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IMG has posted a review by Tony Belding of OIDS 2.0, the shareware remake from Xavagus Prime Software of the classic video game:

What is a classic? What makes a classic videogame? The word has been thrown around so much, some people now use classic as a synonym for old. I have to respectfully disagree. To me, a classic is something that has timeless quality, so much that it never entirely goes out of style. In the fast-changing, high-tech world of computer games, real classics are hard to come by. OIDS 2.0 purports to be such a game. Let's take a moment to look at where it came from!

OIDS was first published in 1988 by FTL Games, and it was made for both the Atari ST computers and Macintosh. In fact, the Atari version was better known at the time, while the Macintosh version mostly slipped under the radar. Macintosh simply was not the gaming platform that it is today. Even so, OIDS drew high marks in reviews from both the Atari and Apple press. If the game could be considered a failure at all, it would have been from being overshadowed by FTL's other game that was released around the same time: a genre-defining, smash success called Dungeon Master. For FTL Games, OIDS may have looked like small potatoes by the side of Dungeon Master.

In terms of gameplay, OIDS is straight, old-fashioned, arcade action. The player is put in control of a triangular spaceship just like the ones used in such great old games as Space War, Asteroids, Gravitar and even Escape Velocity. Turn, thrust and shoot! The scenario is similar to Gravitar: pilot your ship down to the surface of a planetoid and shoot it out with the various defenses there. The biggest twist is, you now are expected to land and rescue a bunch of tiny robotic men, the "oids" of the game's title, and carry them off the planetoids to safety. This is reminiscent of another ancient and well-loved computer game called Choplifter, and has sometimes led to OIDS being described as a cross between Gravitar and Choplifter. For those readers who are fuzzy on their history of computer games, don't worry about it: suffice to say that OIDS borrowed its ideas from some of the the best....

IMG Review: OIDS 2.0

OIDS 2.0

MGF: OIDS 2.0 (1.4 MB)

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