The Classic PC Gaming Era (1977-1989) - Blue Max
The early 1980s delivered this intriguing oblique scrolling shooter that’s like Zaxxon meets River Raid.
RELEASE DATE: 1983
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Bob Polin / Synapse Software
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Somewhat playable
BEST VERSIONS: Commodore 64
In 1982, Sega released a very unusual scrolling shooter called Zaxxon that allowed players to fly through a seemingly three-dimensional space fortress thanks to an oblique projection perspective and the ability to adjust the starship’s altitude by moving up or down. The game was quickly ported to many home console platforms and the Atari 8-bit PC, but it soon had stiff competition on the PC in Blue Max, a game with a similar style that moved the action into World War I, replaced the starship with a biplane and allowed players to drop bombs on bridges, tanks, boats, anti-aircraft guns and buildings.
Blue Max came from developer Bob Polin and was released by Synapse Software Corporation, a developer that made a big name for itself on the Atari and Commodore 64 before it was absorbed into Brøderbund in 1985. The game comes complete with a fictional story about British Flying Ace Max Chatsworth, who flies a feared blue biplane. Any German pilot who shoots him down will receive the Blue Max medal, giving Chatsworth a fitting nickname.
Blue Max starts off simple - you take off from a runway and begin a sequence of bombing missions, first taking out some flashing targets, then taking out an enemy airbase and finally, flying into a city and bombing a special monument. The whole game can be completed in about 10 minutes if you know what you’re doing but getting shot down starts you back at the beginning. Fortunately, you can take a few hits and survive, but often, it’s at the expense of one of your crucial systems, perhaps causing your fuel to leak, your maneuverability to decrease, your guns to jam or your bombing rack to malfunction.
Blue Max can be tough to get into today because its controls are almost a little too simplistic for their own good. The single button on the joystick is responsible for helping you take off, for firing your machine guns and for launching bombs, and the context of how those actions work depends upon how you’re utilizing the joystick. Once you’re in the air, your plane can move side to side or adjust its altitude up or down. The most difficult of the game’s mechanics is bombing – you need to start from a high altitude, pull back on the joystick to drop down, and then hit the button to release a bomb before you pull back up to avoid a crash. Hitting targets successfully with your bombs is key to progression, and one of the unfortunate things about Blue Max is that the game will continue on without allowing you to complete it if you miss the key targets, leading many players to believe it goes on forever when it does, in fact, have a true ending.
It’s also really difficult at times to understand your altitude relative to the other planes and to the ships on the ground. Those who play the game well (as evidenced by some impressive Youtube playthroughs) tend to fly low and aggressively fire at everything, racking up points and nailing both airborne and ground targets. I must play the game badly, because I could barely shoot down any planes and often struggled to hit buildings consistently unless I focused on them at the exclusion of all else. The game offers options for reversing the altitude controls or toggling the influence of gravity, but I found these options only made things worse for me, and there was no way I was touching the difficulty.
One of the reasons Blue Max was well-regarded by fans and critics back in 1983 is because it had depth beyond a simple arcade shooter, and I can see that if a player were willing to put in the time on either the Atari 400/800 original or the popular Commodore 64 port (which is my preferred version), Blue Max could be a satisfying title to fire up and blow through as you chased that high score and moving your rank beyond “Flying Tiger” to “Blue Max.”
Bob Polin did create a sequel to this game called Blue Max 2001, and Synapse Software released it in 1984 to a disappointed fanbase. The sequel is actually a bit more playable for a novice because it involves piloting a flying saucer that has the added ability to hover from time to time to shoot down enemies over a stationary field, but the rest of the game moves at an odd scrolling angle from right to left and feels a bit off in general. Even stranger, you play as Max Chatsworth IX fighting aliens on another planet (begging the question of whether this game is supposed to take place in 2001 or some much more distant future). I’d recommend this one primarily as a curiosity rather than as a great game.
Sadly, Synapse Software would go on to become a short-lived imprint of Brøderbund not long after Blue Max 2001 was released and was shuttered after the 1985 release Lode Runner’s Rescue (also featured in this volume). Their brief run generated many good games (and a few great ones) for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 platforms, and I can’t help but recommend Chicken, The Pharoah’s Curse and the Shamus games among many other decent, but decidedly inessential, Synapse Software releases.
As Our Series Continues…
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about shoot ‘em ups, 3D games, flight simulators, sports games, gameroom games, puzzle games and so much more.
And while you’ll definitely see some titles from prominent North American publishers like Sierra On-Line, Infocom, Activision, Electronic Arts, Brøderbund, SSI, MicroProse, Lucasfilm Games, Epyx and Sir-Tech in the mix, you’ll also see references to games from the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain and Japan.
If you’ve missed the earlier entries in the series, which cover ASCII games, adventure games, wargames, strategy games and role-playing games, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 1. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!