Werewolves of London
Been looking at Werewolves Of London across the Speccy, CPC and C64 for ChinnyVision at www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEYLIsfqabk
Does anyone know why the Speccy version has such a low number of sprites on the screen? Is it for memory reasons? Makes the game feel very sparse when you only have 4 sprites on the screen at once.
Does anyone know why the Speccy version has such a low number of sprites on the screen? Is it for memory reasons? Makes the game feel very sparse when you only have 4 sprites on the screen at once.
Post edited by chinnyhill10 on
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCifcRlP9KST8T0irCHyykrA ChinnyVision, Youtube reviews of games using the original hardware
Comments
Fantastic game. I often re-visit it.
Haha! The wolf on the C64 version looks like the secret 5th member of ABBA :lol:
Indeed! :lol:
Really?
Felt empty to me with none of the pace of the Amstrad version which can get really frantic. It's fun like GTA is fun with you rampaging through screen killing people as you go. On the Speccy there just isn't anyone around and certainly not 8 police officers all charging down the tube station escalator trying to catch you.
C64 version is odd. They've ruined the balance of the game by having too many police officers who can jail you wandering around. Also in the other versions the difficulty ramps up the more killings you do, but on the C64 the police seem to come at you full tilt from the off even when you are yet to kill.
There's a fix for that - in fact, there's a TZX with the fix in place!
Yeah, it's bloomin' hard enough without any more characters on screen. One or two in pursuit with an innocent bystander to chomp is just right. It'd just be silly to have more. The Speccy atmosphere is spot-on and is a great way to give-in to the Eddie Quist within me! Aaarrrooooooooo!
That's a bit like saying GTA 5 would be more fun with half the characters in it and never more than 2 cops on the screen. :D
No, not really. The character focus is completely different in WoL. The hunting-ground needs to be yours, with interaction of other characters a surprise. You don't want to be constantly under-fire or being chased, and you don't want to have your kills laid out for you in a row. It's night time, there are only a few people around, and there is the chance that those few cops are gonna kill you anyway. That's more than enough. It's perfect.
There's nobody around in the daytime either. And having played all the versions back to back, the Speccy version is the one with the cops having the least chance of catching you.
Not saying it's bad. But it's incomplete and rather empty.
Haha, I *knew* you were going to say that. Daytime characters make no difference to the gameplay really. That's the time you need to get yourself together and sort out your next move. All you need to worry about is tracking down your next family member. If you bump into anyone else, then that's by-the-by. Other characters don't come into it much. And saying that "the Speccy version is the one with the cops having the least chance of catching you," well, that's actually a good thing! Blimey, when they're onto you with bullets flying, it's frantic enough. :)
Both Amstrad and C64 games are nice, mind, but the atmosphere is all wrong to do the game justice for me. I guess it depends on whether you're a Universal Studios werewolf fan and like arcade games (then go for Amstrad or C64) or whether you're a Jo Dante fan and like horror adventures. (Then the Speccy is the one for you.)
:lol: Yeah, I'll go along with that! :)
:lol:
I'd say the ideal version would be somewhere between the Speccy and Amstrad versions. The Speccy version lacks something because there's not enough of a ramp up later in the game, but the Amstrad version tries a little too hard and suffers as a result.
You wouldn't be saying the CPC version tried hard if you'd played the C64 version. Police come after you like you are a 5 Star wanted in GTA from the off! Also the ratio of cops carrying keys to guns is all wrong so you constantly end up being locked up for the night.
Not sure what the people doing the conversion thought they were doing but they spoilt it completely.
There's extra challenge in losing people on a crowded screen. Take your eye off the ball and you've lost them. Suddenly you catch up with them again and there are now two people wearing blue tops. Which one is which?
Also is it me or does the Speccy version have less screens? Go to the park gate entrance and on the CPC and C64 there are screens to the left. On the Spectrum you cannot go left.
Has anyone ever spoken to the programmers to find out just how complete the Speccy version actually is?
Thanks for that, mate!
It is indeed an extra challenge, and it used to wind me up a bit! :D Similar events occur on the Speccy, but not quite as infuriating. My main issue with both Amstrad and C64 versions is the wolf itself though, which is just too cute for me to take the game seriously. Still worth playing though. All of 'em. It's a great idea.
There's no 128k version as far as I'm aware. They either never intended to do it or didn't get around to that bit.
Remember it was programmed in 1987 but never made it out until 1989. In 1987 128k games were still thin on the ground.
Yeah, it just seemed to get shelved and forgotten about for a while. We're fortunate that Mastertronic took it up and released what there was of it.
Ariolasoft (of which Viz Design were part) went bust. I guess Mastertronic picked it up from the liquidators. Would be interesting to find out precisely how they got hold of it.