Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3D is the SNES installment to one of the latest games for the 16bits era, offering great visuals and sound! The game was originally released as Jim Power In Mutant Planet for the Amiga and Atari ST as well as the 8bit Amstrad CPC home computers.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Much like the Turrican series, Jim Power is a prime example of a platform shoot 'em up story which rarely fails to grant the player with great time of action with stunning visuals and sound! The story takes place somewhere in the future where you play the part of a secret detective (and a capable shooter) from the Special Warfare Unit, launching a mission to rescue the President's daughter that's been kidnapped by an evil creature named Vulkhor and taken to a beautiful -but not so friendly- planet called Mutant. The main goal in each level is to advance to the far right (end of the level) of the screen before the clock ends, taking out hordes of mutants (zombies, beasts and other human-like creatures that wander around), as well as avoiding various traps, spikes, dripping acids or moving platforms! The quest seems hard huh? Yes. You must also note that, the game does not offer an energy bar rather than just a few lives, while any contact (or a misstep) with any of the above, will result to instant death, taking you a few meters back! Your weaponry is fantastic. You have a rapid fire gun and a bunch of smart bombs. You gun can be upgraded by collecting several bonuses left from your dead enemies. You may also find and collect extra time bonuses in order to extend your ... survival. Two out of the total five levels offer pure shoot 'em up gameplay. These are Level 2 and 4, in which Jim is equipped with a jet pack and shoots everything that comes towards him, in a horizontal style gameplay. Note that at the end of each level, Jim has to wear his jet pack and fight gigantic bosses!
GRAPHICS / SOUND The SNES version takes the original a small step forward since it is compatible with paper 3D glasses (that present the backgrounds in 3D). It also has more colors on-screen. The visuals are awesome with multi-parallax scrolling and rotor effects. The sprites are large and they move smoothly in all directions. The game offers great sound as well. There are several sampled SFX here and there while the introductory and in-game music scores are of excellent quality, resembling the (equally excellent) original tunes found on the Amiga version.
Screenshots
Sounds
Intro/Menu music:
In-game music sample:
Gameplay sample
Amiga (original version)
Hardware information
Super Nintendo (SNES)
CPU: Ricoh 5A22, based on a 16-bit CMD/GTE 65c816 core, Input: 21.28137 MHz Bus: 3.55 MHz, 2.66 MHz, or 1.77 MHz MEMORY: Main RAM: 128Kb / Video RAM: 64Kb / Sound RAM: 64Kb GRAPHICS: Progressive: 256x224, 512x224, 256x239, 512x239 and Interlaced: 512x448, 512x478 / Pixel Depth 2,4,7,8 bpp (8 to 11 bpp dorect) / Colors: 32768 (Depth 15bit) / Sprites: 128 (64x64 pixels) / Backgrounds: Up to 4 planes each up to 1024x1024 pixels / Special: Mode 7 matrix operations. (1 layer 128x128 tiles out of 256 with 256 colors) SOUND: Sony SPC700, Sony DSP: 16-bit ADPCM, 8 channels. Output: 32 kHz 16-bit stereo
Hey the sound was better on the Amiga system! The original in-game soundrack was better I think. The graphics looks almost the same, except the rotoring scrolling of the background in the SNES.