Menace (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
74First!, there was DMA Design. Then, there was Menace (in 1988). Lets take a look at this game with auto-fire, to see how it all works. I haven't played this game seriously before, so this will be the furthest I've ever got with it. Lets press Fire, and check this game out.
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Recorded: 14th Feb 2024
Narrated: 21st May 2024
Uploaded: 14th Nov 2024 (and released to backers)
I'm not sure how far I ever got with this game before, perhaps up to level 4 or 5. But it seemed a bit too hard. In 2024 I decided to cover this game, and recorded it, after Cosmic Spacehead (a classic from my youth) and Train Driver 3 (a game I always wanted to understand how to play it). X-Out was recorded towards the very end of the year, in September.
A nice and easy one to edit, and not too many verbal flubs to edit out, unlike Shadow Dancer and Tower of Babel. Looking at the date of release, I must have edited this just after I got back from Spain, so I cant remember much about editing it, other than it was easy. It always takes me some time to feel grounded and back to normal after a trip away.
Danscore:
Considering this was 1988, Amiga users didn't really get a taste for what the machine could do until way later. This game was put together by a team of students and fun-loving lads from Dundee in Scotland. It feels much better than PD in terms of quality, and they were right to ask full price for this game. It is far less frustrating than Bloodmoney, or Project X, and your ship doesn't feel too fast when you collect one too many speed ups. It seems fair, and if you memorise the patterns, and judge when an enemy is about to leave the screen, it is possible to collect the power ups between each wave. On the down side, even with auto-fire, good luck collecting the shield power up you wanted, due to having to mash the fire button so much for a simple token of help. Sure, the guns and cannons are easy to shoot out, but the rest require just the right distance between you and the power up box in order to make it possible, which is usually difficult. Having said that, the game feels a bit on the easy side on normal difficulty with autofire, and the weapon power ups only seem essential on the final levels. It would have been nice if these were actual ammo counts on the screen, and to maintain the weapons longer, which is normally a given in most other shooters, which have some kind of max loadout. Graphics range from acceptable to good for 1988, and there is one layer parallax backgrounds. Music and SFX are guttural and clattery in all of the right places. So I cant give this game anything higher or lower than 6.5 out of 10. I know this must have huge nostalgia for fans, but I never really played it, and it is not among the top shooters the Amiga ever witnessed. Its not Disposable Hero, or Project X, or even up there with Psygnosis' own Agony, which all appeared later and quickly superseded it.