Alex's Reviews -
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Our dear and unforgettable #Amiga has truly given us so many gems.
One of these is definitely #Agony, a title developed by Belgian company Art & Magic and published by #Psygnosis in 1992 for the magnificent 16-bit Commodore computer.
It's an exceptional side-scrolling shooter with a fantasy setting, and the story tells of a powerful wizard, Acanthopsis, who has discovered the "power cosmic," an exceptional force that grants boundless power to those who master it.
While acquiring this power, Acanthopsis dies, but just before breathing his last, he reveals the existence of this exceptional power to Alested and Mentor, his disciples.
Both set out in search of the "power cosmic," but Mentor, the more evil one, manages to gain an advantage and unleashes enemies, monsters, and pitfalls against Alested to try to block his path.
Alested, who has been transformed into a barn owl, must set out on this extremely dangerous adventure through six action-packed levels.
The raptor's standard weapon is a sort of wave to launch at enemies, a weapon that can be upgraded by collecting potions and magic formulas, the latter of which are used to cast spells activated by pressing the spacebar.
Agony, also using some programming tricks, takes full advantage of the Amiga's capabilities, featuring top-notch graphics and sound.
A first curious fact is that the game doesn't feature a proper animated introduction that takes us to the beginning of the game.
This was a deliberate decision by the project managers, who, to save costs, required the finished product to be distributed on a maximum of three floppy disks. Since the game already featured a wealth of graphics, music, and sound effects, they cut the animated intro, which was already completed, and printed the story in the manual (the cut intro is included in the game demo).
Another interesting fact concerns the choice to use a barn owl as the protagonist: the game was published by Psygnosis, which featured this very bird in its logo, but the nocturnal bird was chosen solely because it was deemed appropriate for the game's atmosphere, and for its beautiful flapping of its wings; it had nothing to do with the logo.
As mentioned, the game was developed by Art & Magic, formerly called Ordilogic System, which had developed Unreal: Agony in 1990, which was then in development and was supposed to be its sequel.
The game's code was worked on by Yves Grolet, and the graphics by Frank Sauer and Marc Albinet, while the packaging was handled by Anthony Roberts and Roger Dean.
One last interesting fact and the date of the game's soundtrack: the initial music was composed on piano by Tim Wright, but a different, and according to Wright's permission, improved version was included in the final version, performed by Frank Sauer.
The latter didn't get a chance to hear the modified music until the game's release, and at that point he criticized Sauer's choice, claiming that one note of the theme had been played an octave lower than the original.
Sauer countered by stating that the file had been sent with a sampling rate that he felt was too high, and to address the problem, he had played it and resampled it at a different rate, thus lowering it by an octave.
Controversies aside, we are faced with a great masterpiece of human art that has undoubtedly written a beautiful page in video game history.
Alex
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