Titolo Completo: Thunder Castle
Software House: Mattel Electronics/INTV Corporation
Anno di pubblicazione: 1982/1986
Genere: Arcade
Ci sono games that have become popular even in mainstream icons of themselves and of an entire generation, memories of facts to swallow balls, cans, hammers and umbrellas, while others arrive at the wrong time, too late, and end up being forgotten.
The most recent memory is of Heart of Darkness by Eric Chah, glorious creator of Another World, with this title was perhaps created a milestone for PC, with regard to the platform playability coupled with cut-scenes do not interactive, long time but ended up working it out at a time when people craved now only the third dimension polygonal Tomb Raider.
Castle Thunder is also a of those unlucky games: if it were actually released in '82-83 as had to happen, would undoubtedly have been a big success, but then the Big Crash, the abandonment by Mattel Electronics Intellivision, and many other negative factors, eventually Thunder Castle oblivion order up to 86, when it was finally completed and sold by the "heirs" dell'INTV Corporation. The second youth Intellivision, which lasted until the late '80s, however, was a purely American phenomenon, and few reports of these new games in Europe now came under the dominion of the Commodore and Sinclair home computer.
But the history of Castle Thunder is primarily the story of two characters that have created a she and a him, she is Connie Goldman, talented programmer but especially animation and graphics, which won an internal competition Mattel to create a themed game "magic".
This initial approach created an idea called Magic Castle, which became in process Mystic Castle. "He" is the great David Warhol, former programmer Mind Strike, Connie that help to complete the game, who took it was renamed Castle Thunder. Shortly before the game went into production Mattel shut and, as mentioned earlier, fell in limbo until 86, when the resurrection occurred by dell'INTV
Corp. While there is no news of further production of Goldman, Warhol became a popular programmer and musician, coming to work with companies like Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games, and then founded his own software development house independent, Realtime Associates.
Looking at the packaging of the original game, it is the poorest of the sumptuous book boxes to which we had become accustomed was the first Mattel glorious, as is the case for any production INTV Corp: The manual is a fold in a poor black and white while the cover, instead of presenting an original artwork, is actually borrowed from an old advertising for Mattel Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Treasure of Tarmin.
Despite all the misfortunes and delays have to say that the game is incredible, both in terms of the graphics, sound, and for the gameplay.
In terms of gameplay, Castle Thunder is essentially a maze game, a direct descendant of Pac-Man, but with an unusual ability to combine the ambience and personality of the enemy, to borrow the maze of furniture and Lady Bug Mouse Trap and the iconography of heroic-fantasy that has its archetypes into monsters, wizards and dragons.
unfortunately are only three levels that cycle with increasing difficulty, but this is mainly due to the limited capacity console memory of that time, and anyway it was a winning choice, given that it is better to have a few very distinct and specific levels, rather than a long sequence of repetitive screens. Moreover, they were coded with a reasonable degree of randomness in the arrangement of objects and obstacles, certainly a very effective way to increase longevity and variety.
The three beautiful full-screen moving images made by Goldman, as the splash-page worthy of a golden age of Marvel comics, introduce us to the top in a forest with bushes "changing" surrounding a mysterious castle, while a menacing dragon winding through the wildlife corridors. Our poor knight blemish and without fear at the beginning is also unarmed, helpless in the face of menacing dragon, which can only escape. His only options are few fairy creatures that touch, give the "power" to kill the opponent's turn, which was replaced twice by a fellow most powerful and fast, before they can pass the level. The power has a very limited duration, and is given in the first case of two bats, the second of a mouse and the third fastest by an enigmatic skull.
After killing the dragon's third city welcomes us a labyrinth, probably inside the castle, which they saw before, the territory of two evil wizards, wicked magicians of the ancient world. The challenge then is concluded con un'elegante discesa negli inferi, dove la nostra vita sarà questa volta minacciata da tre demoni, con tanto di coda e forcone.
Oltre alle creature fatate, vari bonus compariranno durante il nostro percorso, alcuni veramente preziosi per la nostra sopravvivenza: come nota di colore possiamo dire che l'unico bonus negativo, che dimezza il punteggio corrente, è a forma di pettine... Che il nostro sfortunato cavaliere abbia anche problemi di calvizie?
Sognavo di provare questo gioco sin dall'83, quando scrutai uno screenshot di Mystic Castle sul catalogo italiano Mattel di allora. Le mie ricerche nei negozi ebbero ovviamente esito negativo e, da piccolo estimatore del fantasy genre, I had to settle for a few games at the old Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. After an eternity and a half, first through emulation and then finally finding an original cartridge for sale on a popular auction site, I can finally close this "painful" chapter of my life video game. The wait has been fruitful, however, and certainly I can say in retrospect that if I had Thunder Castle at an early age, I would have played to death and total physical exhaustion.
It was never seen anything so beautiful sull'Intellivision graphically, as well as the fund is sound at the highest levels, whereas then there was a tendency to simply create a couple of jingle and a bit 'of effetti sonori, qui è presente un intera partitura creata da Warhol partendo da temi classici, volta a sottolineare ogni azione positiva e negativa.
Non credo ci sia molto altro da dire, se non che spero che questa recensione serva a far (ri)scoprire a qualcuno di voi questo classico prodotto per la console Intellivision: sicuramente anche nei miei prossimi scritti cercherò di presentarvi giochi "dimenticati", perché ritengo che sia troppo facile parlare sempre dei soliti noti, e che il compito principale di chi si occupa di retrogaming sia far crescere la cultura videoludica generale, piuttosto che partecipare ad una mera celebrazione dei vecchi tempi, a cui troppi siti (italiani e non) ormai ci hanno abituato. Vi lascio però with a small final game: in every splash page designed by Connie Goldman (relating to villain Dragon, Wizard and Demon) is hidden within the design signature of the author; to you to locate it in the difficult task of all three images.
Andrea Packages
NOTE: This review originally appeared on Still Alive n.6
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