Mad Professor Mariarti is probably one of the best platform games ever made for the 16bit home computers. It was originally released in 1991 by Krisalis Software for the Acorn Archimedes and later the same year ported to the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY
You are Mad Professor Mariarti, a cool looking scientist who must shut down his 5 different laboratories after some kind of mutation outbreak. Your best bet is to solve strange puzzles and use tools to destroy any mutated equipment and save the world from the mutated danger. Mad Professor Mariarti is a great platform game split over five different levels of fun and you have to complete the first four to gain access to the final stage. Each stage has its own environment like the botanical, space, chemical, computer science and the mystery laboratory and also hides its own individual hazards and dangers. Remember that, everything that flashes or sparks will either kill you instantly or seriously sap your energy and if you fail, you'll end up in a loony bin. Not quite enough blood for some action fans, but it still remains a worthwhile little game. By running, jumping and ducking, you move the Professor across platforms, conveyor belts and ladders. Note that Mad Professor Mariarti is one of the earliest platform games to ever hit the Archimedes home computers.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Amiga version has neat and colorful graphics with funny, cartoon-style sprites that move relatively fast and smooth and each stage looks almost identical to the Archimedes original version. The sound on the Amiga is very impressive, having great in-game tunes (similar to the Archimedes) and a variety of nice and funny, sampled sound effects.
CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHz MEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM. GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once). SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs