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Uridium
◾Platform: C64
◾Wii Points: 500
◾In Real Money: GBP 3.50 / EUR 5 (approx)

Kristan already exploded all over this classic shoot-'em-up in our retro channel, giving it top marks, declaring it "effortlessly innovative and visually slick". I wouldn't go all the way up to a 10/10, but there's no denying that Uridium represents the best of C64 shooters in the same way the International Karate demonstrates how original thinking flourished away from the American and Japanese arcade/console axis of power.

It's a horizontal shooter, but play it like R-Type and expect to get creamed. You're piloting a Manta fighter over the surface of fifteen alien Dreadnoughts, sent to steal precious minerals. Free to fly left or right, dictate your speed and even flip your ship on its side, your aim is to keep destroying the Dreadnought defences until you're able to land on its surface. You then play a quick mini-game to earn some bonus points, before zipping off as it exploderises to bits.

As well as the lateral freedom of movement, another change from formula is that it's impossible to collide with the smaller alien ships. You simply fly above or below them. Their shots, however, are instantly fatal - as are the homing missiles that launch should you linger in one place too long, and the elevated structures that must be flown around.

It's hard but it's also fair and, by avoiding the linear progression of the shmup genre, places the onus for success firmly in your hands. There are elements of Defender, Xevious and Gradius all thrown into the mix, but the end result is something unique and a testament to developer Andrew Braybrook's ingenuity. Quibble all you like about the VC's inflated prices - I'll probably agree with you - but if you genuinely resent paying a few quid (or Euros) for Uridium, you may very well be insane.

9/10

"The End of Velocity."

Uridium /juridiem/. n. 1. Fictional metallic element.
2. The light-speed Commodore 64 space shoot-em-up from 1985 named for this element.

Uridium, from Commodore 64 legend Andrew Braybrook, is as terrifyingly fast as computer games have ever been.

I don't always buy that 'Games aren't as challenging as they used to be' line, but Uridium is the most powerful argument the case ever had, because today a game like this would not get off the ground. The average player session on one life in Uridium is somewhere between three and ten seconds. Viewed from overhead, your spinning wedge of a spaceship slingshots up and down the length of alien bases (called Dreadnoughts) which scroll horizontally at blinding speed. The base surfaces are covered in deadly structures which you must pilot around in microseconds. You have to be able to continually line yourself up with series of openings in the time it takes to blink.

While your brain maintains Warp Factor Nine and the flesh is streaming off the back of your head, endless alien waves heralded by warning screams swarm past in succession. Of course they're shooting salvos at you as well. You must destroy as much of the base and as many aliens as you can, surviving until the defences are pacified enough for you to be able to land and set the base computer to self-destruct.

Uridium is dauntingly, spectacularly hard, but it can be bested. Controls are tight enough, and your craft can and will react to everything in time when your reflexes and dexterity both peak at once. Thus, just trying to play Uridium, even upon those occasions when you crash and burn in seconds, invites god-like feelings. Because you're daring to be insanely masterful! To dream the impossible dream!

In those moments where you do pull it all together, the experience is a true rush. You've shot across twelve screens of terrain, weaved amongst numerous obstacles and survived three complete dogfights with spiralling aliens in the space of ten seconds. The thrill of such Jedi-like prowess is untouchable.

Am I advocating mastery of Uridium as a way to stun and impress that girl or boy you like? No, but I am telling you that Uridium is one of the zeniths of reaction-speed gaming, and that it inspires you to be amazing. You'll now understand why this game was the epitome of cool back in the day. Every time you went to a friend's house, everyone would have to play Uridium - it was just the done thing. Heck, you'd barely ever survive past level four, but you'd always come away stunned and feeling like you could see things no-one else could see and do things no-one else could do.

The first level of Uridium has the unprepossessing title of 'Zinc'. Level titles progress through elements and metals (Silver, Gold) to alloys (Platinum), and finally to alien alloys (Kallisto, Quadmium) and the deadly nirvana that is 'Uridium'. There's an addictive formal quality about this design concept, and the delicious metallic sheen and strident colour scheme of each Dreadnought sparkles off the screen. Beneath each Dreadnought too are boldly styled atmospheric backgrounds; black star-studded space, lakes, lava or gassy nebulae.

I remember how awed I was by the appearance of the player's ship in Uridium when I first laid eyes on it. The almost hexagonal craft tumbles, spins and folds itself through G-Force turns in an artful aerobatic style which I don't think I've seen duplicated in a game since.

The ship moves in all directions but only ever faces or fires left or right, and it never comes to a halt. Even your slowest cruising speed sets a mean pace when you consider the large scale of the graphics. They reveal relatively little of the terrain ahead, and give you the scary and thrilling sensation that you're within breathing distance of everything, almost scraping the Dreadnought hulls. The bad guys don't look as amazing as you do (they're various spheroids and pointy craft) but the bases themselves more than make up for that. The semi-3D industrial hulks are covered in bleak future-military structures and ominous shadows which mark out the sites of your doom.

In Uridium you can fly up and down the length of each level as you choose, fighting aliens and blowing support structures off the surface. The levels don't end until they're good and ready, thus placing you at the mercy of their exacting deadliness. When you get the alarm screaming 'LAND NOW!' you will be able to put your ship down on the marked out landing strip somewhere on the Dreadnought. And the more of everything you destroy, the sooner this happens, but until it goes happen, you are forced to keep flying around. 'Let me land!' cries the Uridium player pushed to the brink, staving off alien onslaughts, zipping around mazes of walls and towers at Ludicrous Speed, or just circling madly above the prow of the Dreadnought in hopes of evading everything with all the logic of an Ostrich jamming its head into the sand. Waiting for the all-clear to escape a Uridium level is pretty scary.

Alas, when you do manage to land you will encounter the only moment of disappointment in Uridium: It turns out that initiating the destruct sequence is essentially a timing game, one in which you must hit the button in rhythm as a series of point values light up. At least you can't fail to detonate the base, but you can miss out on a lot of points. You then get to fly back over the Dreadnought's entire length as it detonates, spinning out of control all the way and seeing and hearing the surface vaporise beneath you.

Then it's on to the next world and the next Dreadnought. The base layouts and alien formations become more diabolic and artfully arranged each time, especially the structures you must dodge between, and each world has a unique feel. Yet all of the game elements you will ever encounter in Uridium are present in its first level. This is some classic old-school design, pitting you against increasingly vicious configurations of the core elements. Uridium is one of the finest C64 games ever, and a great action title for all time.

-- Uridium -- 9/10 --


Reviewer's Score: 9/10 | Originally Posted: 08/09/01, Updated 07/26/10

Game Release: Uridium (EU, 1986)

Description

15 carrier spaceships have garrisoned your galaxy and each of these ships tries to steal a valuable metal. Destroy the defending forces of each ship and land on them, to accomplish the mission.

Uridium is a famous shoot'em'up game where the player flies over surfaces of spaceships and has to try to shoot down defence towers and hostile spaceships. Unlike other games of this genre the aim of Uridium is not to fly through a level and at the end fight against a boss enemy. You rather try to destroy a fleet on a spaceship carrier and at the end of the level also the carrier itself. For this you have to destroy the whole fleet of the enemy, which is parking peacefully on the surface. Additionally you have to resist a wave of attackers and defence canons. If you destroyed the hostile fleet you have to fly to the right side of the carrier and land on a runway. Then you get your bonus and the ship explodes, while you take flight with your spaceship.

Design

For the eye Uridium offers some exciting views. Alone the ship of the player is an eye candy. The adversarial spaceships are realised very appealingly. But you should not expect too much. The game cannot keep up with other games of this genre as Katakis.With Uridium the priorities were located differently. The animation of the turning and spinning spaceship is a special eye candy. The wohle thing runs very fluently during the game.


Hints

On the spaceships there are several obstacles against which you quickly bang. Some aims, which you have to destroy, are positioned behind obstacles. Hence you have to fly back a few times to get at these aims. There are also canons which cannot be destroyed, but they send out drones which follow the player. Furthermore there are other things which can be destroyed. That's why the motto is: "shoot at anything which stands out from the background!"

As soon as the defensive fortification of the ironclad has been destroyed, the writing "Land Now" flashes at the upper screen. Now fly to the right end of the ironclad and then from left to right over the landing field to land.

This leads you to the fuel element chamber, where you accomplish your mission. Always press the fire button at the right moment. You need to have accomplishe the mission before the countdown displayed in the upper screen reaches zero.

Game options

You can chosse between the following suring the title sequence:

F1 - one player, one joystick, both joystickports possible

F2 - two players, share one joystick, both joystickports possible

F3 - two players, two joysticks

F5 - music volume up

F6 - music volume down

F7 - colour mode

F8 - monochrome mode

Controls
By pressing the fire button press fire button the game is started. Move the joystick up and down Joystick forwards / Joystick backwards to move the Manta fighter on the screen. Move the joystick to the left or right Joystick left / Joystick right to lower/raise the speed. When you keep the joystick pressed against the flying direction until the minimun speed is underrun, the Manta fighter will make a backward roll and fly into the opposing direction. With this manoeuvre the flying height is temporarily raised, which can be used to avoid hostile drones.
With the fire button press fire button you activate the laser. The laser can eliminate the aims on the ground of the carrier and also hostile bombers.
Keep the fire button pressed and move the joystick up or down Joystick forwards and press fire button / Joystick backwards and press fire button to fly a 90° roll (and with this to place the fighter edgewise), so you are a smaller aim and you can get through narrow passages.

Points
small surface part destroyed - 10 points

big surface part destroyed - 25 points

hostile fighters on the runway - 100 points

hostile fighter - 100-1000 points

formation destruction bonus - 100 points per formation

a bonus manta is rewarded every 10,000 points

Solution

Tips
While the carrier space ship resolves into its single components, some structural parts that are left can still be shot and so points can be collected.

Cheats
The versions of "Uridium" and "Uridium+" by "Remember" contain - next to different trainers - also the manual and a saveable highscore list.

Critics

Robotron2084: "Yeeeeeeeeeess! Uridium!!! Great !!!! Zzzzzzzappp! Ka-Boooooom! Bratatatatatatatata! Shwiiiing! Srrrrrrrrt! Wowowowowowowowow! Broooaaaach! Zooooooom! 9 out of 10 points!!!"

blubarju: "Uridium is technically a class for itself. Tender and fast scrolling, good graphics and nice soundFX. If it was a bit easier I would give 9 points, but this way I still give 8 points."

Jodigi: "One of my first games, that I played enthusiastically, but it wasn't easy to play Uridium!"

Miscellaneous

Uridium+

"Uridium+" (also: "Heavy Metal Uridium") was released by Mindscape in the US and has the following changes:
The levels are newly-arranged and partly a bit more challenging.
You do NOT have to wait for the message "Land Now" any more, but you can rather land with the Manta glider at any time on the runway.

Trivia

Since 28.03.2008 the game is available as download for the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console.

'Emergency ... Fleet of fifteen enemy Super-Dreadnoughts Sighted ... Entering this Galactic Sector ... Now orbiting our planet ... Draining planetary core of all mineral resources ... Request assistance ... We are under attack ...'

Once again our solar system is under the threat of extinction from an unknown enemy and once again it's up to you to prevent such a cataclysm. Uridium, the follow up to Andrew Braybrook's previous offering Paradroid, puts you in the pilot seat of the latest Manta class Space Fighter and straight into the action with a press of the fire button. Your objective is to destroy all fifteen Dreadnoughts by disrupting their interstellar power units, thus causing a chain reaction which eventually vaporises them. However, things are not so easy (are they ever?), since the enemy's defence systems must be successfully avoided, or disposed of if the situation arises, before you can land on the Dreadnought's master runway, enter the engine room and prime the ship destruction sequence.

Each Dreadnought is viewed through a horizontally scrolling window which follows the movements of your craft left and right. Aliens of varying description sneak in a variety of different formations and should you prove competent enough to completely annihilate a wave, a bonus is awarded after successfully landing. Points are basically acquired by simply killing the nasties, but your score can be further increased by taking out certain ground targets. Some scenery such as meteor shields and communications aerials, cannot be shot though, and must be flown around as they are too high to fly over. The height of an object can be determined by the length of the shadow it casts.

Homing Mines are occasionally unleashed from the Dreadnaughts flashing generator ports and some deft manoeuvring is required to avoid them as they cannot be shot. Thankfully, they self-destruct after four seconds.

If you skilfully survive a set number of alien attack waves, the message 'Land Now' flashes up to indicate that you should land on the runway at the far right end of the ship. Failure to heed this warning results in a high speed attack from even deadlier alien craft, which get progressively meaner the longer you refuse to land. On docking with the Dreadnought the display splits and is replaced by a representation of the fuel rod chamber -- a sort of futuristic fruit machine. Here you determine the size of the bonus you are to receive for destroying the battleship and this must be done within a short time limit or a life is lost.

As the attacking alien battleships require specific metals to be converted into energy for their interstellar power units, they are identified accordingly. For example, the first ship is called Zinc, the second Lead, the third Copper and so on, right up to the fifteenth ship which is called . . . Well that would be telling, wouldn't it.

Uridium is truly an impressive game, immaculate in both its execution end conception. The totally amazing graphics are the first thing to strike you; they really are excellent. The game itself is impressive as well and even though I'm not a great fan of shoot 'em ups, Uridium is still great fun to play. The Manta is very responsive indeed and is a pleasure to control, skilful handling providing a similar sort of joy to that on Defender. Using software sprites for the ship's laser fire means a lot of bullets. Even so, the game stays super slick and smooth throughout. Some of the effects used are very clever indeed, especially the boiling away of the ship at the end of the wave. Despite Uridium being a shoot em up, it's not all mindless violence; knowing the maps of the various Dreadnoughts is essential to get anywhere of note. Overall, an excellent game that should be on every 64 owner's software shelf.

Presentation 99%
Slick in every aspect and many useful options.

Graphics 99%
Incredible high speed, smooth scrolling backgrounds, superlative sprites and exceptional use of colour.

Sound 94%
Great title screen tune and highly effective FX.

Hookability 98%
Highly addictive due to breath-taking graphics and simple but rewarding gameplay.

Lastability 92%
Fifteen Dreadnoughts may prove monotonous to complete due to little variation in play, but still an enjoyable game to come back to time after time.

Value For Money 92%
Slightly more expensive than previous Hewson releases but definitely just as worthy.

Overall 94%
Visually awesome, sonically sound, technically stunning and a brilliant shoot em up to boot.

To many C64 owners, Andrew Braybrook is a god, a coding god, of course, but a god nonetheless. While he occasionally dabbled with other systems, his mastery of the C64’s innards was legendary, and he delivered a number of super-slick games that felt just as polished as those you’d seen in arcades.

Uridium scored an astonishing 99 per cent for its graphics when it was reviewed in issue 11 of Zzap!64. It’s a near-perfect score, but totally understandable when you witness what Andrew was making the C64 pump out.

Impossibly fast, silky smooth scrolling combined with gloriously detailed Dreadnoughts and stylish- looking ship sprites to create an awesome game that still impresses today.

It was Uridium’s meticulously designed gameplay that most remember, though, with your Manta-class Space Fighter effortlessly gliding over the huge Dreadnoughts and taking down the hordes of opponents that constantly assaulted you.

It wasn’t just the Dreadnaught’s fleet that caused issues, though, as the battleship itself also had to be contended with.