Previous Next

This game originally came over from the States a couple of years back on the Atari (6502-based) and thus made its weary way onto the Commodore 64 (also 6502-ish) in a short length of time. Transference of the game onto the Amstrad and Spectrum (or should I say Amstrad and Amstrad - the paradoxes could go on forever - which are also Z80-based) has taken much longer. But... on with the plot.

This game was to be the first in a series (and it was) of games based on the reasonably new Fractal Mathematics system (which it wasn't). Fractal mathematics is an incredibly simple, yet amazingly complex way of mapping out functions using fractional dimensions. So instead of using 2D to represent 3D you use 5.78D (or some such). The upshot of this is that you can draw pretty pictures of any sort of surface (and nice pictures of trees - but we won't go into that here) that you can examine in any detail.

The best definition of a Fractal surface is 'a surface that does not get less complex the more you magnify it'. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this as Fractalus doesn't use Fractals at all. Oh, it was going to. But all that processing on an Atari 800 - you've got to be kidding. So the game designers came up with a fudge to produce a display that looks "Fractalish" to the uninitiated, but is no such thing. Why I'm telling you this I don't know - it's not relevant to the game as that's excellent, but somebody's got to educate you.

In the game you fly your space ship over a 3D surface that looks like a collection of slag heaps. On these slag heaps are crashed compatriots of yours along with some nasty aliens. The idea is to detect where your guys are, pick them up, destroy their craft and escape. All this without being destroyed by the alien gun turrets or letting the aliens in.

Apart from that, that's the game. Nice graphics, and playable too - there's just not a great deal to describe once you marvelled at the high speed mathematics (where there aren't any) and been amazed at the good graphics (plenty of that).

A very good conversion, but a bit of an old game.