★ GAMES ★ EDITEURS ★ CONTROVERSY BEHIND, DOMARK SETTLE FOR BATTLE (AMSTRAD COMPUTER USER) ★ |
| Controversy behind, Domark settle for battle (Amstrad Computer User) | Games Editeurs |
The combat game market is hotting up. The latest pugilist to enter the arena is Gladiator from Domark. Simon Rockman looks at the company and the program. Domark has had more ups and downs than the Otis (A make of lift - Ed) which takes you to the Amstrad User office. It has always had a high profile - the image of good marketing helping mediocre software. Its first program was Eureka, an adventure written by Andromeda software which took the player through a myriad of different times but this was never converted for the Amstrad. It came out just after the Arnold, offering a huge cash prize to the first player to finish. If no one managed this the £25,000 would be split among everyone who bought a copy. This was an excellent deterrent to piracy and an incentive to play the game - "I can't have my tea now Mum -1 want to win £25,000”. Just as the deadline was looming a schoolboy told Domark that he had finished the game and left last year's PCW show with a cheque and a large grin. Even for the people who didn't win. Eureka was good value for money. Double Oh Seven The first Domark program to appear on the Amstrad was View To A Kill based on the James Bond film. While the music by Duran Duran was doing very well in the singles chart the game did less spectacularly in the software stakes. View To A Kill was rushed and it showed. This was not helped by lots of magazines being offered an exclusive.
Domark has never worried about what prudes might think. Friday 13th was a very successful horror film. It was certainly scary, I trembled through part two. walked out of part one, and avoided part three - in that order - but then I'm just a coward. Still a lot of people like being scared silly and were very popular. The game of the same name caused the kind of trouble on which Domark seems to thrive. There were calls for it to be withdrawn, the advertisment had to be changed and Domark claimed that it was all in the best possible taste. Unfortunately the game was not as scary as watching an undead attack two teenagers in a VW Beetle. It was too easy by far. All you had to do was grab the spear and throw it enough times. Domark seems to look for controversy. One of its newest releases. Splitting Image, has annoyed the people at Central Television so much that the name has had to be changed to Split Personalities, but fortunately the game -a block puzzle program - is good enough to weather the storm. Gladiator, their newest release, has none of the usual Domark traits. No big name tie-ups, no rumours or scandal, it is just a good down-to-earth combat game. The Amstrad conversion has been written by Mike Moscoff who was part of the original Spectrum programming team. Mike is a programmer working on big IBM mainframes but was attracted to the micro world by the graphics. He complains that the mainframe world is all accounting and no fun but that games programming is much much more time consuming. The conversion from Spectrum to Amstrad had taken over three months. It was originally intended to be a Mode 1 game but the lure of extra colours and the quest for speed led to a switch to Mode 0 one month into the project. This meant that the all-important spritt routines had to be re-written. When I saw Gladiator the code was nearly finished but the graphics were still being finished by an artist the other side of London. The smoothness of the graphics is partly due to the use of a buffer to the screen which allows the whole area where the fighting takes place to be updated in one fell swoop. The key combinations got very complicated with the Spectrum and Spectrum 128 versions so Mike has simplified the options for the Arnold. You still have just as many weapons to choose from and can still throw your sword or dagger but the key combinations have been made easier. A useful hint for players is that the trident is the most powerful weapon (Mr Reagan believes that too). You can use two tridents despite the software recommending that you select a shield. There are many types of weapon including a ruler, which Mike says is there because of the ruler fights he used to have at school. You could arrange a fight to the death with rulers. If you get really bored you can set the computer to fight itself, gambling on the outcome. In fact once you have defeated the champion you have to defeated the champion you have to do this to win your freedom - yes I've seen Sparticus as well. Gladiator is not a typical Domark game but it is good, there are elements of the other combat games but more of an atmosphere, but the thing which really sets it apart is the lack of hype. I look forward to seeing the finished program. ACU
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