By 1995, the Amiga was done. The CD32 was a year in its grave. All the magazines save for the very nerdiest were shrivelling up into nothing as the games quickly vanished. Darth Vader, Sam and Max and a certain green-clad space marine made sure that there was no place in the computer world for slow moving, ugly games that couldn't talk back to you. Europe was falling in love with the Japanese consoles, every British kid was getting a Mega Drive II for Christmas to replace their Master System II, and Sonic the Hedgehog was appearing in two cartoons at once.
Only the brave, the mad and the heavily invested remained to try to magic up some glory from the abandoned hardware and win the hearts of the Amiga's vast and loyal European install base.
| Developer: | Binary Emotions | | | Release Date: | February 1996 | | | Systems: | Amiga 1200, CD32 |
Say hello to light-hearted fantasy epic The Speris Legacy, featuring this rather nifty digitised painting of one hopeful adventurer who could easily be Neal McDonough in a blonde mullet.
Amiga Computing magazine described The Speris Legacy as 'pure genius', with its coverdisk demo asking 'The best game of the year?' in bold red letters. Amiga Power dedicated an entire cover to it with a brand new lovely illustration.
The Amiga could still have its hero!
The Speris Legacy was an Amiga exclusive, and appeared on both the AGA chipset machines: the Amiga 1200 home microcomputer and its CD32 console counterpart. Both versions are identical - the computer version supports the CD32 joypad, and the console version supports an optional keyboard - so I'll be kicking back in a huge armchair and enjoying Speris on a big telly on the CD32.
--- Speris - The Story ---
Cho sat under the shadow of the old oak that had perched atop the Westmark Cliffs for longer than living memory. He gazed thoughtfully across the land of Speris spread out before him. At least here he'd found some respite from the cruel taunts of his so called friends. Didn't they understand parental pressure? The endless jibes to smarten himself up and get a haircut for his job interview at the city farm.
In the end it had proved easier to give in... Easier that was until his friends saw him. He wasn't a farmer... No way! He was a hero, travelling the world in search of adventure, fame and fortune.
Cho sat under the shadow of the old oak that had perched atop the Westmark Cliffs for longer than living memory. He gazed thoughtfully across the land of Speris spread out before him. At least here he'd found some respite from the cruel taunts of his so called friends. Didn't they understand parental pressure? The endless jibes to smarten himself up and get a haircut for his job interview at the city farm.
In the end it had proved easier to give in... Easier that was until his friends saw him. He wasn't a farmer... No way! He was a hero, travelling the world in search of adventure, fame and fortune.
The fairy-tale story emerges slowly, in its loveably terrible way, aiming for fantasy but screwing it up with shaky grammar and patches of over-eager silliness. Our would-be hero Cho enters into a secret agreement with his best friend Prince Kale to accept the role of heir to the throne to protect the kingdom of Speris in the event that Kale's evil brother, the mad Prince Gallus, were to make an attempt on Kale's life.
Four years later, Kale's evil brother, the mad Prince Gallus, makes an attempt on Kale's life.
As Cho gazed around at the terrible scene, full of grief at the loss of his best friend, one thought came into his mind - 'Gallus! It must have been!'. He paused for a while as he thought of all the wonderful times he had had with Kale. Gallus would not get way with this, thought Cho, now hell-bent on revenge. This was his chance for adventure... his chance to prove his worth. He wouldn't wait for Gallus to come for him. He would seek out Gallus himself and put an end to his troublemaking once and for all.
Yes, that's the word I'd use to describe a murderous usurper with designs on the Crown: "troublemaker".
Amiga music has its own distinctive sound - typically the sound of a very small set of samples stolen from the keyboards and synthesizers of the era, squished up into a slightly lo-fi version. This intro music has shades of Yo! Joe!, which on reflection could be the highest praise I could (accidentally) give.
Despite the events of the previous day, Cho was able to sleep well. He planned to spend the day getting ready for the long journey ahead... There was a lot to do, he didn't even have any possessions, and he didn't know which direction he should travel... Good Luck Cho...
But what is this? Surely I haven't put a SNES game on by mistake!
I don't know why I'm struggling to think of anything similar - does the Amiga simply not have any other cutesy, top-down action-adventure games? Fantasy games on the Amiga were always pretty gritty and serious: if they weren't side-on platformers like Lionheart, or slashy-bashy things like Golden Axe or Barbarian, they tended towards slow-paced Western RPGs of either the Ultima or Dungeon Master kind. I can't think of anything that an Amiga fan could fire up when they want some breezy Hydlide action. Heimdall maybe? Could Origin's 1988 game Times of Lore (external link) be the missing piece?
We're free to explore Cho's home town of... I'm not really sure what it's called. There was nothing to inspect or take in Cho's house. To the south is The Royal Maze, where "A tip of steel will reveal." To the north are the Palace and the Allotments.
Hi, I'm Sammy. I think there might be a sword somewhere near here, but I don't know because I'm just a kid.
Cho even gives you a bunch of conversation choices to choose from - ranging all the way from Hi, how are you? to See you around.. Cho doesn't have anything to say about Kale, the King, Gallus, his desire to adventure, asking about where he can find or buy a sword or shield, or what he should do next. It isn't great. Thanks to Sammy, I at least know there's a sword somewhere.
There's no shops in Choville, which is just as well since I have no money. I can enter all of the houses, which are absolutely gigantic inside, but there's nothing to swipe, no pots to smash, and I can't even search the bookcases.
Guess I'll just keep wandering around then.
I must say I'm loving the King's fancy shiny fuschia smoking jacket. It's very Pagan Min.
Hello, I'm Fluff. The nice king let me and my brother live with him. He says we help him relax. We get tasty food, too!
Hello, I'm Furr. Isn't the King nice? We're nice and safe in here and we get stroked lots, cool!
Surprisingly, the King has a lot of dialogue. Double surprisingly, it's coherent and not all stupid.
Hello, young friend. You've probably heard about how my twisted son Gallus has caused so much trouble for everyone. When he murdered Kale that was the last straw!
Yes, I did hear about the time I held my best friend's dying body in my arms, yesterday.
I decided that I needed to do something definite about the situation and so I have chosen you to go and find out where Gallus is hiding, overpower him and bring him back to me.
What a coincidence! I woke up this morning wanting to take revenge on Gallus too!
The King says that if I accomplish this task, I will become the next heir to the throne of Speris. For a simple farmer who's never held a sword in his life, everybody sure does think a lot of me.
To help me on my quest, the King bestows upon me a mighty boon of bugger all, and says I should just go out and talk to everybody. Also he told me this town is named Sharma City!
It doesn't seem that anybody has any new conversation options now that I'm officially the King's loyal bloodhound. A purple haired gentleman in a robe tells me that there's a locked door beside the Kings Palace, and sure enough if I start rubbing Cho along the exterior walls of the Palace, I get a buzz-buzz sound indicating that there's a hidden doorway I can't yet enter.
The only interactible object in the whole house is the treasure chest at the bottom, which contained 1x🔑.
There's a hidden doorway on the left of the Palace, which contains nothing at all. There's a guy outside it who explains that certain objects can be pushed, but doesn't explain how you do that. You could easily spend an hour in the various rooms of the Palace pushing Cho up against random objects trying to find the correct hidden passage.
What you have to do is go to the opposite side of the Palace and use your 1x🔑 to open the corresponding hidden passage on the right hand side. The entrance is the small patch of blue tiles visible at the top of this screenshot.
Only my nimble fingers on the terrible CD32 pad can save Cho from being blasted by ecto-goop before he's even found a way to fight back.
To be honest the CD32 pad isn't all that bad, at least it wasn't when it was new. Its d-pad just has a tendency to self-destruct and render the entire pad useless until you find a replacement part or swap the whole thing with a Playstation pad adapter for a vastly more enjoyable experience.
You have to push this pedestal to the left (right doesn't work!) to reveal a hidden teleporter to a hidden room within the hidden room.
ONE PROTRACTED WIBBLY-WOBBLY TELEPORTER EFFECT LATER
The game doesn't do that. It doesn't have any fanfare at all! Lame.
I honestly thought this was going to be more difficult. I didn't omit a deadly dungeon full of swinging axes and spike pits for brevity: there was simply the ghost room, then the sword, and that's it.
Let's save the game! You can save any time you like from the menu. The CD32 console uses internal save RAM, but only has 1 kilobyte of space compared to a PS1 memory card's 128 kilobytes, so The Speris Legacy's single save file takes up over half the console's memory.
Now I'm armed, those ghosts don't know what hit them. There's still no dialogue changes outside, but Cho refuses to leave the town by the main gate until I've found a shield to go with his sword.
Cho: I don't think I'd better leave here until I've got something to help shield me from enemy attacks. I feel a bit vulnerable at the moment!
There is another way out, though.
I have no idea why Cho has to smash through a wall in the village to gain entry to the Maze. What's to stop the evil creatures inside from escaping now? I guess it's true, you can't make an omelette without unleashing a park full of monsters on a defenseless village.
The Maze itself is, well, a maze, but not a fun kind. It's featureless and repetitive. It's four screens across by six screens down. I tried my best to show you a screenshot with an enemy and some scenery on the screen at the same time, but the enemies are so infrequent and the level so lifeless that I couldn't make one happen.
Very occasionally you'll encounter one or two very small, very difficult to hit enemies. And they don't drop any bloody money. Defeated enemies should have fountains of coins and gems and hearts bouncing out of them like a piñata. There's a reason Deluxe Galaga got a two-part Super Adventures post!
There are teleporters in here too, forwards and backwards. To get to the center of the maze, you've got to find hidden teleporter tiles beneath the flowers, which means first-time players have to cut every single one down until they find it.
Cho's sword arc doesn't extend as far or as wide as it ought to, making hitting the flowers a real pain in the arse. The charge gauge fills up when you hold the button... and does nothing when you release it. I'll add it to my collection of totally useless Amiga interface gauges.
The teleporters fit within a single tile, so there's no logical way a player can work out where the teleporters are likely to be due to their size; you'll never luck upon the border edge of a large hidden teleporter that spans multiple tiles.
To complete the Maze, you've got to go all the way forwards, hit a dead end, find a secret teleporter to a closed off section of the Maze, flick a switch pillar that doesn't seem to do anything, use a teleporter to return to the Maze entrance, repeat the entire Maze a second time up to the spikes you just lowered, which leads to a long, empty passage towards the middle of the Maze where you can finally get the shield!
This shield will reduce damage inflicted by enemies.
Inexplicably, the shield takes up the WEAPON slot, rather than the OBJECT slot. The description says it reduces damage, but do I have to have it equipped, or is it passive? Cho's sprite doesn't change and I still swing with the sword either way.
Time to save the game once more and begin the epic struggle to very slowly walk out of the Maze, out of Sharma City, and onto adventure!
AND THEN
The game fades to black and crashes. That's no big deal. I just saved after all.
Say, here's a little Speris Legacy tip from a videogame professional:
When you're saving your game, it'll have a default name of [EMPTY]. You'd best change this name, because if you don't, Speris will assume the file really is still empty when you try to load it. If you didn't know this and the game crashed, you'd have to repeat everything you'd done in the game up to that point.
That'd be hilarious, wouldn't it?
When you're saving your game, it'll have a default name of [EMPTY]. You'd best change this name, because if you don't, Speris will assume the file really is still empty when you try to load it. If you didn't know this and the game crashed, you'd have to repeat everything you'd done in the game up to that point.
That'd be hilarious, wouldn't it?
ONE KEY, ONE SWORD, ONE MAZE AND ONE SHIELD LATER
The world map music is rather pleasant and medieval-ly. Sharma City looks a lot more impressive when viewed from a distance, doesn't it? I recall it being a lot less of a 'metropolis' and more of a 'nothing at all'.
You might be wondering why The Speris Legacy has this odd, Dragon Quest-looking overworld map when it's supposed to be a Zelda-em up? Surely Speris Legacy should have a continuous overworld that cleverly links all the locations of the game with interesting challenges and optional places to explore and gather more items!
Well, yes, but then Speris might be called a rip-off, and we couldn't have that. Fear not, because in place of an overworld, you've got my own personal videogame hell...
My Super Adventures in the SperisLands continue in Part 2!
I like that the odd sentence construction in the opening crawl suggests that Cho has been sitting under a tree for "longer than living memory". He's a patient lad!
ReplyDeleteOr he's got a very short memory!
DeleteI try my best to copy everything exactly as I see it, but Speris doesn't make that easy. :)
That should be a link before the smiley btw, if the site style doesn't show it up.
DeleteBritish kid gets a Mega Drive II for Christmas, a dramatisation.
ReplyDelete