What is Spectre Supreme?

The first sequel to Spectre. Introduces many new weapons, obstacles and enemies.

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In Spectre Supreme, you play a cybertank in a cyberworld where all kinds of had guys are trying to cyberkill you. Spectre Supreme is different from other games with the same basic plot because it’s so engrossing. While it’s not exactly realistic — it certainly bears no relation to anything remotely real — it’s very believable. This is partly due to the sense of physical motion the game creates: you actually feel like you’re inside the game, because what you see on screen responds in all details to your movements. Also, the Spectre world has a stark character all its own. When you play, you plunge into an intricate, mechanized future. The game’s graphics make that world come alive.

In Spectre Supreme, as in the original Spectre, your goal is to pick up a series of flags and kill the tanks that are trying to kill you. When you get all the flags, you move to a harder level. Spectre Supreme offers all kinds of new twists, however: special alternate weapons, cybermud that slows you to a crawl, shields, gateways that transport you across the playing field, and other new toys. You can also increase the difficulty setting — which causes the terrain to change and the enemy tanks to get better at shooting you — and you can customize the keyboard controls. Spectre Supreme also comes with Sam’s Crazy Worlds, a series of customized levels. Velocity claims it will be releasing more modules to keep the game changing.

Velocity has also added to the network game. In the original Spectre, there was only one game for networks: each person played a tank trying to kill other tanks. In Spectre Supreme, there are 13 variations, including Cyberball, which is basically tank soccer: the red team tries to knock the ball through the white team’s goal and vice versa. Cyberball lacks the mayhem of some variations; in Mano a Mano, for instance, you try to kill the other players’ tanks with no obstacles on the playing field. A message at the beginning of Mano a Mano says “Nothing to hide behind.”

After extensive testing in our lab, the MNSTC (Macworld Network Spectre Test Crew) concluded that the original Spectre’s network game is superior to Spectre Supreme’s because it gives players slightly greater maneuverability and speed. However, Spectre Supreme’s single-user game is definitely better than the original. The vast increase in variation far outweighs the small loss of maneuverability.

Spectre Supreme does have a couple of problems. First, there is no way to save a game in progress. Second, although the game frees you to move to another application when you complete a level, you can’t pause in the middle of a level and switch applications. Also, if you’re running System 7 and have other applications open, you occasionally encounter some peculiar color changes. Finally, the MNSTC complains that in team play, scores should be calculated by team and shooting your own teammates should be penalized.

Still, Spectre Supreme isn’t like many other games in which a sinking boredom sets in when you realize that you can’t get beyond a certain point and even if you did, it would just be a slightly more taxing but similar level. The pleasure of Spectre Supreme comes not in getting fartlier and farther, scoring higher and higher, but rather in the almost addictive sense of control that you get from moving that little tank around. This game is so much fun, it’s even fun when you lose.

Yaffe, Gideon. (December 1993). Spectre Supreme. Macworld. (pg. 77).

See also: Spectre VR

Download Spectre Supreme for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 6.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• Macintosh Plus
• 2 MB RAM
• System 6.0.3

Supports black and white, 4-bit color, and 8-bit color displays.

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II