Previous Next

Space Ace you could just about tolerate. Dragon's Lair 2 was pushing it a bit. But now there's another Readysoft laser disk conversion for your ST, you might be wondering when it's all going to end. After all, if you've played one... This game also concerns the dork called Dirk. This time he's rescuing someone else from Singe's castle - does he never bloody learn?

The game is a series of short animated scenes, each involving Dirk in a life-threatening situation. Your job is to watch the animation carefully and, at the right moments, jab the joystick in the appropriate direction. If you're right, Dirk survives. If not, it's Goodbye, Mr Life, and another try at the scene. You never have full control over Dirk - he only sometimes responds to your instructions, so you might push right and find he doesn't move for several seconds.

As you might expect from this sort of game, the graphics and sound are exceptional. The backgrounds to each scene have been carefully drawn to traditional animated cartoon standard, as have the characters in the foreground. Animation is fairly smooth, particularly when you consider the size of the characters. Samples are used at dramatic moments and considerably add to the atmosphere.

Things haven't changed in the world of laser disk games. They're still chock full of gorgeous graphics and stonking sounds, but the gameplay seems to have slipped out in transit. There just isn't any. Whacking a joystick occasionally hoping something good might happen isn't skilful, it's just plain annoying.

Very very annoying - the game's so frustrating you don't want to play it at all. Particularly since there are long, slow bouts of disk accessing after every scene and when you die - and the game's not even hard drive installable which is the only thing that might have made it vaguely playable.

Boring, dull, frustrating, pointless and ridiculously expensive. Apart from that, it's fine.

1. Readysoft's other games, Space Ace and Dragon's Lair 2, are the only ones that can boast similar graphics - and a similar two second attention span.
2. Great samples, just like Llamatron, only less so.