When I first took a look at Battle for the Planets, I was immediately impressed by the sharp graphics and the very thought of this shareware game coming into the fold of networkable Macintosh games.
If you’ve enjoyed the venerable Mac network games like NetTrek, Minotaur and Bolo, then you’ll probably look forward to Battle for the Planets. This will probably be the first such network game to feature arcade-style graphics equalling that of award-winning titles like Maelstrom. In fact, if you’ve ever wondered what Maelstrom would be like if it had been networkable in the first place — this one comes really close! This game features digitized sounds and 3-D rendered 256 color graphics.
Options, options, options! Arcade spacecraft shoot-em-up games can get tiring really fast if you don’t have the ability to customize your craft. BftP allows you to select from four principal ship types. This is analogous to being able to select either a Federation, Klingon or Romulan ship in a game of NetTrek. As you play along in BftP, you can pick up various add-ons, power-ups and special equipment (such as a cloaking device) that gives your ship enhanced features and abilities.
Battle for the Planets was meant to play over Ethernet networks and possibly by modem play using Apple Remote Access (ARA). It would be nice if future versions of the game could also include artificial intelligence for solo play or even an option to play over the Internet using a TCP/IP connection.
The main reason this is a preview is because BftP is still a work in progress. Only a DEMO/PREVIEW version of the game was available at the time of this writing. The game developers said that the final release version should be out soon.
For more information on Battle for the Planets, contact: jmalkin736@aol.com
