Atomic Robo-Kid

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You control Atomic Robo-Kid (a robot) as he enters the fortress and prepares to battle with the countless machines that will float around and try to kill him in multiple ways. At first the Robo-Kid can only walk on the ground and jump if necessary, but in the process you will find several power-up gems, that will give you the ability to take off and fly and shoot your enemies on air. There are four different weapons, each helping your quest in a different way. These weapons have an unlimited supply of ammo and vary from five-way blasters to massively destructive energy beams. Collecting gems is not the only way to get extra weapons, as you can also find a little dragon who will sell you new weapons, but at quite high prices. Other gems will increase your speed, supply a shield for a few seconds etc. The enemies are tough, attacking you from both directions and shooting with bombs and the like, that will drain Robo-Kid's shields. You may easily get overwhelmed by them since they can surround you. The game is split into 28 different levels of intense action. The difficulty level increases depending on the level, since some levels are very hard and others are pretty easy. Atomic Robo-Kid offers furious action and there is a good supply of levels all set at just about the difficulty needed to stop you from beating the game. It's not a fast shooter, but it is playable and addictive.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Atari ST conversion offers quite good (but not great) graphics in a semi-organic style, much like the original. I would expect more! Although sprite detection is very decent and the backdrops are good with a lot of variety and remaining faithful to the coin-op, there is severe frame-rate drop when too many sprites swarm the screen! Also, the color palette is limited to 16 colors only! Note that similar issues are found on the Amiga too, but at least the Amiga conversion runs a bit smoother than the ST. The actual playing area is fairly restricted, but there are some interesting backgrounds to look at. The speed might suffer when things get crowded, but this can work to your advantage, giving you some extra micro-seconds of reaction time! As expected, the only arcade-perfect conversion is the one found on the Sharp X68000 home computer. The game's sound is fairly good and adds to the overall appeal of the game. It offers a nice music score as well as some wicked sound effects during your battles with the aliens.