Wizball
This
game is one of the most unusual shoot-em-ups ever. You play a wizards
ball, uhm, that sounds a bit rude... When you start you bounce
all over the place, you have to shoot power-ups to collect 4 way
moving, a cat (more on this later), two way shooting, edge protection
shooting, lasers, multiple direction shooting, smart bomb and
invincibility. You select the currently flashing weapon by wiggling the
joystick, the uniqueness of the game is however in control of the cat.
Hold in the firebutton and control goes from you to the cat. You have
to restore color to the world, you do this by shooting paint droplets
and then collecting them with the cat.
There
are three pots or three colors to fill, every level has a
different color and a different target color. When you fill the blended
color pot you get to go to an interlude screen, collect some extra
points and then you go to see the wizard where you collect a permanent
extra weapon. Start with the movement controlling weapon, when you die
next you do not bounce all over the place.
You can
also collect droplets that makes your cat crazy, makes the screen dark,
give you extra lives and a bunch of other possibilities.
Not the ordinary shoot-em-up, but a great one. The Commodore version is
perfect, everything is done just right, the speed of the aliens, the
hiding away in the scenery the general pace of the game. The Spectrum
is not bad but with the screen narrow, allowing it to scroll, enemies
spring out at you slightly to quickly. The sprites flicker, sometimes
enemies disapear, the collition detection is also bad. You see the
Commodore has hardware collision detection, the Spectrum not, I thought
I would just put it out there.
Playability, graphics, sound and extra effects are better on the
Commodore. The Spectrum doesn't have the interlude blasting screen and
also the Spectrum doesn't have the great intro theme.
