Chaos Strikes Back Original Version
FTL Games and Software Heaven released the original version of Chaos Strikes Back for the Atari ST in December of 1989. Chaos Strikes Back was ported to the Amiga in 1990.
Chaos Strikes Back was programmed by Doug Bell, Joe Linhoff and Mike Newton; its graphics were drawn by Andrew Jaros and David Simon.
Chaos Strikes Back is the sequel to Dungeon Master of 1987 Atari ST, which is a flip-screen cRPG.
Chaos Strikes Back is Dungeon Master on steroids: a 10-level mega-dungeon that features much tougher combat, more and deadlier traps, stingier itemization and non-linear conventional and verticality-based exploration via four main pathways.
If not imported from the original DM parties are assembled on a separate Prison level of the dungeon that contains 24 characters. There are 13 wizard spells and 16 priest spells to cast as well as 24 different enemies to get owned by.
Speaking of which, Chaos Strikes Back is famous for dumping an unequipped party into borderline pitch-black darkness amidst a swarm of giant armored worms. DM veterans won't have too much trouble dealing with the initial challenge, but newbies will get instantly owned over and over again as they work out how to illuminate the chamber, dodge monsters, cast spells and otherwise get to grips with the controls. And this is how sequels should be.
The Chaos Strikes Back Utility Disk features a Portrait Painter and a Hint Oracle that analyzes save games and gives the player hints. The original Dungeon Master portaits were changed in CSB in order to reflect the characters' now-heroic status.
Chaos Strikes Back displays in 16-color 320x200. As in Dungeon Master the flip-screen drawspace is 224x136px.
The Atari ST version of Chaos Strikes Back requires 512K RAM and was distributed on 2x 3.5" 360kB single-sided diskettes. In addition, players need one blank disk for save games and another blank disk to create an adventure via the Chaos Strikes Back Utility Disk. Dungeon Master save games can be imported as well. Diskettes can be formatted within CSB or CSBUD.
- Chaos Strikes Back manual: 23 pages
- Chaos Strikes Back Adventurer's Hand Book: 100 pages
On original Atari 520 ST hardware CSB suffers from long load-times and slowdown because its data is heavily-packed on single-sided diskettes. However, CSB is still a great game.
Chaos Strikes Back Amiga 1990
FTL Games ported Chaos Strikes Back to the Amiga in 1990. The Amiga version features better sound, slightly greater draw depth, shorter loading times and higher framerates than the original ST version. In addition, the Amiga version has an outro and there are a number of small differences to itemization and such-like.
Amiga Chaos Strikes Back requires an Amiga with 1 meg of RAM (like DM) and was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB double-sided double-density diskettes.
On ST/Amiga, Chaos Strikes Back stands as one of the greatest game sequels and the second-best flip-screen cRPG after Tony Crowther's Captive of 1990.
Overall, I give CSB 8.5/10.
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