SUPER GAME GUIDE
Look, over there, through that swirling cloud of strange mist... No, it can't be, but it is! SU's guide to the game-greats of yester-year. Yes indeedy there have been some good 'uns on the market in the last few years so now's the time to start polishing up on your collection if you've missed out on any of these fabbo titles. Mark Patterson, who's been in the business since before he was born and who has written not just for SU but also for Amiga, ST, PC and Console mages gives us an extra critical run down of the best...
SHADOW OF THE BEAST
Label: GBH
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Mark Patterson
A classic shoot em up. with wonderful detailed graphics, good music and any amount of monsters, beasts and assorted nasties to blast away at. There are power ups along the way giving you even better weapons as well as magic potions. The graphics are big and clear with fabulously detailed backgrounds, all giving the game a great atmosphere.
Label: Gremlin
Price: £12.99/£15.99
Reviewer: Gary 'Mouth' Whitta
Will wonders never cease? When it was released last year on the almighty Amiga by the almighty Psygnosis, Beast was hailed as the best thing ever. With a thousand million billion trillion screens to explore; fifty thousand layers of parallax scrolling, sixty channel music, twenty googolplex colours (*) a designer T-shirt which came free in the oversize box, Beast got a lot of publicity and subsequently did very well for itself. What most people didn't realise until much later, after all the hype had died away, was that underneath all the flashy decoration, the game was only an average arcade adventure. (*) These figures may be exaggerated, but not much.
Now it's appeared on the Spectrum - something which not many people ever expected to happen - courtesy of Gremlin, and despite the obvious corner-cutting that's had to be done, it's not bad at all. You're this rather ugly-looking warrior chap who's out to get an evil Beast who's been causing all sorts of trouble in the world of Necropolis. Putting an end to all this badness is achieved in typical arcade adventure tradition - run left and right, climb up and down ladders, beat up baddies and collect objects. Sounds a bit seen-it-all-before? Well the truth is you probably have, but it's the execution that sets it apart from the crowd.
In the course of running about, collecting keys and helpful objects, you'll be accosted (oh no missus) by all manner of weird and wonderful creatures - ranging from over-sized ants to bouncing Psygnosis logos. A hefty monster-punch sees these off, but watch out too for nasty spikes that come up from out of the ground and puncture your bottom.
So what nice about Beast then? Well the graphics for a start. Despite being about as one colour as graphics get (whatever happened to the multi-colour, no-clash sexiness of Lightforce, eh?) they're very pretty indeed, and there's a nice clean-cut feel to them. Sound too is lovely jubbly with an epic theme (i.e. you can't turn it off) playing throughout. Bestest of all though is the gameplay, with loadsascreens to mess about in, lots of puzzles to solve and a never-ending army of sleaze-minions to give a damn good seeing to. And for the intellectuals amongst you the layout of the game makes it the perfect candidate for some serious mapping - should you be that way inclined.
Label: GBH
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Steve Keen
I was one of the people who flipped over Shadow Of The Beast when it was first released and I still think it kicks butt now it's out on budget. In fact I've always fancied myself as the little goaty fellow with the beard but unfortunately Garth has always managed to steal the limelight in this department!
Shadow Of The Beast is a simple game with fantastic graphics, excellent 'parallax' scrolling, a convincing soundtrack, and a vast array of monsters to do battle with. Along the way you'll find weapons and potions with which to beat off all comers, not that you need them, as most of the beasts seem happy enough to run onto the end of your fist! Various other items such as keys are available to help in your quest and most are really essential.
Shadow is a fabulous game, loaded with music that'll totally absorb you until completion. The sprites and graphics are a welcome teller to the midegty or muddled style we have become used to today. In fact the only bad point I can make is that the loading system is rather tiresome, but that's little price to pay for a classic conversion.
ALAN:
It won't take you a lifetime to complete, but once done you'll wish it could have gone on forever. All praise to Psygnosis and now GBH for not neglecting our Spec chum.
All information in this page is provided by ZXSR instead of ZXDB