The year
was 1992 when Core Design released another awesome title.
This time
around, the Atari ST was the chosen platform to develop another outstanding
piece of software, but it’s on the Amiga that this title really shines. I even
consider it to be an hidden gem, ‘cause every time I talk to my friends about
it, no one really knows it.
For the
ones that never played WolfChild, well, you should!
The game
was created by Simon Phipps, the designer of Rick Dangerous and best known for providing
that hilarious scream of death (SCREAM)! The audio department was in the good
hands of Martin Iveson, renowned artist of the original Tomb Raider musical
score.
As said
before, WolfChild was originally released for the Atari ST and the Amiga, and,
later, ported to every single Sega machine: the MasterSystem, Game Gear,
Megadrive/Genesis, Sega CD and, also, for the Super Nintendo being, this last
one, the only console version that you should play, mainly for its amazing
parallax scrolling graphics and great music.
Obviously
inspired from comic book art, which Simon Phipps’ is a huge fan, the
characters’ animations, sprites and colorful background graphics are simply
amazing.
The game
features a pretty nice intro, where we get to know the reasons that made
Europe’s vocalist, Joey Tempest, to submit himself to a biotechnological
experiment that his father was working on before being kidnapped. The
experiment gives our hero the ability to transform him into a wolf- human
hybrid that has special attack techniques that may defeat the Chimera
organization.
The
scientist’s research was the main objective of the Chimera organization that
aims to rule the world with their own breed of hybrid beings. But Joey Tempest
is in the move and on its “FINAL COUNTDOWN” to slay all of those nasty
creatures and rescue his father!
The action
takes place over five amazing and beautifully designed multi-directional
levels. In the first one we’re on this massive spaceship hovering over the
clouds and taking down some stubborn bird-like bad guys. As we progress, power
up items are laying around just waiting to be picked up. These items will give
us the ability to change into a sort of werewolf with some bad ass weaponry!
Second
level is set in a Endor-style forest and we’re faced against a horde of lizard
beasts and nasty carnivorous plants.
The third
level is a sort of Aztec temple filled with insect warriors that we must kill
in our way to Chimera’s laboratories.
Once there,
we come across a mish-mash of half-finished mutants and failed experiments
which burst forth from their own incubator containers. Amazing stuff!
Apart from
the first level, that functions as an appetizer to warm up the player making us
believe that we’re this great undefeatable beast, all the others are quite long
and maze like filled with platforms and nasty enemies in which we’re invited to
explore and search carefully for extra hidden pick-ups and bonuses, shortcuts
and secret rooms that are scattered through this fabulous scenario just waiting
for us to discover.
In the end
of each one there’s a nicely drawn boss that, in the Super Nintendo version,
has pretty nice new and fancy animations when they appear on screen. So, to
progress into the next level, we just need to hit them a several number of
times in order for them to explode.
The sheer
speed at which things happen force us to keep moving, making WolfChild a super-fast-paced
game.
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