Well it's time to have a look at a crappy Amiga game; so here we go with the unforgiveably bad Renegade.
This arcade game had been a huge hit on the likes of the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC 464 and Commodore 64 with all machines being treated to an excellent version. Arcade gaming at it's finest.
The ZX Spectrum version of Renegade was an extremely playable and addictive arcade game / beat em up - so surely the Commodore Amiga version would be better still? Not quite...
The backstory to the game had you (as the 'Renegade') moving across town to meet up with your girlfriend Lucy.As soon as you step off the train a group of thugs decide to try kick the sh*t out of you. You must fight off the attackers and move through five levels of action to reach your lady love.
The five levels were:
The Station
The Pier
The seedy back streets
The main street
The meeting place
Your character was handily well versed in martial arts and street fighting, which gave you a chance when making your way through the levels. If you didn't switch off through boredom and frustration that is.
In each 'location' there was a different type of gang, from unarmed brawlers, hells' angels armed with chains, to whip wielding ladies of the night. Ahem.
Our hero could punch, kick, flying kick and even knee opponents to send them sprawling. In a slight difference to other beat em ups, it was possible to dish out more 'violence' than normal.
For instance you could grab an assailant by the shoulders and knee them in the groin repeatedly. Nice. You could also knock an attacker to the ground and get on top of them and punch them in the face over and over again.
These touches in the game were a lot of fun on the 8-bit versions, but it was so badly implemented on the Amiga it didn't even seem violent. It should have set it apart from other arcade games / beat em ups on the Amiga but I'm afraid to say it didn't.
In classic arcade tradition there was usually a 'boss' attacker on each level who you would have to defeat to progress to the next part of town. The bosses were way tougher than the normal gang members, as you might expect.
The environments were really poorly drawn and managed to be devoid of any atmosphere that you would expect from seedy areas at night time. The characters were poorly implemented and badly animated, for the Amiga it just was not acceptable.
There was a nice variety of enemies to battle (such as hell's angels on bikes who would try and run you down), but the backgrounds, characters and sound effects were so poor it was more of a chore than a pleasure.
The game was completed once you reached your meeting place with Lucy and defeated all of the enemies there. If you got that far then I really do doff my cap to you - I finished this game on the ZX Spectrum but the Amiga version bored the crap out of me.
I could go on but I won't. This game disappointed me a lot back then, and looking at it now it's one of the worst games I have ever played. It's almost as bad as The Adventures Of St Bernard. Almost.
It's a shame that with a LOT of tweaking it could have been a true classic Amiga game. As it stands this game is well remembered by Amiga gamers for all the wrong reasons. Even at £7.99 it wasn't worth it.
We recommend getting hold of the real Amiga hardware - but if not then download an Amiga emulator and download a different game. Alternatively you could try and play it online.
Please see our other Amiga retro game reviews - all links are listed in alphabetical order. Cheers guys
GENRE: Arcade game (Beat em up)
RELEASE DATE: 1992
RELEASED BY: Imagine
DEVELOPER(S): Bill Barna, Wayne Blake, Tim Follin
PRICE: £7.99 - UK
Not so classic arcade action:
Classic Games, Arcade Games and Amiga Games
No comments:
Post a Comment