Blood Money is a famous horizontal and vertical scrolling shooter, initially released for the Amiga (OCS) systems in 1989 and later ported to the Atari ST and the PC (DOS) computers. Blood Money was also ported quite successfully for the 8bit Commodore64. Though its great graphics and sound, the game was also memorable for its high level of difficulty!
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Blood Money is the official sequel to 'Menace', a poor arcade shooter with ugly graphics and extremely crappy gameplay. Fortunately, Blood Money beats its predecessor in every aspect. The game's world is divided into 4 different planets and there are 4 different ways to fight. The first world is made of metal and you fly through it with a helicopter. The second one is a large sea world where you sail through with a submarine. The third one is a frozen world, where you pass through wearing a spacesuit and the last one is a volcanic world of fire where you fly using jetpacks. The whole weaponry you use can be upgraded through stations found in various places along the levels. In order to buy new goodies you must first collect coins after killing your enemies and spend the cash wisely. Enemies vary in every world, from small insects to even giant dragons. The game can also be played in a 2-players mode. Although a classic and famous shooter, Blood Money was never able to be one of the best shooters of the home computers era due to its high difficulty level and lack of innovation.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The ST Blood Money is a good version and, although slightly inferior to the original in terms of visuals and sound, it still remains a great game for the Atari ST library. It features good artistic work with 20+ colors on-screen. Background details have minor differences with the Amiga version and the ST version looks way better compared to the PC (MS-DOS) game. The sprite animation and background scrolling are both quite smooth considering the lack of blitter. Note that the wonderful animated introductory scene found on the original (Amiga) version is missing here. In terms of sound, you can choose either music, consisted of a very melodic 3-channel music score or sound effects only. The sound effects are "shooter typical", consisting of laser firing, explosions and the like.
GAMEPLAY SAMPLE VIDEO
On our video below you may watch the Commodore 64/128, Atari ST and Amiga OCS versions of the game.
CPU: Motorola 68000 16/32bit at 8mhz. 16 bit data bus/32 bit internal/24-bit address bus. MEMORY: RAM 512KB (1MB for the 1040ST models) / ROM 192KB GRAPHICS: Digital-to-Analog Converter of 3-bits, eight levels per RGB channel, featuring a 9-bit RGB palette (512 colors), 320x200 (16 color), 640x200 (4 color), 640x400 (monochrome). With special programming techniques could display 512 colors on screen in static images. SOUND: Yamaha YM2149F PSG "Programmable Sound Generator" chip provided 3-voice sound synthesis, plus 1-voice white noise mono PSG. It also has two MIDI ports, and support mixed YM2149 sfx and MIDI music in gaming (there are several games supported this).