If ever an annual festivity was ripe for conversion into a game surely it would be Guy Fawkes night. One based around subterfuge and sneaking large amounts of explosives into an underground lair with a view to blowing up a national government, ultimately ending up in some men with funny beards being brought to justice; it could be straight out of a Tom Clancy novel if it were not set 400 years ago.
Sadly, it seems, the finale of burning Catholics doesn’t poll very well with many demographics.
Instead we focus on the more colourful aspect of the festival: fireworks. Any self-respecting engine can push out a mass of particle effects to create the illusion of a fireworks display but only a handful of games have embraced them as the heart of their experience. Most recently there has been Boom Boom Rocket, a rhythm action game from Bizarre Creations, and, from the launch of the PS2, Fantavision, a puzzle game where flares from fireworks must be captured to gain points. My favourite, however, is a mini-game tucked away within the EyeToy.
Not known by many, it goes by the name of Rocket Rumble; and it places you in charge of a fireworks display. Rockets are launched from all across the foot of the screen and, using the PS2′s camera to read your movements, you must touch each to activate them before slamming a hand down on a plunger to detonate them in a burst of colour. Traditional puzzle elements are added to this concept, encouraging you to string together similarly coloured blasts and activate larger and larger quantities of rockets before triggering the explosion, each allowing your score tick up with gay abandon.
Aside from the high-scores and pleasing sound effects, Rocket Rumble’s hook is the subtle way in which it used the Eye Toy as an input device. Most games using Sony’s camera saw you flailing madly in front of your television, whether it be to wash windows or see off mini-ninjas. Here, however, you required accuracy and patience. Reaching you arm into a cluster of rockets to select each blue one individually and then slapping the detonator before they came back to earth was a delicate task at times. Admittedly you could still swing your arms wildly in a bid to select every rocket on screen but those who did didn’t grasp just what the game was trying to achieve.
So many motion controllers come and go with vast mounds of forgettable mini-games, usually only brought out when there are others around to share in the humiliation. These collections come and go relatively swiftly but the one that kept Eye Toy: Play active in my front room long after the party had ended was Rocket Rumble. Possibly my favourite puzzle game that no one has heard of.
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife and rabbits fit in. Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer
