Devilish: The Next Possession

"Digging up the past can turn sour."

When I first found out this kind of game had made it over to the Genesis, I was quite surprised. ‘Who would buy this kind of game’ I thought, ‘Classic gaming action for the likes of the ZX Spectrum, or the Commodore 64 - but the Genesis?’. Then I thought I may be wrong. Maybe the developers had come up with some ingenious idea to convey the genre into the sixteen-bit era – an update we’d all be rushing out to buy.

Sadly the answer was no.

Devilish, for your information, is a ‘bat and ball’ game. Anyone into gaming pre-nineties will recall Arkanoid as the champion of its kind. The premise was simple enough for anyone to play, yet mastering the game took some time and skill. You basically controlled a ‘bat’ or ‘paddle’ which deflected a ball around the screen destroying bricks, until there were none left. If you let the ball go past you, you lost a life. Each level had a different shaped ‘wall’ getting progressively harder, with such obstacles like ‘gold’ bricks, which were indestructible - there to get in your way. Addictiveness came as standard, bringing you back to get that one level further. Think of it as ‘Pong’, playing against an inanimate wall instead of another player. It sounds easy enough, but couldn’t have been harder – especially as the ball often tended to increase to speeds faster than the eye can see.

The conversion to the Genesis has brought about a monstrosity of a game however. Shunning the temptation to add some gaudy background graphics of which the originals were incapable of, and then label it as an update, the developers chose instead to lose the static screen. I’m all for progression and change, yet in this instance I’ll say that I’d of actually preferred the former.

As you break through the bricks in front of you, the screen scrolls upwards, following your progress. There are various blocks which help or hinder your progress as well as an assortment of monsters which happily deflect your ball in any given direction. This process carries on until you got to the boss, a being so devoid of interest, you will want to defeat it to relieve your boredom.

Another unwelcome change is your paddle, or in this case, paddles. You see, you don’t just have one – that would be far too eighties. Your first paddle works in the same way as the classic one does – left moves it left, right moves it right. The second one, which sits just in front of your first, moves forward and backward at your command, yet always stays in line with the other. So now you can chase the ball up the screen with your new paddle – an addition that is as pointless as it is confusing to work. Play further into the game and you do realise the importance of the additional paddle though. Later levels scroll sideways as well as upwards which was obviously considered a challenge by the developers. To overcome the problem, your second paddle can rotate, giving you the ability to hit the ball sideways. Unfortunately, the whole scenario turns into an absolute farce as it just doesn’t work right.

As if that wasn’t enough, the biggest problem of all seems to have developed only in this title. You see, the ball doesn’t conform to physics – in fact it does pretty much what it likes. Hit the ball against a wall or one of the bricks at 45° and you would expect it to bounce off at the same angle right? Not in this game I’m afraid. The ‘random angle generator in full effect’ takes over every time the ball strikes something rendering the game virtually unplayable. What makes this situation worse is the fact that Arkanoid et al never had this problem… and they are older than your dad!

With all of these failings in trying to recreate a simple game, you would expect the graphics to be its saving grace. Admittedly, they are not too bad, yet hardly any reason to buy the game. As the action is viewed from overhead, the scenarios are actually reminiscent to shooters such as Mercs. Each level takes on a different theme with surroundings to match, the first being a cemetery. Gravestones pose as the blocks you must clear to reach your goal, vampire bats hover around the paths intent on obstructing your way. The use of colour is quite nice too though detail is lacking. The cemetery consists of a grassy dirt track surrounded by bushes and rocks, simple yet effective. One level is obscured by waterfalls making life a little harder and indeed the last level, the beach, is completely obscured by a watery effect adding an unwelcome burden to add to your problems.

All in all, the ‘bat and ball’ genre should have stayed on the eight-bit systems it championed. Along with Mah Jong, Shove It, and all those other little games that no one else with any sense of sixteen-bit gaming would buy, Devilish should be lost in the obscurity it was doomed to endure. Find an old computer and Arkanoid and see how it should be done.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/03