July 22, 2010, at 09:15 AM

Mini Review: Asterix and the Great Rescue

I've been playing through some SMS games recently on the rather nice ApprenticeMinusDS. (Not that there's anything wrong with S8DS, I'm just rather lazy and haven't tried it yet.) I've played through the SMS Asterix games and I thought I'd make some notes on my thoughts... first up is Asterix and the Great Rescue, for no particular reason (it's the third of the three games).

Graphics

The first level seems rather underwhelming but overall it's top-notch late European standard. That 512KB uses a lot of nice, varied graphics with plenty of unnecessary detail. The sprites have a lot more frames of animation than you're used to. There's a little graphical trickery with background priority. There is a huge variety of levels; it's a prime candidate for mapping.

Sound

I play with the sound off. But the VGMs are great. The one slightly annoying thing is that the noise channel is buggy (the developer didn't realise he was resetting it every frame), but I guess the music was composed with that in mind.

Longevity

There's loads of levels; the difficulty is not that high (although I think it defaults to easy), but it's entertaining enough and takes more than an hour to play through. There are a few really frustrating points where you get stuck - the part where you have to destroy breakable blocks without a potion (the only time you need to do that in the game), and the log rolling boss are prime examples.

Plot

Nope.

Fun

Yeah, I guess.

Innovation

Transforming character... magic potions... well, it's not original but it's done in a reasonably slick fashion.

Conclusion


Mini Review Ratings