ScrambleRND

## Origins

   Scramble was an early scrolling arcade shooter where players controlled a jet facing enemies over several sectors (a city, a swarm of meteors, a cavern filled with U. F. O.s, etc.). The jet fired to the right as well as dropped bombs, the latter of which were needed to bomb tanks in order to replenish the player’s constantly dwindling fuel supply. Running out of fuel or colliding with any object would cost the player a jet and the game would end when they had no more jets left in reserve. It was ported to the Vectrex home system later and was followed by the sequel of Super Cobra.

**ScrambleRND** is a modern day remake, although with graphics that “looks like an Atari 2600 game”. Although the majority of the gameplay was left intact, the landscape is random with every play.

The game was created and published by Wiebo de Wit for the PC in 2013.

## Gameplay

The basic game play involves the player piloting a jet over a continually scrolling landscape that is divided into several sectors and the player must react to various targets along the way. These include rockets, which can launch vertically and pose a danger to the player’s spaceship. Ground targets include mystery bases (worth a random amount when bombed), fuel tanks that add to the player’s fuel level and an enemy base at the end. Air targets include launched rockets, U. F. O.s and asteroids.

The first zone of the game is a mountainous area filled with rockets, mystery bases and fuel tanks. The second area adds a cavern ceiling and U. F. O.s that quickly ascend and descend as they get closer to the player’s ship, starting from the right side of the screen. The third area has asteroids that are immune to the player's shots and start from the right side of the screen and move left towards the player’s ship. The fourth area of the game is pretty much like the first area as far as containing the same targets, although the majority of the landscape is at the top of the screen, rather than the bottom. This leads to a cavern containing several passageways and fuel tanks. The final area is a mountainous zone containing only an enemy base, which the game will start over at the first area if the base is destroyed, although at a higher level of difficulty.

## Differences with update

The continuous hum from the arcade game is absent. There is no onscreen indicator as to what sector the player is in. Enemy targets do not instantly clear out once a new sector is entered (i. e. there can still be some U. F. O.s onscreen when the player enters the third area, which a previous sector's targets would disappear right as the player entered a new area). The rockets and U. F. O.s are now multicolored. The first sector is shorter, along with rockets having the ability to launch in the second sector. The meteors were replaced by asteroids in the third area and the landscape is much more mountainous, along with the meteors having the ability to destroy targets upon contact, plus the asteroids themselves will also get destroyed when they hit a wall (which in Scramble the meteors flew over the mountains and never made contact with them). The player can also fire several more shots this time around, the scoring system has been changed and the difficulty curve is not as high (as the rockets do not launch towards the player’s ship, nor does the fuel consumption speed up as much once the first base has been destroyed, for example).

## Controls, main menu

* Start game–enter key
* Configuration screen–escape key

### (configuration)

* Continue–escape key
* Reset–R key
* Quit–Q key
* Toggle between full screen/window–F11 key
* View/configure controls–F12 key

#### (in-game)

* Move spaceship–arrow keys
* Drop bomb–X key
* Fire bullets–Z key

Controls can also be remapped on the configuration screen.

## Trivia

* The default high score is always 1206 whenever the game is first started due to it being a tribute to the Commodore 64 scene group the creator was in. Every group had a callsign number and 1206 was de Wit’s.
* RND in ScrambleRND stands for “random”.