Summary
Giddy fun for honing your twitch reflexes.
The Good
Obviously inspired by the light cycle sequence of Tron (which was in turn inspired by a 1978 Atari 2600 game), Novatron has the simple premise of two opponents attempting to wall each other in. Novatron's graphics were isometric; while not 3D in any sense, they
looked 3D, and that was enough to impress the PC gamer of 1982.
On the easier levels, the computer opponent turns lazily (or not at all), but on later levels, the computer turns perfectly. Your only recourse is to wall him in quickly and leave no escape route -- a maneuver that frequently requires turning at the very last possible timeslice to draw a barrier one pixel away from the wall. Talk about twitch skills...
The Bad
Many people talk about the speed of the game on modern machines as a problem, but that's to be expected. Truthfully, the only gripes I have are obvious ones for any game of any time period: The ability to save high scores is absent, and there is no simultaneous 2-player ability. Adding these features would have required less than 100 lines of code, so it's just plain dumb that they don't exist in Novatron.
The Bottom Line
If you don't have any timing or reflexes before playing Novatron, you will when you're done!
