Planet Bob - Uridium

RSS Bot · April 2, 2006

Hi there!

And again we continue our journey through the backcatalogue of Graftgold, and again we stop by at a classic:

Uridium

Ratings:

Zzap! Rating: 94%

Lemon64: 7.6

Staff: Steve Turner (music) Andrew Braybrook (everything else)

Overview:

Again I'd assume that this game needs no introduction. But anyway, just in case:

A giant fleet is trying to invade the solar system. They've backed their support with a fleet of 15 dreadnoughts, all carrying supplies. Your mission is to destroy all of them, so that the invasion will hopefully get cancelled.

In this side-scrolling shoot 'em up you're basically destroying the dreadnoughts surface installations, while fighting against diverse defending squadrons. After you faced a certain number of waves, you can land on the dreadnought, initiating a destruction sequence. (Well, actually it launches some little score-bonus scene then )

Fun in 2006:

Still absolutely incredible. Ultra smooth scrolling, excellent designed and very challenging levels still make this an awesome experience. Remember, I started this series of articles, because the C64 DTV version of Uridium brought back the fever. By now I used up a complete round of batteries on this game alone. I'm somewhat stuck in level 13, but I think I can beat it (even with the crappy DTV joystick ). Not sure if I ever did in the past, so it's about time now

Uridium compared to the previous Graftgold titles:

Well, obviously it's another masterpiece from Andrew Braybrook. Steve Tuner added some music again, a lot better than the Gribbly tune this time (Try this MP3). One major difference between Uridium and the previous titles (8-ways vs. side scrolling aside) is in the controls: While Paradroid and Gribbly had both inertia and friction, in Uridium there's inertia only... (...of course, since everything is happening in vaccum this time :lol: ). Coming from Paradroid, one will also notice that the SFX are very similar. Stylewise Uridium goes one step forward, as it's further defining that Graftgold Metallic look, which we'll see more often in the future.