The Eidolon

Lucasfilm Games was one of the most influential company that has great technology, so we can suspect other companies / individual developers couldn't develop such 3D games in that era. Even though I'd searched for 3D action-style games out of tons of Atari 8bit / Atari 2600 games, however, I could find only "Battlezone" clones as games that have "Battle" elements prior to 1984. Make sure that "The Eidolon" was originally released for C64 and Atari XL/XE in North America in the end of 1985. On this website, I will mention ZX Spectrum port in 1986. It is because now we can play ZX Spectrum games on retro consoles such as "CD32(+FDD)" or "SNES(+AD Adapter)".

To tell the truth, the game would become sluggish if you play on CD32+FDD, so I strongly recommend you to play the game on SNES+AD Adapter if you surely want complete all levels. Anyway I mean that we can play legendary game on our retro console and nothing gives us such great pleasure as this. Of course "The Eidolon" allows us to use Kempston joystick. It means we can move using control pads as below: Up: Go forward Down: Go backward Left: Turn left Right: Turn right Fire button: shoot projectiles Can you say it differs from FPS games!? By the way, do you know what Japanese people say when they saw "Ghosts 'n Goblins" was ported to NES in the same year, in 1986? They were very impressed and used to say "This is it, a mass storage of 1MB ram! Then that accounts for beautiful graphics!" Imagine that they came across "The Eidolon" in that era. They would be shocked as to stun. It might  had changed the history of console games' developments...

1. Current level. 2. Your HP. After you died once, the game would restart from the starting point of current level. 3. Your time left. Every the long hand of a clock hits twelve 12 times,    the short hand of a clock would move 1/12 around.    Every the short hand of a clock hits 12, the current figure would be reduced 1.    If the short hand of a clock hits 12 after that figure became 0, your game would over.    You must have to restart from the 1st level. This figure would increase by 2 every you complete a level. 4. Your have 4 types of projectile as weapon.    A color of the projectile available would light, and a color of the projectile you select would flash.    Which color of projectile you can shoot would have much to do with your current HP. 5. Which direction you are facing now.    For example, even if you face west‐northwest,an arrow that means west would flash as shown to the left screen.    We should be see them only as a guide. 6. Gems you've gotten. There are barriers in front of the BOSS enemy.    To destroy barriers, a gem that is the same color as that barrier would be required.    You can bring gems that you didn't use over to the next level. 7. A distance from the BOSS enemy.

A enemy appears! ...In this game, each enemy is placed to guard a gem. They are sleeping till you get closer to them. After you awaken them, they would move suddenly. All normal enemies don't shoot projectiles. They just come towards you. So you shall shoot them while going backwards. In the 1st level, you will see 3 enemies, which figures and aggressiveness are different each other. You will see new enemies in later levels. For example, it adds one new enemy of each level till the 3rd level. In the 4th level, it adds two new enemies. Therefore you won't get boring, will you?

It matters when you should get blue projectile and how quickly you can collect gems. So you shall learn where they are placed. For example, see a map of the 3rd level as shown to the left screen. A BOSS enemy awaits you in each level. All 8 BOSS enemies are different each other. These battles' system is totally different from normal enemies' one. A BOSS enemy shoot projectiles in 4 colors that damage & blew you. You must catch them by space key. Your HP would be healed. Only 1 type (color) of projectiles would damage a BOSS enemy, however, there is no way of knowing which type of projectiles damages a BOSS enemy till you actually fight with it.