Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters

Hey folks, Nick back once again with a video from our trip to John's Gameroom. One of the game's John was telling me he loved was Atari's Escape from the Planet of The Robot Monsters. He said he was able to find a conversion kit version of the game but he held out hope that he could find a proper, original dedicated unit. Well after years of searching he finally got a lead on a dedicated unit and it was added into the arcade that week. Due to this the game wasn't setup right. There was a problem with the buttons on the first player (which was later fixed), the sound wasn't turned up loud enough to hear and the screen needs to be adjusted.

Since I have never played the game before I had to make sure I got it on video. It's sad that I wasn't able to get any of the sound from the game, because if you loved Atari's arcade games you'll find a lot to like. It's got that classic Atari voice that you might know from their classics like Gauntlet, APB and Road Blasters. It sounds muffled and barley like what their supposed to be saying but it's just classic.

The game is a lot like Sega's Alien Syndrome. You and a friend have to run around mazes and you need to rescue hostages all while being attacked by the evil robot monsters. Every time you destroy a robot they drop a green energy orb that can be used to power up your gun. Unlike Alien Syndrome there's only two weapons, the standard gun and you can also get bombs that can level anything near you...including the hostages. Unlike in Alien Syndrome your character has the ability to duck which is useful for dodging shots from the robots.

While this was my very first time playing or even seeing the game this game, according to our good friend, the one and only, Guru Larry, Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters has a huge following in the UK. The game spawned ports on just about every home PC from the ZX Spectrum to the Commodore64. Larry said there was also a planned port for the NES that never happened but the prototype ROM is supposed to exist. (No idea on how you can play the game on a two button controller when the game uses three..)

Be sure to check back in with us later this week for a "lost" video!