Troopanum
| title: | Troopanum |
| url: | link |
| download page: | link |
| license: | abandonware |
| genre: | Space invaders Games |
| developer: | BSC Games |
| platform: | Windows |
| release: | 2001 |
| features: | sound |
| last edit by: | Richard |
Description
Troopanum is an arcade space shooter similar to graphical games like Space Invaders and Galaxian. The main objective of the game is to destroy aliens that try to land and take over your base (after which of course the Earth will be next!). If four alien ships land, your base is destroyed and you lose a life (you begin the game with three lives).
The gameplay consists mainly of moving towards the alien ships that you hear descending left or right. This is done by pressing the appropriate cursor key. When an alien ship is right above you (its sound will be in the middle) an extra bleeping "lock-on" sound is heard which informs you that you can hit the ship. You shoot by pressing the control key. You receive points for every hit, but you lose point for every miss. This is an interesting way to keep balance in the gameplay for triggerhappy players. When you have shot a certain amount of alien ships you have completed the level and you start a new one. Every now and then (on levels 4, 8, and 12) you will be pitted against a boss, who you must destroy to beat that level. Bosses, unlike other ships, reappear on the screen after you shoot them, until you shoot them a specified number of times, (and of course while this is going on the boss also has a number of normal ships to back them up).
Occasionally a special item will drop from the sky. You can use these in your battle against the enemy waves. There are three special items: a Super Laser Gun, a Smart Bomb and a Portal. When you shoot such a special item you collect it and can activate it when you want. The Super Laser Gun acts as your normal laser, except it can blast enemies out of the sky from a much farther distance. So when you are moving towards an alien ship you'll notice the lock-on sound even when the ships sound is not in the middle, meaning that you can already shoot the ship. Each Super Laser Gun carries five shots. The Smart Bomb, when used, blasts all enemies out of the screen. This can be very useful, especially when you're in a big fix. If a boss is on the screen, the Smart Bomb will have the effect of hitting him once. A Portal can have one of two effects; it may raise you to the next level, or drop you to the previous level. There is no way in telling where you might end up! Each of these special items can be loaded using keys 1 (Super Laser Gun), 2 (Smart Bomb) and 3 (Portal) and then activated using the control key.
Every level provides faster and more (multiple) aliens. The player can choose one of the three difficulty levels.
Bsc closed down in march of 2013, however Dan Zingaro has agreed that all of their titles can be made abandonware and are thus still available on the Audiogames archive site (check the above link). Though originally released as a commercial game, Troopanum (now usually referd to as "classic Troopanum so as not to be confused with it's sequel), is now available for free. This unfortunately does mean that the score posting function is disabled since Bsc's website no longer exists, though the game still reccords game statistics for posterity and bragging rights.
You can here a ful playthrough of the game by Christian Gillegos recorded in 2006 Here on the Asmodian site
With the issues so many people have encountered playing BSC games on modern windows, Daniel Nash created the very handy Bscfix program to help. This works extremely well and now means most of Bsc's titles can be played again. You can find the pack on the audiogames archive or directly with this download
Happy Blasting.
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Updates: entry 2 Feb 22 and description 2 Feb 22