Previous Next

Another Cosmi offering, and this one is magic. No, it's better than that. OTT music and introductory screens again, but at least they allow you to admire the author's care with detail and his facility with C64 programming - quite brilliant use of colour, graphics, sprites and sound effects.

Interesting scenario, too. You're a hunter armed with a bow and arrow, wandering for some reason through an evil forest. You're actually after the Demargorgon, though Lord knows why: he's surrounded himself with a variety of generally offensive monsters.

Multiple levels of play again, and a choice of difficulty level from 1 ('innocent') to 4 (described quite accurately as 'crazy'). Starts quite easily with an attack from a swarm of king-size spiders: you have to press the fire button once to load, again to shoot. You're better off running away once you've loaded, because you don't get enough time to do both before the spiders get [some text missing]

At which point, you'll notice the fabulous scenery effects, with a real sense of perspective: the landscape further away scrolls past more slowly than the immediate background, the sun moves around its orbit as you play, night falls and the moon rises, the moon wanes and day breaks again... Wow!

Anyhow, defeat the spiders and you go into a lunatic dance of joy. Fun the first time, but it goes on... and on, and on. And it happens every time you pass to the next stage. Which, after the spiders, is the king-size killer bee. Then comes a shower of outside frogs: easy enough to kill, but even if a dead one lands on you, you end up looking like something you wouldn't offer your cat. Following that is a fireball-dropping dragon - very difficult to hit, very nasty when you get hit (barbecue time).

The dragon we found very tricky to get past. But then there's the really difficult one: a convincingly evil phantom hiding behind the trees most of the time, with trying for a between-the-eyes shot (well, between what whould be the eyes if he/she/it had any). Meanwhile, you're also avoiding a bunch of gibbering skeletons armed with toasting forks. You can knock them off easily enough, but getting the phantom isn't easy.

Then the game gets damn near impossible, because having seen his minions vanquished and being naturally a bit less than sanguine about that the Big D himself takes a hand. The sky darkens, lots of lightning, occasional glimpses of large but essentially shapeless mass: You've got 60 seconds to detect and despatch him, and he's invulnerable except for one spot between the eyes....

Kapow. Enough variety in play to make things interesting, a complicated scoring system to rack up Hi-Scores with your buddies, but especially the superb graphics and good detail - they all make this one something rather special. Shame about the intrusive sound and interminable jigs, but all in all, a big hand for author Paul Norman.