★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ GAMESLIST ★ BARBARIAN (MELBOURNE HOUSE/PSYGNOSIS) (c) MELBOURNE HOUSE/PSYGNOSIS ★ |
Amstrad Action | Amstrad Sinclair Ocio |
No. This is not Palace's Barbarian again, but rather another game with the same name, which appeared first on sixteen bit machines. Palace have a reputation for cover art featuring scantily clad women, but now Psygnosis have gone one step further: there's full nakedness on the cover. Before you get too excited.
I should explain that the being in question is in fact a dragon. Members the Society for the Protection of Dragons from Exploitation should contact Psygnosis direct. Right then, some background, courtesy of the little novella that accompanies the game. (It's a sort of Gothic Coronation Street, so be prepared.) Thoton and Necron are twin brothers who meet an old druid one day as he is wandering through the forest He befriends them and teaches them to fight with sword, bow and spear. After a year of daily visits the druid turns up as usual, but carrying only the sword and bow. He asks the brothers to close their eyes and when they open them again they feel power surging through their bodies. Necron can cast fire from his fingertips, but is warned nevor to burn Thoron because the flames would turn back and destroy Necron The bow is given to Necron and the sword to Thoron. Many years pass and the boys part company, only meeting again much later in a village, during which time nice Necron has turned into a real bad guy. When they meet they fight tooth and claw (sound like normal brothers to me) and eventually Necron is slam. Thoron doesn't have the will power to destroy the soul of his evil brother and so in fact Necron doesn't die, he is merely forced to live underground Thoron is later killed by a dragon sent by Necron and Thoron's son Hegor swears to avenge his father's death and bring the evil Necron's life to an end. You are Hegor and you wield the sword of your father. Phew! Got all that? The screen is split into a row of icons and a flick screen playing area with a large sprite of you standing at the left There are ten icons on screen and a further three can be accessed at the flick of a button. Left/right moves you and up/down alters winch icon is highlighted, fire activates the icon. There are four normal movement icons and you can also run. A dramatic forwards or backwards somersault is also possible and you can stop dead in your tracks with another icon. No barbarian would be complete without a sword, however, and this can be wielded menacingly at any monsters.
If a monster is too scary then you can turn tail and run, leaving your sword behind in your haste. The extra icons allow you to pick up, drop and select objects. Your lives score and number of arrows are also shown with the second set ol icons. Arrows are picked up later in the game. Each of the screens that you wander around has one of two types of danger, moving and static. Static ones include sections of ceiling that bash you on the head and sections of bridges that vanish when you step on them. Moving dangers are the toads, werewolves and ghosties of this world. Contact with static or moving dangers are equally lethal You start with four lives, but in your first few games they won t last very long. That's one area in which the game lets itself down badly it's too easy to end up dead unavoidably. Traps have no warning, and so the first time you come across one you're almost guaranteed to lose a life. Monsters may only take one blow to kill, but timing it can be very dodgy. I suppose it's like an arcade game: you die a hundred deaths before you start to recoup your investment. Graphically Barbarian is not technically brilliant and the graphics are in general chunky. There are no tunes, but the few sound effects are good. There's not really any great depth to the game, which is just a series of problems with basically only one solution to them. Once you know how to deal with them there will he little challenge to the game. This is one of the most obvious examples of a game that you'll only ever bother to complete once A nice try at cutting a sixteen ait game down to eight bits. FIRST DAY TARGET: Complete 20% GBH SECOND OPINION "This is better than Palace's Barbarian, in that there's an objective. I always like games which give me a reason to play them and the novella certainly helps. And I like running through a fortress chopping everything in sight: this barbarian's a guy I can sympathise with." PbM, AA#40 GREEN SCREEN: No major problems |
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Page créée en 099 millisecondes et consultée 5018 fois L'Amstrad CPC est une machine 8 bits à base d'un Z80 à 4MHz. Le premier de la gamme fut le CPC 464 en 1984, équipé d'un lecteur de cassettes intégré il se plaçait en concurrent du Commodore C64 beaucoup plus compliqué à utiliser et plus cher. Ce fut un réel succès et sorti cette même années le CPC 664 équipé d'un lecteur de disquettes trois pouces intégré. Sa vie fut de courte durée puisqu'en 1985 il fut remplacé par le CPC 6128 qui était plus compact, plus soigné et surtout qui avait 128Ko de RAM au lieu de 64Ko. |