Be Excellent To Each Other

Regular viewers will remember that at the turn of the year I did a round up of the software released by Amsoft. Most of it was rubbish, but there were a few gems. Sorcery + was one such gem.



Highly acclaimed on the Spectrum and C64, it was given a disc only port to the CPC. The reviews were the best any CPC game had seen and with good reason. This was no Speccy port, it looked good and played well.

But the game quickly faded from view. I'm not sure why, like Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga one minute the game was being run on a loop in computer shops (indeed the game has an attract mode for just this purpose), the next it was forgotten.

Perhaps it was all hype, perhaps better games came out or perhaps gaming moved on. But today I want to find out if the game actually still stands up and try to work out just why it went from hero to zero. I also had the game sitting on my desk after finding it the other week and wanted to entice you with original artwork.

The aim of all this is to play the game and post what you think in this thread. Pithy paragraphs and comments rather than full reviews. When we're all done I'll collate them and will turn it into an article.




To play:

You'll need a CPC emulator. 8 Bit Challange players will already have this but if not there are some links below:

Windows - http://www.winape.net/
Mac - http://www.bannister.org/software/arnold.htm

You'll also need a disc image:



To load the game, insert the disc image and type: run"disc"

Ensure you have configured a joystick in the emulator as the game has no keyboard controls. Don't worry, the emulators will let you map to the keyboard.

Instructions to play:

For a start the emu won't let me map the up on my 360 pad to x or b where I need it (pushing a stick up to jump is unnatural and stupid on a pad). Secondly can I kill that ghost with my sword? Seems reaching a weapon usually tends to happen at the same time as the enemy catching me up, which feels a bit cheap. I can't kil an eye with an axe for some reason.

Like the graphics though, they remind me of my BBC.

You need to move fast. But there are lots of opportunities to recharge your energy.

Different items do different things. From memory:

The ball and chain kills the eye and also the skull thing.
The axe thing kills the ghosts + possibly the dog face thing.
The sack of spells and shooting stars kill anything in their path (they shoot out four bolts to the side and up and down).
The swords kill the hag things.

You have to press fire when holding the object to activate it.

All the items do stuff. You have to work out what. The cauldrons can be used to recharge your energy but be warned, some will randomly suck energy for you.

Special looking objects release the sorcerers from their prisons. Eg the bible releases the sorcerer closest to the sanctuary.

Just got a little more into it, killed a few enemies, they don't appear to respawn, which is nice. Then I end up at 'the waterfall' where I instantly die. Way too cheap, I'm off for a glass of dandelion and burdock to give myself some retro thrills that don't disappoint.

How do I unlock the green doors? I'm getting a key and standing next to them and pressing fire, but no joy. Also, the trapdoors with the loop handles. If that's what they are.

/edit Ah, we posted across one another. I'll look into it a bit more then, though the arbitrary trial and error was never something I understood when I was a child so these type of games never quite grabbed me. It's like trying to render a classic Lucasarts point n' click puzzler in the Jet Set Willy universe with the Jet-Pac control scheme. On drugs.

It's weird. The game is trial and error. Sometimes the puzzles involve logic, sometimes its trial and error. And I'd forgotten what a bastard game it was at times. I used a coat of arms to enter a locked door, which then took me into a room I couldn't get out of again.

Somehow I considered this acceptable in 1986. Likewise the instant death when you hit the water or the fact for much of the game you end up trying to work out what object does what. I must have had the patience of a saint considering that I managed to rescue the majority of the sorcerers on more than one occasion.

This guy seems to know where all the objects are:



Somehow I really loved this game at the time, but its abit cack now. But why did I like it so much? Yes the graphics were nice but I'm now trying to rack my brains to work out why this kind of gameplay was acceptable at the time.

Was it that games hadn't developed enough to be logical? Remember the first Dizzy game didn't get great reviews, and IIRC one of the accusations was that it was rather simplistic. In retrospect Dizzy 1 was very very logical. The puzzles made sense and it didn't deserve the lowish marks it attracted.

Or perhaps we expected our games to be harder and had longer attention spans. All I can say is after 3 short games of Sorcery + this evening it got turned off.

This was one of the big features at the time. What you kill stays dead, pretty much unheard of when the game came out. Baddies also retain their last position when you leave a room IIRC.

Not too thrilled... As has been mentioned, the trial-and-error gameplay really leaves me cold. That and the relentless pace; on first play, you arrive in the gameworld not sure what exactly you have to do, but get attacked the minute you start playing, so there's no time to get your bearings. The pace (when there are enemies on screen) suits an action game, and one with a basic premise, like shooting stuff.

Makes me ponder how much more user-friendly games are these days, really. There's no clues or logic, there's a randomly-generated gameworld that can leave you opening a door into instant deaths... Although, the inconsistency of the usage/purpose of the items is the worst gameplay flaw, I think.

Still, the short turnaround in gameplay (die after 20 seconds, replay again in seconds, die again) is welcome from today's more bloated games. Yes, I know there's the New Arcade movement, and all those simple games apps, but I don't own an iPhone.

I'd have probably spent an hour or more in the old days playing something like this (possibly Sorcery+, had I owned a CPC rather than a Spectrum), but I realise that wouldbe more due to the thrill and novelty of being able move colourful things about on a television screen than anything else. That and the fact that an infinite amount of games weren't available on the end of the phone-line, so every last drop of entertainment had to be wrung from every cassette.

The game map is consistent rather than random and actually I suspect it would look really nice if mapped out as Malc did for Super Robin Hood.

I can live with the fast moving action although indeed it was a novelty to see sprites moving smoothy and with that level of detail.

Perhaps it was down to presentation. The C64 version is quite a contrast:



Could it be that Sorcery + was the CPC's Shadow of the Beast? We somehow overlooked all the faults because the graphics were the best around at that time? Oddly enough I played Beast a few weeks back and my first impression was that it was pretty terrible.

Very much a product of the era, we may eve have wanted our games like this - unwilling to buy a game that would be over quickly, maybe the game lived as much afk as sat there, joystick in hand? Mapping the levels, discussing with mates at school what did what, needing magazines and therefore the trip into town and therefore getting out into the world, away from your bedroom, because in Smiths that month one of the mags MIGHT have the answer you needed. Today all I need is this box I'm sat at, for EVERYTHING. Simply for forcing that not to be the case, games like Sorcery have meaning and purpose today.

That said, I'm off downstairs to play Halo Reach online against a bunch of people I'll not bother putting a headset on to talk to.

Adn yes, Shadow of the Beast. Hopeless. I was friends with 3 brothers who'd an Amiga and they were allowed a game new each. From memory, one got Italia 90, which we all enjoyed. One got Robocop 3, which we all enjoyed. One got SotB and never, ever lived it down. Taught us all a valuable lesson about graphics that game did.

Ah, I thought we'd be playing forgotten 360 games that cost 50p now or something.

You honestly thought the first game wouldn't be for the Amstrad?!

We will do. My initial opinion was it was wrong to ask people to spend money but popular opinion seems to disagree. There's no reason why we can't do a full spread from ZX81 to the 360.

Only because I actually found the game a while back by chance and could scan the instructions and cover. The main problem with many games in emulators is the lack of the original instructions.

Harsh but fair.

Reading these comments, it would appear the cover illustration is the best bit.

Not really fair. Having watched the Youtube playthrough there does appear to be some logic. The problem is working out what object does what.

It's almost like Dizzy on speed but without the very logical puzzles in those games.

But the look on his face! It's brilliant!

The look on your mum's face is brilliant...

To remind myself of the context of the game, I jumped in and played some other 1985 CPC fare. For all its faults, Sorcery + is light years ahead of every other game in terms of presentation.

To demonstrate this I went on Youtube and pulled up a game at random released at the same time.



My conclusion is that we loved Sorcery + because it was just so far ahead of its time. But as we headed into into '86 and '87 we started to see games like Head Over Heels come out which looked great but also played great. So Sorcery + was ahead of its time in terms of presentation, and perhaps gameplay as well (given the fact it remembers the state of a room as you left it) but within 18 months everyone had caught up. Suddenly the gameplay flaws were exposed and we forgot about it.

Almost like the Ultimate games. Loved them at the time but once you had played Batman and Head Over Heels they just seemed dated and clunky. Doesn't take anything away from the Ultimate games of course, just that they were eventually bettered.

I often get the feeling you must be a lot older than me Chinny, being as my memory of the games of this era is so hazy, but I understand from previous revelations that this is not the case.

To be fair, the more probable reason for my hazy memory is that my parents saw fit to furnish me with a BBC B in the eighties, with very little games for it too. It was with a mixture of both joy and horror when I downloaded a large set of BBC disc images for use with an emulator recently and discovered that the Beeb had perfectly serviceable ports of Jet Set Willy and Mikie and I'd had no idea at the time. I was too busy playing Life of Repton and Spycat.

Anyway, I might have to indulge in this retro fest at some point. I can only remember 3 CPC games that I liked from the time (Short Circuit, Werewolves of London and Metro Cross), but I'm quite certain there must be many others.

The Beeb owner I knew had none of the games the rest of us had. All he could do was go on about Killer Gorilla and Repton when faced with the rest of the kids playing all the latest games.

Werewolves is a good game and should have a review at Up To Jump wot I wrote.

Coming back to this, whenever we touch on reminiscence of the 8-bit era, I realise how different my experiences of the time were, being a bit younger than most. I only knew one other child at early primary school who even had a computer at home (and he had an Amstrad PCW!) so I didn't get playground discussions about, say, the merits of C64 vs. Spectrum, or swapping cassette tapes with my peers and so forth. Everything changed when the 16-bit era rolled around, and games were more common as a form of entertainment, but at times like this I realise how much more fun the 8-bit heyday would've been had I been slightly more older and aware.

Hope he had Head Over Heels:



Despite not supposed to be capable of graphics suitable for games, Ocean first managed it with Batman. Apparently the PCW's designers at Brentwood House were quite taken aback. The machine simply wasn't designed to be capable of such things.

Wiki:

Hey, he didn't have Head Over Heels, but he did have Batman!

I played HoH as my parents had Ocean's Magnificent Seven compilation. Discovered Batman about a year later, as my dad bought it in a branch of Woolworths, the Hit Squad budget label re-release. My parents were big fans of Head Over Heels, playing it to 2am sometimes and mapping it out on graph paper, so getting a second fix pleased them, even if Batman was the inferior game of the two. It helped that with Batman, I got lots of advice from my schoolfriend to pass on. He managed to complete Batman at a remarkably young age, child prodigy stylee.

Batman is another forgotten game. Raved about on release and then blown away by Head Over Heels.

So, you downloading Sorcery+ then?

Chinny, I will try this, I promise. But today, as the weather was decent (ie: not rain) was more concerned with trying to trim the colossal shrub at the front of my house back with the electric trimmer without cutting my fingers off. By the time that was done I just wanted a shower and then lots of beer.

Each to their own.

Okay, been playing it while the NFS:HS demo downloads.

So far I have to admit it's a bit cack. The fucking rivers especially, even though I can obviously fucking fly, as soon as my feet get even damp I fall completely in and die instantly. I'd say half my deaths are due to the water. It's ridiculous.

All enemies just charge straight at you (some through walls or objects you can't pass through) and just touch you to drain your energy. So even killing them is almost impossible without taking damage. That each only dies to a specific weapon is frustrating, as is the fact that 'a strong sword' breaks after one chop.

Still can't figure out how to get the green doors or the wooden plug things open, some doors I find I simply cannot pass through at all, even if I've just emerged from one. And bobbing up and down trying to get precisely the right height for a door to let me enter while two enemies are both touching me and draining my energy is unfair.

Best result so far is 6200 points, no sorcerers saved. I don't seem to be doing a lot of sorcery either.

I'll have another go later.

Wooden hatches generally need the right key. The green doors require special objects which are generally a pain to get hold of. Eg the bible at the waterfall or the Sorcerers Moon object.

For tips take a look at the video posted above (not the shit C64 version mind).

There are enough weapons around to kill all the enemies + you can recharge on the cauldrons that are hanging around (although these can sometimes suck your energy at random).

What do you use the sack of spells for?

To be honest I'm not sure this game would gave held my attention much when I was 12 - it seems like a chore having to figure out what you need to carry where by trial and error, endlessly retracing your steps..

Welcome to the 8-bit era! They only had kilobytes of RAM to play with back then remember

With the odd exception, 8-bit era computer games are fucking rubbish, we only put up with them at the time because we didn't know anything better.

Explained further up, but it's a weapon that kills everything on the screen in its path. The shooting star does the same thing.

Meh, whatever, Dad

(@atrocity)

Really not true. Sorcery+ isn't a game I would pick up today to play, but there are loads of 8 bit games that I'd play over many modern games.

Be it Head Over Heels, Ranarama, hell even the Dizzy series there are lots of gems that are worth a go.

Sorcery+ doesn't hold up because the gameplay isn't sound. When you consider that CPC Jet Set Willy came out at the same time, Sorcery + is miles ahead in presentation. But if you thought Jet Set Willy was unforgiving then Sorcery+ is far worse. But that was a trait of the era. At the time it was fine, today it doesn't stand up. The question of why this game was forgotten so quickly is now answered. Yes the game looks good (and stunning by the standards of the era, just look at that C64 video) but only 2 years down the line you could have bought Dizzy for 2 quid and had a far better gameplay experience.

Although even that game could be a bastard. Remember the first time you played, you went to the screen to the right, walked across what looked like a bridge only to fall into the pit and die without warning?

Even in the last 8 Bit Challenge we could see 8 bit games being played and being enjoyed. Malc completed Super Robin Hood and Mr Dave completed Jet Set Willy. They'd hardly have done that if they were "fucking rubbish".

I did say with the 'odd exception' (although I remember being bored silly by JSW even when it was the bestest new game in the world), I had the most popular 8-bit computers when they were in their heyday, C64 (with disc drives), VIC-20, Atari 800XL, Spectrum (48/128+), CPC464, even a bloody Einstein (which was most definitely not popular).

There were some games that were worth sinking serious time into, Elite is an obvious example, or pure shooters like Mega Apocalypse where skill was the order of the day, but a huge number of them relied on the kind of shit that Sorcery does, random deaths, random puzzles, massive repetition, huge amounts of trial and error. That's not really the fault of the guys who made these games, they were working with systems that had cripplingly limited resources, and much of what they achieved is very impressive against that backdrop - the fact remains however, that many of them were crap games even back then, and they're not the worth the time of day now.

Computer game music was far better back then though, come to think about it.

Even the original SID versions of a lot of C64 music still stand up on their own, but the 'proper' remixes done over the years make Generic Backing Track #55 that you have to put up with these days seem amazingly bland and awful.

I think it's quite telling that even the guy in that YouTube video who knows what he's doing struggles getting around some of the obstacles without touching the water.

I am determined to save at least one sorcerer.

Well I'll be fucked if I can. I know how to, I just can't live long enough to do it!

It's a damning inditement of my gaming skills when an 9 year old me could rescue approx 5 of them.

I had a look at the disc and found that the game uses 121k. That's HUGE for 1985. It could do it because it was disc only and it loaded everything on demand. So it would happily work in a 64k CPC. I can't think of any other CPC game from this era that was anywhere near as large as this. Usually games were around 40k or less. It was only when the multiloads arrived we saw games larger than the basic memory.

Found some stats on the game:

75 different rooms
196 normal doors
63 "green" doors
63 "trap" doors
120 enemies
188 items (of 30 types)

Found the original C+VG review here:

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/C+VG/Issue051/Pages/CVG05100026.jpg

There is an Amiga and conversion from a few years later:

http://hol.abime.net/2014/review

ACE awarded it 553 on the ST:

http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_picture.php?src=ace/magscans/ace14_1988_11/074.jpg&c=11224&n=1&filesize=227346

Anoraks will note that the page from ACE features both a former and future Amstrad Action editor.

Ulp. What a time to find that there seem to be no working ST emulators for Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Just had a go on the C64 version which was much hyped at the time. As the Youtube clip suggests, its rank. Guess the version:





The C64 version moves even faster and gives you no time to think. It has far less locations. The difference is like comparing some early 90's 16 bit game with some cut down 8 bit version.

But at the time it got good reviews.

I miss the days when games were distinctive-looking depending on which format they were running on. You could tell whether a game was on a Speccy, C64 or CPC with a glance. Or NES, Master System, etc. Everything started to look more homogenous after the N64/PlayStation/Saturn generation...

The amazing thing with those screenshots is that both computers are capable of displaying 16 colours at once at the same resolution, but the CPC's larger 27 colour palette (compared to the C64's 16) makes all the difference. Although to be fair they have clearly spent more time on the CPC's sprites. Just look at the main player sprite for example.

There's also a neat programming trick going on with the CPC where the main play area is low res 16 colour (160x200), but the status area is medium res 4 colour (320x200). At the time the game was launched, this was almost considered to be witchcraft. In later years quite a few games used it. Take the image to full screen (by clicking on it) and you'll see how much smaller the pixels on the book in the status area are than the pixels in the play area.

Seeing "you drowned in the river" in a posh hi-res font is essential to the Sorcery+ "experience".

All complete. Thanks to everyone who helped out:

http://uptojump.co.uk/?p=1491

I remember firing up Imagines Alchemist just to listen to the music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi4FPoaaPx8


Fantastic.

*slaps Chinny*

Suicide Perkins?!?

'Sue' for short.

Apologies. The confusion stemmed from the Christmas name and the name of a friends dog. All corrected now.