With games like Nintendo Land and Splinter Cell's competitive "spy vs. merc" multiplayer mode, there's been talk of Asymmetric Multiplayer, but the concept is hardly new. In 1982, both Asymmetric Multiplayer and split-screen gameplay were invented at the same time - in Nautilus, one of the most original games ever made.
Pitting a ship delivering cargo back and forth against an underwater submarine, the game created an experience that was completely different for each player, and the interface matched this as well. The top half of the split screen was actually smaller than the bottom half, since the ship merely needed to be aware of possible submarine attack and possible enemy helicopter attack. Ultimately, the ship's gameplay was limited to moving left and right, dropping depth charges and homing mines to attack the sub, and possibly avoiding the helicopter's attack when necessary. If the submarine reached the top of the ocean, the ship could easily be shot down.
The submarine player was the one who got to have more fun. Exploring the sea, avoiding attacks from above, enemy robots on the sea floor, or even the homing mines in the water, navigating electric barriers, refueling every once in a while, and destroying the buildings and collecting their energy cores, was easily more fun and complex than the back-and-forth movement of the ship. I preferred playing as the ship when I was 5 years old; nowadays, I can't even imagine anyone having that preference.
The result is a very imbalanced game. A unique one, to be sure, but instead of two evenly-matched opponents with radically different abilities, you get two people doing very different things - one with large freedom of movement and a more complex goal, and one that's doing very little. Difficulty levels can be tweaked to add extra hazards for the submarine and/or ship, which does add more to the gameplay.
Being made by Synapse, probably the best Atari800 game developer out there, the presentation is fantastic for the time. The bleeps of the sonar which decrease in pitch when players reach each other's position, the fish swimming back and forth in the water (a cute detail), and especially the cool animation of regenerating the destroyed buildings (which is the ship's goal), all added a lot of life to the game.
VideoGame Incredibly innovative for its time; creative and original even today, but not quite balanced
With games like Nintendo Land and Splinter Cell's competitive "spy vs. merc" multiplayer mode, there's been talk of Asymmetric Multiplayer, but the concept is hardly new. In 1982, both Asymmetric Multiplayer and split-screen gameplay were invented at the same time - in Nautilus, one of the most original games ever made.
Pitting a ship delivering cargo back and forth against an underwater submarine, the game created an experience that was completely different for each player, and the interface matched this as well. The top half of the split screen was actually smaller than the bottom half, since the ship merely needed to be aware of possible submarine attack and possible enemy helicopter attack. Ultimately, the ship's gameplay was limited to moving left and right, dropping depth charges and homing mines to attack the sub, and possibly avoiding the helicopter's attack when necessary. If the submarine reached the top of the ocean, the ship could easily be shot down.
The submarine player was the one who got to have more fun. Exploring the sea, avoiding attacks from above, enemy robots on the sea floor, or even the homing mines in the water, navigating electric barriers, refueling every once in a while, and destroying the buildings and collecting their energy cores, was easily more fun and complex than the back-and-forth movement of the ship. I preferred playing as the ship when I was 5 years old; nowadays, I can't even imagine anyone having that preference.
The result is a very imbalanced game. A unique one, to be sure, but instead of two evenly-matched opponents with radically different abilities, you get two people doing very different things - one with large freedom of movement and a more complex goal, and one that's doing very little. Difficulty levels can be tweaked to add extra hazards for the submarine and/or ship, which does add more to the gameplay.
Being made by Synapse, probably the best Atari800 game developer out there, the presentation is fantastic for the time. The bleeps of the sonar which decrease in pitch when players reach each other's position, the fish swimming back and forth in the water (a cute detail), and especially the cool animation of regenerating the destroyed buildings (which is the ship's goal), all added a lot of life to the game.