Hi there!

 

Of course I won't bore you with an old 1:1 fighting game, this is all about Psygnosis' Barbarian:

 

 

Hehe, you might think I'm nuts playing this one on the C64, but well, I've a weakness for 16>8 bit ports

 

This game is downright silly to begin with. See, it's a Ghosts'n'Goblins kind of scenery and you're controlling this big Barbarian - exclusively with icons. No kidding! Click on the left arrow and he walks left, click on the right arrow and he walks right, click on the jump icon and he... you get the idea.

 

While this possibly had at least some novelty charme on the "new" 16-Bit machines, being equipped with mice and such, porting this icon system 1:1 to the C64 is downright ridiculous, no?

 

As shown above, the C64 graphics are horrible. There's no music and the game has only one single fit-for-everything sound effect. Still, believe it or not, it's playable. It even is kinda fun to play, at least if you're the B-Movie kind of "trash" lover.

 

It even seems to tell some kind of story. You're fighting your way to the bottom of a volcano and the obstacles in your path are really varied. There's a big dragon in the middle and an evil magician at the end. Then you have to escape the volcano again within a time limit, before the volcano explodes:

 

 

Psygnosis was pretty (in)famous for this kind of game. On the Amiga they were all about graphics, 3 out of the 4 disks in the box would usually be required to show the intro of the game, which then used a couple of bytes on the 4th disk. It'll be fun to check out their other games, especially those with C64 ports

 

Some future day the "Playing..." series may see Psygnosis next game "Terrorpods", but first it'll continue with something else.

 

Greetings,

Manuel