Venus the Flytrap Amiga Gremlin Graphics 1990

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Venus the Flytrap

Gremlin Graphics of the U.K. released Venus the Flytrap for Amiga in October of 1990. Venus the Flytrap is a side-on platform and run and gun game that features good controls, 50 FPS screen-scrolling and the smoothest sky gradients possible. Venus the Flytrap also features horizontally-scrolling shoot 'em up bonus stages with parallax scrolling and high sprite-counts.

Amiga Venus the Flytrap was programmed by George Allan, drawn by Paul Gregory and Berni Hill and composed by McMullan and Low.

Venus the Flytrap is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth in which cybernetically-enhanced insects went haywire. In Venus the Flytrap players control an armed and armored cybernetic insect that seeks to exterminate the insect-plague. The insect can walk left and right, jump, fire to the left and right as well as jump vertically and diagonally. The insect can also move and jump about while inverted on platforms and cavern ceilings. Players have limited control of the insect's movement in mid-air, which is however important.

Once the power-ups pods are collected, the insect can switch between six different weapons on-the-fly: Normal, Big Shot, 3-way, Mortar, Beam-up (R-Type) and 4-way. Only the Normal weapon does not require ammo. Pick-ups include pods such as 1-up, lose life, time, vitality, shield, ammo, flight, and control-reversal. Hazards include pits, spikes, turrets and time-drain icons that are embedded into platforms. Also embedded into platforms are hyper-jump, continuous jump and magnet icons.

• Active drawspaces of 310x224 (platforming) and 292x224 (shooting)
• 10x worlds consisting of 5x levels each and 1x bonus level each
• 6x weapons & 10x collectables
• 4-notch energy meter
• 6x boss enemies & 24x standard enemies
• 20x secret rooms
• Select weapons F1-F6
• Self-destruct (R-key)
• Smooth sky gradients
• Parallax screen-scrolling in bonus levels
• Articulated cybernetic insect sprite
• Death animation for cybernetic insect sprite
• Crisp on-reveal and on-collect sounds for power-ups
• Excellent music
• Intro & Outro
• Floating point-acquisition graphics

Venus the Flytrap criticism: scrolling is needlessly non-bi-directional. No on-jump or on-land sounds effects.

You can tell Venus the Flytrap is an Amiga-first game within the first few seconds of play. This game has Amiga soul.

Venus the Fly Trap Worlds

• The Forbidden Forest
• The Frozen Wastes
• The Dead City
• Wood World
• The Caverns
• Death Valley
• The Creeping Swamp
• Tech World
• Translucent Plain
• The Stygian Creek

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