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Snapshot S wish Thud "Urgh!" Pad pad pad. "Halt! Who goes..." Swish snap!
Silently sneaking through the darkened corridors, the slightly built Ninja dropped the two guards before they could make a sound. She climbed the ladder at the end of the corridor, only to find another three guards at the top... she expertly spun a pair of shuriken, injuring two of them. But the third ran after her. The corridor ended in a sheer drop down the side of the building... she backed up a step and without hesitation flung herself into the void, bunching her body tightly in a fast, high spin.
Phew! It's exciting all this Ninja stuff, innit! If you enjoyed Saboteur, you'll just lurve Durell's spanking new sequel, Saboteur II. Subtitled 'Avenging Angel', it's the adventures of Sab's sister, a fetching gel called Nina, who it seems is a Ninja too. Poor old Sab, though he escaped intact from the last adventure with the enemy's computer disk, got himself iced (clumsy beggar) at the end of Saboteur I. Sis is understandably miffed about it, and sets out to make home cooked catfood out of the evil foreign power who did for him.
The format of the game is similar to Sab I in that you are a black clothed figure, with all the high leaps, Kung Fu kicks and punches, and a lot of shuriken and dragon's tongue swordplay besides. Where Sab II wins out over Sab I is in the sheer size of the thing! Over 700 screens take you through tunnels, the rooms in the three buildings, through the grounds around the base and even beyond ...if you can escape.
Nina has discovered that her brother was knocked off because the disk he stole contained the plans for a new missile base, which the enemy is building inside a mountain. She hang glides over the mountain and drops into the enemy's base. On the top is the original missile base, a building containing all the enemy's ammo, and the new missile base. Previous Ninja warriors who tried to destroy this base have left their weapons behind, so there's plenty of stuff for you to fling at the flame-throwing androids and maneating pumas...
You must get in, destroy as much as possible, prevent the evil toads from nukeing the western world, and get out again on the flashy motorcycle you'll find in the lower caverns of the mountain. As in Sab I, you must also collect computer tapes, but this time if you feed them into the computer you'll blow up the missile. There are lifts to negotiate, 14 pieces of computer code to collect, pumas to outrun and eight foot tall androids to beat the living springs out of. Yep Sab II's a hell of a lot more difficult than its prequel! In order to drop a guard, you have to kick it, pierce it with shuriken, beat it over the head with spanners and lead pipes and generally duff it up for some minutes before it consents to have a little lie down. On the whole I avoided confrontation with the metal mickies and ran away rather than waste my energy.
All the computer tapes are in boxes along with your ammo - in order to find them you have to riffle through the contents of the boxes. The lifts save you a lot of time going up and down levels 'cos you can travel up to ten floors in one fell swoop. This comes in very handy when your timer's running short and you've got to get right down to the bottom level and on yer bike before the missile blasts off!
The graphics are smaller and a little more detailed than on Sab I, and the characters more animated. The androids seek you out, so you have to keep moving a lot more than in the previous game. For 128 music fans, the music for the Fat Speccy is fantastic.
This is a fine sequel, but possibly more important, it's a fine game in it's own right. Saboteur was an original twist on an old platform riff, so that makes Sab II a double twist with a backflip and a lager chaser!
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