Topic: Adventures Of Rad Gravity (NES)

[Timothy1979]

Hello everyone,



I'm the one who did the map for Faxanadu. I'm currently mapping Rad Gravity, a *strange* game not so well known (because it was damn hard and kinda *weird*). I've mapped everything except the last planet (Telos) that I?m mapping at the moment and I have a problem:



- Does anyone on knows where is the last Energy Unit ?

- Does anyone know if there is a way to get pass that robot on Utopia ? (see screenshot below).



> http://oxynelle.free.fr/rad.gravity/map.utopia.gif



To show my progress, here is the map for Cyberia? I?ll finish Telos tomorrow.



> http://oxynelle.free.fr/rad.gravity/map.cyberia.gif



(Sorry for my english, I'm french...) ^_^

[marioman]

Try GameFAQs.  There is a guide there that should help you out.



http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/game/587076.html



Good luck.

[JonLeung]

I liked (The Adventures Of) Rad Gravity.  It was featured in a GamePro comic in the first GamePro magazine I got, probably December 1990 or so.  Because Rad Gravity is upside down on the box, I've frequently seen the box upside down in rental stores.



I never did finish the game.  Some areas are tough.



Oh, yeah, I should give you your Map Of The Month item for Faxanadu...



Good luck with the maps, I'm looking forward to them!

[Timothy1979]

Thanks Marioman, I allready know this walkthrough. His walkthrough is incomplete, it lacks 2 Energy Units(I've emailed him to tell him there is one more on Odar, but I don't know where is the last one), and doesn't say anything about this passage with the Robot on Utopia... *sigh*



(Gone mapping Telos - the last level)

[TerraEsperZ]

I just read a review of the game on GameFAQs and it certainly looks interesting, so I'll certainly give it a try.



Regarding FAQs and walkthroughs, there's never any garantee that it will include everything that is inside the game despite what the author might claim. That's doubly true with games that aren't that famous, and I myself found a couple of secrets for Treasure Master (NES) that weren't mentionned anywhere since the game is so obscure.



Oh, and your English is very good, and better than many people who write online. I'm a Quebecois and your post looks fine to me



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[Maxim]

There are only two ways to know you've mapped all secrets:



1. The game doesn't (seem to) have any

2. You reverse-engineered the level data from the ROM to show where they all are



Since the first doesn't apply, it becomes hard to know for sure whether you've covered everything. New secrets are being discovered in 20+-year-old games all the time.

[Timothy1979]

I have mapped all the game, i just sent it to Jonathan. I don't know if I have seen all the secrets of the game, but there is something interesting here :



> http://www.geocities.com/passgens/pages/files/rad.htm?20078



Some guy created a password generator (it doesn't work with me...). Look at the right, it says "" for the last energy unit. Therefore, I think the last Energy Unit is simply *missing* from the game. I may be wrong, but I think that's an explanation...



Maxim > I don't know how to hack or reverse-engineer a game with an emulator. I'm just good a taking screen shots and copy paste them ^_^

[marioman]

I found a video of the area, but it didn't show how to get rid of the robot.  Maybe you should blow the moving robot up when it is on top of the other one?  I haven't heard of this game before, so this is just a total guess.



Sorry I can't help more.

[Timothy1979]

No problem, I think there is no 16th Energy Unit

[JonLeung]

You submitted 9 maps, but they're numbered from 01 to 10.  Is there a 5th map that you forgot to send in?  It would be between Vernia and the Asteroid Belt.

[Timothy1979]

Oups !!! Sorry ! It's Turvia :



http://oxynelle.free.fr/rad.gravity/rad.gravity.05.turvia.PNG



Here is the order:



1 Cyberia

2 Effluvia

3 Sauria

4 Vernia   

5 Turvia

6 Asteroid Belt

7 Odar

8 Volcania

9 Utopia

10 Telos

[slyspy007]

Does anyone know the scoring system of Rad Gravity? I started a new game where I used the walkthrough to find the Crystal Bombs & Volcania Energy Unit. When I went back to use my password from 1991/1992 (when I last played the game since I gave up on it a while back), I got the same items and noticed a different score. I'm trying to find out why there is a difference.



Do we get more points for meters if no lives are lost or if we never leave the planet? Or are the points based on the order of planets chosen? I wonder if this game is like Space Quest III (IBM PC game from late 80's early 90's) where there is a maximum score that we can get.



Also, is there a trick for getting to that secret room in Volcania with the Energy unit? I was able to do it once or twice, but after that couldn't do it again. I wonder if there is a certain level in the lavafall where the beacon must be dropped in or if the player is supposed to teleport when it's at a certain level.

[Maxim]

Most games' password systems will only store large numbers rounded by a certain amount. The game's passwords are 20 characters from a set of 32, giving a total of 100 bits of information. To store a 6-digit score perfectly would cost 20 bits, but to store it rounded to the nearest 32 (for example) would cost only 15 bits.

[Timothy1979]

No idea about the scoring system... I may be wrong, but since the game is sort of a pulp galactic adventure, the scoring could just be a homage to old (older than NES, of course) video games where scoring was an important thing. There is another odd thing in that game : Rad has a translator to understand alien languages, yet he never speaks to any alien in the game... Another odd thing : Only 2 or 3 musics !!! ^_^

[JonLeung]

I was interested in this game because it was featured in the first game magazine I ever got (a month before I started subscribing to Nintendo Power) was an issue of GamePro in December 1990, the one with Bart, Marge, and Homer Simpson on the cover.



At the time they had a series of comics starring a guy named GamePro, who travelled through games (kind of like Captain N, or a more serious and action-packed version of Nintendo Power's Howard & Nester, I suppose).  In that particular issue he was in The Adventures of Rad Gravity.  I can't remember what happened, though it might have been the stage in the game where Rad has to save that cycloptic computer that was captured and put on a conveyor belt towards the incinerator or whatever that is.  And when GamePro left that game at the end of that episode, he was headed into Michael Jackson's Moonwalker for next month's adventure, I believe.



Last time I looked, there was not a Wikipedia article for this GamePro character, and it's probably hard to find on Google.  That's a problem when a character shares his namesake with the magazine itself.



I wouldn't mind looking at the full compilations of the comics again (I know that official collected volumes exist), even if they probably would be pretty cheesy.  I remember that there was a beginning and an end and enough of a story arc, too, unlike Howard & Nester, even if most of the comics in between were throwaway episodes.  Though I remember thinking it was a big deal when the cybernetic bad guy (I think his name was "Stalker" though I could be wrong) who was pursuing GamePro got some kind of upgrade...basically made to look cooler, at least I thought so.