Agent Orange (video game)

Agent Orange, a horizontally scrolling shooter, was released by A&F Software in January 1987 for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. The player’s objective is to cultivate crops across eight alien planets to earn money for space travel, while fighting off rival alien farmers and managing the planting and harvesting of crops. The ultimate goal is to reach the final planet and claim a batch of alien weedkiller called agent orange.

At the start, the player’s mothership heads to the first planet, displaying the number and strength of enemy farmers there. The mothership carries seeds and eight smaller daughterships, which are both fighter craft and planters. The player launches a daughtership onto the planet’s surface, controlling it directly; each daughtership represents a life. The daughtership moves in eight directions as the play area scrolls left and right from the mothership. Alien farmers attack, starting off easy to destroy but becoming tougher as the game progresses.

Aliens plant their own crops, which act as weeds that choke the player’s crops and take up limited planting space. The player can destroy these alien weeds with weapon fire. Indigenous weeds also spread across the planet but cannot be destroyed by the player’s weapons. The daughtership can plant crops if seeds are available; seeds grow through three colored stages, and once they reach the third stage, they can be harvested. Crops wither if not harvested in time. Crop growth is lifelike: too many or too few crops in an area stunts growth, so the player must find the optimal density. The daughtership can hold a limited number of crop units, shown by a bar that fills as crops are collected; exceeding the limit causes a crash landing and destroys the vessel. The mothership also has limited cargo space; once full, it must return home to sell the crops. The mothership cannot leave the planet until all alien aggressors are eliminated. Upon returning home, harvested crops, remaining seeds, and surviving daughterships are converted into cash, which can be used to buy new daughterships with improved shields. The player can then return to the same planet, where more alien farmers appear, or move to the next, more difficult planet, each featuring stronger and more numerous alien ships.