Ganymed

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Ganymed

Ganymed is a Shooter game, developed by Euroline and published by ReadySoft, which was released in Europe in 1988.

My heart sank when I saw the cover of this game... not another Empire Strikes Back ripoff. Jeff Minter made a fortune out of a game called Attack of the Mutant Camels on the C64, and that was about a million times better as a game than this rather turgid attempt to rekindle an ancient idea. Sure, it’s been written for the American market, and perhaps they don’t mind this sort of rubbish, but in this country, the competition is a little stiffer.

The screen is divided into thirds for the action, the scanner and the score. You fly your ship in a Defender style fashion from the right to the left and back again, trying to destroy the big walkers as they lumber from left to the right.

The game is fast, to be sure, but with no real control over what’s happening to your ship, if you take off too slowly you get shot; fly faster and you get out of control and crash into one of the Deathbots.
The sounds are depressingly similar to the sound effects from the Star Wars games, although nicely synthesised rather than sampled. The sound you get outside the action is a little bit boring, being just a synthesised throb. The graphics are nice enough, but somehow a little bit wooden, what I would call 8 bitty.

Ganymed is derivative, and frankly a bit of a letdown compared to other games of it’s type. I’m reminded of Firebird’s Return to Genesis, which although in a similar price range is a much more enjoyable game, being better thought out and well presented.