Switchblade

Copyright : Gremlin Graphics | Reviewed by : Hiro

"For 10,000 years he slept. His mind feeding on the nightmares of the weak. Now he has awakened. As the night bled crimson, the Fireblade shattered and its power died. Then the slaughter began."

In SwitchBlade it?s up to Hiro, last of the BladeKnights to search the vast Undercity, defeat the evil minions of Havok, reassemble the fragments of the Fireblade and put an end to the great evil himself.

Graphics

The graphics are superb in this game. They may be low color but it uses the main advantage of the Mode 1 resolution to great effect to add much detail to the sprites and backdrops. Hiro himself is a brilliantly animated little fighter with smooth animation and a few different fighting moves. The enemies are nicely designed too. There are a few pleasant graphical touches in the game such as the lights that switch on when Hiro is near them and the small effects when collecting items or dieing. Also many parts of each screen are blacked out until you actually reach that area. It adds a lot to the atmosphere and mystery of finding new locations. The title and intro screens are also nicely drawn with a great looking logo made of many sections which scroll onto screen from all directions to connect into the games logo. The intro is made of small images that set the tone perfectly for the game and gives a brief explanation of the task at hand. Also on the cartridge version the red sky is done in a gradient, and extra colors are used on some walls and props thanks to the extra graphics capabalities of the Plus machines.

Sound

The sound again is great. Whilst the sound effects are adequate, it?s the music that shines. There are two main pieces of music not including the very small tune that plays shortly before you gain control of Hiro. The title music blasts through the speakers as soon as the game has loaded and sets the tone nicely for the game ahead. The in-game tune is very catchy and helped kept me playing through even the most frustrating aspects of the game. I find myself whistling it to this day. In game you can only have either the music on or the sound effects on. Not both together. It?s only a minor niggle but at least it gives you the choice which is more that can be said of most CPC games, many of which may only have sound effects, or just music, or nothing at all.

Gameplay

While it may at first just seem like an ordinary platformer, the close combat and exploration features give it far more depth to many other games on the CPC, almost perhaps like the Metroid series or later Castlevania titles. It?s a pretty tough game and can even be unforgiving at times but it is very addictive. Unfortunately some of the toughness comes from some less than perfect collision detection which can be a problem combined withthe slightly stiff and awkward jumping. Trying to jump over fire on the surface part at the beginning of the game can be tricky and when hit Hiro will get dragged around causing more unnecessary damage to him. Some parts later on require pixel perfect jumping else Hiro will plummet and lose more energy. Good thing is these negative points do not kill the enjoyment of the game too much and if they were perhaps addressed then this game would be pretty much perfect.

Final Comments:

All in all this game is by far my favorite on the CPC and I still play the CPC Plus cartridge version on the WinApe emulator regularly as well as the Amiga version on WinUAE. The fact that I play the CPC game even with owning the 16 bit incarnation shows just how good a conversion it was to the CPC. May have less colors but the gameplay is intact and the CPC version is by far the best 8 bit edition of the game (The C64 game in comparison is horrendous to even look at).

SwitchBlade was followed up by a sequel that only appeared on the 16 bit Atari ST, Lynx and the Commodore Amiga and was developed by different people. While still a decent enough game it lacks the addictive qualities of the original and the lack of in game music (would have loved a remix of the original?s tune) hampers the feel of the game.