Right at
the start we’re greeted by this rather amusing plot:
“Greetings pilot. You are Commander Armstrong
and you must destroy the evil empire of Mandarax. Actually let’s be honest. There is no evil
alien empire. You are not a hero. Probably. You are not the last hope of
mankind. You enjoy blasting space aliens. These aliens are specially bred to
feel no pain.”
Dave Hughes’
team, Stonechat Productions, released, last week, Stormfinch, a shoot-em-up
where the player has nine lives to battle through 10 levels and defeat 9 bosses
and, as well, the entire galaxy!! Let’s face it, in real life we only live
once.. I think! So, why not only one life and an energy bar along with some
scattered power ups for us to pick up?
Our ship
provides two types of weapons: lasers and plasma rays, but, just like in
R-Type, there’s also an extra capsule that can be oriented around our ship and
do multiple shooting, highly useful as the enemies pop up from all directions!
Enemy
detection could be better, but the game is so highly enjoyable for its smooth scrolling
only, that I can live with that!
Stormfinch
is an awesome accomplishment on the ZED X Spectrum. It brilliantly uses Einar
Saukas’ NIRVANA engine that, since it was released in late 2013, was only being
used to create beautifully colored puzzle and reflection type of games. These
two are a good example of this.
Never
crossed Spectrum users’ minds, like myself, the possibility of multicolor tiled
display, like the one shown on this screenshot. This is a new frontier for
homebrew developers and a beginning of a new Era for Sinclair’s machine 33
years since the very first ZED X Spectrum model arrived and it’s now proven
that this brand new engine can produce amazing games like the one we’re looking
at!
As said
before, the engine is capable of multicolor tiled display across 30 columns and
22 rows and it is capable of changing color attributes every two scanlines delivering
an 8by2 “almost full screen” pixel display.
So, we’re
looking at a multicolor shoot-em-up, something unthinkable to ever get to see
on a Spectrum. A lot of people believed that the NIRVANA engine wasn’t capable
of showing lots of action onscreen at the same time. Here’s the proof that they
were wrong!
Stormfinch
isn’t better than Electric Dreams’ extreme quality conversion of the original
R-Type, or the awesome Zynaps from Hewson Consultants, or even 2010’s Genesis:
Dawn of a New Day from RetroWorks. But this one will surely beat those three on
its visual beauty of these multicolor animated sprites that the NIRVANA engine
can provide.
This
nonstop shoot-em-up also offers the player this awesome tune that fits
perfectly into the action, even if it loops after a couple of minutes.
Nonetheless, after I’m through with the game, I just kept on whistling it!
We’re on
the right path to a ZED X revolution where developers have, now, these awesome
tools to create a brand new world for 8bit gaming awesomeness!
I’m so
thrilled and I can’t wait to see what’s coming in the future!
Download Stormfinch from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByxiMYbPnlUdeWU4R05Kb2luSEk/view
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