Alpine Games review

[Nubian]

Hey All,

I live in Australia and received my Alpine Games in the post last week. It was a highly anticipated arrival as I am first and foremost a Vectrex homebrew enthusiast so this game had to be good to sway me in the way of the Lynx. And it is!

 

As many Lynx devotees know it took a team of programmers 3 years to complete Alpine Games. When you place the card into your Lynx you are greeted by 2 intro screens, one with good music, and then onto the main selection menu where excellent techno music comes into play. You can select from a variety of options including Competition and Practice as well as World Records. The beauty of the world records feature is that the hi-scores are automatically saved to ther card so no more long nights trying to complete a game which does not have an autosave feature such Shadow of the Beast and most other Lynx games.

 

After selecting 'Competition' the first event faced by the player is Bialthalon. Biathalon is probably my favourite event and I have manged a world record of 27.3 which incidentaly is displayed on the Duranik.com hi-scores page. Here the player simply e-mails Duranik a world ecord score, by use of a special in-game code, and it is displayed on their website for all to see. Biathalon has a unique control method which is actually much improved from the Commodore 64 Biathalon (Winter Games - Epyx) control method. It takes a while to get the knack of it but soon you are up and running breaking world records.

 

To cut a long review short the stand out events for me apart from Bialthalon are Snowboard Rush, Slalom, Bobsleigh and Ski-jump. Throughout the game the graphics really set the precedent for the enthralling gameplay, which leads to hours of gaming and perserverance, trying to set the new world record and be amongst the best in te world at playing this game. The graphics in 'Slalom' are actually reminiscent of real ski-slopes and how the team pushed the Lynx to her limits, and got that little bit extra out of her that other late 80's and early 90's games developers couldn't muster, is quite incredible.

 

Other hi-points in Alpine Games include multiple player seletion so you can choose from 7 players from countries such as England and Japan. I have been speaking to the team at Duranik and there is also going to be some add on cards released by the end of thre year to add features to the allready excellent Alpine Games.

 

All in all Alpine Games is the best Lynx game in my opinion and shows just what the lynx is capable of. At 35 euros the game developers have done us a favour and released a homebrew game into the market which is financially accessible for the average gamer and delievers across all borders. Magnificent. (Review written by Daniel Foot)

 

Graphics : 10

Sound : 9.5

Gameplay: 10

Overall : 10

[SwedenLynxer]

Welcome to this forum and thanks for that review Nubian!

 

Here is my own review among with others: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.p...ghlight=#532743.

 

Looking at the Duranik hiscore site. Final Result 90 pts set by seamoon just a few days after Alpine Games was released! That's absolutly fantastic!