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Game info |
|  | Barbarian |  | Genre | Fighting | Developer / Publisher | Palace Software (Europe), Epyx (North America) | Released | 1987 | Media | 1 x  | Rating
 | Graphics: | 9.0 | Sound: | 6.0 | Gameplay: | 9.0 | Overall: | 8.0 |
| Reviewed by | ndial | Barbarian was first released for the 8bit Commodore's home computers in 1987 by Palace Software, and ported to the most common 8/16bit computers in the following months. A totally addictive fighting game (especially when in two-player mode with top notch graphics and great sound for its era. |
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Review |
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 The evil sorcerer Drax has taken Princess Mariana as hostage, but has agreed to let her go free if a warrior can defeat his guardians. And that's where your barbarian comes in. Barbarian (known as Death Sword in the USA) is a one-on-one sword fighting game. Each character (a sword-wielding barbarian) has six life blocks and can survive twelve blows before biting the dust. The action takes place against two backdrops: a forest clearing and a pit of death. Fight against the warriors of Drax and rescue Princess Mariana. The fighters' moves are impressive: they can slice and dice with the sword, chop away, duck, jump, roll, and then there's the lethal chop which takes the opponent's head clean off. The game also features a two-player mode, in which players fight their characters against each other. Not to be confused with "Barbarian", a MelbourneHouse/Psygnosis game from 1988! Technically speaking, this is a great release for the BBC Micro computers, indeed. The game features top notch graphics for its time though the sound is adequate here. The backgrounds are very well detailed while sprite are nicely animated and move really fast on screen. In general graphics here are superior to the ZX Spectrum release! Note that, the CPC version is certainly the best 8 bit version concerning the level design but all other 8bit versions are great too. There's no music here during gameplay nor the few catchy small themes when battle starts and... ends found on the CPC and Commodore systems, but still the sound effects are enough to keep you interested in battle. A truly great effort all in all! | |
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Screenshots |
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Gameplay sample |
| | Some videos belong to retroshowcase.com (indicated); others not | |
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Comparable platforms |
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Hardware information |
| BBC Micro / Acorn Electron CPU: 2 MHz MOS Technology 6502/6512 MEMORY: RAM 16KB (Model 1), 32KB (Model B), 64KB (Model B+), 128KB (Master). ROM 32KB GRAPHICS: Resolutions supported: 160x256 with up to 16 colors on screen (8 colors + flashing option), 320x256 (4 colors), 640x256 (2 colors) SOUND: Texas Instruments SN76489, 3 channels + 1 noise channel, 7 octaves (mono). Also it optionally featured a TMS5220 speech synthesiser with phrase ROM!
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 | RGB 8-colors palette (but capable for 16 on screen as 8 physical colors + flashing option) | |
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