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Genre: Game - Arcade action

Developer: Puppy Games

Minimum System Requirements: 500MHz G3, Mac OS X v10.2.8, 256MB RAM, 16MB 3D video card, 20MB free hard disk space

Price: $12.95

The first thing you notice when you visit Puppy Games' website is an embedded Java applet running what appears to be their homebrew version of Galaxian, or Space Invaders. The instructions are at the bottom—shoot, bomb and move—and rightfully so, as the game will not wait for you while you skim through Puppy Games' home page. Linger too long over a game description and you'll hear the sound of your ship's shields gradually failing until you get a Game Over on a game that you may not have even realized you were supposed to be playing. The message is pretty clear: you came to this site to play some games, so games you shall have.

Ultratron is one of their more recent offerings, and it's an interesting take on a classic arcade premise, to say the least. The plot description is basic:

"The last human has been slain by evil killer robots. You are the one remaining humanoid battle droid. Your mission is to avenge the human race and destroy the four bots of the Apocalypse: Ieiunitas, Bellum, Lues and Letum!"

And so is the gameplay, which has you running and shooting in eight different directions to destroy these evil killer robots just as soon as they can warp in, collecting powerups, and exploiting score multipliers; it will come so naturally to you that you'll be impressed with yourself. The simplicity of the gameplay and the storyline is very much an homage to the early arcade games such Space Invaders, Galaxian and Galaga, and it stands as a testament to how powerful and compelling such basic, streamlined game designs can be.

Ultratron has the essential trappings of an '80s arcade title, and it certainly encourages you to play it just like you would when you cut class to play arcade games at the local 7-11 back in the day. It even incorporates a central Internet scoreboard to recreate the thrill of entering your initials on the local Defender arcade cabinet high score to leave your mark on the local competition. But, interestingly enough (and I cannot say for sure if this was an intentional move by the game designers), something begins to happen while you play Ultratron that marks it as much more than just another arcade game; at some point in Ultratron, you will discover that the plethora of background sounds you hear—such as "Humanoid Detected" and "Destroy All Humans" is not leading up to some kind of cheesy bass-thumping techno track designed to get your blood pumping, but is in fact just the disturbing repetition of the evil killer robots' orders to kill you. Later, perhaps a few levels or maybe even a game or two later, you'll notice that the abstract backgrounds of each level—complete with spotlights and tracking lasers that follow your every move—look less like primitive representations of cyberspace or some arcade world and actually start looking like empty downtown city streets. But you'll continue to blast robots apart and collect score multipliers and grow stronger and stronger and maybe even make it past a Bot of the Apocalypse or two. And finally, perhaps maybe not until the end of the game, you may reach a breaking point. What Ultratron does that old arcade games didn't do—or perhaps couldn't do—is convey the utter hopelessness and sense of loneliness that is appropriate to the storyline.

Ultratron ends up being more than just an homage to the arcade games of yore, but a reinterpretation of those arcade games. Where the old games left you in the pizza parlor reveling in your command over your instincts and mindlessly submerging yourself in the game to appease the Dark God of the High Score, Ultratron leaves you torn between your primitive desire to beat the robots and avenge the human race, and the overwhelming feeling of futility that the game communicates, as if your revenge on the evil killer robots is, well, meaningless. Where a normal arcade game can leave you with a burning desire to beat that top score, Ultratron can make you feel like playing a game for a high score is like measuring a war's progress by a body count. Even the game's visuals—smooth sprites and particle effects heavily inspired by old arcade games, and backgrounds that look like a crude top-down view of a metropolis done in the cartoony colors of '80s games—can make you wonder for a moment if the world would just automatically transform into a two-dimensional set of icons the moment no humans were around to perceive it. Again, I can't say for sure if this kind of atmosphere was the original intent of the developers at Puppy Games, but I can say that Ultratron is a testament not only to the longevity of the classic quarter-munching arcade game, but the expressive power that the atmosphere of a game—even a mere 6-megabyte shareware title—can hold over its audience.

Download the Ultratron demo.