Rastan

Copyright : Taito | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Rastan was a game that I first played on the ZX Spectrum and loved it to bits, later that same year while on Holiday I saw the same game in the arcade sitting right next to Superman - isn?t it strange that both arcades are now emulated in RAINE.

You act out the role of a young Rastan and fight your way through his adventurous past, on the way you will learn more about the ancient Rastan. He was once a thief and a murderer but had to be that way to survive such violent times. You will come across skeletons, orgres, hawks, bats and much more in this platform adventure that takes you into another world, a violent world in which only you could possibly survive.

That was how the creators of the arcade phrased the game and indeed many of those phrases were used on the back of the original inlay to all of the 8-bit versions that followed. While this game was a classic on the ZX Spectrum was the conversion to the Amstrad any good? was it even worth the effort and was any effort even put into the conversion in the first place?

Graphics

Rastan has been converted over to all of the 8-bit machines very well indeed and almost all versions have well drawn, if not different graphics and levels.

The graphics in the CPC version of Rastan are very nice indeed, our hero has been drawn well although it does look like he has gained a bit of weight since the arcade version, all of the nasty monsters have also been drawn well with a good use of colour in each of then. We didn?t notice any graphical glitches, our character didn?t disappear off screen for very long and was always visible (even against the darkest colours) so all in all a good job has been made on the graphical side of things.

Sound

Sound is just as good although it is missing a little something, the ingame music has been ripped from the game and we are left with just sound. Not that there is anything wrong with that and at least we do get to hear the Rastan theme on the opening screens of the game - good enough I suppose. It?s always active and almost every action from the arcade has been added into the CPC version.

Gameplay

Gameplay is almost as good as the Arcade version with a slight difference in speed and appearance. Providing you were good at the old slash-em-up arcade you should do well on the CPC version. The controls can be re-defined in the menu and if you are going to use the keyboard I strongly recommend it because the controls they gave you to start with are awful. It?s not overly difficult and it looks as if the easy dip switched version of the arcade is the method they chose when converting.