Brian the Lion

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You play the role of a little jungle feline named "Brian the Lion" and your main task is to rescue your dear friend "Chris the Crystal" who was kidnapped by the evil "Geeza the Dragon". You start your quest with a couple of simple abilities like running, jumping, stomping on enemies and slashing. The game contains some really nice touches, especially Brian's roar. This can be used to kill smaller creatures and startle middle-sized creatures. The level design is great, with many obstacles to watch for and secrets to discover. You pretty much always exploring, dodging enemies or collecting some nice bonuses. The game is not dull at all! On the contrary, Brian the Lion is so much fun! The controls are fairly straightforward, though you may often "brainlessly" run towards enemies by accident. This is a classic action platform game that will keep you playing a lot! It's not a unique game but Psygnosis rarely made bad games. Brian the Lion is recommended for any Amiga owner and it's a decent game either on the original OCS chipset or on the most advanced AGA.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The AGA version is visually better (as expected) compared to the OCS chipset Amiga (A500 etc). The game's graphics are really good, with detailed backdrops and landscapes, parallax scrolling and a bunch of funny and cartoonish characters. Note that, the game fakes a parallax layer using a couple of sprites multiplexed across the screen! The Amiga AGA version is pretty colorful, with more than 100 colors on screen and the game's animation is fast and smooth. It is the first game to introduce the famous Super Nintendo Mode 7-style effects onto the Amiga. These effects are used to zoom, fade, and rotate the graphics and can even map on image or textures onto a cylinder. The most significant difference between both Amiga versions (the OCS and the AGA) is that the latter has more details and double the colors on screen (200+). The sound is also greatly done, featuring 50 amusing in-game tunes and many digitized sound effects. Note that the CD32 version (based on the AGA chipset as well) is using the machine's CD benefit and offers more in-game soundtracks, compared to the Amiga 1200 and the original Amiga 500.