Previous Next

A fleet of five freighters carrying battle robots to the besieged plant of Basmyth has run into an asteroid field. The asteroids themselves posed no threat, but from the far side of the field, alien ships were bombarding the freighters with disorienting beams which drove the crew's android servants haywire, and also activated the battle robots in the hold, sending them on a destructive rampage. The human officers were eliminated almost immediately, leaving the ship open for occupation by alien forces.

To prevent this, all the robots on each ships must be destroyed before any raiders can come aboard. A cybernetic influence device (ID) under you control has been teleported aboard the first freighter. The ID has the ability to connect itself into a robot's brain unit and take control of it. The plan is to use the weapons and mobile capabilities of each robot to eliminate as many other robots as possible, moving up the ranks from slow and unarmed servant droids to heavily armoured sentinels.

Andrew Braybrook never quite matched the ingenuity or playability of his original C64 Paradroid, released in 1985, so it was with great excitement that I booted up this revamped Amiga version.

Is there any way he could have used 16-bit power to improve the gameplay? Well of course the graphics are vastly superior to the original, thanks to artist Michael Field. Each robot sprite is intricately detailed and instantly recognisable, and the way their various arms, legs, heads and gun turrets move is superb.

Sound has been similarly beefed up, and as well as the stereo robo-burbling and weird background effects, there's a great metallic guitar track on the title screen.

Apart from one or two upgrading tweaks and apparently more intelligent enemy robots, the action is pretty much the same as the C64 version, and that is by no means bad. Amiga owners have been voicing their concern over the loss of multi-directional movement, but the game certainly doesn't miss that at all, and the vertical deck scrolling is fine.

Overall then, a brilliant translation, destined to be just as much a classic as the C64 version was.