Paradroid

Nintendo console exclusive

The game is set on a spaceship viewed from a top-down perspective. The ship consists of numerous rooms and levels, each one populated by hostile robots or "droids". The player, in control of a special droid called the "Influence Device", must destroy all the other droids on the ship. Each droid (including the player) is represented as a circle around a three-digit number. The numbers roughly correspond to the droid's "power" or "level", in that higher-numbered droids are tougher to destroy.

Released: 1985
Platforms: Acorn Archimedes Atari ST Commodore 64 Commodore C64/128/MAX Ouya Wii
Genres: Shoot 'em up Shooter Strategy Tactical
Developers: Graftgold
Publishers: Hewson Consultants
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Science fiction
Country: United Kingdom
Languages: English

About

Paradroid is a Commodore 64 video game written by Andrew Braybrook and published by Hewson Consultants in 1985. It is a shoot 'em up with puzzle elements and was critically praised at release. The objective is to clear a fleet of spaceships of hostile robots by destroying them or taking over them via a minigame. It was remade as Paradroid 90 for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST home computers and as Paradroid 2000 for the Acorn Archimedes.

There exist several fan-made remakes for modern PCs. In 2004, the Commodore 64 version was re-released as a built-in game on the C64 Direct-to-TV, in 2008 for the Wii Virtual Console in Europe and in 2018 on the C64 Mini.

Keywords

robots
pixel art
developed by one person
non-humanoid protagonist
virtual console
wii virtual console

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Enemy forces have hijacked a space fleet by turning its robot consignment against the crew. The goal is to neutralize all the robots, thereby rescuing the humans. The player controls a prototype influence device that allows them to move the hostile robots.

The game is set on a spaceship viewed from a top-down perspective. The ship consists of numerous rooms and levels, each one populated by hostile robots or androids. The player, in control of a special droid called the Influence Device, must destroy all the other droids on the ship. Each droid (including the player) is represented as a circle around a three-digit number. The numbers roughly correspond to the droid's power or level, in that higher-numbered droids are tougher to destroy; there are 24 droid types.

Development

During development of the original game, Braybrook kept a diary that was published monthly in Zzap!64 magazine, in which he stated:

The thing you actually play with are robots shown from above. There's going to be lots of them. If you want to know more about a particular robot what you do is log-on to a computer terminal. From there you can sift through all the robots and get large side view pictures and you can select things to get more information.