Portugues
The Menace from Triton
Saved games stay in this browser only.
About the game
Year 9918. Humanity has spread across the galaxy, until a scout ship meets a giant head floating near the Aigai Nebula and goes silent. Soon after, the nearest military base receives a message from the Triton Empire: humans have gone too far and will be wiped out. You fly one of the fighters sent from Ithaki Base to strike back.
The Menace from Triton is a side-scrolling shooter in the tradition of the MSX classics, with a layer of planning on top. Between missions you choose the next planet to attack on a galaxy map and spend the credits you earn in a shop of weapons and upgrades: faster engines, twin and triple shots, torpedoes, missiles, lasers, a flamethrower, shields, option drones and extra pilots. Levels are put together differently every time you play, the bosses wait at the end of each sector, and the difficulty climbs steadily on the way to Triton himself.
Playing it here
This is a homebrew game for the MSX, the 1980s home computer standard that was especially popular in Japan, Europe and Brazil (where it sold as the Gradiente Expert and the Sharp Hotbit). It is a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release, made for MSX1 machines as a 48 KB cartridge for the MSXDev'20 competition; version 1.2 adds the password system of the later physical edition. It runs here in the blueMSX emulator with C-BIOS, a free replacement for the MSX system software.
Click Play, let the intro run (or press Space) and press Space on the title screen. Your computer keyboard works as the MSX keyboard. F2 saves the full state of the emulator in this browser and F4 brings it back. A gamepad acts as the MSX joystick: the bottom button fires (Space) and the right button takes power-ups (M).
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrow keys | move the ship; move the pointer on the map and upgrade screens |
| Space (tap) | fire; select on the map and upgrade screens |
| Space (hold) | half speed for careful flying; fires the special when the energy bar is full |
| M (or N) | take the highlighted power-up from the bar at the bottom |
| F1 | pause; while paused, Q aborts the mission |
| Esc or M | on the upgrade screen, jump to the Back button |
| F2 / F4 | save / load the emulator state |
A few things worth knowing
Equip what you buy. Upgrades bought in the shop only count once they are equipped. The left side of the upgrade screen shows the eight slots of the power-up bar you will see in the mission.
Speed and fire rate first. The ship starts slow and the basic gun fires slowly. The author's own advice is to spend the first credits on speed and on the first bullet upgrade.
Power pellets are fragile. Some enemies drop pellets that charge the power-up bar, but an enemy destroyed too close to a wall loses its pellet. Write down the password shown on the galaxy map to continue another day.
Credits and licence
The Menace from Triton was written by Santiago Ontañón, who releases his games as Brain Games; code, graphics, music and story are his. The README thanks NatyPC, Alejandro Gil Cal, Jose Luis Lerma, Pablibiris, Jandro, Andrés de Pedro, Dani de Boixos Clubs, Uninteresting, Unepic Fran and JamQue for their feedback. Data in the cartridge is unpacked with an aPLib decompressor by spke and uniabis (zlib licence) and a Pletter decompressor. The game is free software under the Apache License 2.0. The licence text is linked from this page.