Space Paranoids

[664846a814a04Kolya]

Space Paranoids is a first-person shooter arcade game appearing and featured in the 1982 movie Tron. According to the plot, it was created by Kevin Flynn but the code was stolen and released by ENCOM and the villain Ed Dillinger. In the movie Flynn is seen playing the game in his arcade.

Several years ago I followed the development blog of a guy named Estil Vance who had set out to create this game. He planned to build a cabinet to run the game in for that authentic arcade feeling. But he built the game on Windows. I managed to get a beta version back then which was promising but not quite there yet. Then I lost track of the project for a while and when I checked again Estil's website had vanished and with it his Space Paranoids.

At some point my old beta version also stopped working due to a directX error (missing d3drm.dll), but I kept it around anyway.

Yesterday I found my the beta again and managed to get past the bug. But more importantly I found a newer version on a Czech free games website.  In this version there is a very helpful minimap and some bugs fixed.

A few notes on playing
The game is meant to run in a cabinet so credits must be present to start. Press 5 to insert coins for credits and 1 to start the game.
Arrow keys control the tank. Space bar fires. A D W S control the turret rotation and angle. X aligns the turret with the body of the tank (i.e.points it straight ahead).
The included original readme file is not accurate in this, because it refers to an older version.

There is a DisplayRes.EXE included to set the game's resolution, but don't go too wild with that. At resolutions above 1920x1080 you lose the proximity indicator in the game and get some display bugs.

[664846a814c36ZylonBane]

Spoiler: Space Paranoids is played on the ground, not in space.

[664846a814d35Kolya]

Well it might refer to claustrophobia. Seeing as you're being hunted to death in a maze of tall walls. Or it's just a cool sounding scifi name.

[664846a815089RocketMan]

Now all I gotta do is rip off my bike handlebars and wire them up to the arrow keys and I'm good to go