Highlander

Off with his head!

Not all games are worth waiting for, as Darran discovers

» Canvas » 1986 » amstrad CPC One of my favourite movies from the Eighties is Highlander. I don’t think it’s a particularly brilliant movie, but it’s a film I was able to watch with my mum long before I was old enough to legally see it, which is probably why it left such a big impression on me. After all, who wouldn’t love a film featuring wobbly accents from its two leads, a ferociously hammy turn by Clancy Brown, multiple decapitations and a killer soundtrack by Queen? Needless to say when I found out that a Highlander game was available for my trusty Amstrad I begged and pleaded with my mum for a copy of my own. After being rebuffed by my mum, I went to my Nan (always a soft target) turned on the doe eyes and was promised the game for my birthday. Mission accomplished. What a pity, then, that Highlander turned out to be exactly the sort of game you don’t want to receive as your main birthday present.

Highlander was from that period at Ocean Software when it was content to simply secure a popular licence, and attach it to a game, any game. Games like The Untouchables, Batman and Robocop would change all that, but Highlander was before the quality control went up. The one nice thing I can say about it is that the Amstrad version has some really lovely sprite work, and that the big chunky sprites do a great job of replicating the stars of the original movie.

Sadly that’s all Highlander had going for it, and I soon found myself annoyed with the fiddly controls, simple movesets and weak AI. It admittedly became a lot more fun when played with a friend, but there were so many similar games available, so we’d typically just go back to Way Of The Exploding Fist instead. Still, it did teach me not to be blinded by any future licensed games, so something good came out of owning it.