Exolon Review

So although this game is not a CD32 game it is on an unofficial game compilation CD. 99% of the CD32 games came from the computer side anyway and all some companies did was add CD audio.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that on the 8bit home computers Exolon was amazing. I played it on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and it’s a great game.

The main aim is to get from one side of the level to the other while taking out swarms of enemies that come at you. Along the way, there are defences like gun turrets which you can take out with your rocket launcher. This is quite easy to do as you hold the fire button down and out pops a missile that blows away anything in front of you. At a certain point in the level, you will be able to upgrade your suit and this helps when the action gets hard and heavy. The game itself was very colourful (even on the Speccy) and had some great music.

The Amiga version for me is slightly different, for a start the levels have all changed and there doesn’t seem to be enough space to do anything. Graphically, its quite nice and the animation of the main character is excellent. The music is rather annoying and I think it could have been done better. I was hoping for a 16bit rendition of what was on the previous 8bit game, but what we get is something that I personally don’t like.

I think if you played the Amiga version first you may like it a bit more, but as I and many like me have played this on the 8bit computers you may not like this game. The reason for that is because the 8bit versions are by far better and the 16bit version are lacking quite a bit.