Sly Spy Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
22Developed by Software Creations and published by Ocean in 1989.
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Based on the arcade coin-op from Data East, Sly Spy is a pastiche of Ian Fleming's famous secret agent, James Bond and everything associated with the character.
My first brush with the game was on the Amiga, but I wasn't aware that the C64 received a port as well. Given that it was developed by Software Creations, I expected great things given that their conversion of Bionic Commando was a triumph.
Unfortunately, I was sadly disappointed. The game isn't terrible, but it is depressingly mediocre. Each of the levels is extremely short and simply require the player to move to the right without dying. Enemies pop into existence seemingly at random and can also disappear with alarming uncertainty; when an enemy reaches the end of a platform it simply vanishes into thin air!
Killing enemies can reveal power-ups, extra health as well as components of the "Golden Gun". Once collected, the player is given a special weapon capable of shooting through multiple enemies at once.
Each stage typically culminates in a boss fight, but these are woefully disappointing. The aquatic robot suit is probably the worst of these sequences as the player can stand at the far left of the screen without any threat of getting hit.
The graphics range in quality form general excellence to the bland and uninteresting. For example, the backdrops are generally well drawn and there is a very nice parallax effect on the underwater stages, yet the design and animation of the main sprite is quite poor (although the arcade barely had any animation either). The title screen graphic drawn by Martin Holland is excellent, although the guy hanging from the zip-wire bares an uncanny resemblance to Matt Smith of Dr. Who fame.
It has to be said that this is something of a dud as far as Software Creation's games go, which is a real shame, although the source material was hardly the stuff of classic gaming to begin with.
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