Hybris

The Good
In January 1984, two people – R. J. Mical and Dale Luck – created a program at the Winter CES show designed to showcase the hardware capabilities of their new machine, the Amiga, and it was enough to convince people to give up some of their dosh and buy one. It was a red-and-white chequered ball that bounced around a grid, ricocheting off its sides. Another program that would showcase its capabilities was Hybris, an excellent vertically-scrolling shooter from Discovery Software who released more classic games such as Zoom! and Sword of Sodan, with the latter receiving an inferior Genesis port.

When you fire up the game, you are in for a real treat. You hear the first of the two excellent soundtracks composed by Paul van der Valk (who also composed the music for the “Imploder” file packer utility) over an attract mode featuring a small demo, hall of fame, high score table (the spectrum of colors used for the text is impressive), and scrolling credits. If you leave this attract mode running for a long period of time, you even get to see mug shots of the developers.

As either J.P. Maverick or K. Lovett, you need to make contact with a remote Earth colony stranded on a far-away planet terrorized by alien forces. You do this by going through three levels of intense action, killing swarms of invaders that have their own attack patterns. These levels are quite long, but to make up for their length, each one contains beautiful scenery with features specific to them. For example, level two has huge subs with enemies mounted on them, while in the final level maggots can be seen crawling around the mountain.

Boxes containing weapon upgrades arrive every ninety seconds, and you can shoot these to break them free. Take too long to get them and they will disappear. The maximum amount of upgrades you can get is five. Once you have put the upgrades to good use, you can press Return to use an alternate version where the weapons detach themselves from the ship and fire in all directions. So technically, that is a total of ten upgrades you can play with. Press Return again and the weapons reattach themselves to the ship. Be warned, the number of times you can do this is limited.

Once you get halfway through the levels, you will need to defeat a boss that spews invaders from its mouth. Once you have dealt enough damage, the bosses go up off the screen once you have dealt enough damage to them, only to reappear at the end of the level. The final level is the hardest of them all, with invaders emerging from the bottom of the screen and four bosses appearing throughout the level. In this level, I found the second boss harder to kill if I didn’t get any upgrades. If you can make it to the very end, you will come face to face with a huge, colorful boss that just looks impressive. Your ship is supplied with some smart bombs that prove effective against the bosses.

You can press Space during the attract mode and this will bring up the Change Options screen, allowing you to change different parameters such as the number of lives, the bullet speed of the alien projectiles, and how long before each weapon upgrade appears. The only problem I have is that it makes the game far more easier. Leave the screen idle for a few seconds and it automatically goes back into attract mode.

The Bad
Umm...

The Bottom Line
Hybris is an excellent game in which you pilot a ship through three long levels, admiring the scenery that includes the desert, ocean, and mountains. A boss is waiting for you halfway and it needs to be defeated to continue the level. The graphics and sound is excellent, and the game itself features a nice attract mode. The One mentioned some ports for the Atari ST and PC, but these never eventuated. At the time, if you are wowed by the game, the only way you could play this is to purchase an Amiga.