Tooth Invaders  (1982 - Commodore)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Play as Plaqueman to fight the plaque D. K. This Plague Germ is covering all the teeth. Your weapons are the toothbrush and dental floss. All the while you must not come into physical contact with D.K. or you will be "eliminated." Your brush needs fluoride toothpaste to energize it. If you don't pass the toothbrush through the toothpaste it will not work. Floss has to be used to get the spaces in between teeth. If teeth start decaying you will get warning sounds.

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Description from the packaging:

Tooth Invaders is a game that sparkles with arcade style action. What's more, moms and dentists love it for teaching proper dental care. You are the superhero Plaqueman, and it's up to you to defeat the dreaded enemy, D.K. At all 9 levels of play, Tooth Invaders is a challenge that will keep you amused for hours. This is definitely a game you can sink your teeth into! This game has been reviewed by the American Dental Association.

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Review

Back when I wrote the review for Blue Print, I never really imagined I'd find myself face to face with what I considered the grandpappy of weird-ass game concepts, but here we are. Tooth Invaders, which is the game about brushing and flossing teeth -- which, granted, might also be the ONLY game about brushing and flossing teeth -- this game and its kind seems to fully embrace the craziness of the 80's. 

At first glance, you might be wondering exactly whose teeth we're brushing here, or if the workload is portioned out somehow. Because in Tooth Invaders, you are being tasked with overseeing the protection and maintenance of two rows of four teeth each, upper and lower jaw. Your weapons of choice is a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss, and your goal is to completely clean out all of the teeth you see here. Making that job more difficult is a bacteria making the rounds, leaving marks behind the teeth and putting stuff between them as well. (Actually, I'm not entirely sure of the latter, but possibly?) 

As is typical of a lot of early 80's games, the production values aren't much to speak of here. You control a stick figure wielding a stick toothbrush and a stick... piece of floss -- well, I guess that makes sense to a certain degree, with only the floss's rigidity being the fly in the reality ointment. The bacteria enemy did get some amount of design beyond the whole stick motif, though, but still doesn't look any more complex than what you'd see in Miner 2049er, so visual design is clearly not this game's strong point. 

Neither is its audio. The game seems to have gone for the "one note PD library shootout" with two short parts of more famous musical works, and they sound about as good as you'd expect, which is "not very". The sound effects are a bit better, though, mostly because they aren't loud or abrasive, and each sound effect lets you know what's going on. There's brushing and flossing sound effects, there's sound effects letting you know when the bacteria thingie is damaging teeth, and there's also a fairly low, but still notable alert sound to let you know that one of the teeth is in danger unless you do some emergency cleaning. They actually serve the game quite well and makes up for its musical shortcomings. 

The latter is especially important, because the stage the game is set on has two modes; the overseeing mode, where you get to see all eight teeth, and the close-up mode, which you need to enter to be able to do any cleaning at all. It's fairly ingenious -- particularly if it's true that Tooth Invaders has been made by a boy in his early teens -- and serves to give the game a certain sense of strategy and the player some advance warning that the bacteria thing is near. Which is necessary, because the close up mode might scroll, but you have to be pretty close to the edge of the screen to be able to push it along, which presents a very large danger that you'll be in the receiving end of a surprise attack by the green bacteria monster. It's particularly important because you die on contact, whisked away to the great big tooth rot heaven in the sky by a radioactive lollipop (or something like that -- it's the crazy 80's, remember?) Thankfully, the game switches between the two modes quickly enough, so it's just a matter of being careful, which you will always have time for, since there is no particular time limit to this game. 

One thing that thankfully makes this anti-bacterial warfare a bit easier is that, once you've completely cleaned out a tooth -- that is, brushed it clean and flossed each of its sides thoroughly -- a little fanfare will play, and the tooth will start blinking in a set of colors, marking it as completely clean and preventing the bacteria thing from damaging it any further. This leaves you to concentrate on the remanining ones in peace, though be warned; while the bacteria can't damage finished teeth, you will also then not get that telltale sound of it leaving marks on unfinished teeth, meaning that the more teeth you have cleaned out, the more careful you will have to be, because you'll never know where that thing might be. And, as I've mentioned, it can drop out of nowhere and kill you dead, so occasionally going to full screen mode to check its whereabouts is highly recommended, especially near the end. It moves fast, true, but not THAT fast. 

Tooth Invaders is a marvellously goofy and fun concept, but sadly, it also has some limitations and niggles that might get on your nerves. The first and biggest problem is that you will only play that one stage, ever; upon completion, the game merely resets you on the same stage with an even more effective bacteria thing making the rounds, making the game a bit of a fight against repetition fatigue. And while the game controls fairly well, swapping between the brush and the piece of floss takes some time getting used to, because you can't grab the floss while you're holding the brush and vice versa. You have to put the brush in its stand before picking up the floss, which sort of works against the game, even if it makes logical sense. Adding to that problem is that it's not a matter of pressing the button to grab or place the brush or the floss -- the button serves as a switch between zoom modes and nothing else. You basically have to run up to the stands and wait until your character places the tool of choice there, which he doesn't always do. And when he does, you have to make sure to first move away from the stand properly, or he'll just grab the piece again, forcing you to run back and stand around, hoping he'll put it back. This mild inaccuracy carries over to the brushing part of the game, where it can get a bit arbitrary about whether a smudge on a tooth will be cleaned out or not, and you'll sometimes find yourself waggling the joystick or running needlessly back and forth to get that last smudge off. 

That said, if this game is someone's very first coding attempt -- or even someone's first attempt at a professional release -- I'm still quite impressed, especially if it's true that this game was made by a 14 year old. It does have that kind of homebrew, one-man project feeling over it.


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