Amiga Power


Disc

Publisher: Loriciel
Machine: Amiga 500

 
Published in Amiga Power #2

Disc

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (well actually in an arcade in Blackpool), I played a coin-op game called Discs Of Tron. Based on a sequence from the Disney movie, it featured two guys standing on floating discs suspended in mid-air and throwing deadly frisbees at each other, trying either to destroy their opponent's discs so he would fall to the floor, or kill him outright by kitting him with the frisbee.

It was quite fun in a simple sort of way, but I'm surprised to say the least to see it crop up as a full-price Amiga game in 1991. Still, that's what we have here from Loriciel, albeit with a couple of minor tweaks in the form of some disk-water dull power-ups, and a strange system of altering the properties of the frisbees so that they can damage their owner as well as his opponent. And say to say, it's rubbish. (Hey, this is only a short review, I've got to get to the point quickly - there's not enough time for any pussy-footing around.)

The carefully-balanced gameplay of the arcade machine has been ruined, to the extent that, for a lot of the time, only one of the protagonists is actually able to do anything, while the other wanders around aimlessly without any weaponry, trying to avoid the frisbees flying in his direction roughly one every five seconds. Sounds like a recipe for a major snoozerama? It is.

Disc

Of course, there are varying skill levels and various options for training modes and such like, but the truth of the matter is that the actual game itself simply isn't worth the effort. (And this becomes even more abundantly clear when you add the effort requiried to make sense of the unforgiveably badly-translated manual.

Graphically Disc is alright I guess, but the replacing of the original discs with rectangular tiles spoils the abstract look of the game, while the animation of what few moving graphics there are leaves a little to be desired. Soundwise nothing very much happens at all, and unfortunately that's also a pretty good summary of the game in general.

The Bottom Line

A passable budget game with a ridiculous price tag. For £25, don't even bother to think about it.