I realize with my last post, I jumped into the sequel without talking much about the game that came first, though I have learned words from both of them. In an odd, meta-narrative way, this is actually fitting, since I did play Archon II before I ever gave the first one a shot. Since they’re both pretty fun games, with different things to offer, I felt I should give the original some attention. Which brings us to today’s word.
manticore, noun – a mythical creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, also (sometimes) the wings of a bat
Learned from: Archon: The Light and the Dark (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga, PC, Macintosh, NES, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, PC-88)
Developed by Free Fall Associates
Published by Electronic Arts (1983)
In many ways, the first Archon is a much more straightforward game than its sequel. It has the same system where if two units land on the same square, the screen shifts to an abstract representation of the battlefield, where you fight in real-time, but there’s less environment variety. Instead of elemental planes, you’ve got what amounts to a chessboard with white and black squares. The gimmick comes in the fact that the board undergoes a constant day/night cycle, where the Light side is stronger during the day (and on white squares), while the Dark side is stronger at night (and on black spaces). There are also in-between squares that shift colors along with the time of day. This injects a bit of strategy, where your most mobile units can get to the enemy leader faster, but taking them to their max range in a turn might leave them on the wrong-colored square as day/night is approaching.
And oh, are there a lot of unit types. From basic soldiers, to trolls, to shapeshifters, to the manticore. The description of it above comes from Arabian mythology, and I have to admit, it’s pretty cool…but at the time, I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at. The thing was just a vaguely quadrupedal mass of blue pixels, with something that looked as much like a satellite dish as a tail. Not exactly frightening. Thankfully, my parents had an encyclopedia with a better illustration, and from that point on, my imagination filled in the blanks better than any graphics of the time could have (cheesy as that probably sounds).
If this looks like an old album cover, you’re not entirely wrong. Some games from this era came in what were essentially record sleeves.
Brain Rot 