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"DROID 2" by SPIRAL MILE
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system ..... ST, STe, 512 KB RAM, RGB, STEEM
tested on .. STEEM
genre ...... jump'n'shot
size ....... one selfbooting disk
release .... created in 1994, released June 2oo4
url ........ http://www.lordandlord.co.uk/
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Quite unsuspected another game from the nineties that was never released before
has seen the light of day lately, "DROID 2" by SPIRAL MILE. SPIRAL MILE was a
small coding team from the UK that matched it to place one of their games onto a
ST FORMAT coverdisk, the predecessor of this one, simply called "DROID". This
one was a quite nice platform game where you took over the control of a robot to
explore some caves and destroy hostile objects. It featured very well drawn gfx
and animations that placed it far above other public domain games...
"DROID 2" seems to be the straight follow up and the title gives already away a
lot about the contents of the game and you surely can get the best idea of it if
you know Earx early game "Neurobotix" for Falcon. This is a quite similar thing.
Again you have the control over a robot walking on two legs that can jump and
crouch and overall is heavy armed.
With this droid you have to walk through a labyrinth or cave or something and
rescue some people, the only problem is, that it wont work out fine as it very
often happened that I got a reset when I destroyed the cage, where those people
got imprisoned, to be precise this happened 3 of the last 4 times I played the
game, so it would be cool to see some further debugging here, as the game -is-
quite good.
So far so bad... now for the good things. As I mentioned at the beginning, the
predecessor was already of quite good quality and so it goes on.
The most impressive thing on the game are the good grafix that reach easily
commercial quality, or better, they even knock out some high priced game. Our
Droid walks nice animated through the dark sceneries, even though the one in the
former game was slightly better animated (for example if you collected a gun you
could see that thing too on your robot with steady turning magazine...) and the
different enemies, like static cannons and ugly green robots do as well.
Furthermore the level features small animated fires on the ground that blow in
some life even if you killed all other things on the screen and as you start on
the beginning of every part again if got killed, it is nice to see something
flickering and not only a boring static screen.
To make a big jump from the predecessor they also filled now over 4/5 of the
screen with the scenery while in the former game only the half screen showed the
action. Therefore you must switch the info tables about your life and ammo as
well with collected keycards and points while pressing the firebutton and leave
your robot crouch. Not the best solution but ok.
Therefore it seems the makers have invest all their powers into the grafix and
forgot the fx/msx... Musix aren't included at all, not in the intro and not in
the game. Ok, there are FX included, but only for collecting items, the usual
shots of your robot, exploding/incoming shots and enemies and last but not least
a sirene that informs you about low shield energy, but those FX are very ok.
Ok, what else is left to say? The controls are ok, even though the game is more
easy to play with the joystick instead of the keys via emulation as you have to
crouch at first and have to press upwards fast then to jump higher... and with
three fingers on the cursorpad... erm... you know :) So if possible, play it
with joystick on the real machine!
The game itself features all the usual things you know from shot'em'ups, such as
extra weapons, keys to open several doors, "service points" to reload your ammo,
smart bombs (that take the half of your ammo), doors to change between the
levels that can be used to go back too, this is good if you need to reload your
ammo for example, and several other gimmicks that make a game interesting.
Only negative point is the missing scrolling, the screen scrolls only if you are
close to the edge to the next screen and on some points it even turns shortly
black, esp. on such shot'em'up games this is always a drawback for the player...
Something more to say except of the final words?
Final words... "Droid 2" is a classic shot'n'jump with well done grafix and good
styled sceneries, the things that leaving your speakers aren't
mind blowing but doing their job as well as the controls. Because
I had that problems with "Bold" I didn't tried it on Falcon, but
it would be cool to know if it runs. But anyone who likes games
of that kind, "Gods" or "Magic Pockets" fans, just grab it and
take some blasting rounds... it's really worth a try.
PS... If you checked their website that features also the predecessor game, you
should check the "Hoog" page, too. That game obviously was never released,
too, except of a demo that appeared on STellar PDL, anyway, that game
gives the best impression of the knowhow of the coders and offers a neat
styled jump'n'run blaster with "Rainbow Islands"/"Magic Boy" touch...
_______________________________________________________________moondog_o6/2k4___
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