Parsec was a simple game. A traditional side-scrolling space shooter. Enemies entered the screen from the right and if you didn’t kill them before they reached the left side of the screen, they would double back and attack from behind. There were only a handful of enemies and three “mini-bosses” (called cruisers) per level. The beauty of the game was that each level was exactly the same, save for a varied background color and slightly faster gameplay, which made each level progressively more difficult. The simplicity of the game made it both easy to pick up, and extremely addictive.

In addition to enemy battle, you also were required to navigate tricky fueling tunnels riddled with stalactites and stalagmites. Powering down your ship into a lower “lift” speed would decrease the sensitivity of its vertical lift, making refueling expeditions much less dangerous.

Parsec seemed simple enough to recreate.

Figure 1. Quick Parsec-clone cell phone mockup
 

In 2003, I got the itch to try and develop a mobile game and a Parsec remake seemed an obvious choice. Up until this point I was only experienced in the procedural programming languages I had already learned: Pascal, PERL, JavaScript, and ActionScript. I hadn’t quite mastered the nuances of object-oriented programming. Most cell phone games, unfortunately, were programmed in J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition), an object-oriented language. So it wasn’t long before I got a little over my head and (as happens all too often) abandoned the project. Before quitting, I managed to design a quick mockup of gameplay, illustrated above.

Two years, two moves (from Colorado, to San Francisco, to Orlando) and one new job later I found myself planning another Parsec remake, but this time as an Apple desktop widget.

More later…

—Ryan