Highlander (video game)

Highlander is a video game tie-in to the Highlander franchise released in 1986, the same year as the film, published by Ocean Software for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC home computers. It was not received well by gaming magazines of the time - Sinclair User awarded it two stars out of five and called it "a golden turkey", also giving it the "golden turkey award" - and the game was described as a bad port of standard fighting games at the time.[2]

For the Atari Jaguar CD video game, see Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods. For the video game that was cancelled in 2010, see Highlander: The Game.
Highlander
Developer(s)Canvas (Roy Gibson, Simon Butler, Steven Cain, Martin Calvert)[1]
Publisher(s)Ocean Software Ltd
Platform(s)Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
ReleaseNovember 1986
Genre(s)Action, beat-em-up
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Gameplay

Highlander is an arcade fighting game, in which the player controls one of two swordsmen. In the single-player mode the player plays as Connor MacLeod and must fight three opponents in one-on-one combat: his mentor Ramírez, then Fizir (named Fasil in the film), before finally facing The Kurgen (named The Kurgan in the film).[3] In each fight the objective is to reduce the opponent's health to zero, at which point he is decapitated and the player wins the fight. A two-player mode is also available.[3]

Reception

In addition to Sinclair User's "golden turkey" award, Crash gave it an overall score of 57%, with one reviewer describing it as "totally boring and quite unplayable",[4] while ZZap!64 gave it an overall score of 30% and wrote "This is a real case of a film tie-in rip-off".[5]

The ZX Spectrum version of Highlander is featured in Stuart Ashen's (also known by his online presence as Ashens) 2015 book Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of, noting that the graphics for the Spectrum release are the same as those used in the Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 releases, which are designed for a lower screen resolution and in more colors than the Spectrum. Ashens expresses that "The Spectrum's monochrome rendering leaves them an incomprehensible mess." Ashens heavily criticises its gameplay and graphics, expressing that the combat "feels futile" and stating that "On starting the game, the first thing to hit you is how incredibly ugly the characters are ... Astoundingly, it plays even worse than it looks. None of the sword fighting moves seem to do much ... you can't really tell who is successfully hitting whom ... Playing Highlander is one of the least entertaining ways you could possibly spend your time." Ashens calls Highlander's controls "horribly unresponsive" and moving the player character "clumsy", saying the single tactic to winning Highlander is to "mash the fire button and hope". Ashens criticizes the lack of music and 'lazy' sound effects; one of the only sound effects in Highlander is a popping noise if someone gets hit. Ashens calls the game design 'lazy' as well, stating that "despite there being three different opponents that you have to load separately, they all have identical moves. They just look different and [have more health]", furthermore stating that "I can only believe Highlander must have been written in an incredible hurry."[6]

References
  1. Highlander at SpectrumComputing.co.uk
  2. Sinclair User 1.87, page 52
  3. "Highlander gameplay instructions". Ocean Software Ltd. 1986. Retrieved 25 July 2017.
  4. "Highlander". Crash. 2.87: 114. February 1987.
  5. "Highlander". Zzap!64: 23. February 1987.
  6. Ashen, Stuart (2015). Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of (1st ed.). London, England: Unbound. pp. 82–87. ISBN 978-1-78352-256-9.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.