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As voluntary reviewers in a fan-based community we may not get money for our efforts, but to compensate that we have the liberty of focusing on titles we cherished and loved in the golden days of the best of gaming platforms.
Be it my desire to complete a series of reviews about red jacket donning action heroes or the welcome opportunity to write something really not at all that praising for a change I have opted to give away that liberty focusing on something from the fouler, bilge-drenched parts of gamescape...
Ladies and gentlemen: I give you...
...Rolling Thunder!
If you were eager into the scene back in the day, you'll remember Tiertex
from other 'quality' titles such as Alien Storm and Dynasty Wars. Or perhaps, you won't, since thankfully most of that crap has sunk into an abyss of oblivion, and rightfully so.
Now, don't get me wrong. (And you, arcade junkies, stop stoning me to death with your leftover coins!) Let me specify: The aforementioned titles were good and engaging games in their original coin-op forms. It's only too bad the happy fellas from Manchester were a tad too eager to port every arcade game they got their grubby hands on to Amiga, with invariably disastrous results.
It could be deducted that Tiertex was the reverse king Midas taking solid gold and turning it inexorably into a pile of hot, steaming excrement with a touch that can only be described as magic.
And now that we're set in the mood...
The game opens to a view of a green, red-eyed goblin from Hero Quest laughing scaaarily. It's laughing at you. It's laughing at you for having obtained this miserable excuse for a game.
In the meantime, the goblin's henchmen that were apparently pooled from the gay Ku Klux Klan member surplus do a dance to honor their leader's might. Remember, this was the golden age of Michael Jackson and Bad.
Ha ha ha ha!
Don't leave this marvel of intro sequences just yet, but check out the ingame keys: Maybe you want to start the 2 player mode in case you have a swindled your friend to yearn to experience the exciting world of an R.T. cop.
You will thank yourself for memorizing the game keys, since the first thing that threatens your life in level 1 is not the bullets flung at you by pink-hooded imperial wizards nor the grenades dropped on you from the floor above, it's not even the protagonist's slow, gentlemanly stroll that would be well suited for a funeral procession or an english bridge club - anywhere but a firefight.
No, it's the creepy neverending background tune that consists of two alternating five-second parts that was aptly described as "continual samba-type tune" in CU Amiga. It's not a tune to set you into that special, adrenaline pounding pop-the-baddies-save-the-world-mood you want from an action game.
You start in a warehouse riddled with the bad guys.
The only mood the Rolling Thunder tune sets you into is one of making funny little finger dance moves in front of the computer with your eyes crossed and a stupid grin on your face, drooling.
After you've disposed of that, most dangerous enemy you have to face, it's time to walk ahead to face the dangers. Walk slooowly to face the dangers.
Coming out of closet
You may think this is an ordinary side-scroller, but you're in for a surprise as the first KKK'ers jump elegantly down from the floor above to pester you. Yes! There are two floors you can take the action on. Double the fun!
The other original element is the clever usage of doors bringing some primitive 3-D activity to Amiga. Yep, in the action-filled corridors there are doors from which lethal enemies appear when you least expect it. You can avenge them for this dastardly behaviour by entering one of the closets yourself!
When you do this, the enemies in their intimidating pink, lime 'n' red
outfits are totally gobsmacked and won't know what to do. They freeze in their tracks and start wildly looking over their shoulders with all the smoothness of their two animation frames.
Soon, a complete panic overcomes their nervous systems. Sometimes they even start lobbing grenades uselessly to the floor below just to conceal their fear. And all the while you've been chuckling in the closet two feet away from them. You can then swiftly emerge and end their misery with your pistol.
Miraculously, the baddies are grenade-proof.
However, keep a respectful distance to the purple-capped night hawks as they, having realized your trickery, become enraged and will dan-dan-dance you to death with their spastic fist-moves if you happen to venture too near.
Then, on you go to face more frightening adversaries like deformed yellow pygmys with curly hands, fearsome panthers with evil intentions and horrible mutant bats.
Worst comes to worst
Well, the music aside, the review still sounds like it's about a dull yet quite-a ordinary platformer. Hmm. How could I convey the massive amounts of suckage of this conversion to the masses?
Let's start with the graphics. They are quite horrible taking little advantage of Amiga's capabilities. I mean, come on, is that pale white bloke the best you could do with the most powerful home computer of the time?
The smoothness of two animation frames mentioned earlier there holds so nearly true to every character in the game it could be consider equal to true. To put other aspects in par with the crappy animation, Tiertex has managed to make the game commendably unresponsive.
There's no telling whether R.T. the action hero will empty his clip to the nearest opponent or just stand there smiling happily at the death that is equally happy to claim him, even if you're pounding the fire button like a jackhammer.
Equally deadly but a bit more irritating and is the way the platform-jumping works.
Luckily, here the second floor saves you.
In many places like the picture here you won't be able to jump on the higher of the grey platforms, but just over it, and helped by your momentum, diagonally to the spastic fist of a Klansmember.
Of course you can wait until the enemy jumps and blast him with a well-timed shot, but by then your clock has ticked to naught. No, the only real option is to play the level over and over until by blind luck, there happens to be no enemies at that point and you can cross safely. Woo-hoo, my idea of fun.
Final verdict
Due to the extensively repeating nature of the game and some irritable edge of the samples that is quite hard to pinpoint, the sound effects are definitely more irksome to listen to than on most of the other games.
There are a couple of good samples in the game, but mostly they're like the gun sound - which is probably a recording from some of the programmers croaking 'ciao', and the bullet hit sound is 'chap' equally.
As a whole Rolling thunder is by no means an easy one. It takes in places very much skill to get through. You can even take it as a challenge to beat if you manage to tackle the half-baked playability and stupid quirks in platform-jumping.
Yep, you can take it as a challenge, but enjoy it you will not.
To be honest I might have been too harsh on this one... During this intense trip down the Tiertex lane I came along an intriguing specimen of gaming history called Human Killing Machine. As of yet, I haven't tried it, but something tells me if this game reaped a 2, it could well be off the scale...
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OK, it beats the C64 version on the graphics side. Which is not saying much.
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Ciao! Chap!
Samba, samba!
The excerpts above should read:
Upper line - Gun sounds
Lower line - Action game music
Too bad, they don't.
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Unresponsive, unpolished and unfair.
The fun factor is completely missing here.
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This game sucks like a lamprey eel.
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Get Amiga Forever with pre-installed Workbench, games, applications, and much more.
It also contains the original Amiga ROM-files, 100% legally!
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