Switchblade Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
49Developed and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1991.
Foreword: the ending sequence font got a bit screwed for some reason; Hiro says "My world is safe for now..." - pretty crap ending after all that work!!
You play the role of Hiro, last of the Bladeknights as he attempts to recover the 16 parts of the shattered Fireblade and to defeat the evil Havok and his army of minions in a bid to save the planet Thraxx from certain doom.
I'd played Switchblade 2 on the Amiga and enjoyed it, but I'd only ever played a demo of the original from a Commodore Format powerpack tape.
The game is one big maze of rooms connected by ladders and platforms with enemies spawning seemingly at random to try and kill you. The fragments of the Fireblade are scattered across the map and it can be quite tricky finding them all. Certain walls can be broken to reveal secret areas that can contain bonus items, weapons and health.
By default, you have a melee attack to defend yourself with, which you power up by holding down the fire button; the longer you hold it, the more powerful the attack. You can also pick up various ranged weapons, which are needed to defeat the boss monsters. Every so often, you will encounter a boss creature that you must kill before being allowed to access the next section of the game.
Ben Daglish was on music duties for this title and it's pretty good; it's just a shame there are only 2 tunes in the game.
I've only 3 minor gripes with the game:
1) It's very fiddly trying to climb ladders.
2) Sometimes your ranged weapons actually pass through monsters due to some collision detection issues once the screen gets full of sprites.
3) The game's colour palette isn't great. All the reds and greys can make it difficult in making out that much detail in the characters/background.
Enjoy!
#retrogaming