Barbarian II

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game is a flip-screen action adventure game with hack and slash elements. You choose between a male Barbarian (featured on the first game) who uses a Battle-Axe or a female character who wields a Long Sword. You travel through four different places to find Drax and finish his plans once and for all. On each of the first three levels you must fight six different types of monsters who are willing to kill you faster than you think! Those monsters can be from little angry chickens to heavily powered giants using their...bat! During your quest you can also gain more lives (initially 5) by collecting any skulls you may find. A truly interesting arcade adventure game (rather than a fighting game as its predecessor) which will offer you plenty of gameplay time! You start from a volcanic land and you go through a cave complex, a dungeon and finally three levels in which you encounter 2 monsters guarding Drax, ending up in a final fight with him.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The ZX Sinclair version is a really great attempt! It has nice visuals, scrolling and gameplay for its hardware, though they are limited only to 4-5 colors. The ZX version is almost identical (!) to the MSX. I was impressed by the sprite animation which is really a cool feature for a Spectrum game. Comparably, the graphics on the CPC and the C64 versions are better due to their wider color palettes. As far as the sound, I really like the sound FX on the 8bit Spectrum as well as the short tunes during gameplay (that are missing on the MSX version).