North & South: Les Tuniques Bleues is a hilarious, action strategy game, developed and published by Infogrames in 1989, for almost all home computers of this era.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY The game takes you to the American Civil War (1861-1864) and you can choose either the United States (the North) or the Confederate State (the South) armies. The game's interface is a map of North America, where you can move your armies and take over enemy states, forts or even harbors (in a 2D horizontally scrolling race against the clock!) Troop movements and most of the other strategic plans, take place on a single screen map that shows the American states of the time, with the objective to vanish the opposition from sight. Your priority is to occupy enough territory to establish a rail supply line and subsequently fill your safe and buy new troops. Of course, the occupation of a territory already inhabited by enemy forces, means war! Each battle scenery includes wide terrains like canyons, rivers or forests that will make troop formations harder, but can also work to the enemy's (or your) advantage. With doses of humor, you battle against your opponents by using infantry, cavalry or artillery units (which you can switch at any time). Reinforcements can be completed via ships or by gaining money through trains. During each battle, the terrains are seen from above and the game offers beautiful views with lots of colors, while the armies look so tiny and the sound is so funny! In some quests, such as taking over a fort, the game's perspective changes to side scrolling (as I said above), where you control a single soldier and try to kick and stab the enemies in order to reach the flag and take over the fort before the time runs out. The same happens when you chase a train, aiming to loot supplies that will help you in your battles. Overall, North 'N South is a greatly done, funny and very amusing game, suitable for everyone (from kids to adults), no matter what style of games you prefer! Absolutely recommended!
GRAPHICS / SOUND The Amiga version's visuals are identical to the Atari ST, while the Amiga has superior music and sound effects! This exquisite presentation generates a suitable comic-book feel throughout the whole game. The stylish graphics are combined with plenty of suitable sound effects and other funny stuff, offering a real treat to the eyes and ears! The game's music is a spoof from national or war march anthems and it really is absolutely gorgeous! There is also a PC (DOS) version running on EGA or CGA graphics modes; the EGA mode is close enough to the original, at least in terms of graphics. Every Amiga owner should try this game at least once, only to find that it's so addictive!
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