Insanity joining the meager North American
releases.
Another Aetherbyte original release is Pyramid
Plunder, also for the Turbo Grafx-16 Super
CD-ROM. This time, Pac-Man is the title being
paid homage to and in a big way. While
Pac-Man, in most of his iterations, was quite limited in graphical prowess, Pyramid Plunder
takes advantage of the platform to offer up level
aesthetics that break up the monotony of trolling
through mazes avoiding enemies. For one
thing, greed plays a big part in why Lootin' Larry
is in the pyramids in the first place, no he is not
there for some altruistic reasoning, just simple
want of money. Plain and simple.
Lootin' Larry is also not dragging along his
whole family either, at least not yet. This is a
solo adventure of one man against the guardians of the pyramids and the perils of not
collecting all of the loot. Speaking of guardians,
instead of escaping attacks by the same ghosts
level after level, Larry has to contend with
mummies, scorpians and skeletons. Levels are
tailored to the enemy from sandy looking walls
to those clearly made of rock and stone.
As with Pac-Man, when Larry collects the power
-ups that are scattered around the maze, the
enemy on that level will flash blue to show their
vulnerability. Catching the enemies while they
are blue will add to your score, as usual for
these styles of games.
The levels are large and sprawling affairs that
allow the enemies to get around, and out of
sight, complicating matters. At the top of the
screen is a handy mini map of the whole level
that does show enemy location, power-up
location and the current position of Larry.
Without this little detail, Pyramid Plunder would
be frustrating and easily cheap and unfair.
Fans of Pac-Man will feel right at home with
Pyramid Plunder. While neither Pac-Man or
Berserk hit the Turbo Grafx-16, Aetherbyte are
more than happy to oblige retro fans looking for
something similar, but original.
Pyramid Plunder and Insanity are available on
www.aetherbyte.com