Barbarism increased: Barbarian+ for Classic Amiga

Classic beat'n'hack'em game "Barbarian - The Ultimate Warrior" got a fan-made facelifted remake, and is now available on Aminet.

Some of you may have been following "Barbarian+"'s development history, with occasional artwork and news reports showing up in various places, but for those who didnt: "Barbarian+" is a remake of the classic game, written in AMOS by "Raster Wizards" Christophe Romagnoli, Simone Bernacchia and Colin Vella. It brings updated, refined graphics and sound, new warriors, new scenery, boss fights, cut scenes, one and two player modes, and demo and tutorial modes.

Now "Barbarian+" has been released to it's facebook-Page and to Aminet (see links below). It's a set of six .adf-files that you can directly use with your preferred Amiga-emulator, or transfer to physical floppy media for full retro gaming immersion.

A quick review

The basic concept of course remains unchanged - let's say the "depth" of this game is... limited. But that's never been what "Barbarian" is about. It's always been about visceral fun, brutal fighting for real men, and protecting curvy Maria Whittaker from the dangers of everyday barbarian life.

Minimum system requirements for "Barbarian+" are: 68020, 2MB ChipRAM

The Aminet readme file for "Barbarian+" says it also requires MUI 3.8, but MUI is not present on the game's floppy disks, and it still runs fine from floppy-only. Maybe MUI is just required for the harddisk installer, or it's just a mistake in the readme file.

The game runs from it's bootable floppy disk, or can be started from Workbench, which is a very welcome feature. It's a set of six floppies - be ready for some swapping, or install the game to harddisk with the installer provided on floppy disk nr. 6. (You can also simply copy the disks' contents to a folder on your harddrive.)

Barbarian+ title screen

It looks gorgeous, as if literally every single pixel of the original game had been reviewed for improvement - which probably is the case indeed. A nice tutorial mode ("Controls") explains the warrior's moves and gets you immediately ready for close combat. Demo mode lets you watch computer opponents hurt each other for your viewing pleasure.

Two of the new warriors - my god, what are these?

The new scenes and warriors make a refreshing change, and some of the new sounds are just amazingly realistic. Apart from the general overhaul, new details have been added here and there. The game looks smoother than the original, probably due to more animation frames and faster screen refresh, but also maybe intentionally plays a little bit faster and more responsive.

Two Amazons fighting - this will not end well...

Overall "Barbarian+" does not explore new gaming territory, but that's not what it's supposed to do. It's a beautiful tribute and a fine update to the original game with plenty of improvements. The screenshots above do not even remotely show the amount of changes. "Barbarian+" should not be missed. Fantastic work!

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So far just a quick review, not to spoil too much - now it's up to you to fight your way through "Barbarian+" and find out the gory details!

You can download "Barbarian+" from AmiNet:
http://aminet.net/package/game/2play/Barbarian_Plus_ADFs_1_0

Thank you very much, Raster Wizards!

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Sources:
http://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2018-11-00016-EN.html
http://www.indieretronews.com/2018/11/barbarian-plus-head-chopping-classic.html
https://www.facebook.com/BarbarianPlus/