A new platform game for the home computer? A genre that has been commercially exploited for at least a decade for precisely such platforms? Yes, even many! Thanks to the lively homebrew scene. The Heart of Salamanderland for the Amstrad CPC immediately attracted my brave adventure-heart.
Indiana Jones was definitely the idol of its hero Patton, whose whip comes from Salamanderland – not Castlevania. On the cover picture, he strikes a pose and graphically impresses every Amstrad fan to the extreme. Searching for 9 tears of the evil Guardian of the Dragon's Tail cave, which he has shed somewhere there. Patton flips past more than 50 screens to escape the brick-walled cave with all its monsters and blocked doors.
Patton fights off flying ghosts, sword-wielding skeletons, fireball-shooting dwarves and shuffling zombies. He develops a feeling for creating an imaginary map of the rooms he visits so to gain important life energy points and to not lose track. As his life is straightforward, no teleporters or moving platforms will hinder his progress.
This is not a criticism of the lack of other exciting game elements that have made similar games such as Rick Dangerous – which, incidentally, was also converted for the Amstrad CPC – so successful. There, you also have to deal with rolling rocks, explosive charges and flying spears, and the screen scrolls instead of just flipping as you transition to the next one. The Heart of Salamanderland just doesn't belong to the upper class in comparison.
Nevertheless, Patton embodies a hero of such caliber that at the end, the player is left wondering whether Patton is afraid of the Guardian or whether the Guardian is afraid of Patton. But beware, the game cannot be saved. The only thing that remains is the snappy chiptune that bubbles out lively of the AY-3-8912 as constant background music.
The Heart of Salamanderland is a back-to-the-roots game. Masculinity paired with banality. To simply call such a game dull would be an insult. It is a tribute to one of the earliest genres of video gaming.
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