Game:

Thanatos (1986)

Category:

Review

Duration: 38:54

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INTRODUCTION (From the manual):
Fly to the right till you get to a castle, then land and walk up to the castle gate. Use flame from close range to burn down gate. If you run out of flame go back and find a witch tied between two stakes and eat her (just walk up to her slowly). This will refill your energy shown by glass (on the bottom right of the screen). In the first castle land near the girl (who will be the colored green, and will be waving with both arms), and allow her to climb onto your neck (ie: just land nearby and wait). Fly onto the next castle. When you find the book of spells, land and let the girl collect it. Fly to the last castle where you will find the cauldron in which the girl can cast her spell. Land nearby.

You can pick up foreground object (eg: knights, horses, rocks, and soldiers) by flying over them and touching them with your open claw. You can then take them up high and drop them (on other objects, if you wish!). You can also burn foreground objects with your breath. If you get attacked by the knights, dragons, rockfalls, etc, your heart (shown on the bottom left of the screen) will beat faster, eventually flickering blue just before you die. To slow down your heart rate you must land and stand still (or walk slowly - especially when in the caves!) without being attacked. To win the game you must carry the girl all the way to the cauldron. If you turn around quickly she may fall off, and you will have to pick her up again.

REVIEW:
You play as the dragon Thanatos and you have to free a sorceress that has been imprisoned in a castle by an evil Lord of the underworld. When you fly to the castle you have to watch out for falling rocks in the caverns and men throwing spears after you. When you come to the castle you will have to land and use your dragon breath to burn down the gate, get the sorceress and fly to the next castle to get the book of spells and carry on to the last castle where there is a cauldron in which the sorceress can cast her spell and defeat the evil Lord.

Flying to the first castle is quite simple but after that things will get tougher. You will have to fly over the sea where big sea dragons will attack you, and in big caverns a lot of spiders will attack you, and you will also have to defeat another dragon, and at the last castle you will be attacked by pumas, and lots of other creatures is also trying to make things tough for you. You can recover by landing and standing still except if you get a lot of rocks on you or not can get away from ex the blue dragon and the pumas when they attack, then you will die. Your dragon fire breath is not unlimited and you will have to find and eat a witch to refill it.

For a 1986 game this is quite impressive, good use of color, parallax scrolling, and you are controlling a huge green dragon. You get a good feeling of controlling a big heavy dragon because when you want to change direction in the air or on the ground things takes time, and also when you are at the ground and wants to get in the air again. Movements of the dragon is done quite realistic and it is well animated, and the gameplay has been made to fit this, because you will not need to react quicker than the dragon can do.

It is not a fast paced action game, but in 1986 there was also plenty of these, and Thanatos brought it’s own very unique gameplay and style into the computer game universe!

The game was made in a 48k and a 128k version. The original 128k version had AY intro music, but no music in the game, just AY sound fx. This version has got a super in game soundtrack added by Himik's ZXZ / Phantom.

The game was published by Durell Software Ltd in 1986.

Rating:
Original 48k + 128k versions: 90%
Unofficial 128k version: 95%

48k tape: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games/t/Thanatos48.tap.zip
128k tape: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games/t/Thanatos128.tap.zip
Unofficial 128k tape: http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/TRD/bin/ThanatosRemix_128.z80