Project-X / Ultimate Body Blows (Critical Zone)

"Project-X
Heart-pounding, arcade quality shoot'em-ups could not be done on the Amiga - or so they said until Project-X came along. Project-X is the Amiga CD32's most action-packed and engaging galactic blast with coin-op style graphics and truly earth-shattering gameplay! For raw energy... for raw action... Project-X is the obvious and only choice. At last, the Amiga CD32 has a real arcade style blast. At last, you can experience the thrills and enraptuous spills of a real game. Project-X- sets fire to your senses.

Ultimate Body Blows
No ordinary mortal can turn down the ultimate challenge. But can you accept the challenge and win? Can you enter into close quarters combat with 23 hardened fighters and survive? Are you a real champion or one of life's chumps? Ultimate Body Blows is the hardest hitting beat'em-up ever designed and developed. If you think you can throw a good punch, there's only one way to prove it... play the CD32's best ever beat'em-up."

The Amiga CD32 Critical Zone pack came with seven bundled games including the Project-X / Ultimate Bodyblows compilation as played here. This also includes a couple of game demos also published by Team 17.

Project-X is a shootemup featuring five levels and is the Special edition release of the game with shorter levels and easier game play. In each you blast enemies for power ups you can use to upgrade your weapons. Three different craft are available with slightly differing abilities. I have longplayed this before and made sure this time to disable autofire so that I can show the beam weapon by holding fire to charge. It is all over quite quickly thanks to the much faster game loading from cd.

Ultimate Body Blows is the combination of the original Body Blows game and Body Blows Galactic. 22 characters to fight against in a single player with one character or in multiplayer tag team or tournament. Each fighter has there own special moves activated by pressing fire and a direction. Using a CD32 pad allows for separate kick, punch and special move buttons. The longplay firstly goes through the game set to max speed and difficulty best of three rounds. This is frustratingly difficult as your super move is blocked often (wont charge) and connecting moves is seemly random with the cpu opponent seemingly able to block everything at will. The second play is with the unlocked T17 , single round on Skill level2 and makes the game a cakewalk like the opponent suddenly isn't interested in playing.

Overall, as Pack-In games go, this was a good one featuring two high quality games with Ultimate Body blows being the only AGA game and taking advantage of CD audio. The high quality demos only add to this compilation and is far better than the Oscar/Diggers compilation that was included with every CD32 and also included in the Critical Zone pack which had a very good bundle overall and don't think you could be disappointed if you had it.

Part 1
00:00:00 Project-X
00:36:14 Alien Breed Tower Assault (Demo)
00:46:30 Superfrog (Demo)

Part2
00:00:00 Ultimate Body Blows Instructions
00:02:50 Ultimate Body Blows (Skill 3 Turbo 2, Kai Ti)
00:45:30 Ultimate Body Blows (Skill2, 1 Round, T17)
01:06:05 Super Stardust (Rolling Demo)
01:10:17 Arcade Pool (Demo)