FORTRESS OF NARZOD

Evil wizard Narzod has gained the power to enslave all of humankind, so you — the last good wizard — must stop him. Three roadways (Lower, Middle and Upper) stand before you, filled with enemies. On the Lower roadway you must defeat the Doomgrabbers, Tarantulas and Ghouls by bouncing your shots off the walls of the road. But be careful as they can bounce back and hit your hovercraft! On the Middle roadway, swooping Warbirds are added to the attack — shooting them will leave them onscreen as a shield against enemy bullets for a short period of time. On the

Upper roadway the birds will fire back at you. Reaching the Fortress itself sees the Mighty Hurler stand between you and victory over Narzod. The Mighty Hurler will patrol back and forth, flinging volleys of spiky bullets at you and you must hit it six times with your blaster to destroy it. The game then loops back to the start.

The original C64 version was entered into the Mixed Game Competition at the Breakpoint 2009 demo party with an enhanced and improved version released in 2011. RGCD negotiated with Smith Engineering (see below) to create an officially-licensed cartridge.

The C64 version starts with a vector-based TRSI intro followed by scrolling instructions and the nicely drawn FORTRESS OF NARZOD logo that emulates the Vectrex text. In-game the white on black graphics look sharp and angular. The enemies show some scaling effects as they move down the screen, and the bullets bounce off the walls predictably. Although he does look comical, the Mighty Hurler is a difficult opponent to defeat. The high score screen deserves praise, with the letters rotating left and right in a smooth arc as the player enters their name. It will take some practice to conquer the game and it proves quite addictive.