Pegasus

STORY / GAMEPLAY
After many years of fierce battling, the five planes of existence were invaded and made corrupt by Satan. He wasted no time in filling them with his own creatures, foul abominations of nature. It seemed that nothing would be able to ever regain and save the ancient worlds. Satan has decided for something cataclysmic. Travelling the five planes of existence ha has shattered the magical crystals which hold the souls of Death, Nature, War and Fate. Without them to keep the forces of magic in balance chaos will take over the mortal world. Terrible catastrophes will bring normal life to a stop. Earthquakes will destroy cities, floods will kill millions. However, there is a brave hero, named Perseus who can save the world. Flying on the back of his faithful companion, Pegasus, he takes to the skies killing the creatures of the night. The game is set over five levels, one for each of the crystals and a final level in...Hell. Each level is further split into ten stages. The first five are the flying sequences with your pal Pegasus, while the second five are sightly different, in which you dismount Pegasus to explore on foot. You run, jump and fight your way across the land. Creatures attack from the air and land. They come in varying sizes and powers and some take more shots to eliminate the others. The smaller minions can be dealt with easily, just a couple of daggers will do the job. The larger man eating creatures require a lengthy bout of blasting with spears and crossbows. At the end of each level is a Guardian. These are larger and harder to kill. Of course there are several bonus to collect in form of crystals, to either restore your health or upgrade your sword's fire balls (oh yes, your sword in the flying section, shoot fireballs). Some crystals will be found, some waiting to be collected, others only appearing after enemies have been destroyed.In the flying sections, crystals are used to increase the power of your weaponry while in the running sections crystals will increase the power of your sword as well as restore your health. Also in the running section, by collecting 30 crystals will also give you a special magical sword that will launch a fireball in front of you, killing any enemy it hits before they have a chance to reach you.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics on the ST version are rather unimpressive and cannot compare to the way inferior Amiga version. Although the Amiga version offers plenty of neat touches and truly beautiful backdrops with up to 64 on screen, lighting flashes, bucket load of parallax scrolling, the Atari ST version looks and feels quite poor except for the foreground details. Pegasus and Perseus animation is still truly incredible, but again lots of detail is missing and mainly the design here is based on a few rocky-style details in the foreground along with a shades of blue at the backdrop ...sky!
The sound is on the same standards, with spot effect for every single bullet and explosive noises, in contrast to the Amiga version which offers a handful opf digitized sound effects (e.g. thunder punctuates the explosions and zap effects). Of course there is a nice introductory tine, but still this does not save the day. Overall, the ST version is a bit disappointing, and probably and STE enhanced version would be really appreciated back then...