UCM22
.tHE .sIRIUS .cYBERNETICS .cORPORATION
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"PAINIUM DISASTER" by ANVIL SOFT
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system ...... Falcon, 4 MB, RGB monitor, Jaguar Pad
size ........ 12 MB on harddisk
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Oh man, what an odyssey... Not only the way of the game before it vanished from
the screen in 1997, no also after the rumours about a free release came up, it
took over a half year untill the few gamers left on the Falcon got their hands
on this game...
All started back in 1995 and was brought to way by the new formed german demo
band called CRUOR, who decided, right after their first release of a 96 K intro
after the FRIED BITS III to work on a vertical shot'em'up game, right in the
tradition to such great games as "Wings Of Death", "Lethal Xcess" or "Xenon 2",
to mention a few, that were very popular in the late eighties/early nineties.
And, maybe you remember that, they already matched it, to release a playable
preview of the game on some german Atari fair in autumn 1995 (I still own the
original disk, hehe). But after that the game was postponed again and again and
as it was thought to be ready in 1997 at first it was more or less boycotted by
the german magazine STComputer out of an unknown reason, and furthermore, as it
was filled with bugs, it was thought to be released as shareware... and got lost
since the Anvil Soft team lost their interest in the already finished game...
After they made their first footsteps on the PC gaming market, in 2ooo they were
contacted by Milhouse, who owns the Place2Be Atari website and they handed over
a copy to him, for exclusive release on his homepage... but nothing happened,
so the year ended and I digged them out again... But since Milhouse decided to
let the game die on his harddisk, the Cruor guys weren't interested in the point
to force him to release it, and after several mails they didn't reacted anymore.
Later on Milhouse decided in August, at least eight months after he got the game
to release it on his page, but without giving a download link for the people,
and last but not least Evl, the God from the north (hehe), matched it to ripp
down the game from Milhouse' server and it was finally released...
Many words before the real review you might think, is the game worth all the
hype? Dunno... Maybe, because it is just the second game of this kind that was
finished and released on Falcon! Except "Painium Disaster" there is just the
game "Raiden" around in a finished version... And there was just one more game
planned, called "Xmoon" that was dying with the actions of the Independent back
in the year 1996 and just matched it to a first playable preview...
Ok, so what's this game all about? As all games also "Painium Disaster" tries to
deal with a background storie and as it is usually with the stories for shooters
it isn't of bigger interest for the game itself. So there is a bad computer chip
called "Painium" that has to be destroyed. But as always, who, as real shooting-
freak, is really interested in the background story? I for myself never thought
longer about "Lethal Xcess" or "R-Type" for example, since all games of that
genre have just one goal, try to survive and kill as much enemies as possible on
your way to the next stage...
That's for the intro... The game itself comes along in a 6 MB file that fills up
nearly 12 MB on your harddisk. After the usual copy and depack act I finally
tried out the game on the VGA monitor. Since I new since the preview that the
game supports the Jaguar pad, I already digged it out in our cellars and already
connected it to my machine. While the loading procedure starts I got already wet
fingers and hands... "Finally!" I thought... nearly 5 years too late...
After a big ANVIL SOFT logo appeared on the screen, the intro sequence starts
with several raytraced animations that giving the game a nice professional
touch. And finally the main menu popped up. Ooops... where is the title screen
then?! Maybe it got lost, dunno, but I remember some title screen in the demos I
got of the game. Anyway, this isn't a big failure since I know what game I have
loaded here.
The main menu offers several options, just like setting overscan, watching the
highscores, choosing joystick or joypad and a credits screen. Here I have to say
that several people told me that the STE joysticks don't work and so you have to
get a Jag pad for playing.
After I did all things I needed I choosed the start game option and another menu
appeared, offering 4 different characters, male and female, all with different
weaponery. Two of them just offering one weapon, two will give you missiles as
well. I took the fourth guy, that offered a doubled plasma gun as well as the
mentioned missiles that are used to destroy targets on the terrain.
Then another animation sequence comes up, showing your space fighter starting
from the home space ship and flying to the first planet. The game loads again
and suddenly my screen folds together and the monitor resets... what the hell?!
I tried it two or three times again and it seems as the game doesn't run on VGA
monitors, or at least not on all of them. So I connected my Falcy to the TV set
and repeated the whole action... and there it was running fine.
Ok, finally I matched it to start the battle with my tiny little space fighter.
The screen is filled to every border if you have switched on the overscan mode
and scrolls very smooth with a very colourful background, showing some strange
alien planet or something. On screen you can see some status bar, showing the
shield energy of your ship, the number of ships and smartbombs. But you didn't
have time to check out the screen very long since the first waves of enemie
space ships are flooding over the screen. And wave upon wave comes along, always
firing.
After some time you will see that the enemies are coming up in special waveforms
and don't try to catch you or to shoot in your direction. So the enemies A.I.
seems to be a little help for you since it doesn't took too long untill the
whole screen is messed up with enemies and bullets sprites, blinking on the
screen. The whole thing starts to be very hectic and suddenly you're loosing
ship by ship and life by life. It doesn't helps very much to fire missiles to
the ground stations of the enemy that are firing waves of bullets over the whole
screen and it doesn't helps much to collect the goodies appearing on the screen
after you've killed a complete wave of enemies, that will give you energy, extra
lifes, smartbombs, weapon upgrades or even will kill you (the grey ones!). A bit
bad is the fact that you're loosing a full developped weapon if you're catched
an upgrade for another weapon that isn't installed...
And so I tried and tried... always dying in the first level. I reached some kind
of in-level boss that was a smaller problem as the horrible ground stations, but
since the level was going on in the same design I guess I maybe had reached only
the middle of the first stage...
And "blamm!" I'm out of business, have lost all ships and can take a look onto
the "game over" screen and the highscore table and at this point I really wonder
how many points I have reached since I didn't saw a score counter on the screen.
Very strange thing and not really good for the motivation...
I tried it again and again, and somewhen I dragged my old ST out of the cellars
and played a round of "Lethal Xcess" to calm down...
Ok, to cut this off I will collect all the good and bad things here in a short
overview...
Highs.. This game tries to make the best out of the Falcon's possibilities. In
comparison with "Raiden", that looks like a converted ST game, "Painium
Disaster" uses the Falcon hardware up to it's very end. So you have a
damn colourful screen with hundreds of colours. The sound comes along in
8 voices. The game uses the Jag joypad as well. The whole presentation
is very professional with all the in game and intro sequences. Also the
highscore table is a nice thing that could rise the motivation to play
the game again... but...
Lows... The game unfortunately features a lot of lows as well, since it is so
damn hard to play that I never matched it to reach the end of the first
level. It isn't as unfair as "Raiden" where you're dying by the 1st hit
of an enemy, but your energy decreases so fast that you don't survive
very long... More or less good in that case is the limited A.I. of the
enemies, always the same waveforms, no direct shootings in the direction
of the ship...
Another point to mourn about is the fact that the sprites of the enemies
shots are hard to see on the truecolor screen and often you just see
that you were hit as your ship finally explodes.
More to come... the game runs up to the last sequence before starting
the level, fine on VGA monitors, but after the game starts the screen
folds together and resets the monitor... Maybe this is a problem of my
monitor only, but since all other VGA stuffs running fine on it, I'm a
bit disturbed.
As several people mentioned, the STE joystick doesn't seems to be
implemented right... And since there is a highscore table implemented I
wonder were you can check how many points you reached, since there is no
counter somewhere on the screen...
___ ratings ____________________________________________________________________
visuals ...... 85 % - nice colourful sprites, background, intro sequences
audio ........ 65 % - soundtracks are ok, fx not very special
idea ......... 6o % - a shot'em'up... but far away from reaching Lethal Xcess
controls ..... 7o % - quite ok, but only Jagpad support
motivation ... 4o % - the game is truly to hard...
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___ overall ___ 64 % ___________________________________________________________
Ofcourse it is a game you must get if you're a Falcon gamer, but it was a very
wise decision to release it as freeware finally since if you would have bought
it as it was planned so, you surely would be angry about the lost money...
.tSCc. no pr0mises - no demands! moondog . o2/2k2
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