Guard your fort, castle, ship from hostile enemies with a big hammer as your only weapon! Hammer Boy was inspired by the 1985 Game & Watch Nintendo game named "Fire Attack", and later in 1990 released on the arcades by Dinamic Software running on an Amiga PCB hardware! The game was ported a year later to the 8bit Amstrad CPC, Commodore C64, MSX, ZX Spectrum and on the 16bit Atari ST/E, Commodore Amiga and PC (MS-DOS) computers.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Your main mission is to defend your territory -within a specific time limit- and prevent the enemies from reaching the walls of your fort by hitting them on the head with a big hammer(!) You're constantly being bombed by the enemy forces and you must put out fires that are set from the wall's sides. If too many enemies enter the fortress, they'll capture the flag and then you must start all over again. Note that on the next levels you defend different settings like a castle, a ship etc. Hammer Boy is one of those games based on a very simple concept and offer great fun. It's an addictive and good looking game that has 4 levels, each with its own backgrounds (battleship, castle and a space station) and its corresponding enemies (natives, pirates, knights and aliens). The gameplay remains the same in every level and this repetitive fact may make you easily bored (or maybe not?)
GRAPHICS / SOUND Both visuals and music are pretty good in the CPC version. The graphics look better than the Commodore's version, with more bright colors and better designed backgrounds. The sprites are also nicely drawn, but the overall action is kinda slower when compared to the C64 version. The CPC version features a nice introductory tune and several funny sound effects and music during gameplay.
CPU: ZiLOG Z80 4MHZ MEMORY: 64 KB or 128 KB of RAM depending on the model (capable of being expanded to 512k using memory extension boards) GRAPHICS: Motorola 6845 address generator, Mode 0: 160x200 / 16 colors, Mode 1: 320x200 / 4 colors, Mode 2: 640x200 / 2 colors, A colour palette of 27 colors was supported SOUND: The CPC used the General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing 3 channels Mono Sound (via internal speaker) but capable to offer Stereo Sound provided through a 3.5 mm headphones jack (with pretty impressive outcome!). Also, it is possible to play back digital sound samples at a resolution of approximately 5bit. This technique is very processor-intensive though.