Magazine Reviews

[Pix]

#5472

I’ve dug up a couple of mentions for Raptor. Shareware games never got full reviews in UK PC gaming mags so they are quite brief. They both loved it which is making me wonder what I’m missing about this game. I notice one of the reviews only mentions Adlib/Soundblaster support which is making me think Sound Canvas wasn’t the way to go when I was playing the game. If support was only added later on, it’s not always as good as the original Adlib.

[watchful]

#5491

From what I recall back in the day I think ADG is right that it came out when everyone wanted cool graphics. And this game looked good even on modest hardware. Never got very far in the game back in the day, though I’ll try again. Maybe mouse or joystick controls will help.

Since I don’t see mid-mission saves I plan to use DOSBox-X and its save state feature (F11+S and F11+L). Seems to work well enough with my CD version from the thrift store.

[Pix]

#5493

I must have watched that ADG but can’t recall what he said – I’ll have to give it another look. Some of these verge on exploits but here’s a few tips for getting to the end of Raptor without savestates:-

You take far more damage when a ship crashes into you than when being hit by bullets. If you have the choice, head for the bullets.
The exception to the above is when you get ships firing lasers later on. These are best avoided if you don’t take them out immediately.
Don’t be too greedy and try to shoot everything. It’s more important to keep your shields up.
On difficult levels you can do better sticking to one side of the screen most of the time, only moving to take out anything ground based that shoots bullets.
You can stack up to 5 of the energy shields and will need to do so on the later levels.
If you hold down fire and keep pressing alt as fast as possible you’ll be able to fire all your weapons at once. This works better with slower firing weapons and if you don’t have too many different weapons.
If you get a weapons power up during a mission and then abort that mission, you’ll still have that weapon (and any damage you suffered). You can repeat this as much as you want to get cash. Level 6 works really well for this, just abort as soon as you grab the dumbfires.

[TigerQuoll]

#5495

One more thing that’s worth mentioning is: don’t stop moving. Even with your fire button down for the whole level (as it should be), you should be spending at least as much time ducking and weaving around bullets as you are firing at baddies.