Hi there!

Move over Solomon's Key, here comes:

Spherical (1989):

Program: Jörn Galka

Graphics: Bernd Buddrus, Andreas Escher

Musician: Ramiro Vaca, Chris Hülsbeck

Ratings:

Zzap! Rating: N/A

Lemon64 Rating: 8.2

Still backtracking here, but Turrican 2 will definitely come one day. This one came out on the 16-Bit machines first, but as you can see from the credits, it was ported by Rainbow Arts main staff, securing the highest possible quality on the C64 as well.

While Spherical obviously borrows a lot from Solomon's Key, its creators managed to enhance it with several new ideas of their own. One major difference lies already in the main goal of every screen: Instead of collecting a key in order to open the exit, here you're building a path to the exit for a rolling sphere.

After a timer of usually 20 seconds runs out, it'll mercilessly start to roll, so depending on the level you either have to trap the sphere somehow in order to gain time to clear the rest of the level, or work insanely fast to pave a safe passage for it.

Of course this is spiced up with all extras known from Solomon's Key, plus a dozen new ones, like e.g. gravity reversal switches. The levels are diverse and many, there's over 100 for single players and another 100 for two players simultaneously. The major highlight are the 10 impressive boss stages though, like the one with the animated dragon in the picture above.

The other sprites are very detailed for such small objects, albeit the detailed backgrounds make it look busy once again. Music is a bit of a disappointment, as it is limited to the title and menu screens, but it gets the job done there.

Fun in 2010:

I never really liked the original Solomon's Key, probably because I usually got stuck within the first 5 levels. Spherical starts much easier and has a gentle learning curve, so I like it a lot more. Still I can't play more than 30 levels in a row before losing interest again

Greetings,

Manuel