Elfmania

STORY / GAMEPLAY
According to the ancient magical laws of Muhmulandia (the Land of the Elves) whoever challenges the Crown to an Honor Fight and finally wins, he/she will gain control of the whole realm. Also, there's another, even greater, prize that awaits. It's the mystical Dragon Fan that will reveal the secrets of the Universe. It is surely a prize worth fighting for, but you must give the king a reason to fight and to do this you must hire your own fighters to conquer the Champion Fighters (the King's army). Well, the story doesn't say much but trust me, the result is an awesome one-on-one fighting experience. As this is a not-so-violent game, the bars at the top of the screen do not represent the amount of energy remaining. Every time a fighter lands a punch, the opponent's bank balance is reduced and a coin appears on-screen which can be punched back into the other player to inflict more damage. You can combine some nice attacks, by punching once, wait for the coin to appear and then punch again! This is useful to particularly defeat armed opponents. To pull a special move you have to rapidly repeat a certain moves combination until your character launches towards the opponent. This method works well but it also gives your opponent the chance to pull back and avoid the special attack. Another nice feature is that you are not actually fighting alone but you're constantly hiring people to participate in the fights! As long as you collect coins and win battles you'll have the chance to hire more capable fighters who will become valuable assets when you'll have to fight the King. The developers managed to retain everything we love about fighting games back then while they radically altered gameplay to make it a more taxing and strategic fight-fest of the mid 90's! Even the way you initiate your special moves is smart; not only is moderately easy to do but it also gives your opponent the chance to see what you're up to and react accordingly (this automatically removes the element of a surprise attack though)! Overall, Elfmania is superb and the control system really works, especially with the addition of this coin-punching feature.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Terramarue managed to create a very colorful and beautifully animated game for the A500! Elfmania made all other fighting games for the OCS to look like outdated crap! The parallax is nothing short of incredible and all screens offer more than 100 simultaneous colors on screen! The moving backgrounds are large and beautiful, while the range and quality of the animations has to be seen to be believed. Surely the attention to detail pays off and we have a technically amazing game. The scenes actually look like three dimensional and the backgrounds realistically fade into the distance. Also, on each scene's background there is an animated object or a character! The sumptuous graphics will draw you in and, considering this is a standard A500 title, it leaves you wondering how this game would look on an A1200 or a CD32 version! The game's music accompanies every fight scene but it isn't so outstanding as the visuals. Surely it is not irritating but probably a more appropriate soundtrack choice of could have really enhance the game's atmosphere. The game features all the necessary sound effects i.e. shouts, cries and bangs that fit in every move (fully sampled of course) and they all realistically convey the action.