Fortress (1984 video game)

Fortress is a scrolling shooter in which the player manoeuvres, a starfighter along an alley-like terrain in an isometric perspective, moving toward the top right of the screen. The player craft burns fuel rapidly (even more when flying at altitude) and fuel tanks need to be destroyed to replenish the on-board fuel tank. If the craft runs out of fuel, it crashes. The player must avoid enemy gun turrets, rocket pits, and fighters, as well as deal with additional problems of navigating over and through walls with force fields. The player has three lives. Completing the three stages leads to the enemy headquarters which needs to be destroyed. The game then starts over from the beginning. ==Development and release==

Fortress was written by then-16 year-old Matthew (Mat) Newman of Amersham. He got his start using microcomputers with a Nascom. He then wrote several commercial titles including Alien Swirl for Program Power, Space Hi-way for Amcon, and Ewgeebez for Software Projects. His experience essentially allotted him a "toolkit" for game creation. ==Reception==

Both Personal Computer Games and Computer and Video Games featured Fortress as "Game of the Month" in their June 1984 issues. Chris Anderson of the former publication praised its isometric graphics as "superb" and how the game "combines 3D realism with hair-raising action." Aside from lacking originality and a software bug that causes crashes on some machines, he lauded it as "one of the most impressive games available on a home micro." Tom Baines of Retro Gamer gave an equally favourable assessment much later on. He proclaimed, "From the variety in enemy types and the mix between dodging projectiles and dogfighting craft, to collecting enough fuel to progress and the game's smart use of height to traverse the environment – Fortress handles everything that Zaxxon does, and extremely well, in spite of the BBC Micro's low system power." He expressed minor complaints about the lack of a height indicator and a built-in multiplayer mode. ==References==