Vigilante

Copyright : US Gold | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Another popular 1980s arcade beat-em-up gets converted to the home computer to save the youngsters some pocket money, after shelling out £9.99 for the game of course. Irems Vigilante is one of the most memorable arcade games, at least it is in the UK because almost everyone of my friends had a copy of this on one computer or another. The best version being the US Gold Amiga conversion.

The cops are useless, you are sick and tired of people walking all over you and telling you what to do, forcing you to hand over your belongings and threatening to kill you. You become a Vigilante, pretty soon you aggravate the wrong person and you?ve got big trouble on your hands.

The Skinheads vow revenge and kidnap your girlfriend Madonna (Yeah right) and lock her inside the back of a van, if you want to see her alive again you will stop causing problems for the Skinheads or she will die, if you go after her you will die. There really is no choice so you end up kicking the crap out of a lot of people in order to get your girlfriend back.

Graphics

The arcade version Vigilante has since been emulated so I?m sure that at least a handful of you have seen the arcade and can compare the CPC version to the original.

The graphics in the CPC version are actually pretty good, even though the bad guys don?t look so tough when you see them move. There is little animation involved in the moving of bad guys and your character around the screen and the handling of weapons has not been converted so well to the CPC. The colour scheme is spot on and I doubt that it could have been made any better, it looks and feels like an old arcade game from the moment you hit the fire button.

Sound

Sound is pretty basic although we are treated to a pretty cool if not a little high pitched theme at the start of the game. You can?t help but wonder if the sound could have been improved in the game itself and I for one am sure that it could if US Gold had put more effort into it.

Gameplay

Gameplay is not quite the same as the arcade or 16-bit versions. It moves far to slowly and suffers from slow-down at certain points. You will also find it difficult to defend yourself against the bad guys because the controls are less than responsive and you are limited to either a punch in the face or kick in the shins (the arcade is the same but it?s faster and not as irritating). If the controls were slightly more responsive and the speed of the game was increased it would be far more playable than it is, there aren?t that many good conversions of this game so it?s not the fault of the machine but the coders.

The original rocks, most conversions do not.