engineer

tim   .

                                                      

.   hunkin

cartoonist

ART APOCALYPSE

   
Art Apocalypse is a game where you shoot art – a real shooting gallery. To cater for different tastes, there’s a variety of different types of art to shoot at.

To play the game you train by shooting first at static paintings and then at moving paintings. Finally you try to shoot the sculpture, which explodes in a very satisfying way if you hit it.
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It is based on an old Namco game I bought from a friend – it’s a good game with a really clever Peppers ghost illusion to make a ceramic cup explode. Its a bit dull just shooting at bulls eyes so I thought it would be more satisfying shooting at art, particularly because Southwold is quite an arty place so jokes about art seem to be popular. I got a bit carried away with the graphics applying the language and hype about global warming to the increasing amount of art produced in the developed world. 
See the graphics.

In its original form Art Apocalypse was never satisfying because the game was too hard. The best bit is shooting the sculpture at the end of game (it explodes in such a brilliant way), but people hardly ever got that far. As it still had Namco’s programmed chips to control everything I couldn’t think how to make it easier.

But then my friend Andy Plant came and worked on it with me for a week and we solved the problem by giving the gun a laser sight – its now very hard to miss the targets and the gun itself is much more satisfying, a sort of sci- fi ray gun made from an old air tool. Andy also convinced me to make the shooting man to go on top.