Photon is original arcade/strategy game, and one of the best for the Coco 3. It features 4 voice background music (several different tunes, depending
on which level you are on), speech, very smooth (60 frames/second) graphics, great gameplay
and 62 different levels (63 if you include the final showdown with the evil boss, Ludevide). You can start on any of the first 15, and they progressivley get harder and harder. Basically, you have mazes of objects
that you can push or pull (but only 1 square at a time, and only if they are not blocked by something else), and several types of creatures roaming around. DUPEs are the
colored circles... they can cause a lot of damage before they are destroyed, and are mindless... they just follow the paths in the maze (which you can change by
moving objects around). Plasma Droids are the pulsating purple things, and they try to track you down and kill you... but they run away
from DUPEs, as they can get destroyed by them even faster than you can be destroyed by them. There are other things to find, like
power bars (free lives), time stop bombs, etc. You have to get to the exit to the next level, and sit on it for a few seconds to descend, during which time you can
not move, but can be attacked. In between screens, you get some text describing the level (or daring you on things), and each time
you die, the master enemy (Ludevide, and anagram for Evil Dude) taunts you with actual speech while he flies around the screen
(you can see him on the death screen, where he laughs at you when you die for the last time). You also can take some damage (see the damage bar)
before you actually lose a life.
The game docs (and advertisements) for Photon mentioned how addictive the game is, and they are right. The game
itself has been ported to the PC at least twice; an official version by Sundog, and a compiled basic version that is shareware. The shareware
version isn't as good as the Coco original though... the music is missing, and the game play isn't as smooth.
Title: Photon
Author: Jeff Steidl (Produced by Glen Dahlgren)
Publisher: Sundog Systems
Released: 1991
Requires: Color Computer 3, 128K RAM, disk only, joystick.