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Tabs MOD Since: Jan, 2001
2024-05-30 07:20:08

Sure, if you can identify at least three tropes. It had plenty description.

Nautilus is a 1982 game for the Atari 8 Bit Computers that introduced unique firsts to the industry: the first Split Screen game, and the first Asymmetric Multiplayer game. That's right; while Nintendo invented and popularized the term Asymmetric Multiplayer, it was around 30 years before the Wii U!

There are one or two players. Player One (or the Computer) controls the Colossus, a ship on top of the ocean, on the top half of the split screen, and Player Two controls the Nautilus, a submarine who can travel freely underwater on the bottom half of the split screen. Their play experience is totally different.

The titular Nautilus is given the job of destroying an underwater city by shooting it down, and collecting the energy cores within. The energy cores also add fuel to the Nautilus. The Nautilus also must avoid things that have been dropped in the water to kill it, such as depth charges and homing bombs, and optionally (they can be toggled on/off or changed in difficulty levels), separate homing bombs that spawn on their own and seek it on higher difficulty levels, and lasers that turn on and off underwater and block the Nautilus's path. The Nautilus can rise to the surface to attack the Colossus directly. If the Nautilus is damaged, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean for a few seconds before rising and regenerating.

The Colossus is given the job of transporting a repair crew from the base on the right side of the map to the left side, which then rapidly repairs the underwater city. If the Nautilus happens to be where the city is when it regenerates, the city takes precedence, and the Nautilus takes damage equivalent to a kill. The Colossus also has to content with a helicopter that drops small bombs into the water, and possible attacks from the Nautilus.

To address balance, the game has multiple difficulty levels, all of which tend to make things easier/harder for the Nautilus but not so much the Colossus. The difficulty affects things such as spawning homing mines that seek the Nautilus, and the speed of the Colossus's underwater attacks.

BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
2024-05-30 13:43:26

Okay, here are some I can think of:

  • Asymmetric Multiplayer: One player is a submarine, the other is a ship. The submarine can move in all directions, while the ship can only move side to side. The two players have vastly different goals, and even differently sized portions of the screen. The two players could hardly play more differently.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Both players have infinite lives. Death for the submarine means sinking to the bottom for a few seconds, then rising back up with full fuel. Death for the ship means being sent all the way to the right, the ship's home base. Essentially, killing the other player slows them down a bit and nothing more.
  • Deadly Walls: Only a problem for the submarine. Touch any wall and you crash. The ship doesn't have this problem, as it can only go left (to recharge the cities) or right (to collect a new charge).
  • Destructible Projectiles: One of the first of its kind. The homing mines that chase the submarine can be shot down.
  • Emergency Refuelling: The submarine has a fuel limit that is continually draining. Running out of fuel means instant death, but the energy cores stolen from the cities also refuel the sub.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: A primitive form of this. Both players have a sonar-like sound playing that changes in tone when they both occupy the same vertical space. There's also an arrowhead on each screen representing the other player's horizontal position being to the left or the right.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: As is common for the era, both players are dead in only one hit.
  • Protection Mission: Of a sort. The ship must defend the underwater city, in the sense that it must not only attack the submarine but also regenerate the buildings if they're destroyed.
  • Split Screen: Ship gets the top, sub gets the bottom. The top half of the screen is also smaller than the bottom half due to the ship not needing to see as much in order to know what's going on.

Is this enough to start the article? I'm having a hard time thinking of other tropes at the moment.

Edited by BonsaiForest
Excessive-Menace (Fifth Year at Tropey's)
2024-05-30 13:54:25

^ That's certainly enough to make an article.

SING TO ME, LEND ME THE SONG OF BLASPHEMY
BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
2024-05-30 18:59:06

Thanks! Am I allowed to edit the page? Do I have to wait for a mod to do something to the page to enable editing it? How does the process work?

MyFinalEdits (Spin-off Series)
2024-05-30 20:14:26

Just make the page, no permission is needed. As long as it's not a stub and has a good description and more than three examples (you already have nine), it's a free action. Also, don't forget to crosswick the examples into the associated trope articles, and put the page on indexes. =)

Edited by MyFinalEdits 135 -> 180 -> 273 -> 191 -> 188 -> 230 -> 300 -> 311
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