Unique and original arcade style fantasy shoot ’em up with superior, rock solid soundtrack.

Story

The once mighty and wealthy magician Sagyr has suffered a curse cast by Xandrilia, the Wicked Witch from the West. The curse has turned Sagyr into a bat and blind as he his, there is no way for him to read and cast the correct spell to reverse the horrible curse. Allegedly Xandrilia cast the curse on Sagyr because of age-long jealously for his magical power and the riches that he possesses. Sagyr must now confront the witch and force her to lift the curse, and thus a harsh battle begins…

The Game

Wings of Death is a vertically scrolling arcade style shoot ’em up in which you play as Sagyr fighting the minions of Xandrilia. The game starts you off in Sagyr’s cursed bat form, but along the way you’ll be able to collect power-ups called spells, which can turn you into other winged creatures and thus alter your weaponry. The goal of the game is to survive and blast your way through each of the seven stages and defeat the final boss – Xandrilia.

Content

You’re given three lives, and Sagyr can take quite a bit of punishment before he dies as indicated by a health bar. When you eventually lose all your lives, you can continue the game from the stage in which you died – and you’re given four chances to continue.

There are around 40 different types of enemies that you’ll get to fight against – bugs, insects, demons, mutants, zombies, dragons and so on. The game also has numerous hazards that you must avoid such as fire pillars, poisonous flowers and volcanoes to name a few.

The various spells you can collect are Spread Fire, Circle Blast, Power Beam, Dragon Fire, Thunder Balls, Hunter and Destroyer. Spread Fire is as the name implies a shot that spreads in a wide cone from your beast. Circle Blast lets you shoot a small ball that bursts into all directions when it hits the ground. Power Beam is a very powerful constant laser-type weapon that quickly burns through enemy attack waves. Dragon Fire is a straight forward fire shot that burns through enemies. Thunder Balls is perhaps the strangest weapon of them all – it will have you shoot numerous balls linked together in a string, and this string follows a strange set pattern across the screen. Hunter and Destroyer can be combined with any of the other spells and basically acts as an external side kick that kills enemies on impact.

The power-up spells will drop from defeated enemies. The spells are depicted as black bubbles with an icon in it, representing the nature of the spell. All power-ups in this game will sway from left to right sometimes making it hard to avoid, so if you’re careless there’s a risk that you unintentionally pick the wrong spell. Sometimes they even stack together, making it impossible to pick just one.

This is important, because if you keep collecting the same type of spells, your fire power will increase considerably for each spell of the same type that you collect. Each spell can thus be upgraded in four or five steps. Collecting a different kind of spell however, will reset any upgrades you had back to square one, so you’ll typically stick to the one type that suits your play style best. Also the spell that you’re currently under will have an impact on your movement speed as well as the size of the beast that you transform into. Naturally this affects how well you’re able to avoid enemy bullets and other hazards.

The spells are mostly well-balanced off of each other. Power Beam is a very powerful weapon, but the beast form that you assume along with it is very slow and big, which makes it unfavorable for the most part.

Circle Blast is perhaps the weapon that is the hardest to utilize because if the small ball hits an enemy before it explodes, you won’t get the explosion effect from it, which severely limits the damage potential. What’s more, the game fails to render all the explosions correctly if there are too many enemies on the screen at the same time. This is a bummer, because Circle Blast is perhaps the most satisfying weapon when fully powered up.

It should also be noted that the spells that you find aren’t randomized, so you can memorize where to get what and through that optimize your chances of getting the final upgrades and thus reach Sagyr’s full potential. This would require you to replay the same level a few times though. It should also be noted that some spells are more rare than others.

Other power-up spells that you can collect are extra lives, extra energy, bonus points and speed upgrades. There’s also the curse that’s best avoided as it will downgrade your current spell-level back to its most basic form. Furthermore there’s the auto-fire spell that will allow you to constantly fire by just holding the fire button pressed down. Strangely, this will decrease your fire rate considerably – manually pressing the button will allow for very rapid-firing, but not so when you’re under the auto-fire spell. Obviously this was not intended by the developers, but it does have a huge impact on the game and is thus regarded as a bug.

When you die, your spell-level will be reset back to square one – which is equivalent to picking up the curse spell. Collecting new spells can be very inconvenient, and on later levels the enemies are tougher and keep swarming the screen – that’s when you’ll notice that the low-level spells just won’t cut it, and it can be hard to recover from death and get back in the game.

Wings of Death features seven different stages, each with a boss waiting at the end. Your journey will begin in Sagyr’s castle, and then take you to the outside world across gardens, swamps, wastelands and crystalline realms. It’s nice to see that the game has a fair deal of variation, and since you’ll keep encountering new types of enemies for each level, it keeps things fresh from start until the end.

Controls

Regarding controls the game is very straight forward. As mentioned, your movement speed depends on what spell you’re currently under, and there’s only one fire button – no bombs or other special attacks. The difficulty level of the game is fair out of the box, and there are no options to adjust it. The difficulty is stepped up for each stage that you progress, because the enemies will generally be tougher, meaner and faster.

The main difficulty lies mostly in recovering from the dreaded curse or death though, as they both reset your spell-level. But there are also enemy attack waves that can surprise you – they can enter the screen from anywhere, so the best practice is to stay away from the edges of the screen if you’re on unknown territory. Also, enemy bullets tend to travel rather slowly across the screen, so the game certainly isn’t as fast paced as other shooters you may have played, but it’s still a challenge.

Graphics

The graphics in Wings of Death are colorful and nice, but somewhat strange. The game mixes a lot of different styles and has been inspired by both abstract shapes, fantasy, science fiction, comic-books and horror themes. Interestingly enough, it manages to have a coherent feel to it even though it mixes stuff up so liberally. It’s certainly inspiring to see.

The animation is a mixed bag – the main hero Sagyr is well animated but there are lots of enemies that appear to be lazily put together. Overall it’s very detailed though.

Sound

The strongest part in the whole game is its fantastic musical compositions. The game has good sound effects and numerous voice samples as well as a rock solid soundtrack that seemingly never gets old. The music is cheery, sad and catchy all at the same time – really, you’d have to hear it to believe it. It manages to capture both ups and downs of Sagyr’s personal battle. This is one of those rare games where every single track is a masterpice, but the once that stand as most iconic are the first few songs; the intro music, and the music from the first two stages. It’s simply brilliant – it’s too good to miss – and it’s sure to capture the hearts of many retro video game music fans.

Summary

Wings of Death is a great game if you are fond of arcade style shooters. It’s definitely one of the best and most original shooters that you’ll find on the Amiga 500. It’s only downside is that it ends a little too quickly.

The game has some replay value though, as it’s easy to play and offers a fair challenge even for experienced players. The great music certainly uplifts the whole game experience by a whole lot, but even without it the game does stand on its own, especially in the Amiga 500 game library.

Developed By: Eclipse Software
Published By: Thalion Software
Version Reviewed: Amiga 500
Genre: Shoot ’em Up
Players: 1
Also Available On: Atari ST
Released: 1990