''Koronis Rift'' is a

1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...

computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

from

Lucasfilm Games Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a large ...

. It was

produced Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

and

designed A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

Noah Falstein Noah Falstein (born June 1957) is a game designer and producer who has been in the video game industry since 1980, winning "Game of the Year" titles for multiple games such as ''Battlehawks 1942'' and '' Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis''. ...

. Originally developed for the

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE ...

and the Commodore 64, ''Koronis Rift'' was ported to the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the S ...

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mold ...

, MSX,

Tandy Color Computer 3 The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Com ...

, and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

. The Atari and C64 version shipped on a

flippy disk The floppy disk is a data storage and transfer medium that was ubiquitous from the mid-1970s well into the 2000s. Besides the 3½-inch and 5¼-inch formats used in IBM PC compatible systems, or the Floppy disk#8-inch floppy disk, 8-inch format th ...

, with one version of the game on each side. A cassette version was also released for the Commodore 64. The Atari version required computers with the

GTIA Color Television Interface Adaptor (CTIA) and its successor Graphic Television Interface Adaptor (GTIA) are custom chips used in the Atari 8-bit family of computers and in the Atari 5200 home video game console. In these systems, a CTIA or GTIA ch ...

chip installed in order to display properly. ''Koronis Rift'' was one of two games in Lucasfilm Games' second wave (December 1985). The other was ''

The Eidolon ''The Eidolon'' was one of two games that were part of Lucasfilm Games' second wave in December 1985. The other was ''Koronis Rift''. Both took advantage of the fractal technology developed for '' Rescue on Fractalus!'', further enhancing it. In ...

''. Both enhanced the

fractal In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as il ...

technology developed for '' Rescue on Fractalus!''. In ''Koronis Rift'', the

's additional colors (over those of the Commodore 64) allowed the

programmers A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

to gradually fade in the background rather than it suddenly popping in as in ''Rescue'', an early example of depth cueing in a computer game.

Gameplay

The player controls a surface rover vehicle to enter several "rifts" on an alien planet which are effectively fractal mazes. A lost civilisation known as the Ancients has left strange machinery, so-called "hulks", within these rifts which are guarded by armed flying saucers of different design and color. Depending on their respective color, shields and gunshots of both the rover and the saucers are of varying effectiveness against each other; part of the game is figuring out which shield and weapon modules work best where. By means of a drone robot, the rover can retrieve modules with various functions (which are not immediately obvious) from nearby hulks. It can only be deployed when all attacking Guardian Saucers have been destroyed. The modules can then be installed in the rover, analyzed aboard the player's space ship, or sold; the rover can carry up to six different modules at a time which can be activated and de-activated as the player sees fit. A large variety of modules is available: Different weapon and shield modules with varying power levels and color codes, modules that increase the rover's power output, a mapper (activating an extra screen on the rover), and even one module that turns the retrieval probe into a bomb, destroying any hulks the probe is sent to investigate instead of retrieving modules. Conversely, different types of hulks exist including one that simply "swallows" the probe without yielding a module, requiring the player to purchase a new probe (and possibly sell useful modules to raise the required funds). The goal of the game is to find and destroy the saucer control base hulk which is located in the 20th rift. To this end, the player must explore the rifts, find hulks, retrieve and analyze modules and understand the color-coding of weapons and shields to overcome the increasingly aggressive and dangerous saucers. The game can be solved in several ways; the quickest is to acquire the bomb module and send the probe into the saucer base with the bomb module activated.

Reception

Info Info is shorthand for "information". It may also refer to: Computing * .info, a generic top-level domain * info:, a URI scheme for information assets with identifiers in public namespaces * info (Unix), a command used to view documentation produ ...

'' rated ''Koronis Rift'' four stars out of five, stating that it was the best of Epyx's four Lucasfilm games. ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through t ...

'' stated that "if KR is a game, it is also a puzzle ... arcade skill alone isn't enough". The reviewer did not enjoy the game because it was so difficult that he spent too much time savescumming, but praised the graphics and sound. ''

Zzap!64 ''Zzap!64'' was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64 (C64). It was published in the UK by Newsfield Publications Ltd and later by Europress Impact. The magazi ...

'' thought that the game was an improvement on its predecessor, ''Rescue on Fractalus'', with superior graphics and gameplay. It was given an overall rating of 96%.

References

External links

''Koronis Rift''
at Atari Mania
''Koronis Rift''
at Gamebase 64 * {{WoS game, id=0002747

at C64Sets.com

1985 video games Action-adventure games Activision games Amstrad CPC games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Commodore 64 games Epyx games LucasArts games MSX games Science fiction video games Tank simulation video games TRS-80 Color Computer games Video games set on fictional planets ZX Spectrum games Video games developed in the United States Single-player video games