Review: Deliverance
by Douglas Kiang

Type: Arcade
Publisher: Inline Software, Inc. (203/435-4995)
Retail Price: $49.95
Street Price: $29.95
Requires: 16 or 256 color-capable Macintosh, System 6.0.7 or higher, 4 MB RAM.
Protection: None

There are many of us who spent our days happily plunking down quarters at the local video game arcade long before the days of Sega and Nintendo. To do battle in full color, on a large monitor, with side-scrolling action, you needed a dedicated video game machine that consumed quarters by the dozens. With Inline Software’s release of Deliverance, that same arcade thrill has been brought to your desktop and shows, quite impressively, just what the Macintosh can do.

Deliverance is noteworthy not only because it is an excellent game in its own right, but because it is also one of the only arcade games to truly showcase the Macintosh’s impressive graphics capabilities. The quality of the full-screen graphics and the fluidity of the animation easily rival that of a 16-bit cartridge system such as the Sega Genesis. 

Speak Softly And Carry A Battle Axe. In Deliverance, you control the Stormlord, a battle axe-wielding warrior on a quest to rescue helpless fairies and save his kingdom. The captive fairies are the guardian angels of the kingdom of Llyn Cerrig, and have been imprisoned in Tnarom’s palace. It is up to you, muscle-bound, scantily-clad warlord that you are, to fight your way through four different levels of your world in order to rescue them. Deliverance was clearly inspired by the “classic” jump and shoot arcade games and requires quick reflexes as well as a quick mind.

The controls are simple. You use the arrow keys to walk and jump, and the space bar allows you to fire an axe at an enemy. As with any great arcade game, you have unlimited ammunition, so fire away. But Deliverance really shines when you team it with a joystick or a Gravis GamePad. The game was made for this type of control, because all of the functions are at your fingertips. Deliverance offers side-scrolling action, which basically means that as you move around, the screen scrolls back and forth to keep you in the center. In each level, you can find different objects that help you on your quest. In order to gain access to different areas of the first level, for example, you must fight your way to a series of chests, then press the up arrow to open the chest and find the key that will open doors to other rooms. At the end of each level, you face a fearsome guardian. Each of the guardians can be overcome in a different way; as with the rest of the game, the key to vanquishing them is in trial and error and in finding each one’s weakness. 

 

After you complete each level, you receive a code that allows you to continue from that point on to the beginning of the next level. However, the codes are linked to your serial number, so you will not be able to share the codes with your friends and must complete each of the levels on your own. This isn’t a terrible setback, however, since all each of the levels require is a little patience and some trial and error to figure out what needs to be done. Often what takes the most thought is figuring out how to defeat the guardians at the end of each level—the most useful hint here is to look at your surroundings, and see how you can use them to your advantage.

The four levels of Deliverance are original and imaginative. Instead of facing the same obstacles over and over against a different background, you encounter everything from giant disembodied fists, to sections of floor that curl back and try to bite you, to a winged Pegasus wielding dragon-seeking missiles. After the first three levels, your method of control switches over and you control the Stormlord’s flying dragon. This approach keeps the game fresh as you head toward your final encounter. If not overwhelmingly cerebral, Deliverance is definitely great fun, dynamic, satisfying entertainment for the reflexes.

Deliverance’s brilliant 256-color graphics and its smooth animation are outstanding. On a reasonably fast machine, there is virtually no slowdown even in the midst of battle. You can be jumping forward and firing a battle axe amidst three or four different enemies all moving in different directions, and the game moves with the same smoothness and fluidity found on dedicated video game systems. Since this is a side-scrolling game, the entire screen is also moving forward at the same time; that’s a lot of information to push around. On less powerful machines, Deliverance gives you certain options to optimize the speed. You can view the game in a smaller window, or you can have the computer draw every other scan line, which darkens the screen but speeds things up and makes your $500 monitor look uncannily like a television set. Some players actually prefer this option since it does seem to give that authentic “arcade game” look.

Deliverance was originally programmed in 320x240 resolution for speed, then scaled up to 640x480 for full-screen animation. This leaves the graphics looking a little blocky. As a result, Deliverance may look like a PC port on the outside, but, at its heart, it is truly Macintosh in terms of its smooth gameplay and its superior graphics performance. For an extra punch (no pun intended), external speakers will make the most out of Deliverance’s robust soundtrack, which includes great intro music, rumbling explosions, and beastly snarls that sound eerily realistic.

For Mature Audiences Only? Contrary to its appearance, Deliverance is actually no more violent than any of the other video games that populate arcades and shopping malls, and it is less violent than many. It should be mentioned, however, that the initial beta of Deliverance featured—shall we say—some rather intense graphic imagery in the backgrounds of some of the levels. To Inline’s credit, these elements were removed or changed (for example, red blood was changed to green, and clothing was added to some of the figures) before the game was released. None of these changes affected the gameplay or the basic premise of the game; Deliverance is still just as much fun to play. A great game should stand on its own, in any case, regardless of what is or isn’t in the background. Still, one can’t help but wonder: how long before we see “Deliverance—The Director’s Cut?”

How Many Quarters Is That? Overall, Deliverance is a game that uses the Macintosh’s capabilities to the hilt. The graphics are full-screen, the animation is smooth, and the sound effects are wonderfully, viscerally, well... eviscerating. The arcade game has been brought to the Macintosh in all its glory. For those who love this type of battle game, Deliverance is peerless. For others, the constant trial-and-error, jump-and-miss, die-and-restart cycle could get a little monotonous. And for still others, the levels may seem a little short and the game over too quickly. Yet all things considered, Deliverance is spectacularly well done, has a very reasonable price, and offers lots of bang for the buck. In short, Deliverance delivers!

Pros
• Fluid animation, great full-screen color graphics
• Several options for optimizing speed on slower machines

Cons
• Some of the levels can get monotonous
• Graphics are a little blocky if full-screen animation is selected