Le Fetiche Maya

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The body of the famous archaeologist Edward Halifax was recently discovered somewhere in the jungle of Yucatan, not far from Chichen Itza. The causes of his death remain unsolved. The old scientist, that's been missing for more than 3 years, carried a Maya parchment mentioning the existence of a mysterious fetish. Halifax's student, Professor Michael Fairbanks (that's you) travels to Mexico with the intention to continue the research and unveil the mystery. Michael finds himself in a small village called Merida, a god forsaken horrid place with two drunken sleeping Mexicans lying in front of a store. He needs to go in and buy supplies and he must also be aware not to spend his only $1000. Buying useful stuff can come in handy when Michael tries to bribe some locals for more info. Food supplies can restore his health (note: meats are more efficient than fruits) and his car can run for some time and distance without fuel (besides, Michael has one spare can on board). So, he has to choose and use his funds wisely. In addition, Michael can trade various items (found on the way) for other valuable goods and then return to Merida. Note that, for the first part of the game, you need to search and find certain objects and, as long as you proceed further, you'll also need to solve puzzles, encounter hostile locals, avoid death traps and wild animals, drive fast but carefully and enter many Mayan buildings and tombs; all the above offer a nicely presented action adventure game from the French software house, Silmarils.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics on the Atari ST are good, as Silmarils knows how to take advantage of the ST hardware and always made beautifully looking games. Each scene of the game is fun to watch with up to 16 simultaneous colors that give an excellent adventurous atmosphere. But as on the Amiga, the sprites' animation is a bit "jerky". What is really impressive is every driving scene that looks like you're playing a racing game (i.e. like Lombard RAC Rally) and changes the game's view perspective into a "behind the wheel" pseudo-3D view. The game's sound on the ST includes a fair, sampled intro tune (of quite low frequency) and a bunch of sampled sound effects while playing.

VIDEO
On our video below, you may watch both the Atari ST and Amiga versions.