Previous Next

I remember when Jeff Minter was the one remaining hope in the games software industry, the last of the wild-eyed, shaggy-haired independents churning out crazy games guaranteed to pop your eyeballs. What a disappointment, then, that Jeff has failed to meet the challenge of the Atari ST and the Amiga by coming up with games as amazing as his early efforts on the Commodore 64 were.

Not that Revenge II is really Jeff's work; while the concept is identical to that of his 8-bit versions, all the programming work was done by Icon Design, and a right hash they've made of it.

Having thousands of sprites dashing around exploding is fine on an 8-bit machine, but on an Atari ST we expect something in the way of graphic sophistication. All we have here is lousy sound effects, and chunky low-resolution sprites performing in front of what could have been nice backgrounds if it weren't for the cotton wool clouds and featureless skies.

The plot? Minimal. You're a 90 foot high death-spitting neutronium-shielded mega-camel, and you have to blast thousands of sprites resembling Pac-Men, glasses of lager, cigarette ends, telephone boxes - you know, the usual stuff.

You can shoot in any direction while running along the ground or leaping through the air to drop bombs. Collecting special tokens adds bonus points, and at the end of every round, if you aren't grid, and goodness knows what reduced to a collapsing skeleton by collisions with baddies, you are returned to the Game Grid. Here you have the option to use your bonus points to buy new weapons, including Big Bullets, Smart Bullets, extra shields and extra camels.

Then it's time to choose the next zone you want to tackle on the grid (you can play through the game in any one of dozens of directions) and return to the mayhem.

Each gridzone you've played becomes transparent if you've completed it, or marked with a cross if you died. The only aim is to complete 100 per cent of the happens that because I don't think anyone would have the patience to do it.

A big disappointment really, firstly because Icon Design have done absolutely nothing to enhance the game in transferring it to the Atari ST, and secondly because Jeff Minter should have been able to come up with something much more impressive than this by now.

For some reason which is completely beyond me this Atari ST version of Revenge II carries an endorsement from a Commodore 64 magazine.

What is the point of that? For what possible reason would an ST owners want to know whether or not the game was any good on the C64?

That gripe aside it is still nice to see Mastertronic whacking out 16-bit titles at £9.99. Sure, Revenge II is not the best thing either of them have ever done - but remember just a couple of issues ago - the excellent Side Winder - that was a C&VG Game of the Month, so I am sticking with Mastertronic for the time being.