In Net Yaroze Month, we are playing every Net Yaroze game featured on the UK Official Playstation Magazine, and ranking them all in the order we liked them. You may have other opinions as to the ranking, which is awesome.
To learn more about Net Yaroze, read our introductory article here.
Game: Decaying Orbit
By: DragonShadow Industries
Genre: Action
Available on Euro Demo: 49, 108
The game was originally to be called Escape Velocity, but Ambrosia Software had got there first.
It took me a while to work out what to do in Decaying Orbit. Many Net Yaroze games don’t have instructions easily available, and the magazines that the discs arrived with, I no longer have to hand.
The idea of Decaying Orbit is to fly your ship from one planet to a target planet, using Thrust/Asteroid-like controls. To make it more difficult other planets will draw you in with their gravitational pull, and ‘cloudy’ areas will make flying more difficult.
Once you get to the target planet, the mission is complete, and you move on to the next one. As you get further into the game, you will have tasks to achieve before the target planet is revealed to you, such as shooting down all of the enemies.
As you progress, you can buy upgrades from a shop to help you in your missions.
If you like Thrust or Gravitar then this is probably worth a try.
Legacy
Scott Cartier, the programmer behind this game went on to work for VM Labs, who created the ill-fated Nuon – a hybrid DVD player and games console technology. Cartier even ported the game to the Nuon as well as arranging Nuon ports of several other Net Yaroze games.
Net Yaroze Month rankings:
So far, I have enjoyed all of the games I’ve played so ranking them is getting difficult, even this early on. I’m placing Decaying Orbit in the middle.
- Blitter Boy
- Super Bub Contest
- Decaying Orbit
- Haunted Maze
- Katapila
Still to play:
- Bouncer 2
- Terra Incognita
- Blockz
- Psychon
- Yaroze Rally
- Tanx
- Gravitation
- Roller
- Robot Ron
- Adventure Game
- Between the Eyes
- INVS
- Video Arcade Poker
- Opera of Destruction
- Sphere
- Surf Game
- Rocks n Gems
- Yarozians
- PingPing
- Game Involving Triangles
- Pssst
- Squeak
- Shroud
- Total Soccer Yaroze
- Time Slip
- Sam the Boulderman
- Technical Demo
- Pushy IIb
- Pandora’s Box
- Down
- Snowball Fight
- Arena
- A Dog Tale
- Mah Jongg
- Samsaric Asymptotes
- Hover Car Racing
- Clone