Kick of the Spear – Return of Anubis (C64)

Summary

Heeding feedback provided on the original Kick of the Spear title, Magovinna went back to have a second crack at his fighting combat game in an attempt to improve its production and playability and succeeds to some extent.

The full character sized fighting experience is retained and improved thanks to the new enemy AI that provides much more of a challenge now  and requires you to mix up your attacks in order to progress. Another plus is the implementation of a scrolling fighting area which agains adds depth to the overall fighting mechanic. However, the number of attack moves is still limited and all enemy fighters feel like the fight in the same way.

The idea of introducing a story mode is a good one but it is poorly executed. The newly added platform stage is presented in a view that is not consistent with the combat view and feels like it is just tacked on rather than neatly integrated so as to make it feel like one continuous gaming experience. Setting this aside, the platforming action is just annoying with floating symbols as hazards.

When it comes to the presentation side of things, it is a mixed bag. The digital speech that was missing from the first Kick of the Spear has been added and it sounds good. The console panels on top and at the bottom of the combat sections are much improved but this appears to be at the cost of the background graphics, which are now really non-existent. The in game music continues to be somewhat lacking.

A lot of credit needs to go to the coder to try and improve Kick of the Spear but there is still a lot of room for improvement required to make Return of Anubis a compelling play. More attack moves, enemy fighters with distinct characteristics, defensive moves, more strategy are all things that need to be refined if Kick of the Spear is going to have any hope of getting anywhere near the quality of a game like SNK vs CAPCOM.