Porting The eclipse

Which version blocked out the rest?

Zx spectrum

The Speccy version ran a tad more quickly than the

Amstrad CPC’S version but the reduced colour palette affected its admirable stabs at realism. Were it not for some clever shading, the ankhs and water troughs would have blended into the background, but thankfully all of the puzzles and absorbing game design remained intact.

COMMODORE 64

There is little to distinguish Total Eclipse on the

Commodore 64 from the Amstrad CPC version other than a jaunty ditty playing in the background and the loss of a couple of Anubis depictions from the instrument panel. It was also just as slow, entailing a lot of patience as players waiting for the screens to be rerendered.

atari st

As with the Amiga version (pictured to the right of this entry), Total Eclipse on the Atari ST is operated via the onscreen icons which makes the gameplay more fluid, since it allows you to better focus on the screen. This makes the instrument panel that bit more cluttered but it was nevertheless a fine conversion job from Sam Ellis.

COMMODORE amiga

With a great use of colour for both the rejigged instrument panel and the main playing screen, Total Eclipse on the Amiga certainly overshadowed the 8-bit versions in terms of its graphics. It also bettered them in the speed stakes, although the overall experience could easily be destroyed by toggling the grating, moody-sounding music.

Ms-dos

As well as adopting the same instrument panel of the 8-bit versions and prettying up the colourful, higher resolution graphics, Total Eclipse for MS-DOS also ran at an improved speed thanks to the enhanced power at Incentive’s disposal. It made the pyramid and its claustrophobic rooms far more pleasurable to explore.