Prehistorik 2

Copyright : Titus | Reviewed by : scooby1970

Prehistoric II is the follow up to... Prehistoric. What makes this game different is that it has been written especially for the Amstrad Plus machines. This review looks at the 128k Amstrad Plus version of this classic platform game released by Titus Software at the end of the 8-bit era in 1993.

Graphics

The graphics are just amazing on this game, with the extended colour palette of the Plus machines you get to see some of the best colours ever used, along with some nice graphical touches that you'll not see anywhere else.

The first thing you notice is that there are trees in the fore-ground! These form part of the parallax scrolling and really add a lot of depth to the screen. The main sprite is well drawn and looks superb, as do all the other sprites in the game.

With all this action and colour and scrolling going on, something has to give though. The scrolling isn't always as smooth as it should be, and there is dreadful slowdown when there is a lot happening on screen. Shame really, as there's never really that much happening on screen which should cause that much slowdown!

Sound

Just sit back and listen to that DMA interrupt Soundtrack on the title screen. It uses digitised instruments and you would never tell that an Amstrad machine could produce this kind of sound. It is really mind blowing!

The in-game sound effects are ok, as is the tune that plays during the game, however why didn't they keep the title-screen soundtrack in the game? Overall though, above average definitely on sound!

Gameplay & Final Comments

This is a sideways (and up and downwards) scrolling platform game where you have to kill the monsters and collect various objects. It's a great game to play and feels very professional in every way, however the slowdown really does effect the gameplay on times.

Prehistoric II, for all of it's great looks and even greater sound, just missus out on being a real classic for the Amstrad machines. Maybe they tried just a little too hard, or maybe the machines were not capable of producing what was asked of them. Either way, it's a fun game, one to show off to all your friends on the power of the Amstrad, it's just missing that little... something.