Rom Check Fail

[Stevie B]

http://www.farbs.org/romcheckfail.php

I found this game in a video game museum in Berlin a few months back, and finally got round to looking up a playable version at home. Give it a go... it's insane but makes sense once you work out what's going on.

ROM Check Fail is an action game where players have to eliminate all enemies to complete each level. The task is made a little more difficult by the random switching of gameplay rules where ideas are recycled and remastered as an odd mix of arcade or console classics from the past.
You start off as a random character from a random game. Each character has different abilities:

Mario (Super Mario Brothers) - jump on enemies to kill.

Pac-Man (Pac-Man) - eat the super pellet that appears on the screen to turn enemies into blue ghosts. Then, you can eat them by going over them.

Link (The Legend of Zelda) - use sword to kill.

Spaceship (Space Invaders) - can only move left and right. To kill, shoot bullet.

Spaceship #2 (Asteroids!) - can go anywhere. Aim with left and right, boost with up. To kill, shoot bullet.

Spaceship (Defender) - can move left, right, up, and down, but can only shoot left or right.  To kill, shoot line.

( add more characters if possible )

Controls:

up, down, left, right - move            space bar- jump (Mario only), other

The game has 20 levels in all. To  beat a level, all enemies must be killed like:

Goomba (Super Mario Brothers)

Ghosts (Gauntlet)

Invaders (Space Invaders)

Colorful blocks (Breakout!)

Asteroids (Asteroids!)

Blue ghosts (not really a killer enemy, but you can eat them with Pac-Man [see Pac-Man on the list of characters] by getting the pellet.)

( add more characters if possible)

Please note everything will change after about 5 seconds in game, so be quick.

You have 3 lives. every level cleared rewards an extra 1-up. loose all 3, and its game over.

Once all 20 levels are cleared, the game will restart only on a higher difficulty.