HEARTLAND 2000
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Heartland 2000 is, as Mr Ni! presents it, an adaption of the original
Heartland game by Tony Greenwood (Stosser software), and the main change is
that it is now running in one VBL on all Atari compatible machines. That
"2000" version was originally presented at the STNICCC 2000 but the public
release happened in april 2002 for some reasons.
Basically, Heartland 2000 is a platforms game, featuring an egg-shaped hero
exploring a large level. The goal is to find the whole set of Hearts of a
card game without being killed. Some of those cards are hidden behind doors
that teleport you to another part of the level. No explanation is actually
given either in the game itself or in the documentation, so I had to figure
out by myself what to do at the beginning...
You can toggle between the two heros, namely Sizzy and Sazzy (probably Dizzy's
illegitimate offsprings), by pressing the 'C' key, but the only difference is
their shoes and gloves color. There are no baddies at all, so your enemies
are mostly spikes here or there. But in case you get wounded, there is a
limited amount of health potions scattered over the game area.
Technically speaking, the game is good. The multidirectional scrolling is
smooth (50 fps on 8 MHz machines), the level size is more than respectable and
Sizzy/Sazzy is moving fast and reacts promptly to joystick orders. It even
made me think about Sonic on certain parts as the action can be frantic! That
achievement is even more impressive considering the game was coded in STOS
Basic. At least the original version was, and I suppose Mr Ni! did not
re-coded everything in another language... The graphics are simple but clear
and colorful, more frames for the animation of the sprite would not have hurt
though.
On STE (and probably Falcon) you can hear a digitised music, made of a very
short sample warping all the time, but strangely it does not sound repetitive,
maybe because it's a really basic melody. I even let the sound on during the
time I played, although usually game musics quickly annoy me. On STF, the game
comes with a soundchip tune, but once again it's a nice one. Note that you can
switch from DMA music to YM music if you have a STE.
I eventually got an archive of the original Heartland game on the internet. It
is really similar to the new version, except the technical improvements and
some additionnal feature like the keyboard support, which is really sensible,
and the jaguar pad support, which is more trivial. One thing is annoying
though. The 1996's Heartland had a menu that allowed you to load/save a game
at any moment, and it seems this feature has just disappeared in the new
version. And everyone knows how annoying it is to have to play the same level
again and again, especially in a game with such big levels.
To conclude, Heartland 2000 is technically a good platformer considering the
ST limits, but the lack of badies and paradoxically the size of the levels
make the game a bit boring. Basically what you have to do is exploring a huge
level to find the lost cards, and that can be a long task : I spent more than
half an hour on the first level without being able to finish it. Consequently
the disappearance of the saving feature is really a big loss, that 50 fps
animation does not counterbalance in my opinion.
Exocet
exocet@atari.org
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