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"Fred's Find" by The Cyberpunks
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system ... STfm, STe, STEEM, 512 KB RAM, RGB, Joystick supported
genre .... Boulderdash clone
release .. o2/o4 - 11 years too late
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Quite unexpected another old game that never made it to a release popped up to
feed the hungry ST gamblers. As we got with "Roger" a quite good one, my hope to
see another nice one was quite high, so I leeched the stuff and checked it out..
After I found myself back in the intro, my hopes vanished quite fast. The whole
intro comes along in just 5 colours and looks like some 2o years old 8bit game,
arf! I was quite disturbed, as I didn't expected such grafix in a game from 1993
in the end, even if it was planned to be given away on a ST Format coverdisk as
the intro suggests and so it should be in the public domain.
The intro leaves already a strange feeling...
The intro comes along with a soundtrack using a module at quite low replay
frequency, even on the normal ST it could sound better, esp. as the intro does
not contain any impressive effects or something else. The same goes for the
style of the tune, very (a bit too) oldschool for my ears. The intro tells us
the credits and gives some major information about playing the game. You can
chose one of the first 3 levels to start on.
And so I did... next shock coming along... The grafix look very awful, again
just like 8bit or something, the design of our hero and the objects on the
screen is also quite low, the colours are bad chosen and I would say it doesn't
matches to stay high over the original Boulderdash on the ST from 1987 or so.
The animations are very sparse and don't break any limits and the actions come
along with some sampled FX if you collect gems or other items.
The aim of the game is clear, move through the labyrinth, get all the gems and
goodies, collect keys to open doors and avoid contact with the baddies that move
around in special ways through the labyrinth, and overall, avoid it to get one
of the many stones smashed onto your head. And that's more or less all about the
game.
The in-game grafix are all other than impressive...
There are a lot of levels to go through, you can edit some levels by yourself or
import some levels from the game that stood as godfather for it, from the old
BBC 8bit home computers. But I have to admit, that doesn't makes the game more
tasty for me, as I was and I am still an addict for nice designed games, that
like to tease eyes and ears as well as the brain.
Surely, it teases the brain a lot as the levels are quite tricky to solve right
on from the beginning, but in the end especially my eyes get tortured all the
time and I wonder if the good old Atari ST deserves such bad styled games... On
this one a lot could be done with better grafix and animations, but it seems as
the ST will never get an asskicking Boulderdash clone as the Falcon got for
example with "Cavemania", the most conversions of this game on the ST suffered
in parts under the very ugly grafix, such as this one here too...
Final words ... A quite unexpected release in a "we dig our old stuff out mania"
but while some of those long lost things are quite stunning even
today, just as "Roger" for example, others can't hide their
origin, the early nineties, and surely wouldn't have been a hit
even 1o years ago, just as "Fred's Find". It is just one other
of the few mediocre Boulderdash clones that invaded the ST but I
have to admit that it didn't matched it to make much more out of
the old idea of the game as its design isn't really teasing the
eyes... But in the end, it may still be usefull for some gaming
rounds for the one or other...
_______________________________________________________________moondog_o3/2k4___
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UCM25
