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 graphics look quite similar to the R-Type, with its semi-organic atmosphere. They are not brilliant on the Amiga conversion, which is negative. Although the sprite detection is very good and the backdrops sport a lot of variety and remain faithful enough to the coin-op, there are occasional frame-rate drops while the color palette is limited to ... 16 colors only! This leads to understand that the Amiga version is actually a lazy ST port! The actual playing area is also restricted, though the interesting backgrounds. The scrolling slow-downs could work to your advantage, giving you some extra time to react! Comparably, the only arcade-perfect conversion is the Sharp X68000's. The truth is, I would expect better results (at least in graphics and animation) from the Amiga hardware but it seems that there is no actual use of the OCS custom chips. The sound is fairly good and adds to the overall style of the game since it offers a smashing piece of music as well as some nice stereo sound effects during the game.