Atari 800 - Necromancer gameplay Bill Williams 8-bit games

Here's me playing a particularly unlucky game of Necromancer for Atari 8-bit. It was written by Bill Williams, known for his creative flair in his games (He also wrote Alley Cat and Salmon Run, among others).

Here we have yet another of his unusual and surreal games. You are the Avatar, utilizing nature (namely, trees) to first destroy the eggs of the evil spiders, then destroying the headstones the Necromancer uses to enter the world.

The game consists of three phases of five levels each:

Phase one is the tree planting stage. You utilize your Wisp to plant seeds while protecting the sprouts from the trolls that will damage/destroy them. You can gain more seeds by catching the.. jumping eyeball thing. As you successfully get trees grown, the level increases. At some point, a spider pops in and starts attempting to poison the trees (this is the crying complete with animation). You have to touch them with your wisp to cure them or else they turn into dead stumps.

Phase Two is using the trees you just grew to destroy as many eggs as possible. The flashing one is the one next to hatch. To do this, you take direct control of the trees and plant them over the eggs, hoping they grow through the soil and smash the egg before it hatches, destroying the tree. If you succeed, you can touch the tree and return it to your inventory. You also have to watch out for the grasping hands which will permanently remove a tree (and sap much of your strength if caught yourself).

In Phase Three, the remaining eggs are turned into spiders which chase you as you attempt to remove headstones where the Necromancer can manifest. Once a level is completed, you continue to the next for 5 levels.

I've not personally beat this game without massively abusing save states. It's very difficult to get lots and lots of trees successfully grown in phase one without them getting poisoned in the high levels. Then, it can be very difficult in phase two to not lose all your trees to spiders and arms (as I did in this game). If you have too many spiders left, it makes it essentially impossible to get the headstones without the spiders getting you.

Wonderful game and still holds up well all these years later.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Atari
• 8-bit
• 8bit
• Bill Williams
• Necromancer

[CthulhuMessiah]

Hey, man, can you post the opening theme song in its entirety?  I would appreciate it a lot.

[Scoth3]

@CthulhuMessiah Sorry for the delay, I've upgraded my computer a couple times since I made this and had lots of trouble capturing video. Done now!

[ventipossum]

I liked your strategy on the 1st stage, where you lined up all the trees on the top and bottom. I always thought that the closer they are to the Druid, the better, but your method looks easier.

As for me, I've finished Necromancer only once and IIRC, the game simply goes back to the title screen right after showing you a single 'congrats' type of screen.

You did know that you can 'destroy' the Necromancer during the 3rd stage, right?

[Scoth3]

I think they tend to grow faster closer to the druid, but once you get the corner ones grown you can pretty much fire and forget the rest. Sometimes they take so incredibly long to grow that you don't get them though.

I haven't actually made it to the third stage all that often, especially back in the day, so I probably haven't used a good strategy there :)

[HitlerOnTheRoof]

I had this game for the atari 800, but never understood what was going on. I still don't. :-(

[Scoth3]

The description pretty much tells the phases. It's not a terribly deep or hidden-meaning game, though it is a very unusual game.

[PeromyscusLeucopus]

I have this game for the Atari XE system! :-)

[gamein60seconds]

@nyyterp Know what you mean. And this is probably why the C64 version feels so poor in comparison.

[nyyterp]

This was one of Synapse's classics. The dreamy quality of the game, along with terrific graphics and sound, was top notch. They were one of the few companies that really knew how to utilize the Atari 8-bit during this time period, partly because they put out original material. Others, like Activision's earliest efforts, were largely flat conversions of their 2600 games (with little improvement). Some of Electronic Arts' games also suffered from flat conversions/porting from other systems.

[gaydanzig]

i never understood this game, even though i played it pretty well. the graphics were good for that time, and it was very imaginative. the trees were cute, and it was sad to hear them crying.

[seymourshabow]

AWESOME game! I never knew you could get your trees back in the 2nd stages! The only way I ever saw the ending on this was to hack it so the energy never went down. Super tough game, great memories.

[CthulhuMessiah]

Useful strategy:

Stick the first four trees in each corner first and let them grow fully while you are on level 1 - 2. If I recall right, the level is based upon the number of fully grown trees, and so you can lag on planting more until you get a lot of seeds. Then you can unload on the top and bottom row.

I loved this game. I could beat it more times than not.

[Babania1]

wow I used to love this game on my 800, very starnge came for its time but greay nevertheless.....