REVIEW: Assassins CD by Weird Science

by: Jason Compton


Game compilation CDs are considerably more interesting to review than font/clipart creations...especially if the games are good, and even more if the design is nice. In all of these areas, the Assassins CD is a success.

A bit of background first. If you've ever seen an advertisement for a PD/Shareware disk seller, you've seen mention to the Assassins line of floppies, basically a couple hundred disks with freely redistributable games on them. Having a modem and net access, it's never been very attractive to me.

Of course, having all 200 on one CD, with a full graphical interface, bootable from the CD32, is a completely different story.

The story is this: The CD comes ready-to-run on basically any Amiga, all the way down to CDTV. A title screen, animation, and music greet you, followed by a menu choice to either use the Workbench (for Parnetting or just direct access to the CD) or their graphical menu system.

Don't pass up the menu system, even if you're not using a CD32/CDTV. It's quick, attractive, and most importantly will do what all CDs of this sort should be required to do: tells you what you need to run it! The built-in scripts, should you choose to play, put your machine into the proper configuration for playing the game. I have yet to find one that fails.

The menu system breaks down games into six categories, in which are alphabetical listings and indications, if necessary, that a game is AGA (well, it says NOT CDTV, which you can interpret to mean AGA...) Usually, some sort of description is available using the interface.

There really isn't much left to be desired. The Assassins disks are also compressed and stored on the CD, so as not to be wasteful with space or if you're planning to pull them off onto another Amiga.

This is good stuff. It's simple enough so that anybody can get it up and running instantly (games don't even choke on my SX-1's fast RAM, which means they covered all of the bases), and has enough games on there that you're destined to find SOMETHING that meets with your approval.

*** NorthWest Public Domain, the provider of this disc, has a deal for Amiga Report readers. NPD will sell the disc at the price of US$16.95 to anybody who admits that they read AR. Shipping to North America is US$2.00, US$5.00 elsewhere. (AR has nothing to do with this deal, and we don't profit from it in any way...)

NorthWest Public Domain
P.O. Box 1617
Auburn, WA 98071-1617
206-351-9502
nwpd@cyberspace.com

Weird Science
1 Rowlandson Close
Leicester
Leicestershire
LE4 2SE

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