Planet Bob - Parallax

RSS Bot · May 17, 2006

Hi there!

So let's kick off this new series of articles, regarding all things Sensible with:

Parallax

Programming: Chris Yates

Graphics: Jon Hare

Musician: Martin Galway

Ratings:

Lemon64: 7.8

Overview:

Honestly, I never really got what it's all about. You're either flying around with an aircraft or walking around on some platforms, either shooting evil alien somethings or trying to drug some evil scientists so that they give you some passwords.

Fun in 2006:

It sucks as much now, as it did 20 years ago. Back in the day I even had an original of this, with manual and everything, yet I never ever got into it. I think it's probably just too "undesigned" a game. They had this incredible parallax scrolling effect, then some cool intro, then some 11 minute title tune from Martin Galway (actually the only reason to ever load this game, even back then ), then... - nothing! Ooopsa - No more RAM left for a game...

Sensible Software compared to Graftgold:

Hehe, since there's no previous Sensible game to compare Parallax to, let's just compare them companies I choose for my article series

They have actually a lot in common: Both started as two people garage/bedroom companies, both where excellent C64 and Amiga game producers and both failed to get into the Windows/3D market after the Amiga died. They both had games released through the same mixture of publishers, like Firebird, Microprose, Hewson, Ocean and others and just like Graftgold they ended on the Bitmap Brothers' Renegade label.

Now, while Graftgold seemed to be a somewhat serious company, Sensible seemed more like the "Monthy Pythons" of game programming. They just had this wacky sense of humor in all their games, mixed with some mad genious. We'll see a lot more evidence of this in future articles, but even in Parallax it already starts: Name one other game where a major part of the gameplay consists of drugging evil scientists :lol: