Lorna is a colorful action platform game based on the Lorna Spanish comics. It was released for the MSX, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and for the 16bit Amiga, ST and DOS.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY
Lorna is a sexy blonde girl and a mighty warrior! As Lorna, you have to battle your way through a swamp, a cave and a forest until you reach a temple. Once you enter the temple, you must find the six pieces of Lorna's robot and then assemble them. On three of the game's levels you are armed with a riffle to survive from various alien species, but you must be careful since your ammunition is very limited. This makes the game rather difficult as you will encounter flying enemies that will carry ammunition clips or energy pods. All you have to do is to jump on them and grab the goodies! Difficulty gets even harder as Lorna is not centered on the screen, rather than walking close to the end of the area. This makes it difficult to time your react when the enemy sprites come against you! Apart from being a typical side-scrolling action platform in most of its levels, Lorna includes a level where you fly a spaceship, shooting and avoiding other ships. Overall, Lorna is a nice action platform, although the gameplay becomes slightly tedious after a few goes.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The graphics on the CPC version are nice and colorful. I liked the background details (jungle trees, underground settings). The animation is quite smooth with huge sprites on-screen although the background suffers from flickering. The game's sound includes a nice intro theme but only a few sound effects during gameplay!
CPU: ZiLOG Z80 4MHZ MEMORY: 64 KB or 128 KB of RAM depending on the model (capable of being expanded to 512k using memory extension boards) GRAPHICS: Motorola 6845 address generator, Mode 0: 160x200 / 16 colors, Mode 1: 320x200 / 4 colors, Mode 2: 640x200 / 2 colors, A colour palette of 27 colors was supported SOUND: The CPC used the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing 3 channels Mono Sound (via internal speaker) but capable to offer Stereo Sound provided through a 3.5 mm headphones jack (with pretty impressive outcome!). Also, it is possible to play back digital sound samples at a resolution of approximately 5bit. This technique is very processor-intensive though.