Sword of Sodan Graphics

[Sasuke]

In Sword of Sodan you can see the game's characters in large dimensions.

What are other games with similar graphics?

[d4rk3lf]

Definitely worth mentioning is Deliverance.
Not as large character as in Sword of Sodan, but very large anyway.
I played it a little, and I liked it, and will play it again.
Haven't played SOS, but it seems like the gameplay is pretty bad.

Here's Deliverance:
[ Show youtube player ]

[dreadnought]

Sword Of Sodan, the perfect example of bigger not always being better.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Definitely worth mentioning is Deliverance.
Not as large character as in Sword of Sodan, but very large anyway.
I played it a little, and I liked it, and will play it again.
Haven't played SOS, but it seems like the gameplay is pretty bad.

Here's Deliverance:
[ Show youtube player ]

Wow. Didn't played that one. Very impressive indeed. The animation of the main character is splendid.
I'll give it a try, thanks.

[Cherno]

Conan The Cimnmerian has large character sprites for the battle sequences as well.

[lionagony]

Under Pressure fits the bill [ Show youtube player ]

[Adropac2]

Sodan sure was impressive at the time. An absolute showcase for how much better Amiga was than anything at the time. The whole presentation was film like and the gameplay felt meaty too as well as looking and sounding stunning. I can't honestly say it was the best game ever but it wasn't crap either and felt like a Conan game. It does tend to receive a lot negative but it was exceptionally good at what it did even if that can be considered simple enough gameplay

A game that had a lot of tension too on top of it all and while I don't like to play it these days, I'm quite respectful of what it was doing and quite early on in the Amiga's life. A real neat bit of history this game

[CCCP alert]

The only thing wrong with Sword of Sodan is the game engine speed, it's sluggish (using the built in Kickstart routines rather than writing their own arcade quality routines to maximise the chipset?). If you want to see how little difference there is between that game on the Apple II GS and Amiga go and check it out on youtube. Somebody should really have gone in and optimized Sodan to bring it up to Lionheart/Beast 1 levels of immediate response arcade controls type gaming.

Games like Sodan, Lionheart, Beast 1 didn't get the review scores they deserved.

If you say these play badly it just proves you are the sort of person who is useless at games in the arcade

Sodan will use ALL the drives you have attached to your Amiga, I had 2 external drives at the time I bought it and there was hardly any disk swapping, thumbs up to the devs.

[Sasuke]

I agree.

Sword of Sodan looked very impressive for a game of its time. I liked it a lot.
It definitely stood out for its graphics. Large sprites weren't seen around on the Amiga. The sound effects are also well done, and the introductory music, like in a swashbuckling film, I always found beautiful.

Even today I listen to the introductory music with great pleasure.

Long live Sword of Sodan!

[Adropac2]

just going back to it actually and it's just as impressive. I'm not especially great at the game which is why I don't tend to play it I think but the idea that it's somehow a dud of a game is really to not see how exceptionally impressive the whole package is even now. I do get the criticisms of a game that on the face of it isn't much more than slash slash and some jumping etc but the gameplay around this it does very well to the point of you feeling that impact when smashing people but also that judgement of hitting, dodging or jumping requires understanding too. Certainly not a crap game

It almost feels like an actual playable version of Dragons Lair say if that was designed with there being more than just timed events and that's quite an achievement. Not to slag on Dragons Lair for what it is

And the music as you say is so very good, putting the whole experience as something quite unlike any other game on the Amiga or anywhere else. I think to put it in perspective just how remarkable it really was is to put it up against the Megadrive version which has none of the wow necessary to why this game was so hugely impressive back then. A massive achievement

[Megalomaniac]

I'd say its no coincidence that some of the most adored Amiga games (Lemmings, Sensi, Syndicate, Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine) have very small sprites. For most genres, especially platformers and shoot 'em ups, there's a realistic maximum size that a sprite can be, to avoid negatively impacting gameplay and making it too hrd to avoid anything. Relatedly, I'd argue that developers needed to know the skill and experience level of the players, and factor that into their game design (especially with multiple difficulty levels).

Street Fighter II style beat 'em ups are an exception, some of those sprites are huge. For end-of-level bosses some of Xenon II's were enormous, btu that's not an especially fast game at the best of times anyway. Under Pressure's main sprite is enormous.

[JudasEZT]

The Plague also had very big sprites and is very smooth and fast and some technical virtues. Gameplay-wise,.. well no that polished.