The Sentinel
There are two games with Sentinel
in the title. There is
Sentinel, an Atari 2800 game from the year 1990 and one of the
two games that used a lightgun on that platform. And there is The
Sentinel, the game this page is about.
The Sentinel was created in 1987 by Geoff Crammond for the BBC computer, a platform little known outside the UK, and obviously released parallely on the Commodore 64. It was soon ported to the Amstrad CPC, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Amiga, the Atari ST and the IBM PC. This last version seems to be from 1989. Interesting enough, it has genuine VGA support. Some screenshots I took had up to 51 colors.
The Sentinel is very hard to describe. Angus Manwaring did a rather good job on the Amiga Games Database trying, so I'll rather quote his review:
The Sentinel is about energy management. You, the player, exist on a sort of island floating in space, and you must navigate your way to the highest point of the island. It's more complicated than that though. The islands, there are thousands of them, are rather like a chessboard, but have many different levels, effectively hills and valleys, of various sizes. The "floor" though is chequered. Your movement is performed by creating a replica of yourself and "beaming" across to it. You would then typically absorb the husk of your old body, thereby losing no energy. It is possible to ascend one level at a time, in this way, and so access the island's summit. But it's more complicated than this… Each island has a Sentinel, that stands on the summit, and rotates 30 or 40 degrees every few seconds. If he can see the square on which you're standing, he will start absorbing your energy, which depletes rapidly. Now on the island, many of the squares have trees on them, a tree is the lowest unit of energy. You can make trees, although there's no particular point, you can also make boulders, which are equivalent in energy terms to two trees, or replicas of yourself (robots); worth three trees. The Sentinel (the bad guy, not the game) is programmed to start absorbing from anything it can see worth more than a tree, ie a boulder or a robot. This is bad news for you, but the good news is you can absorb trees, and boulders, and ultimately, when you can see the square he's standing on, the Sentinel himself. Boulders are particuarly useful, because you can use them to make an artificial platform on which to stand. This game is largely about your elevation. Well, that's about it, as you can see the main problem is explaining what the game is about, rather than saying how much you like it. It is a superbly creative game, which can generate some very exciting moments, particularly when the Sentinel starts using Sentries to help him.—Angus Manwaring
In the US, the game was published as The Sentry, on Commodore 64, PC, Amiga, and Atari ST.
Overall, The Sentinel is a superbly ingenious, well-crafted game that is incredibly addictive, full of some very exciting moments to liven up an otherwise abstract exercise, such as when the Sentinel starts using Sentries to help him. The Sentinel might not appeal to anyone due to its very abstract nature, but with great gameplay and thousands of islands, it's a forgotten masterpiece that will occupy your times for weeks on end. Also check out the remake from 1998 by Psygnosis called Sentinel Returns, which upgrades the game with vibrant SVGA graphics, great sound effects, while retaining all the addictiveness of the original.
