Prophecy I: The Viking Child is an action platform game released in 1990 for the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST / STE, DOS computers as well as for the Atari Lynx, Nintendo Gameboy handheld consoles.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY
You are Brian, a Viking child called to meet the prophecy for his destiny by entering the Halls of Valhalla and battling his way through 16 different and hostile levels, from medieval castles to mountains and thick forests, swarmed by an army of foes under the command of evil Norse god Loki. The game looks and plays similarly to Super Wonder Boy (a.k.a. Wonder Boy in Monster Land) as it has you collecting hidden coins, upgrading Brian's weapons and visiting shops (to spend the coins collected). Though its similarities to Super Wonder Boy, The Viking Child has better visuals and brilliant sound. It is a so great and so fun to play action platform with lots of nice details and touches. Prophecy I: The Viking Child is a must-have game in any system it's available and will surely entertain most -if not all- platform gaming fans!
GRAPHICS / SOUND The graphics on this game are great, though the small gameplay window. The ST version has some nice and colorful details and good animation while the sprites move like cartoon style characters giving a funny touch. Each level is unique and the game includes medieval castles, mountains, thick forests and more. The negative side on the ST visuals is that the screen scrolling suffers a bit, making gameplay rather tricky, especially when jumping onto platforms. The game's sound on the ST is a real joy, featuring a cool introductory theme and a catchy in-game music score. Unfortunately, there are no sound effects in this 16bit version (!) and cannot be selected from the main menu (as on the Amiga).
GAMEPLAY VIDEO In our gameplay video below you may watch the Atari ST, Amiga and DOS versions of the game.
CPU: Motorola 68000 16/32bit at 8mhz. 16 bit data bus/32 bit internal/24-bit address bus. MEMORY: RAM 512KB (1MB for the 1040ST models) / ROM 192KB GRAPHICS: Digital-to-Analog Converter of 3-bits, eight levels per RGB channel, featuring a 9-bit RGB palette (512 colors), 320x200 (16 color), 640x200 (4 color), 640x400 (monochrome). With special programming techniques could display 512 colors on screen in static images. SOUND: Yamaha YM2149F PSG "Programmable Sound Generator" chip provided 3-voice sound synthesis, plus 1-voice white noise mono PSG. It also has two MIDI ports, and support mixed YM2149 sfx and MIDI music in gaming (there are several games supported this).