The Evolution Of: Cybernoid
Although defined by its original gameplay and fresh mechanics, Raffaele Cecco’s Cybernoid evolved from his previous titles Equinox and Exolon, and then inspired his bigger and better sequel Cybernoid II
Raffaele Cecco talks us about the inspirations and legacy of his ZX Spectrum shoot-’em-up
“Equinox was very much a fly-around-and-solve-puzzles type of game and was in-line with titles like Pyjamarama in terms of pace and exploration” Raffaele Cecco
Of the many games he worked on, Raffaele Cecco is perhaps most fondly remembered for the 8-bit classics that he created as a solo freelancer during the late Eighties and early Nineties. But that reputation does a disservice not only to his later work, but also his earliest effort – Equinox.
Raffaele was just a teenager when he developed Equinox for the Berkshire-based software house Mikro-gen, and as he explains, he was happy to get a little help from his more experienced colleague Chris Hinsley and his more musically inclined coworker Nick Jones. “It was a very small team when I joined,” Raffaele says of signing with Mikro-gen. “It was just myself, Chris Hinsley, David Perry, Dave Shea and Nick Jones. Chris was a big influence at Mikro-gen; I believe he was its first game developer employee. He was a great coder, and he was a bit older and more experienced than everyone else. Chris certainly helped me out with Equinox. It was my first full game, as I’d only really done a few nice demos before then to secure me a job. I remember Chris helped me design the coloured passcard system for the doors. Along with designing and coding, we were also expected to draw graphics, apart from Nick who couldn’t draw but could play the piano, so he did the music instead!”
While Nick worked on the soundtrack for
Equinox and Chris helped devise its colourcoded level-pass mechanics, Raffaele decided that the game’s hero should make do with a solitary rechargeable weapon to defend itself from opponents. “It was a decision based on pragmatism,” Raffaele reflects. “It was my first game, so keeping things pure and simple was the least risky option.
The necessity to recharge was a simple way of adding a bit of challenge without adding much more complexity, and the droid had a laser, rather than bullets, so an energy recharge also made sense.”
Rather than making his droid’s lasers powerful enough to breach blocked exits, however, Raffaele devised a secondary objective for Equinox that revolved around finding objects to overcome obstacles. “I don’t think the idea of
destroyable obstacles of the Cybernoid sort even came up,” Raffaele reasons. “Equinox was very much a fly-around-and-solve-puzzles type of game and was more in-line with Mikro-gen’s previous titles like Pyjamarama in terms of pace and exploration. So it was slower and less explosive than something like Cybernoid. Also, we were still exploring the limits of the Spectrum at that time – I don’t think we had reached the technical pinnacle yet, and perhaps the idea of being able to destroy big chunks of scenery wasn’t something that occurred to us.” A third gameplay strand followed, as Raffaele opted to give Equinox credit-activated teleporters that could beam the game’s droid to areas where vital objects could be found, although the developer has sadly long since forgotten them. “I don’t remember why we had the teleporters in
Equinox,” Raffaele admits. “I would speculate that they must have been necessary to gain access to some areas that were otherwise closed off, otherwise why would the player bother spending valuable credits to use them?”
Additional mechanics followed prior to
Equinox’s release, including time limits on
completing its levels, which was something that Raffaele’s subsequent sci-fi title would prove tense enough without. “Exolon was more of an outright blaster,” argues Raffaele, “so I don’t think it required any more tension, as each new screen was a surprise that dropped you straight into the action. I think time limits worked better with exploration games, where the reward for remembering map layouts and the location of objects was that you saved time. One of my all-time favourite games was Super Mario, and I thought that the time limits on that game worked well, as they gave you just enough slack to complete each level, as long as you didn’t make too many mistakes. Then as you got better, you would have a bit of extra time to explore a bit more and find new things.”
Rather than taking influence from Nintendo’s classic, however, Raffaele reworked a mechanic from Equinox when it came to broadening
Exolon beyond blasting and platforming. “The teleporters in Exolon were a completely different gameplay mechanism,” Raffaele points out. “They allowed you to instantly dodge out of the way of the homing missiles or other baddies when you entered a screen. I think at the time that was quite a unique feature, and I wish I’d had time to think up more scenarios for their use. But as Exolon was a linear run-and-gun, teleporting between its screens like in Equinox wouldn’t have worked.”
Like Equinox, Exolon made quite a Lway, feature of placing obstacles in its hero’s
although Raffaele decided that they should be blown-up with a rocket launcher rather than being unlocked with objects as in Equinox. “Exolon was linear – the game was all about moving forwards, dodging and blasting,” Raffaele considers, “so I think lock-and-key puzzles would have spoilt that continuity. The rockets and destroyable obstacles fitted in well with the run-and-gun style of the game, plus they looked pretty spectacular. Exolon was all about action and visual appeal – remember this was the Eighties, so think of all the over-the-top action movies like First
Blood, Commando and Predator that came out in that era! Exolon was a reflection of that.”
In keeping with its explosive inspiration, Exolon outdid Equinox’s weapon count three-to-one by adding two blasters to its rocket launcher. “Well, run-and-guns need lots of weapons!” Raffaele grins. “Quite simple really, and there was certainly an influence from the multiweapon games that were appearing in the arcades. The doublebarrelled gun made it easier to hit flying baddies that would bob-and-weave in front of you. And the over-and-under enemy rocket launcher was a lot easier to beat with two barrels, as you didn’t have to crouch-and-stand rapidly to hit the two levels of rockets. So, there was certainly an incentive to power-up to the double-barrelled version. The
backpack rocket launcher was used to clear large static obstacles. It was implemented in order to have a slower-paced but very powerful contrast to the rapid shooting of the basic gun. It also provided a spectacular effect when you destroyed an obstacle, which was quite satisfying – that kind of visual feedback was important.”
Indeed, references were made to Exolon’s explosions in its glowing reviews, and so it follows that Raffaele would double the weapons that you could switch between in its successor – Cybernoid. “The multiweapon idea was more of a quick-witted puzzle-thing really,” Raffaele says of Cybernoid’s selectable weaponry. “I liked the idea of having to select the appropriate weapon in a split second as you entered a new screen to maximise the damage to the enemies. It kept the players on their toes in a consistent way throughout the game. In terms of number of weapons, I didn’t think two alone would have provided enough gameplay alternatives, so four seemed like a good compromise. It was small enough a number to allow players to get used to them, but it still provided enough variety to keep things interesting, and it allowed me to think up gameplay scenarios that required their use.”
But another aspect of Exolon’s gameplay was overlooked by Raffaele when it came to designing
Cybernoid ’s stages, specifically his previous game’s exits. “In retrospect, I think I missed a trick in Cybernoid by not having multiple exit options,” he concedes. “It would have provided a lot of replay value to enter a new screen and discover that the lower portion was only accessible if you had used the lower exit. Perhaps I wanted to just keep the game flowing as it was linear and you couldn’t go back on yourself. But if I could go back in time, I would change the game to allow players to have multiple exits and backtrack, not so much for deep exploration, but to just add a few little route options here and there.”
On the specific point of restricting players from revisiting Cybernoid’s levels, especially given how well this mechanic had worked in Equinox, Raffaele reckons his hand was forced by time constraints.
“Cybernoid was clearly influenced by Equinox in some ways – the family resemblance was obvious,” the developer notes, “even if the games played quite differently. So I do feel the lack of backtracking was a lost opportunity in Cybernoid, as I think the game could have been better with it. That was maybe a decision based on the amount of time I had.”
Of course, while Cybernoid lacked gameplay traits established in the aesthetically similar
Equinox, Raffaele’s latest project boasted mechanics that hadn’t featured in his debut title. “There were so many enemies coming in from all angles in Cybernoid that a shield was pretty much essential,” Raffaele observes. “It really helped when you had to balance your ship in between those up-and-down enemies inside the columns. Let’s be honest here – the game was bloody hard, so the shield was maybe a safety net to allow lessskilled players to progress a bit more!”
Further evolutions followed, but unlike its shields – which took their lead from Exolon’s protective exoskeleton suit – Cybernoid’s powerup mechanics were entirely original. “This was a risk-reward element: destroy the enemies to obtain the power-ups,” Raffaele explains, “for example, the spinning mace or the ammo for your currently selected weapon. At this point, I was finding it easier and easier to implement new ideas on the Spectrum, so adding the pick-ups as an additional gameplay element felt like a natural thing to
“Cybernoid was clearly influenced by Equinox in some ways – the family resemblance was obvious even if the games played quite differently” Raffaele Cecco
do within the time I had. I really liked the idea of enemies dropping things when you destroyed them, as it gave a real incentive to get stuck in, plus there was that element of surprise when you saw what they had dropped.”
A second deviation from Exolon resulted in
Cybernoid’s obstacle-strewn stages having to be completed against the clock, as had been the case in Equinox. “I think a time limit suited the frantic pace of Cybernoid where you whizzed around in a spaceship rather than plodding along in combat boots,” Raffaele ponders. “It all added to the sense of urgency and drama of the game – dodge, shoot, shoot, bomb, explode, get the pick-ups and then on to the next screen! You could never really relax when playing Cybernoid – you even had gravity working against you since you had to press ‘up’ to maintain altitude, so the constant action and movement worked well with a time limit.”
A major contributor to Cybernoid’s action followed, as Raffaele incorporated platforming puzzles into his latest game’s single-screen stages, in keeping with those in his previous title Exolon. “I never thought of Exolon or Cybernoid as platform games,” Raffaele clarifies, “or at least, that wasn’t in the forefront of my mind when designing them. I considered them to be action games, and I used platforming elements to compliment the action aspect rather than distracting from it. I used background elements to create obstacles and gaps without thinking about ‘platforms.’ But ultimately, as soon as the player had to negotiate some scenery to land – or jump onto something – then I guess the games earned ‘platform’ credentials by default, even though that wasn’t the essence of the games. For me, a ‘platform game’ was something like Donkey Kong or Super Mario.”
In truth, Cybernoid was never a platform game – or a shoot-‘em-up or a puzzle game, but it did channel those three genres, and its eclectic gameplay went down so well with players that a sequel was a foregone conclusion. “I don’t remember any specifics regarding the choice of weapons,” says Raffaele on increasing Cybernoid’s four armaments to six for Cybernoid II, “nor do I remember why some might have been altered or chosen for replacement. However, I can speculate that decisions would have been based around offering the players new gameplay twists and options. It was a fine balance between giving
players something new and not altering the gameplay that they had enjoyed previously.”
In terms of inspirations, Raffaele credits the arcades of the Eighties for Cybernoid II’S ‘tracer’ bombs, which travelled around the edges of the screen, and his sequel’s collectable rear cannon, which fired in unison with a front-mounted blaster. “By this time, I think I’d been influenced by a lot by games such as R-type with their plethora of weapons,” the developer acknowledges. “The tracer bombs were any easy score for me, as they used the same tracking logic as some of the baddies from Cybernoid. The double gun didn’t really require much thought – it was a pretty standard power-up for a spaceship. It was effectively enhancing the gun so that it required less accuracy from the player so that they could concentrate on other things on the screen.”
Of the many other evolutions Cybernoid II made over its predecessor, Raffaele highlights one in particular that provides him with a certain amount of validation – the follow-up’s alternate routes through its stages. “As I mentioned earlier, I think not having alternate routes and exits through screens was a lost opportunity in Cybernoid,”
Raffaele reiterates. “I can’t remember why they weren’t implemented, but one thing I can say is that I don’t think that alternate routes would have made Cybernoid even more difficult. But I don’t feel too bad about it seeing as I implemented them for Cybernoid II, and they certainly would have differentiated the two games without deviating too much from the original concept.” Reviewers and gamers were in agreement that
Cybernoid II improved on its predecessor without slavishly copying it. Although Raffaele’s desire to go in fresh directions coupled with the ascension of 16-bit gaming subsequently cut the lineage that had produced Cybernoid short. “I think a scrolling version of Cybernoid could have been on the cards if we had continued with the franchise,” Raffaele teases. “That would have worked really well for a Cybernoid-like game. And it would have been technically possible, as I’d created scrolling games like Stormlord and Deliverance towards the end of my relationship with Hewson. Unfortunately, the opportunity never arose as I’d moved on from Hewson around that time and was looking towards 16-bit machines like the Atari ST and Amiga.”
“I think a time limit suited the frantic pace of Cybernoid where you whizzed around in a spaceship rather than plodding along in combat boots” Raffaele Cecco