Zzap


The Hollywood Collection
By Ocean
Amiga 500

 
Published in Zzap #70

The Hollywood Collection

Glorious hype, but perhaps a little hollow.

Possibly the most notable game here is RoboCop (89%), simply because it has taken so long to be compiled. Despite being released in February 1989, it dominated 1990's charts long after superior games such as The Untouchables had faded away.

While a very nice looking game and superbly structured, mixing side-on horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up action with shooting gallery and ID puzzle sections, it doesn't play nearly as well as it should. There's just one life to see you through some incredibly tough action - programmer John Meegan has completed level five only twice.

By comparison, Batman: The Movie plays brilliantly, earning 96% and a Gold Medal on its release. Loads one and three contain large, side-on view mazes of platforms and ladders, packed with villains armed with machine guns and gas grenades. The ability to swing from the platforms or a batrope is particularly good fun. Load two provides excellent variety, with a 'Mastermind-style' puzzle game to identify lethal chemicals, and two horizontally scrolling sub-levels in the first the Batmobile is racing out of Gotham City: the batrope allows some snappy right angle turns into the screen as you follow yellow direction arrows.

The second sub-level has the Batwing flying through Gotham; cables attached to gas-filled balloons have to be cut with the winglips of your aircraft. Great fun.

Unfortunately US Gold's Indy: The Action Game (72%) was a much less ambitious project. Four levels of side-on view platforms and ladders follow the plot of the movie fairly closely, including an archaeological dig, on top of a speeding circus train and aboard a Zeppelin. The final level is an unremarkable Metrocross-style trip through the Holy Grail caverns. Still not bad as filler.

Much worse is Activision's Ghostbusters II (39%). Level one is an off-beat shoot-'em-up with Ray Stantz winched down a sewer shaft infested with ghosts. Level two is a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up with the Statue of Liberty taking on the ghosts, while the final level uses isometric 3D. Loads one and three are too short, and two overly difficult.

Recommendation

Plenty of hype, but only Batman stands out as a first-class game. Would have been unmissable if Ocean had included The Untouchables instead of Ghostbusters II.

Amiga

Again a dramatically mixed bag. Indy (42%) and Ghostbusters II (60%) are fairly dire, but Amiga Robocop (92%) has dated less badly than the C64 game. Top-notch ST graphics combined with high playability make this good fun. But the stand-out game is Batman (97%) which boasts some genuinely jaw-dropping graphics with the Batmobile and Batwing sub-levels being turned into 3D, into-the-screen spectaculars. The rest of the game isn't too bad either with some great music to boot.