Hands up who used to have a Spectrum. What a quaint little rubber beer-mat it was. And some of the games were quite nippy indeed, despite what the C64 snobs will tell you. Some of the greatest games on the Speccy cam from the almost criminally talented hands of Raf Cecco. He specialised in shoot-'em-ups with gallons of colour and explosive sound. On the Spectrum as well, blimey..

Exolon, Cybernoid, Cybernoid 2 and Stormlord were his biggest hits, and quite rightly too. Never had the poor old Sinclair witnessed such excitement. It was the closest thing to a "proper" game that us humble Spec-chums ever got.

What, I hear you say, has this got to do with Deliverance? Well, for those who haven't guessed, Deliverance is Stormlord, beefed up and rewritten in full colour Amigavision. Smashing.

You take on the role of the now obligatory Barbarian, and you have to free a previously peaceful land from Satan and his totally bogus posse. Satan, or Stan to his mates, has kidnapped all the fairies. So not only has the world been plunged into darkness and damnation, but nobody can do the washing up. So, up steps brave old Stormlord, and trundles off to pick up fairies (insert any old John Inman joke here).

So, coincidence or what? No sooner have I calmed down and stopped palpitating over Myth, when up pop 21st Century Entertainment with Deliverance. It's uncanny. Two games in the same month, and they're very, very similar.

As in Myth, Deliverance requires you to don furry boots and a shaggy hairstyle and chop your way through Hell to sort out some fiendish demonic bloke. And when you reach the big baddie dude, you move from platform hack 'n' slash to fast moving shoot-'em-up action. Spooky, eh?

So, the obvious comparisons . Is Deliverance as good as Myth? Well, not quite. It's neck and neck on the graphics and sound front, but Myth's bigger and slightly more challenging. Is Deliverance as good as Gods? Ye, in fact it's tons better. The initial look is the same, but Deliverance doesn't bog itself down with fancy AI routines for the baddies. In fact, it's sheer bad luck that Myth and Deliverance have come out at the same time. Had Deliverance come out last month, things might have been different, but sometimes life can be so cruel.

You see, Deliverance has got absolutely exquisite graphics. Yes, that's what they are. Exquisite. And the sound is nice and chunky. But, unfortunately, Myth's got both of those as well and it's got a puzzly element to it, which just give it the edge.

That's not to say that Deliverance is a loser. No, no. Nobody goes home empty-handed on this show, and Deliverance wins our "Excellent Platform Slash-'Em-Up But Not Quite As Good As Myth" award.

Oh, I feel so guilty about this. You can't believe the personal anguish this is causing me. Under normal circumstances, I'd love this game. In a really deep and meaningful way. We'd have candlelit dinners, walks on the beach, romantic weekends in the Peak District, a lovely wedding and some kids, and then settle down for a long and happy life together.

Unfortunately, Myth came along first and stole my heart away. I'll still carry a torch for Deliverance though, it'll always be special to me. Oh, my heart is breaking. I'm sorry Deliverance, you came along too late. Maybe if fate had smiled on us, we could have made beautiful music together. But if you don't fancy Myth, then by all means give this a look. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship...

There were fairies at the bottom of the garden. That was until the Evil Queen Bahd (Bahd geddit?) got hold of their gossamer wings, their light-as-an-air molecule bodies and holier-than-thou attitudes and looked them up in Satan's palace. Guess what the plot is? Yes, you, the big, hard Stormlord have to defeat the queen, free the faires and make the land of Llyn Cerrig a better place to live in (just like you did in Stormlord).

So, we have a flimsy plot (you can also add a touch of the Dark Crystal - the evil queen is sucking the lifeblood from the fairies in much the same way as Gelfings had their life forces sucked). But who cares about plot when the action is as fast and furious as this? For a start there are unlimited axes you can either chuck in a constant flow, as long as you are static, or wield viciously in close combat.

Once you've mastered this art all you really have to do is complete the four levels: Satan's Palace, The Pits of Hell, The Enchanted Palace and Heaven, rescue the fairies and generally be the goody guy. Easy really. One points that has to be made clear is the similarity between Deliverance (notice, bu the way, the lack of John Voigt/Burt Reynolds/Canoe gags) and Renegade's Gods. The platform style, ladder climbing (better here than Gods), the key collection and even the costume ad strikingly similar.

Even claims to 'intelligent' monsters have retained (a misuse of the adjective in both games. The monsters will still attack, even when they are weaker than you, they won't create traps or try to negotiate peace and sort your mutual problems out in a sensible manner - they will follow you about a bit!).

The key to the whole thing
The control system is easy to get to grips with; there isn't too much for you to pick up and carry around for a start. In fact all you need to worry about are the keys that are harboured within the many chests littered along the way. But Beware! This is a game about demonic forces and fairies, so obviously there are booby-chests (and other receptacles too) that contain various hideous monsters. Frankly everywhere you look there are monster-type things.

The going gets weird very early on, with thumping firsts coming through the floors and ceilings, and even quick-floor areas, these are sections of ground that will attempt to suck you into them if you hang around. Generally there is a slightly surreal feel to Deliverance.

You can take huge amounts of damage before getting through your three lives, but this is for a very good reason, not a second goes by without attacks coming in at you. All good stuff with some smooth scrolling, reasonable collision detection (you can still hang by your toenails from ledges but what the hell, this is a magical land innit?).

It's a kind of magik
To enable you to navigate the passageways, doors, bundles of coins, flying faires, fire, spiders and general magikness (sic) you even have little amber podules to drop along the way. Thank the gods for that 'n' all, because, aside from the huge statues of naked nymphs put there to distract the red-blooded stormlord - and bewilder the equally crimson-corpuscled Stormlady - the bulk of the area through which you trek end up looking the same.

Frankly, Deliverance has a lot to offer the player who is tired of games where an over-emphasis is placed on brains. It signals the return of good-ole, slash 'em and stash 'em fever. OK, so maybe you have to work out a few measly puzzles as well, there's also a hint that standing around manically slashing at the mounting hordes of evil is less productive than moving nearer to the entrapped fairies - but hey! The little critters can look after themselves for a while longer can't they? Let's flash that axe and go "Hurrghghg-ahhhh!!!".

We always feel slightly saddened, here at AMIGA POWER, when we come across a game with the finest of programming talent behind it, into which heaps of effort has clearly gone, and which seems like the answer to all our prayers the first few times we play it - only to find, after a couple of days of investigation, that it turns out to be, well, not quite 'all there'. (I do, anyway, I can't speak for the rest of those ruthless blighters). Surely Deliverance, wit the proven talent of Raf Cecco and a string of euphoric 8-bit reviews to back it up, won't suffer just such a fate? Read on...

For fans of the 8-bit versions, it goes without saying that Deliverance is a platform game with some chap walking around killing monsters. However, that's more or less where the similarity ends - not only is our hero now a large viking type (sort of George Bernard Shaw crossed with Noggin the Nog) instead of a dwarf, the very, erm, 8-bitty gameplay of the original has been replaced by something closely resembling that of an arcade machine.

I doubt if Cecco had anything very much to do with this new version, to be honest - it's really quite a different game to his Spectrum and C64 originals.

Similarities? Well, there are some. Our hero still carries an axe, which he can swing around his head (for close combat) or heave vehemently across the screen (for long-range death-dealing). That's until the final level, anyway, at which point the game transforms itself, with mixed results, into a sort of scrolling shoot-'em-up.

Until then, however, things follow a pretty standard pattern with platforms, ladders and the rest of it. It's familiar stuff - particularly level one, which, with the addition of a few metallic bricks, would have the Bitmap Brothers demanding royalties.

What it doesn't share with Gods particularly, is subtlety of gameplay - this is very surface stuff. True, every so often (on level one, at least) you'll come across these large wardrobe-type things which can be opened to reveal various things, but this hardly amounts to 'gameplay depth'.

More often than not, all you'll find inside are even more evil spiders and bats, though once in a while you'll come across keys, which are needed to get through doors, and, if you get really lucky, fairies - and completely naked ones at that! (Good Lord! - Ed.) As it turns out, the aim of the game is actually to 'liberate' as many of these fairies as possible. (They've been captured by the evil Queen Bahd, you see, plunging the land into darkness etc.)

So this isn't a game of great depth, more an arcade-type thrill. To be honest, the scrolling and animation don't exactly set new standards of treacly smoothness - put Deliverance alongside, say, Leander to see how things should really be done - but who cares when the graphics have been designed as well as this?

The backdrops are stunning in places, and way above average everywhere else. And the sprites are, well, brilliant. Not only are they beautifully drawn, but they're wonderfully imaginative too.

That's really the main thing Deliverance has got in its favour - the Baddy Factor. From the weird invisible men on level two to the strange stick people on level three - and the incredibly frightening insect things that accompany them - all the stops have been pulled out to give the most impressive baddies I've encountered since the General Election.

And if you're impressed by them, just wait till you see the end-of-level sequences! Blimey - you'll be knocked off your feet. They're absolutely astounding, real crowd pullers. Games in themselves, almost. Normally at AMIGA POWER we wouldn't ruin your fun by revealing the details of such things, but I've just got to or I'll burst. At the end of level one, for example, there's this... (Snip! - Ed) Aw. Just look at the pictures, okay?

So what's the prob? It sounds positively splendid. Why the slightly-less-than-utterly-enthusiastic intro? What don't they tell us on the back of the box? Eh? Well, not specific. It's a top-hole game and everything. It's just that, um, (fidget, fidget) there's always plenty going on, but I found myself wishing there was even more yet.

The baddies are terrific, really terrific. But there are only about three different sorts on each level, and once you've killed twenty or thirty of each you begin to wonder if, well, you know... And lobbing axes about is all very well, but I kept expecting to come across some sort of 'shop' (esp on level one). Your only chance to upgrade anything is on level four where you can exchange the blobs you fire for bigger blobs.

CALL ME UNGRATEFUL BUT, ERM...
The crux of the problem is that, once you've uncovered each level's secrets, you're left with the prospect of re-uncovering them again (and again) until you reach the end. (And even then there's a load of disk accessing before the end-of-level sequence). There's nothing hidden away beneath the game's surface to discover, no puzzles to solve or secret rooms to chance upon, and in the more-than-likely event of completing the game within a few days of buying it I can't imagine anyone wanting to play through it all over again.

And how about the competition? Say, Gods, Switchblade II and First Samurai (another Raf Cecco game, funnily enough). Three onto one might not be entirely fair, but they've got Deliverance cornered simply on account of having lots to do.

Deliverance parries bravely with its benchmark graphics (some of the best on the Amiga, no doubt about it) and sheer imagination, but it's not enough. The final blow is dealt. It slumps to the floor, mortally wounded. "f"But what about those end-of-level-bits?" it gasps. "And the scrolling section? And how about the... wheeze... cough..." its three opponents raise their swords and cry as one: "Variety, that's the key."
Good stuff, then, but too thinly spread to be a real knock-out.

he kingdom of Llyn Cerrig is in a dire state of unrest! The long awaited Upper Llyn Cerrig branch of Texas Homebase still hasn't opened, the price of a pint of Babycham has gone up six pence, and to top it all, that pesky Queen Bahd, the crone, has gone and kidnapped all the ruddy fairies again.

Devotees of the rather nice, platformy, puzzley, adventurey charms of Stormlord will be familiar with the plight of Llyn Cerrig, the enchanted land ravaged by a nasty fairy-napping crone. In Deliverance, the crone's back, and this time she's brought the devil.

Yep, no kidding - the nasty old bag has enlisted the help of Old Nick himself. You must step into the Stormlord's fluffy moccasins once again, in order to free the fairies they've imprisoned in an array of delightful locations, such as Satan's Palace, The Pits Of Hell and The Enchanted Forest.

Jane: You don't have to play Deliverance for long to find out how different it is to Stormlord. The cutesy graphics, addictive gameplay and neat puzzles are conspicuous by their absence, replaced instead by rather standard dungeony, dragony arcade adventure fare and rather lame, frustrating and repetitive gameplay.

You start with an unlimited supply of axes and a pawful of markers. These can be used and re-used to help you navigate your way around the confusing, twisty, turny terrains as you search for the imprisoned fairies. The devil's henchmen (a fairly nasty array of bats, creepy-crawlies, giants fists and assorted fantasy beasts) are there to try and stop you. However, most of them are quite easily dispatched with your handy chopper, which you can either lob at the nasties or kind of whirl round and round frantically.

There are energy coins to collect, but you can also replace lost hit-points by just standing still, which takes about ten years and is considerably less interesting than watching paint dry. However, it does present a handy opportunity to get yourself a cup of Ribena or have a wee. At the end of each level, there's the usual end of level boss type beastie to contend with.

And that, folks, is about the measure of the thing, except to mention briefly that you have three lives and no continues. On the plus side, you do get reincarnated in the spot where you died, which is always a treat.

While the gameplay is, unfortunately, nothing to write home about, it's unfair to entirely write off Deliverance. The levels are large and varied, the sound's pretty good, and the sprites are big, extremely smart and quite impressively animated. It's also worth noting that the baddies are programmed to be 'intelligent' (ie they will chase after you if they can, rather than plodding off in the opposite direction).

The background graphics, too, undoubtedly deserve a special mention. They're deliciously lush and detailed - marble gargoyles, billowing all shiny torches in iron sconces, delicate carved wood closets, dangling skeletons, gory cadavers sprawled over torture devices (lovely) and naked bodies strung up in all sorts of uncomfortable and somewhat pervy positions. There are also a couple of enormous and rather unsettlingly life- like statues of topless Egyptian chicks.

It seems fairly obvious that whoever programmed Deliverance is an avid fan of the female form - even the fairies themselves are totally starkers. But beware: spend too long trying to get a good look at a fairy's chassis, and the sneaky little devil will explode! Obviously, these fairies have decided that if the charming hero that discovers their place of imprisonment is more interested in having a gander at their privates than in hurrying them to safety, they'd rather not be rescued at all, thank you very much.

All told, Deliverance isn't horrendously bad or deadly boring, but then it's also several squillion light-years away from being 'one more go' fodder. Stormlord certainly had its faults, but it had oodles of charm and that certain something that had you coming back to it time and time again - two things that its sequel is sadly lacking.