It Came From The Desert
TIME TO RETIRE THE AMSTRAD
» AMIGA » 1989 » CINEMAWARE
One of the great things about owning a new computer is the smugness of knowing that the new game you’re playing simply wouldn’t have been possible on your earlier system. I didn’t have my Amiga 500 for very long, but one of the games that left a huge impression on me at the time was Cinemaware’s excellent It Came From The Desert.
My previous computer had been an Amstrad CPC 464, and as much as I loved it, it had looked rather old hat next to my friends brand-new Amiga and his copies of Shadow Of The Beast, Batman: The Movie and It Came From The Desert. I kept my Amstrad and eventually upgraded to various consoles, but the memory of those Amiga games always niggled at me and I knew I had to own one. When I finally picked up an Amiga in the early Nineties, It Came From The Desert was one of the first titles I grabbed, along with a bunch of D&D games like Eye Of The Beholder and the point-and-click adventure The Secret Of Monkey Island.
Cinemaware’s ambitious game certainly didn’t disappoint, and the sheer scale of what was on offer made my humble Amstrad look archaic beyond belief. It wasn’t just the gorgeous visuals that impressed so much, but the sheer wealth of content that was available in It Came From The Desert. You could travel around the town of Lizard Breath and interview a variety of different inhabitants and spend an age just finding out what makes them tick. It had a distinctive story-like structure that I had rarely experienced on the Amstrad, and there was a depth and maturity to it that simply didn’t seem possible on my 8-bit micro.
And then, of course, there were the entertaining minigames that ranged from a dramatic game of chicken with an oncoming vehicle, to quick-and-dirty knife battles and even one revolving around the use of a fire extinguisher. The best, however, were the first-person gunfights you entered into whenever a giant ant appeared. Get some quick hits in and you’ll drop your gigantic foe, fail and you’ll end up in this unfortunate situation. Now let’s see the Amstrad try and do that!