Rise of the Robots

"A REVOLUTION IN COMBAT GAMES. UNIQUE COMBAT INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM THAT ADAPTS TO AND LEARNS YOUR STYLE OF PLAY. THE FIRST GAME WITH FILM QUALITY, CONTROLLABLE 3-D GRAPHICS. ROBOT ATTACK ROUTINES CHOREOGRAPHED BY A MARTIAL ARTS EXPERT. WITNESS THE FIRST EVER MORPHING CHARACTER TO APPEAR IN A COMPUTER GAME. AWESOME CINEMATIC LINK SEQUENCES."

One of the big releases of 1994. A multiplatform fighting game ported to all the current home computer and game consoles of the the time It also went down as one of the biggest flops not only in 1994 but ever both commercially and in the minds of reviewers and players. If you get aboard the hype train you will surly be left disappointed. The duplication costs alone must have have nearly bankrupted the company, but the game somehow done well enough to greenlight Rise 2 although that would utilise cheap cd technology.

For the Amiga, it was released as three separate versions for the A500 class, A1200 AGA and CD32. In the case of the A1200 version played here, it was distributed on thirteen floppies, matching the pc dos version. Five disks just for Intro, one for the hd installer and seven for the game. This was a time when Amiga games were being scaled back, cutting content to fit. If it didn't fit on two or three disks, it likely wouldn't be published unless the game was so good deserving of more. The game cost a whopping £39.99 (with cd version being a little cheaper at £34.99) with gameplay that lasts maybe thirty minutes with movies enabled. Only a handful of games used between five and up to fifteen disks and were reserved for big point and click adventure games. They cost a lot but at least they were good games that kept you entertained for weeks or at least a few hours if you were just that good.

Rise of the Robots is a fighting game and a very linier one as you can only play as the Cyborg as you battle all the ai controlled robots until finally meeting the supervisor robot. The linearity makes all the disk swapping barrable as you move smoothly through the set. You get a few basic moves as well as two special moves which are absolutely needed on the hard difficulty. you wont be cheesing it with a continuous high kick. Because of all the fighter animation frames there is a huge amount of lag which can cause problems connecting the hits. There are only a few moves but controls can be cumbersome. In order to do damage you need to charge your hit power by holding fire and then performing the fighting move. The charge is lost if you move your fighter. The a also has a habit of going into block stance diminishing your power move. Its a quick run through the five main opponents and once beaten you get to fight them all again before taking on the final fight. At the end of the game I go into a training round as Sentry to defeat Cyborg and show his death screen.

Overall, it's a well presented game and you cant fault the artwork but the gameplay is where it suffers. Never mind the short fighter roster, limited move sets and quick fights, its all the hype around the fighter Artificial Intelligence and the huge lack of it when the game shipped. The opponents spend most time blocking your attacks and can magically pull out all the heavy hitters when attacking you and often are just cycling one move over an over. The difficulty options have a huge effect going from easy where you can just punch them to death to hard where only your high power moves will hurt them. Nothing to do with making them fight better.

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:00 Title Music
00:03:42 Loader
00:06:31 Builder
00:08:30 Crusher
00:10:31 Military
00:12:36 Sentry
00:15:23 Loader
00:17:27 Builder
00:20:07 Crusher
00:22:04 Military
00:24:14 Sentry
00:26:37 Supervisor
00:28:45 Ending
00:31:43 Training as Sentry