Hired Guns 1993
Visual Sciences Ltd. ported DMA Design's 1993 Amiga version of Hired Guns to IBM PC MS-DOS in 1993. Both the original Amiga version and IBM PC port were programmed by Scott Johnston.
A flip-screen cRPG in the vein of Dungeon Master of 1987, Hired Guns is notable for its independent control of up to four units and support for 1 to 4 players. In single-player mode the player can select four mercenaries from a database of one dozen.
In controlling a band of mercenaries, the object of Hired Guns is to terminate the existence of illegally bio-engineered organisms via fusion-induced thermonuclear explosion.
The mercenaries must recover four fusion power core rings and insert them into their corresponding field coil generators located at the target site, which is the Graveyard Central Spaceport. Naturally, each installation is fortified and guarded by hostile mutants that need to be terminated with extreme predjudice using the supplied firepower.
A 256-color VGA 320x200 game, Hired Guns crams 4x 140x82px viewports into a single screen. Each screen-quadrant can be switched to different modes via space-saving tabs along the top.
Unlike most flip-screen cRPGs, Hired Guns also features seamless transition. The unit control and GUI of Hired Guns are solid, and it is cool that you can push blocks, use psionic amps and set sentries and proximity mines.
Both the Amiga and IBM PC versions are immaculately presented; there are fancy screen-wipes and a smoothly-scrolling world map. In addition, the Brian Johnston's music is amazing on the Amiga and the Krisalis rendition on IBM PC is solid as well.
Hired Guns obstacles include locked doors and forcefields. Doors are opened by keys and security access wafers, and forcefields can be deactivated. There are also teleport fields, pushable blocks, push-panels and lifts.
There are over 110 items in Hired Guns. Weapons include handguns, rifles, machineguns, flame-throwers, grenades, grenade launchers and Sonic Stunners.
- Hired Guns Manual: 23 pages
- Hired Guns: The Luyten System: 42 pages
- Hired Guns: Countdown to Graveyard: 42 pages
- Hired Guns: Code Sheets
Hired Guns requires 540K of free conventional RAM. Hired Guns was distributed on 2x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes. The hard disk drive install size is 6 megs. Hired Guns audio supports AdLib, Roland and Sound Blaster (2.7 megs of audio).
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