Wolfchild Longplay (Amiga) [50 FPS]
114Developed and published by Core Design in 1992.
The evil terrorist group, Chimera, have captured the notable bio-geneticist Kal Morrow and murdered his wife and members of his family. It is up to his surviving son, Saul, to rescue his father and prevent Chimera from making use of the radical bio technology that allows humans to transform into powerful human-animal hybrids.
Saul activates the experimental "Wolfchild" prototype and transforms into a a powerful wolf-man with psycho-kinetic powers and sets off on his mission.
The game is set across 5 stages of platforming action. Initially, Saul starts out in human form and is restricted to melee attacks only. By collecting energy power-ups, he can change into wolf-form with ranged attack powers.
In wolf-form, Saul can collect several different "shot" types that change the strength and travel-mode of his attacks. Some offer considerable benefits whilst others, such as the boomerang shot, are next to useless. Saul also has access to a limited number of smart bombs that can be used to clear the screen of enemies, but these should be used sparingly.
Saul can increase his maximum health by collect "EXT" bubbles in each level; something he will definitely need. Should Saul take too much damage, he will revert back to human form and must seek out more energy containers before he can transform back into a wolf.
This was a damn fine platform game for the Amiga that also got ported to most of the games consoles that existed at the time. I think the SNES had slightly improved graphics (some additional layers of parallax scrolling) but I still feel the Amiga is my favourite version with some great graphics and has the best audio (courtesy of Martin Iveson); there was a Sega Mega CD version with full audio score, but I still prefer this version.
My only real gripe with the game is the way enemies will shoot at you the instant they appear on screen and it's almost impossible to avoid getting hit. If you know where the enemies are then it's possible to hit them even when they're off-screen; this requires intimate knowledge of the game.
The guy who opted to become the level 04 shrimpy lobster type boss got a pretty raw deal when they were handing out the mutant powers...
Introduction: 0:00
Title Menu Music: 2:58
Level 01: 6:21
Level 02: 8:17
Level 03: 14:21
Level 04: 23:54
Level 05: 41:32
Ending: 51:40
#retrogaming