Quite impressive 3D routines,  Wednesday, 27 June 2007 Having not seen this production before now I wasn't expecting much based on Demon's review. However on watching it I feel he was overly critical and many of the graphical routines impressed me, especially when you consider this is running on a standard A500.

I do however agree that there are some issues with it. Overall the design of the production isn't that great with no central theme or nice transitions leading you through the production from one effect to the next. In terms of design it feels more like an FX coding showcase, used to just display what the coder is capable of.

Also the music, while quite good, does get a bit repetitive and generic after 30 seconds. It also contains some parts that feel quite dark and don't really fit the demo. There are also some questionable notes/samples used towards the end that don't quite sound right.

In terms of actual coding and FX I gave both a high mark as they are technically well executed. The solid filled 3D is well done with smooth motion and rotation, and the 3D dot graphics are especially nice with the bouncing dot ball being my personal favourite part of the production, especially when it changes from all white dots to coloured dots, representing the flag colours of Luxembourg.

Another thing worth noting is the fractal generation within this production which was not seen that often in Amiga demos. There are a number of fractals generated and the routines are quite fast, and their generation is something I've always found interesting to watch.

So overall this is quite a technically well executed production, with smooth 3D routines and fractal generation, but it lacks production design with no central thread leading the viewer through the routines and no main theme. And the music, while not bad, is quite generic and doesn't really fit into the demo.

This production is however worth watching for its technically well executed coding of the 3D and fractal routines.

 A great and complex game of space based detective,  Thursday, 24 May 2007 Captain Blood is a game I was hooked on at the time, not least because its musical score was by the famous French musician Jean Michel Jarre, an artist I had become a big fan of at the time, but also because of the intriguing and unique gameplay. I even managed to eventually complete the game after many attempts and at the time this felt like a huge achievement.

This is a fascinating space based game, where you take on the role of Captain Blood aboard a massive living space ship called the Ark. It centres on space travel in a galaxy populated by 32,768 planets, many of which are populated with alien creatures that you can have conversations with. But due to the huge number of planets in the gameīs universe most of them are uninhabited, so just randomly going to any of them is not a good idea as it is a quick way to get completely lost.

Before the game begins, an accidental cloning process has happened aboard the captainīs ship and has drained him of his essential life juices. He is dying and the ship tries to help by replacing his damaged body parts and organs with cybernetic components, linking him inseparably to the ship. This is only a stop gap though because without further help the rest of his body will slowly fail, the ship continuing to replace the failed parts, until eventually the captain will be gone, the only thing remaining will be his consciousness as part of the ships systems.

This means that you as the Captain have a finite amount of time remaining to save yourself before your life as you know it is over. The only way to beat this happening is to restore the life juices you have lost by tracking down the 5 remaining clones of the captain which have become scattered across the galaxy, their locations being on any of the 32,768 planets in the games universe. Once found you have to convince them to each teleport back to your ship where you can then extract their life juices and use them to regenerate yourself.

The game heightens the urgency of the captainīs plight as the game progresses. You constantly have a timer counting down to zero and as you run out of time, and the ship starts to replace more of the captain, he starts to become physically harder control. This is achieved my making the mouse pointer (the captainīs hand) harder to control, with it shaking or responding in an erratic manor, making it harder to click on controls or to navigate the conversation icons.

The game is mainly a detective game, where you have to visit each planet and talk to the inhabitant, trying to gain information from them to try and discover coordinates of other inhabited planets, as well as clues to the location of the actual clones.

During the game you have to complete tasks for some of the creatures you encounter in order to gain more information from them. Transporting them to another planet on the promise of information on arrival, visiting a series of other planets on a quest, eventually returning to the first inhabitant once complete, or the destruction of rival planets in return for information, although talking to the inhabitants of the planets marked for destruction can often turn up more information or twists in the plot.

The game's controls are mouse driven and centre around the interface of the Ark, with the mouse pointer being the captainīs hand. As the game progresses and the ship begins to take over more of the captain, the hand slowly changes from an organic hand and arm, to one of cybernetics, and as mentioned earlier the hand slowly becomes harder to control as the game progresses.

Due to the ship taking over the captain he can never physically leave the ship. Instead the ship gives birth to organic missiles called Oorxx. These can be sent down to each planet to locate and communicate with the inhabitants and to teleport any willing inhabitant to the ship where they are stored in cryogenic stasis. While stored in the ship the captain can choose to drop them off at another planet, or destroy them, extracting their life juices to temporarily extend his life a little longer. These Ooraxx missiles also have the power to destroy a complete planet if needed (which is a part of the gameīs plot later on).

Sending an Oorxx down to a planet gives the player a mini game where they have to navigate the missile through a 3D landscape until it encounters an inhabitant and automatically lands. This 3D flying mini game was very impressive at the time, using a black and white vector visual style similar to a 3D sound wave generator or a height mapping system that was very effective in giving the illusion of flying through a 3D landscape.

If an inhabitant is found, the view changes to the conversation window where you get to see what they look like. These conversations are icon driven with both the player and the inhabitant conversing using 150 speech icons. This system worked very well and is a fascinating central aspect to the game. At the time this game was released most games used a basic threaded conversation system where you just picked a sentence from a series of options to get a predetermined reply. Being able to construct sentences from an icon library of 150 icons was amazing at the time and worked very well. Sadly this idea hasnīt been adopted much since and many games still use the dated threaded sentence picking system for conversations.

This game is very unique in nature. The games interface and space setting are visually well designed with each planet having a unique and often beautiful view from space. The flying sequences as mentioned before also uses a unique vector style that is very unique to this game and gives a unique sense of depth to the flying experience. And overall the graphical quality of the game's graphics give it a unique and interesting identity that is hard not to like.

The actual core of the game is the detective work you have to conduct though the many icon driven conversations you have with the occupants of each planet to piece together the puzzle and eventually locate your missing clones. This makes the game is very intriguing and fascinating experience to play. You do need some patience to play it through to conclusion though, which is why I gave it an 8 for Gameplay and not 10, but I personally found it worthwhile and an enjoyable experience. Equally I only gave it 6 for lifespan because it only has the single storyline, that once completed is the end of the game, and would not offer much extra if replayed.

 Nearly as good as the SNES version,  Thursday, 19 April 2007 Being a big Addams Family fan, having watched all of the original B/W TV series and the more recent films, I couldn't wait to try this game based on this cult series.

This platform game was released across multiple systems (SNES, Amiga, Atari ST, etc), but I assume it was actually developed on the SNES and then ported as the best version is arguable the SNES version; and after playing that version in a local store I had eagerly awaited its release on the Amiga.

I wasn't disappointed either as it plays exactly the same as th SNES version. The gameplay is identical with the main character easy to control via joystick and the game scrolling smoothly. The sprites are also very nicely animated and colourfully drawn.

This continues with the rest of the game's graphics, which are dark in theme due to the nature of The Addam's Family, but are also colourful and cute at the same time. Combining this with The Addam's Family tune adds a bubbly and fun atmosphere when playing. The animations are also amusing and want you to keep playing.

The gameplay is set to quite a hard difficulty level, with you needing to memorise each level to guarantee success. This has always been the case with many platform games so fans of this genre will not be put off by this aspect.

Going back to the graphics, it looks identical to the SNES version with the exception that the parallax scrolling backgrounds are completely missing! Instead you are just left with a black background! This is odd considering all other versions of the game do have the background graphics, and this includes the technically inferior Atari ST version. I don't know for sure but I've always assumed that they decided to port the originals level and sprite graphics perfectly, retaining their full colour, and instead sacrifice the backgrounds due to the A500 only using 32 colours onscreen compared to the SNES's 256. But I don't know the reason for sure.

Overall I highly recommend this game if you are a fan of platform games, and even more so if you are a fan of The Addam's Family. It's fun to play, has some great looking graphics and level design, and it lifted by the theme tune.

 The only bike racing game worth playing,  Tuesday, 06 March 2007 Most people remember the great Super Hang-On arcade machine, with the full sized bike you sat on, which you had to lean over into the corners to steer. This was a great arcade game with some amazing graphics and racing gameplay.

The Amiga conversion was definitely one of the best home versions, and recreated the feel and excitement of the arcade original; the only thing missing from the full experience was the bike!

The graphics were very well ported and recreated, managing to retain the look of the arcade original and the feeling of speed. This was something many games found hard to replicate at the time, with some feeling like the road was moving at a different speed to the vehicle, or the vehicle floating. But here the bike feels like it is on the road, taking the bends and moving with the undulating road.

The in-game sound is unsurprising with some basic bike sounds as you accelerate and pass other bikes. What makes the sound is the soundtracks, which are each selectable just before a race begins. This idea originated with games such as Sega's Outrun and has been copied by many racing games of the time, including many of the other great Amiga racers such as Lotus and Jaguar XJ220. The in game music definitely increases the games enjoyment with the tunes generating a much greater enjoyment and sense of speed in the game.

The gameplay is similar to most arcade racing games of the time, with you racing against the clock, instead of directly against the opponents, to reach the next checkpoint before your time runs out. There is definitely more skill needed on the bike when you enter a bend than you would need with similar car based racers. If you don't lift off or break at the right moments you will definitely crash and lose valuable time.

The Amiga version had three control systems, Keyboard, Joystick and Mouse. Keyboard, as with most games, was just included for those who didn't have a joystick. Whereas the mouse control was included to try and replicate the feel of the arcade machine's leaning feature more than a digital joystick could manage. With the joysticks of the time you could either select left, right or centre, nothing else, so adjusting your degree of lean as you went through a bend was sometimes hard to master with a digital joystick. In contrast, the mouse control allowed you to exactly angle the position of the bike as it moved through a bend. This took some practice to master and to begin with it was a very hard system to grasp, with many instead reverting to the joystick control, but mastering the mouse control definitely gave the game move enjoyment once you got the "hang" of it.

If you like arcade racing games then you can't miss playing this classic bike racing game. It was one of the best racer of the time, and is still just as enjoyable and playable today.

 Great fun multiplayer,  Tuesday, 06 March 2007 At the time, Ikari Warriors was one of my favourite shoot em ups on the Amiga, after having been a firm favourite of mine in the arcades with the original 1986 SNK cabinet. The Amiga port was very faithful to the arcade original and retained its same level of difficulty and fun.

This game is definitely the most fun when played two player with a friend and this was the only way I ever managed to complete it.

The gameplay is very similar to a number of other top down run and gun style scrolling shooters. It is best described as a Commando clone, with inspiration taken mostly from the Rambo films of the time. So as Submeg mentioned, if you liked this style of game with some other examples being Leatherneck, Rambo and Dogs of War, then you will find this great fun.

Much like any good shoot em up, learning the attack waves and timing is the only way to get further in the game. And later towards the very end the level design does change, but I won't spoil that for you all.

Definitely a great game and well worth playing, especially if you have a friend to hand to help you out.

A piece of trivia; the two game characters Ralf Jones and Clark Steel later make an appearance as playable characters in the sixth Metal Slug game.