The Plague
| Developer: Critical | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Innerprise | Sound: |
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| Year: 1990 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Action-platformer | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
4/10 | |
Ah, the glorious first generation of platform games on the Amiga! The goal was to show off the machine’s power compared to its ancient competitors (ZX Spectrum across the Channel, Amstrad CPC in France, Commodore 64, and of course, Atari ST). How did they do it? By flaunting a riot of colours, bigger and more numerous sprites; but the young developers didn’t quite master the specs, so they stuck to mimicking the rudimentary mechanics of 8-bit games: run, jump, shoot at endless waves of wandering enemies coming from both sides of the screen. Add to that a shameless plagiarism of illustrations and sound backgrounds from here and there, the hallmarks of a “semi-amateur” production.
This resulted in stuff that was flat as a pancake, most of it unplayable, but visually so garish that contemporary spectators would drop their jaws to the floor.
The Plague was released in 1990. A real latecomer. Still, its outdated look makes me smile … as long as you’re playing with a trainer. I guarantee that dodging the bosses’ attacks while controlling a He-Man taking up a third of the screen, with the boss occupying the remaining two-thirds, doesn’t stay funny for long.
Oh, surprise: the controls are actually above average, despite an insane level of difficulty. I must, however, point out the usual flaws like the one-way scrolling (exclusively horizontal), and the need to choose between music or sound effects (press “F1” at the title screen).
And here’s an unusual feature that very few people accessed legally: if you managed to enter your name at the top of the high score table, a little drawing module let you create a sort of banner that would be displayed at the start of the third level!
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