Amiga Tribute: Hired Guns

Desverger from Hired Guns.

Part 21/24 of my Amiga tribute project >3

And now for something completely different, yes, Amiga had some RPGs as well, this time's title Hired Guns being one of 'em.
Now this is one strange game I tell ya. It was one of the most innovative RPGs of it's time, yet at the same time, it were those innovations that led to it's downfall and obscurity. Well, that, and the prolonged release delay which made most potential buyers uninterested in the end, but still |D

OK, so lets start from the top. The story is fairly straightforward, a group of mercenaries is hired for a hostage rescue mission on planet Graveyard, a mission that is actually a hoax, and that it was all part devised by an evil weapons corporation to test some of their newest genetically engineered creatures on said mercenaries.
Soooo, the cliche story aside, lets advance to the more interesting part... for one, this is the first ever RPG design for a more multiplayer approach, as you choose 4 characters out of 11 which you will control during your adventure, and here's where the problems start. As you don't control your party like in a jRPG... you control all 4 at the same time western RPG style... yes, you control 4 people separately, switching between them on the go. And it's much more of a problem than it sounds at first, from basic commands like walking, which you must do with all 4, one by one, to some way more problematic ones like enemies, who not only can pop up any minute and attack any character you still have alive, they move in real time and can esily switch targets, effectively trolling you as you struggle to switch between characters... yes, it was way ahead of it's time, but back then it meant that if you were playing this alone, you were in some really deep shit. And playing with your friends wasn't an easy option either, even if you had enough friends and could somehow talk 'em into playing with you, you had to have the hardware to play it with this many people, either by sharing one keyboard (not really recommended if you're playing with 3 other people) or have a parallel joystick port adapter and 4 joysticks, which wasn't something all that easy to get.
Next is the music, not the best OST in an Amiga game, but it was nice and had various tracks for the intro, options, character selection, etc. and just when you thought you're gonna have a good time, as even a game this badly designed could be playable with the right tunes... and this is the part when you get even more pissed because the game has NO music whatsoever besides the menus...
The one really cool thing is the cast of charactersthere are humans and androids, each with it's own set of stats, skills, etc. they were not only varied enough to make your choice hard, they were also designed well enough that you could recognize your team and not have 'em shoot one another (unless you really, really wanted to), and it might seem silly nowdays, but back then it wasn't so ovious in those kind of games |D

And yeah, Desverger here was always on my team. Yes, I have played it, and even though I knew how badly designed it was, it was something different and I wanted to know it better to have a valid opinion at the very least |D but back to the main topic, Desverger was the only one who's description outright said he was an assassin and a mercenary, no sugar coating it, no trying to be a "space paladin", just a simple assassin/mercenary with a ripped coat (or just rags), ripped cowboy hat and yet another space gun that I had to spend hours sketching >P he was just too badass not to take on such a quest >D

So bottom line, the game sure was innovative, but maybe partially ahead of it time, partially too advanced for the system it came out on, and partially very rushed, which is strange considering that back then it was a record holder for most delayed game |D but if some more work and thought would have been put into it, the game could have been so much better >.<

Other parts of the project - Shadow Of The Beast, Shadow Fighter, Zool, The Chaos Engine, Superfrog, Skeleton Krew, The Speris Legacy, Flashback, Agony, Brutal: Paws of Fury, Fightin' Spirit, Ruff 'N' Tumble, SwitchBlade, Lionheart, The Lost Vikings, Brian The Lion, Wolfchild, Gods, Entity, Franko: The Crazy Revenge, Hired Guns, Turrican, The Killing Game Show, Yo! Joe!


Desverger (c) DMA Design & Psygnosis