Shadowfire

The Good
I bought this game based on the ZZap!64 review (issue 1, 1985) The first thing that struck me, was Fred Gray's wonderful upbeat title tune (still one of my favourite SID tunes to this day), having let this loop acouple of times, it was on to control selection and away we go! Rapid bleeping was quickly replaced by the in game tune. Once i'd quickly figured out load out for each character, i beamed Manto and Maul down to Zoff V. It took about 5 minutes to figure everything out, with regards deploying team members into new areas, beaming Sevrina back and forth from our ship to Zoff V. Then, the game takes on a strategic element, rolling Maul into battle locations, beaming Syllk in and Manto out worked in most situations, especially when Sevrina would get attacked upon opening a locked door. Watching health meters and strength/weight meters decline, could become quite tense. The Icon system, although daunting initially, became easy to use and ultimately effective. The graphics were quite striking, especially the character portraits, Syllk looking particularly formidable. The map was pretty large, taking most of the 100 minutes to fully explore.

The Bad
Ok, the bad. If you selected analog joystick, it was pretty much restart the whole computer and reload. in the manual you were told there were 3 ways of winning, there is only 1. Torik is pretty much useless as a character, his strength is so weak, he cannot really be sent ahead as scout, he tends to get killed fairly easily. Zark is only really needed to get Kryxix, oh, and the in game music grates, really quickly.

The Bottom Line
I still love this game, to this very day. It was innovative, the title music was truly stunning and the backstory was pretty good too. I still have the game box from 1985. Beyond released 2 really good games in 1985, this and the truly amazing Lords of Midnight, both rate in my ten favourite games of all time.