"Movie" looks FANTASTIC

[cwpab]

As a kid, I never fully appreciated this one visually due to the lack of colors.

The adventure part of the game is your typical impossible-to-guess stuff, but exploring the map was always interesting...

...especially because this pixel art is gorgeous, and the use of mode 1 colours is stunning. Yes, my CPC friends, the game "Movie" looks FANTASTIC. Just realized about this in 2024!

In case you didn't have this one as a kid or have never tried it, I recommend playing it just to explore those mysterious streets and rooms with so many cute objects that you can push.

PS: The C64 version does not exist and the Speccy one is monochrome, so it's not as cool!

[abalore]

It's really nice, but the "1 color per object" could be improved to use a mix of colors for the sprites, as Batman does.

[andycadley]

Yeah, was quite a fun game but I can't say I'm impressed by the use of colour that much. Is a bit "we took the Speccy version and made minimal effort changes" to me.

[retro space]

Might be a Speccy port, but it really looks much more interesting. In the Speccy version each room is a single colour. Also the purple for example enhances the atmosphere quite a bit. This asks for a boot on my Trinitron.

[dodogildo]

I wonder if it runs slower than the Speccy original, as usual?

[cwpab]

2 colors per object is a cool achievement and all, but...

...the things is, Movie looks better than Batman.

The pixel art in Movie looks extremely cute in monochrome, and the decision to use one single color for each object is perfect. It really improves the Spectrum version.

[abalore]

...the things is, Movie looks better than Batman.

 you must be joking

Also, the UI/UX in Movie is horrible, you have to choose between walk or fire, so you can't aim. It's mental. Also the action selector has that weird bounce effect that makes things even more difficult and slower. It would have been a lot better to add separate keys to cycle through the actions while you can always walk. One of the worst UX decisions ever in an Amstrad game. And what a "great" idea to put the "Abandon game" icon in the action menu, along with the weird cursor movement you press it inadvertently a lot of times and leave the game without confirmation.

Regarding performance, it slows down to 1 FPS with just 4 or more moving objects on the screen. Without being perfect, Batman and Head Over Heels run a lot better, supporting many moving objects.

The "Talk" feature in Movie is mostly useless, the text entry is so unresponsive that when you finish typing what you want to say usually the other character has moved out of the room.

And those armours? robots? that move without any kind of animation and kill you on touch, not to talk about the small bouncing balls. The relationship of those elements with the game lore is... well... none.

In the audio aspect, the music and SFX are... non existent.

The limited variety of sprites reveals a very lazy development. As I said, the armour enemies are not animated, the other enemies look just like the hero with little changes, and the girl character has an evil "twin". Very convenient to reuse the same sprite for both 

I'm not saying it's a game to trash. It could be very good if well programmed and taking advantage of the extra memory and capabilities of the Amstrad. In its current status it's no more than a 6 out of 10.

[andycadley]

I've said before I think Batman and Head over Heels are very nice, but they are still just coloured in versions of the spectrum graphics. It's better than Movie, IMO, but I think it's possible to do better if you do the pixelling intentionally knowing that you have four colours (if you look at the graphics for Mighty Castle Adventure, you can see how much more detail you can put in when you do that).

As to the game, it's not the greatest isometric game ever made, but I thought it had some interesting ideas. Probably a bit more ambitious than the developer was really able to pull off and some other bits (like conversation) needed some refinement. It did have a really cool setting though which captivated me back in the day.

[cwpab]

I can confirm Movie has, indeed, all those gameplay and UI flaws. But I was talking about the graphics.

In the end, I would compare Movie to The Abbey of Crime: a beautiful game in a very exotic and well represented setting where walking around is better than trying to solve the puzzles.

(However, I assume all or or must of us didn't have the manual for Movie as kids... and after checking the manual yesterday, I must say it contains key info for the adventure part: the good girl is "Tanya", not "Vanya", and she has the password to the "guarded rooms". And you need to bring her whisky when she asks for it, goddamnit! Maybe this game is not as unsolvable after all with the manual, assuming you find the right "tell me password" and "what is your name" word combinations for the speech bubbles).

Batman is a better game, but let's face it: it looks worse than Abbey, Movie and some other isometric games... and it could perfectly be a Mario/Sonic/Spyro/Bubsy game by simply replacing the main character due to the randomness of the screens, enemies and obstacles.

[GUNHED]

It's really nice, but the "1 color per object" could be improved to use a mix of colors for the sprites, as Batman does.

Yes, a classical cheap spectrum port. MODE 1 can do much better. 

[andycadley]

Batman is a better game, but let's face it: it looks worse than Abbey, Movie and some other isometric games... and it could perfectly be a Mario/Sonic/Spyro/Bubsy game by simply replacing the main character due to the randomness of the screens, enemies and obstacles.

Don't think I can agree on that one. Even when both are monochrome on the Spectrum, Bernie Drummond's graphics just ooze personality. Everything has character and feels like it has complex textures. Whereas those in Movie look a bit, well, functional and full of very straight lines. More like what I'd draw, to be honest.

Batman is, admittedly, largely unrelated to it's license and could just have been an invented character (as Head over Heels would subsequently demonstrate). Although I think we also forget that Batman was little more than a vaguely campy TV show that we'd probably seen on early morning reruns at the time and the somewhat humorous look of the game kind of fits with that.