Planet Bob - Playing Scorpio (Amiga)

[RSS Bot]

Hi there!

 

Coming a long way from Zyron, Kingsoft did another vertical shoot'em up in 1988, this time for the Amiga:

 

 

Unfortunately, this playing experience came to a sudden and unexpectedly early halt, when the game constantly started crashing midway through the third level.

 

Before that, the game mostly felt like a 90° flipped R-Type. It really stole almost everything from R-Type, just turning it into a vertical experience. The level flows, some enemies and their movement schemes, the sattelite and its weapons, even the bosses - it all looked awfully familiar.

 

The game has a very arcadish presentation, basically just the "insert coin" message is missing. The graphics are nice (for an Amiga game that old) and smoothly animated, the explosion and shot sound samples fitting.

 

Scorpio plays very hard, but mostly fair. The first two stages each took over an hour to make it through and what I saw from the third was even harder.

 

Overall I think it's far too generic to recommend, a game that time rightfully forgot

 

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see another vertical shoot'em up in the form of "Dragon Spirit", but first it'll continue with something different.

 

Greetings,

Manuelhttp://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=blog&blogid=54&showentry=6403