Wrath of the Demon
Wrath of the Demon, developed by Abstrax and published by Readysoft and distributed by Empire Software in 1991.
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Player's Review
"Nothing Escapes the Demon's Grasp! Legends tell of a time when fear ruled the land. A time when no man, woman or child was safe from the spread of evil. A time when a fierce Demon sent his evil minions to roam through the land and make the Kingdom his own. That time is upon us once again...
You have been summoned by the King to defend the realm, rescue the Princess, and rid the Kingdom of the evil Demon before all is lost. Your quest will lead you through caves, swamps, temples and castles before reaching your ultimate challenge...the Demon himself.
Wrath of the Demon combines spectacular graphics, animation, sound and playability, featuring:
- 3 Megabytes of graphics data
- 600 screens of action
- 1,400 frames of animation
- over 100 monsters, some larger than half the screen
- more than 100 colours on screen
- smooth 60 frames per second, 15-level parallax scrolling for realistic 3D effect
- compatible with processor accelerators"
Wrath of the Demon is an odd one which plays like a Shadow of the beast clone and possibly what you might have expected the Best II sequel to be. Whilst it has no platforming sections it does have some long running levels and together with the music and parallax backgrounds it is very much Shadow of the beast complete with bad collision detection as you try to hit enemies as the run from either side of the screen.
The game is made up of a couple of different gameplay styles starting with the horse ride which is fast and can be really difficult to spot the potions and when to jump and quite a hard level to start the quest on. There are poison potions mixed in (red/pink) to watch out for too. Then there are some sword fight levels when you need to defeat the enemy to proceed and they usually drop a potion or needed item. The walking stages have you going left or right with you needing to defeat enemies running at you whilst you get to the other side. It can be important to go the right way else you got to fight you way back to the correct side for a needed item.
The game is split into two halves with the smaller walking and fighting stages leading up to the castle which is the second half and takes the most time to get through. It has many doors that need to be visited but now you have to find the switches and keys to open those doors requiring some back tracking through hordes of enemies. There are potions to find as well to keep that energy up and the fight scenes might be a blessing if it can save an energy potions.
I don't like to keep bringing up Beast but just like that game you have one energy bar. Lose all energy and it loads the game over screen. However, in this game you can pick up extra life potions although you can only hold three at a time. You can use it it when you like to reset the energy bar but note that the bar resets anyway at the start of a stage. There are a couple of extra potions for invincibility and insta kill and these are few and need to be used wisely. During the second part of the forest run you will need the invincibility to get past some blades that are in your way and if you don't have those potions ready, you are likely done. Energy potions are plentiful giving you every chance to get through the game but it is better to memorise some of those enemy patterns although the collision detection can be really frustrating saying you are hit when there is a clear gap between you and the enemy. Mostly you face one obstacle at a time but sometimes two enemies can be onscreen at once.
Being from Abstrax as Canadian company I believe the game is primarily designed for US NTSC so I have pinned this as the primary version of the game. The game works just fine in PAL of course but I don't think anything special was done to make sure timing is correct especially with the music. I cant tell if region specific versions were released so assume its one version for everyone. Even the uk box talked about the game being in 60fps. The disk version is being played on an A500 config and comes on four disks. Loading time can feel long and I couldn't easily chop them from the video as the audio is playing whilst loading. Being designed for 512k Amigas, there is also some loading mid level freezing the gameplay whilst it does so just as Shadow of the Beast before it.
Overall, it's a well made game and looks technically great but maybe too difficult for it's own good just like the beast games. David Whitakers music while it sounds like it's been used before in a certain game is also a great addition and maybe a bit slow on pal machines. I'm not 100% sure but I think the CDTV release of the game does have a save function if you had a rare memory card for the machine.
As a bonus video I have included a PAL recorded only because I recorded it first before considering it might be an ntsc game.
00:00:00 Titles / Intro
00:02:13 Intro 2
00:03:40 Stage 1 (Horse Ride)
00:06:48 Stage 2 (Goblin Fight)
00:08:04 Stage 3 (Dragon Fight)
00:09:47 Stage 4 (Cave Walk)
00:16:13 Stage 5 (Caveman Fight)
00:18:19 Stage 6 (Jungle man Fight)
00:20:06 Stage 7 (Forrest Walk 1)
00:23:33 Stage 8 (The Tower)
00:24:45 Stage 9 (Forest Walk 2)
00:31:31 Stage 10 (The Temple)
00:33:37 Stage 11 (Castle 1)
00:45:05 Stage 12 (Goblin Fight 2)
00:46:27 Stage 13 (Castle 2)
00:49:30 Stage 14 (Dragon Fight 2)
00:50:58 Stage 15 (Castle 3)
00:58:58 Stage 16 (Demon Fight)
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01:04:38 Horse Ride to Game Over
You have been summoned by the King to defend the realm, rescue the Princess, and rid the Kingdom of the evil Demon before all is lost. Your quest will lead you through caves, swamps, temples and castles before reaching your ultimate challenge...the Demon himself.
Wrath of the Demon combines spectacular graphics, animation, sound and playability, featuring:
- 3 Megabytes of graphics data
- 600 screens of action
- 1,400 frames of animation
- over 100 monsters, some larger than half the screen
- more than 100 colours on screen
- smooth 60 frames per second, 15-level parallax scrolling for realistic 3D effect
- compatible with processor accelerators"
Wrath of the Demon is an odd one which plays like a Shadow of the beast clone and possibly what you might have expected the Best II sequel to be. Whilst it has no platforming sections it does have some long running levels and together with the music and parallax backgrounds it is very much Shadow of the beast complete with bad collision detection as you try to hit enemies as the run from either side of the screen.
The game is made up of a couple of different gameplay styles starting with the horse ride which is fast and can be really difficult to spot the potions and when to jump and quite a hard level to start the quest on. There are poison potions mixed in (red/pink) to watch out for too. Then there are some sword fight levels when you need to defeat the enemy to proceed and they usually drop a potion or needed item. The walking stages have you going left or right with you needing to defeat enemies running at you whilst you get to the other side. It can be important to go the right way else you got to fight you way back to the correct side for a needed item.
The game is split into two halves with the smaller walking and fighting stages leading up to the castle which is the second half and takes the most time to get through. It has many doors that need to be visited but now you have to find the switches and keys to open those doors requiring some back tracking through hordes of enemies. There are potions to find as well to keep that energy up and the fight scenes might be a blessing if it can save an energy potions.
I don't like to keep bringing up Beast but just like that game you have one energy bar. Lose all energy and it loads the game over screen. However, in this game you can pick up extra life potions although you can only hold three at a time. You can use it it when you like to reset the energy bar but note that the bar resets anyway at the start of a stage. There are a couple of extra potions for invincibility and insta kill and these are few and need to be used wisely. During the second part of the forest run you will need the invincibility to get past some blades that are in your way and if you don't have those potions ready, you are likely done. Energy potions are plentiful giving you every chance to get through the game but it is better to memorise some of those enemy patterns although the collision detection can be really frustrating saying you are hit when there is a clear gap between you and the enemy. Mostly you face one obstacle at a time but sometimes two enemies can be onscreen at once.
Being from Abstrax as Canadian company I believe the game is primarily designed for US NTSC so I have pinned this as the primary version of the game. The game works just fine in PAL of course but I don't think anything special was done to make sure timing is correct especially with the music. I cant tell if region specific versions were released so assume its one version for everyone. Even the uk box talked about the game being in 60fps. The disk version is being played on an A500 config and comes on four disks. Loading time can feel long and I couldn't easily chop them from the video as the audio is playing whilst loading. Being designed for 512k Amigas, there is also some loading mid level freezing the gameplay whilst it does so just as Shadow of the Beast before it.
Overall, it's a well made game and looks technically great but maybe too difficult for it's own good just like the beast games. David Whitakers music while it sounds like it's been used before in a certain game is also a great addition and maybe a bit slow on pal machines. I'm not 100% sure but I think the CDTV release of the game does have a save function if you had a rare memory card for the machine.
As a bonus video I have included a PAL recorded only because I recorded it first before considering it might be an ntsc game.
00:00:00 Titles / Intro
00:02:13 Intro 2
00:03:40 Stage 1 (Horse Ride)
00:06:48 Stage 2 (Goblin Fight)
00:08:04 Stage 3 (Dragon Fight)
00:09:47 Stage 4 (Cave Walk)
00:16:13 Stage 5 (Caveman Fight)
00:18:19 Stage 6 (Jungle man Fight)
00:20:06 Stage 7 (Forrest Walk 1)
00:23:33 Stage 8 (The Tower)
00:24:45 Stage 9 (Forest Walk 2)
00:31:31 Stage 10 (The Temple)
00:33:37 Stage 11 (Castle 1)
00:45:05 Stage 12 (Goblin Fight 2)
00:46:27 Stage 13 (Castle 2)
00:49:30 Stage 14 (Dragon Fight 2)
00:50:58 Stage 15 (Castle 3)
00:58:58 Stage 16 (Demon Fight)
----------------------------------------------
01:04:38 Horse Ride to Game Over
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