Sword of Sodan Amiga 1988 Discovery Software International

Sword of Sodan Amiga 1988

Discovery Software International released Sword of Sodan for the Amiga in 1988. Along with Hybris of 1988 Sword of Sodan constitutes a technically notable early Amiga game.

Sword of Sodan is an 11-level side-scrolling hack n slash game in the classic swords and sorcery mold.

Sword of Sodan was programmed by Søren Grønbech aka Sodan of Datastorm fame. Sword of Sodan graphics were drawn and animated by Torben Larsen. Sword of Sodan audio was composed by Julian Lefay aka Magician 42.

In assuming the role of Brodan or his twin sister Shardan, the object of Sword of Sodan is to battle to the tower of Craggamoor and defeat the necromancer, Zoras.

There are eleven levels to hack and slash through. The warriors only wield swords; their shields cannot be used to block blows. The warriors can move left and right and jump and crouch. There is an overhead chop and a fast slash. The function keys (F1-F4) are used to activate magical collectables. Enemy stamina is shown on-screen along with warrior hit strength.

Sword of Sodan features massive sprites, digitized speech, fancy screenwipes and parallax scrolling. There are obstacles such as spikes, traps and rolling barrels.

Sword of Sodan requires an Amiga 500, 1000 or 2000 with 512K of RAM. Sword of Sodan supports up to two hours of "instant" replay with 1 meg of RAM.

Sword of Sodan was distributed on 3x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. Sword of Sodan contains 4 megs of audiovisual data.

It is important to remember that Sword of Sodan came out in 1988. That means Sword of Sodan predates the release of the Sega Genesis as well as Sega's Golden Axe coinop. In addition, Sword of Sodan was basically developed by just three people.

When I start to think about how Sword of Sodan could have been better, I just remind myself: three people, 1985 technology, 1988 release.

cf. Chronological list of similar computer games:

• Shadow of the Beast Amiga Reflections 1989
• Ghouls 'n Ghosts Amiga 1989 Software Creations
• Ghosts 'n Goblins Amiga 1990 Elite Systems
• Golden Axe Amiga 1990 Dementia
• Unreal Amiga Ordilogic Systems 1990
• Gods IBM PC MS-DOS Platformer Bitmap Brothers 1991
• Immortal IBM PC MS-DOS Sandcastle 1991
• Moonstone Amiga Rob Anderson 1991
• Deliverance Amiga Devinart 1992
• Lionheart Amiga Thalion Software 1993
• Mortal Kombat IBM PC MS-DOS Probe Software 1993

Indexes:

• Amiga Games Reviews (Index to all Amiga game reviews)
• Computer Game Reviews (Index to all computer game reviews)
• The First REAL Amiga Game
• Best Amiga Games
• History of Computer Games 1976-2024