Overkill AGA Download (1993 Amiga Game)

The first A1200-only game ever released was Maxis' Sim Earth which didn't really show off the machine's awesome capabilities at all. However, because the old saying goes "First the worst, second the best", A1200 release Number Two already had a lot going for it before anyone knew exactly what it was going to be. And the next A1200-only game, TFX, will no doubt have a hairy chest.

So, here is Number Two - Overkill, which is certainly no load of number twos. The game has been programmed by Mark Sibly, whom regular readers should recognise as the designer of Cybernetix, the top shoot-'em-up given away exactly twelve months ago by your mates here at The One. This time Mark's excelled himself by creating what has to be one of the most impressive shoot-'em-ups this side of Project-X.

As you'd expect from this kind of game there's no plot to speak of, suffice to say that there are literally thousands of alien slime-baskets waiting to be blasted to into thousands of tiny pieces (which, if you work it out, will leave one million tiny alien pieces. Yeah, thought you'd find it interesting). Once a planet has been cleared of all foreign bodies it's off to the next, progressively harder location.

This is in fact Mark's third Amiga game that we're aware of and the only one so far to be deemed worthy of a commercial release. The trio have all had one thing in common: the influences of Defender. Just why the Australians seem to have such a passionate fascination with the arcade dinosaur is way beyond us but let's hope that it continues for a long time if Overkill is anything to go by.

Now this is really something: Overkill is one helluva blast. It's immediately pickupable and just the kind of game that you can play for either hours on end or a few minutes at a time, depending on what mood you're in. In these days of sophisticated thinking men's shoot-'em-ups such as Syndicate, Dune 2, Theatre of Death, etc, etc, it's nice to get back to basics now and again and totally forget about ground-breaking game design and all that jazz. Just turn off your brain and let your reactions do the talking - that's what I say. The amount of stuff that Overkill throws around on-screen is phenomenal and proof that the game's A1200 hardware requirements really are a necessity and not the result of sloppy programming. However, in a game which borrows so heavily from Defender you'll always get one criticism rearing its head; the fact that whenever you turn around you're usually vulnerable for a fraction of a second as the game moves you to the other side of the screen. If you plan carefully and get used to this then it shouldn't present too much of a problem. The only major gripe I have with Overkill is the small number of planets you have to clear. You can clear each level within three to four minutes and although the seventeen supplied do become mind-numbingly difficult as you journey towards the centre of the solar system, you can reach over halfway through Overkill on your second or third go. But hey, Overkill is so completely ace it's definitely, definitely, definitely a game you'll keep coming back to even after you've completed it the umpteenth time.

A simple, Project-X like shoot 'em up game, from the Adid software. You control your spaceship and have to shoot eveybody who enters the screen :) It uses the AGA chipset, but the graphics is not as good as it could be.

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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