Premiere Longplay (Amiga) [50 FPS]
131Developed by The 8th Day and published by Core Design in 1992.
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Foreword: A re-upload to take advantage of YouTube 60 FPS support!
One of the last, truly lavish productions to be seen on the Amiga, Premiere is another great title from The 8th Day/Core Design. The game combines fantastic music and graphics on to three floppy disks!
The story is simple. An intruder has stolen all the film reels from Grumble Studios and Clutch Cable must scour each of the film sets in order to retrieve them in time for the studio's film premiere.
This sets the backdrop for each of the games thematically designed levels. Each stage is based on a particular film type: Wild West, Black & White, Horror and others.
What really stands out is the quality of the art work and animation. Each level looks great, with unique enemies, animations and tile-sets. This was, undoubtedly, some of the best artwork seen in any Amiga game.
As well as looking excellent, the gameplay is also extremely good. The character controls are tight and Clutch handles well; platform jumping is easy to execute and you won't find yourself wrestling with the controls. The main Clutch sprite is positioned centrally, with a decent level of scrollable space to the left and right, meaning that enemies don't usually pop into existence right on top of the player.
The game is also particularly generous when it comes to health pick-ups. If you sustain damage, you can be assured that you will find a bucket of popcorn or a hamburger with which to restore some lost health. There are also regular checkpoints in the form of clapper-boards; walking over one of these will allow Clutch to respawn at it's location in the event of dying.
The difficulty curve is smooth, but the game starts to rely increasingly on booby traps that pop up without warning beyond level four. Also, level four is particularly tough in that it's difficult to work out exactly which play-field the enemy sprites are occupying; it would have helped enormously if the sprites had shadows.
Martin Iveson was on top form and produced some cracking tunes for the game. The music for each stage suits the overall aesthetic perfectly, but the ending tune is especially good!
Premiere is another excellent platform game from the golden era of the Amiga.
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