Game Info --------------------------------------------------- Developer: Ocean Software (Imagine) Publisher: Ocean Software (Imagine) Year of Release: 1988 Coding: James Higgins Graphics: Martin McDonald Music: Jonathan Dunn Game Review & Impressions --------------------------------------------------- Data East's Ninja-bashing coin-op with attitude should be familiar to almost anyone with a passing knowledge of 80s arcade beat 'em ups, and it was ported to a huge range of computers and consoles, including the Amstrad CPC. Ocean developed this conversion under the auspices of its Imagine label, and its colourful Mode 0 graphics are the main reason I wanted to give this version a try. To Ocean's credit, they managed to pack a lot into the Amstrad version. All the levels from the arcade are present and correct, plus the various enemies, weapons and power-ups are included. The 128K disk version (shown here), also includes some sampled speech, as well loading all game levels into memory, eliminating the need for any additional loading; pretty sweet. However, the CPC version certainly has its fair share of glitches. Some, such as the enemy ninja which seem to have knives sticking out of the middle of their faces, are simply amusing, while others affect the gameplay in various ways. The timer displayed in the bottom right of the screen counts down way too quickly, and your pretty much guaranteed to lose a life in the second level, due to the fact you have to wait for the screen to scroll, with no way of advancing it yourself. The enemies carrying swords will always hit you if they manage to leap into the air, regardless of where the player sprite happens to be when they land, and the collision detection goes completely out of whack when too many enemies are on screen at the same time. End-of-level bosses all behave identically and offer no variation or real challenge, and the boss of stage 3 has lost his ability to multiply and looks like a regular bad guy. The most annoying of all the game's quirks is the final stage, where you need to travel from right to left. Unlike the rest of the game, where the camera scrolls with the player located in the centre of the screen, the screen only scrolls when the players is right up against the border. This makes hitting enemies appearing on the left impossible, since they pop into existence without giving you any time to react. Unless you have a couple of lives in reserve, I highly doubt you'll actually make it through this section. Given the various issues, it would be easy to dismiss this as yet another rubbish 8-bit arcade conversion. For the most part, it is exactly that, but despite its many problems, there's something weirdly compelling about the game. Provided you learn the strategies/exploits needed to beat the enemies, there's a sense of satisfaction whenever you manage to beat a level. The graphics are actually pretty decent, and most of the moves from the arcade version are present, even if you'll only ever want to crouch and punch. If you'd picked this up on budget later down the line, it would have passed a rainy afternoon. Information & Trivia --------------------------------------------------- Video Notes --------------------------------------------------- Related Longplays & Videos --------------------------------------------------- Chapters --------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Title screen & music 02:13 Stage 1 03:33 Stage 2 07:14 Stage 3 09:17 Stage 4 11:30 Stage 5 13:59 Stage 6 16:39 Stage 7 19:23 Stage 8 20:43 Ending #amstrad #retrogaming #dragonninja ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Yf6Rh4H7Y

Developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1996 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Al82_Retro Game Review: http://al82retro.blogspot.com/2018/01/game-review-syndicate-wars-pc.html Complete longplay of the Syndicate Wars EuroCorp campaign (part 04 of 06). The longplay was recorded using the game's 640 x 480 resolution mode for extra clarity. However, the game does not appear to have an internal speed limiter, so the only limit to how fast the game can run is the speed of the CPU. The problem with this is it slows to a crawl when there's a lot of activity on screen, but it is far too fast on less detailed screens, which makes targeting enemies next to impossible. I had to set DOSBox CPU cycles to 150,000 for the actual game levels, then reduce it to 18,000 cycles for the mission briefing/loadout UI screens else it runs far too fast. Read my full review of the game here: https://al82retro.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/game-review-syndicate-wars-pc.html #retrogaming ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBryirvhjJs