Sleepwalker is an action adventure platform game developed by CTA Developments and published by Ocean Software for the Commodore Amiga, PC (DOS), Commodore 64 and the Atari ST/E in 1993.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY The game centers on a boy called Lee and his faithful dog Ralph. The objective is to control Ralph and guide Lee around six hazardous levels (a City, a Graveyard, A Zoo and a Construction site and a Factory) without waking him up - otherwise you'll lose a life! Lee is sleepwalking hence the name of the game. His task is performed by pushing or kicking Lee around, hanging over holes to prevent him from falling and generally accepting all manner of abuse to keep him alive. Thus, this means you have to run ahead of Lee and check for hazards and traps (and believe me, there are plenty of check for) and neutralizing them. Hazards are everywhere spotted which will fry, burn, electrocute, flatter and zap poor Ralph. There are various power-ups, ranging from whooper cushions to give invisibility and custard pies for bridge building. The game also provides you with a map of each level which you'll need if you plan to get out with your master intact. However at later levels, only a small portion of the map is being displayed, so you'll need to track down a special object to help you reveal the rest of the map. There also a few puzzles to solve during your quest (i.e. trigger certain lifts or avoid boulders) too. All in all, Sleepwalker is a funny game, with its unique way of gameplay (being ahead of Lee to help him go through various hazards) although it does get repetitive after a while.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Amiga OCS version has nice colors and smooth sprite animation, much like the Atari STE (using the BLiTTER hardware) and the Amiga AGA models (that have a few more details compared to the OCS). Note that the game has more details on the background on the Amiga OCS and AGA (like the neighborhood buildings) missing from the STE, but all three versions are technically equally great in terms of visuals. The game's sound is also good featuring a few funny digitized sound effects but no music during playing. There is a nice introductory theme though followed by a cute intro of the boy sleepwalking and the dog trying to save him from falling out of the window!
CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHz MEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM. GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once). SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs