Barbarian (Palace)

Ah Barbarian, and 8bit classic and one of the first of the ST's first rate games. Not to be confused with Barbarian by Pysgnosis. Palace's Barbarian is an entirely different bag of baps. Sporting some ideas, er, borrowed from the film Conan the Barbarian, Barbarian is actually a quite addictive, if slightly shallow, fighting game in the style of I.K., Streetfighter et all. The graphics are a bit '8bit' as you'd expect from a conversion but they're fairly colourful and attractive. Sound is pretty good, suprisingly, with a excellent range of sampled grunts and thumps. There are quite a few nice little touches as well, like the little green chap who comes along to drag off the bodies of the loser and the rather nasty decapitation move... I'll leave you to figure that one out. Controls are simple to understand and pretty well balanced. Blocks, forward rolls and various chops are all available to you and thankfully there is no where near the ridiculous complexity of Streetfighter 2. Pretty good, if lacking depth, but then it's a beat'em-up; depth is not a required factor.

Zogging Hell Rating: 8/10

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Cheats

On the one-player game, roll into the middle of the screen and kneel down, then swipe at your opponent's legs. Due to a strange quirk in the program, the other warrior cannot retaliate and you should be able to get the evil wizard with ease.

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