A plateforms game by Bernard AURE
1984 - Sprites



psy.zip


The origins of the game

          
Psychiatric is a remake of the arcad game SPACE PANICS made by Universal in 1980.

This game was adapted on the colecovision console in 1983 then on apple II.

According to mameinfo.dat this game was the first platforms game in the story of the video games.



Home sweet home


You have just taken possession of your new residence,
unfortunaletly the basements is filled with pollutant gases
and dangerous monsters.

There’s only one thing to do, exterminate them.
Thread your combination and at them !
But caution time is limited, watch at your
reserve of oxygen.


                     
The principal menu is full,
you can configure keys,
select the level of the difficulty
and choose the number players.

Press the SHIFT key to start the game…


Crushing monsters
 

The goal of the game is to eliminate all the monsters in limited time.

The small blue pacman in top of the screen indicates time remaining,
it will change color when time goes to end.

The level is divided in four floors and the passage
to the others is done by scales, or by holes.

 







To kill a monster, it is necessary to create a hole by jumping on the floor,
then attract it inside.
Once trapped, jump on it until he dies while falling.

Pay attention that there aren't monsters in the top of you when you jump
 because their contact is deadly trapped or not.

The holes are filled when the monsters fall or are released,
do not wait too long time before jump on them.


The more a monster falls from top and the more it gives back score,
the score of the monster is multiplied of by the number of floors falled.

Some monsters require to fall from several floors in one
or several times to disapeared.

You can slow down the progression of the monsters by creating incomplete holes,
it is useful when you are chased. 
 


The monsters

Here are the three different monsters from the game
*
The octopus :
It's the first monster encounter, it must fall from only one stage to be destroyed.
80 points    
The duck :
This monster must fall from two consecutive floors to be destroyed
240 points    
The hippocampus :
The hippocampus must fall from two floors, but not necessarily consecutive.
If it not die with the first fall, it'll become faster and more aggressive.
400 points
   

Conclusion
 
It’s a pleasant conversion of an arcade game, graphics are very colored and there’re many animations.

The game is easy to take in hand and funny, but the difficulty increases very quickly and at level 5 it becomes really difficult.

I regret the small number of different monsters,
at the level 4 we have see all the content of the game and at the level 6 all levels are identical.

In spite of the lack of variety,
PSYCHIATRIC
is a good game and I recommend it.