A round of applause please for THE best game on the Amstrad CPC 464!
Posted by CrazyKongJPW on Jun 7, 2010 13:09 (Jun 7, 2010 13:09)
TARGET; Renegade Ruled! It was the late 1980's around my best friends house where the sequel to Ocean's great Renegade had inevitably struck it's chord.
Though the original (albeit awkward control method) had moved the goal-posts as 8-Bit beat 'em up's went, it was the second coming that blew all else away. After school on Tuesday afternoon's wether sun, snow, wind or rain my friend would fetch his box of Amstrad CPC 464 games from his cupboard for us to play them out during the rest of the day. The usual suspects being Barbarian, Buggy Boy, Space Harrier, Live & Let Die or Bubble Bobble but end we unanimously ended up with TARGET; Renegade. Until the day my mate got his SNES (a good few months away), it was T;G that remained the top dog.
But it wasn't all plain sailing, for although the game was an original (as most kids in class had about ten copied games on one cassette tape), we would both sit praying for the game to load properly... see the final six or so rows of pixels which were to complete the loading screen, were extremely temperamental and would sometimes mash themselves up into different colors yep, the ultimate indication of a classic piece of software having crashed! But fear not, we would not give in that easily - we carried on and on, okay sometimes we would sneak in maybe a couple of rounds of Arkanoid to cure our nail-biting, but sooner or later we were to strike Beat 'em Up gold!
The opening level was to see us both in a Multi-Storey car-park with already one of the endless stream of hoodlum's approaching, all of this amidst the carousel-esque background music (a more sinister theme than the up-tempo 'Boogie Woogie' of it's prequel).
The music was twinned with crunching sound effects when fist (or mallet) autographed an enemies face. All manner of thugs as in the original game, tried to corner our equally thuggish heroes into losing one of few lives/credits, including foe trying to mow you down on his motorcycle! This guy was particularly amusing as he held a mighty resemblance to ELO's Jeff Lynne (who at the time had become all-too familiar with us young guys as he graced the majority of our parents' record collection - usually sitting in between the Motown and Kate Bush albums) but... unless high-kicking this guy off his bike, he would soon be jumping off after a couple of passes to help his pals to trade some blows This first level also included a 'genius for its time' board transition, for as it was split into three sections, the end of the first two stretches/screens presented an elevator, which once disposing of the bad guys, we could hop into the elevator and proceed to the next board, and also making the game even more memorable well, in Beat 'em Up terms anyway..
The game also if released these days, would probably be seen as an insult to 'political correctness' as in following levels you would have to dodge bullets from a revolver wielding pimp (as stereotype if there ever was one upon seeing the sprite), kicking vicious bulldogs out of the park and, and... defend yourself from drones of whip-lashing whores, who also flashed their smalls' as you're knuckles made connections with their purdy jaw-lines!
This was by far, the best side-scrolling beat 'em up of its day (if not the best ever?) on the Spectrum & sister Amstrad, though the Commodore 64 had its opponent with the awesome conversion of Double Dragon II, and made it their own by a long chalk. But we had our beloved TARGET, which if has now departed from our software collection or friends have been excused or estranged from each-others company, this will never, ever stray far from our memories...
Geeky, unpopular, spotty? Very much resembles the owners too! Though playing & possesing such a beautiful machine has put me in good stead, as my teenage angst with acne has long since been cured (though unpopularity & geekiness , not), I do look like Harrison Ford, so I ain't arguing.... Hope you are doing ok boyo and again, thank you for your comments. Cheers.
Jun 8, 2010 23:41:58 (
Jun 8, 2010 23:41
)
Great review 
