honp9@menudo.uh.edu (Jason L. Tibbitts III) (05/24/91)
Dragons Lair II: Time Warp is the latest submission of ReadySoft's line of interactive cartoon games for the Amiga. The software is engineered masterfully under 512k and with full compatibility, but it seems the difficulty and sound are off the mark. Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp (TW) ReadySoft Incorporated Your mother-in-law climbs the table wielding a roling pin: "Kidnapped?" she yells. "My Daphne kidnapped again?" You stare in amazement as the large, buxom woman leaps across the table, ready to strike. The only exit seems to be running, but where? That scene is your first decision in ReadySoft's new interactive cartoon game for the Amiga: Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp. Dirk the Daring, the lovable, blundering knight created by Don Bluth animation in the laserdisc coin-op Dragon's Lair, is back for a completely new adventure. His wife Daphne, who he saved from Singe The Dragon, has now been kidnapped by the evil wizard Mordoc and whisked away a captive in a magical wrinkle in time, being forced to marry Mordoc. Dirk must find a fumbling old time machine and go back to prehistoric times, even back to the days of Adam and Eve, and then back to take on Mordoc The Wizard in a fight to the finish. First, though, he must get past his mother-in-law. This well-drawn game seems more of a sequel to their previous game, Space Ace- another laser coin-op. ReadySoft, makers of the wildly popular A-Max and A-Max II, has made vast improvements from their first cartoon game, Dragon's Lair. The original Dragon's Lair (DL) was an excruciatingly slow-loading game that needed 1 megabyte of memory to run, and also needed to stop animation at times to take a breath and show what scene was coming up next. No so with DLIITW- the animation is so fast loading, that it actually makes the game a bit more difficult to play; certain scenes need you to make your move before the scene has completed fading onto the screen. For those of you unfamiliar to this type of game, your movements are not moving sprites around a medeval shoot-em-up. Instead you control what Dirk's reactions are to certain situations. For example, in the above situation with his mother-in-law, Dirk must move LEFT during the time she is waving her rolling pin. A correct response rewards you with points based on quickness and timing of the move, while failure shows you an animation of your untimely demise; in this case being hit over the head with a rolling pin and crashing into a million pieces (a la Tom and Jerry). The animation is smooth, and seems to be done near 10 frames per second at times. The disk drive constantly loads scenes while you are playing another, but there are still gaps between many scenes, during which your score and lives are displayed. There is a convenient save game feature which allows you to put your point and score in the game on a floppy, ready to be loaded later. Unfortunately, the six-disk game is not HD installable, which makes the fingers do a little too much traveling during the game. DLIITW is also non-multitasking and is heavily copy-protected, but the speed of loading makes up for these faults. It is unfortunate that ReadySoft did not test their game a bit more than Space Ace. Some points of the game have speech which is badly sampled, making the imperative dialogue completely garbled. At times, the samples will repeat themselves in mid-sentence, making an amusing James Brown-like sound, but it hinders you from completing the game. The game is also truly more difficult. At times, it gives no indication when a certain move is necessary, and also gives absolutely no hint as to where the move should be. So, will Mordoc The Evil Wizard succeed in placing the ring on Daphne's finger, removing her completely from Dirk? Will Dirk ever get past his mother-in-law? Will ReadySoft fix these minor faults in an otherwise enjoyable game, therefore making Dragon's Lair II v1.1? Only time will tell. Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp ReadySoft Incorporated 30 Wertheim Court, Unit #2 Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada L4B 1B9 (416) 731-4175 (416) 764-8867 (FAX) Reviewed by: Joe B Reeves 1528 S. 6th St. Ironton, Ohio 45638 (614) 293 7425 (614) 532 6673 in 4 weeks. jreeves@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu -- Jason L. Tibbitts III | Moderator: comp.sys.amiga.reviews "Blob Shop Programmers:| Send submissions to HONP9@menudo.uh.edu Because We're Bored!" | Check comp.sys.amiga.reviews for submissions Disclaimer: Opinions...| guide, disclaimers, etc. Fnord.