http://d-bug.mooo.com/automenus.php?s=48&e=48


Captain Fizz by Psyclapse, Crack by LSD

Tracksuit Manager by N/A, Crack by Final

Advanced Rugby Simulator by Codemasters, Crack by LSD

Elf by Micro Value, Crack by Ozzwald

Pyramino by Pressimage, Crack by LSD

Captain Fizz


I've seen an ad for this game even before I had an ST (for the record, we bought an Atari ST User instead of Atari User) and it had this huge version of the cover box painting: Two men holding big guns in space suits, one looking left, the other right, explosions all round, space ships, woooooooot! This game's going to be OSSOM! It also had some text describing it as the best thing since sliced bread, it made you want to join in the action immediately and start blasting alien scum!

(it also had some tiny screenshots of the game which you couldn't really understand what the game was about!)

I never did play this game up to a few years ago, so I was always curious to see what kind of awesomeness I was missing all this time. So I booted it up to be confronted with...

...a Gauntlet clone. Errr, yay?

Anyhoo, it's not exactly Gauntlet, since it's split screen, so each player can wander around the level independently, which is of course a good thing. Then again, each player's view screen is rather small so you don't have much room to maneuver, which is bad. Then again the players move in 16 pixel steps, which makes them a bit uncontrollable, which is also bad. Oddly enough, the enemies move in 1 pixel steps. There's also a lot of sprite flickering, which is bad. And no diagonal movement or firing, again bad. The level instead of scrolling is screen flipping - dunno if that's good or bad, the level design is made for flip screen which is ok. The levels are scattered with doors that open only when you pick up the right keycard, and there's more than one keycard of the same shape in the level, which probably means that each player will have to find keycards for him/herself, which can't be bad.

Weighing the pros and cons, I'm leaning towards that this is a good game and I think that a 2-player session will be even better. So, after the initial disappointment, I'm left with positive vibes with this game. It's astonishing that sometimes even Psygnosis/Psyclapse actually made playable games instead of the crap they used to release .