What is battle-girl?

battle-girl is a top-down vector based shooter, boasting furious gameplay, a superb soundtrack, and visuals that while not complex, still manage to look superb.

Move and shoot in whatever direction seems suitable and blast through countless stages within 'The Great Machine'. The player takes control of Battle Girl, as she attempts to prevent Terminus, a rouge military juggernaut, from re-programming the stages control pods and running amok.

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The evil robot Terminus has managed to get inside the Great Machine, the computer responsible for maintaining order in the universe. He intends to destroy it so that Chaos will reign supreme. Someone has to stop him, don’t they?

Enter Battle-Girl, a 15-year-old red-headed pilot with a penchant for combat. Resurrected from her sleep, she’s ready to make Terminus pay for his actions. She jumps into her Soyuz 1183-A Battlecraft and heads for the Great Machine.

The object is simple but not easy. You must protect the chips inside the computer from being subverted by Terminus’ “programmers.” After you destroy enough programmers on a particular level, you proceed to the next. Each level, of course, increases in difficulty. With more than 99 levels, you can waste many hours of your life.

Terminus, meanwhile, is not idly watching you kill off his programmers. He sends armed escorts to protect them. They become meaner and nastier as time goes on, but you acquire meaner and nastier weapons to use against them. When you destroy an escort, you usually get some sort of power-up, such as a restoration of health, shields, and special weapons.

If the programmers manage to subvert four of the chips (called “pods”) on a level, then Terminus is free to enter the level and attack you personally. You don’t want to let this happen. He is very difficult to destroy, and you most likely will not survive the encounter. Should you be lucky enough to do it, you get big bonus points, but he comes right back on the next level anyway.

This game is pure action satisfaction. The 2D vector-based graphics are extremely well done, providing smooth, intense gameplay. It hearkens back to the arcade games of yesteryear but adds some new features to take advantage of modem hardware and software advances.

For example, you can adjust the game screen to fit the full resolution of your monitor. This means you can fill a 17- or 20-inch monitor and see almost all of the game field at once. You can use a variety of input devices: keyboard, joystick, mouse, or any combination of the three for control. You can even control the detail level of the graphics, so slower machines will perform more acceptably.

The introduction and setup controls and appearance are equally masterful, making for a well-rounded game experience. The icing on the cake is the excellent techno soundtrack, pounding along with the incessant game action and keeping you pumped up and ready for more. You can even play the CD in any music CD player, so you can enjoy your favorite Battle-Girl score even when you’re not playing the game. For the ultimate Battle-Girl experience, we recommend connecting a pair of external subwoofers to your Mac and turning them all the way up.

Albright, Wade. (November 1997). Battle-Girl. MacAddict. (pg. 78).

Download battle-girl for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5 up to Mac OS 10.2

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• PowerPC processor
• 5 MB RAM available
• 640 x 480, 8-bit color display
• CD-ROM drive
• System 7.5.2

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver