Giana Sisters Download (1988 Amiga Game)

Giana and Maria are two little sisters. One night, Giana entered a strange dream-world of monsters, giant mushrooms and castles with hundreds of jewels suspended in mid-alr. The only way she could wake up was to find the crystal at the end of the 32nd stage of the dream-world with a little help from her sister Maria.

The sisters' dream-world consists of 32 levels of scrolling platforms inhabited by stumpy little monsters. Avoiding these is pretty easy to begin with, and they can be squashed by jumping on them. Unlike most little girls, Maria and Giana have rock-hard skulls that allow them to headbutt stone slabs, some of which give special powers. The first of these is the glowing ball, giving the sisters a punky hair-do that smashes through otherwise indestructible blocks. Others let you shoot or freeze the baddies and give extra lives.

Further into the game you have to negotiate pits, fire, nails and dissolving bridges. By experimenting you can find blocks that contain extra jewels and secret bonus rooms at the bottom of certain pits. Invisible jewel blocks are also dotted around the levels.

Graphics are not Giana's hot point, in fact they are almost identical to those of the 64 version. It scrolls smoothly but the sprites are very basic, as are the backgrounds. Fortunately graphics are not that important as you start to play. The simple platform action has just about the right amount of levels and difficulty to make it worth trying to get that one level further. During the game a bouncy piece of music plays along, changing every now and then with the later levels.

I would have liked to have seen some more variety in the levels, most of which are just new arrangements of platforms and pits. This is understandable on the single-load 64 game but I am sure the Amiga could handle a few more features. Even so, Glana Sisters is a game that scores on gameplay rather than flashy graphics or sound and will have a lot more staying power for it.

One of the first games I've been addicted to - Giana Sisters. A great Jump 'n Run - nothing special compared to all the stuff of today, but a real classic. Find your way through many levels with some strange and cute monsters which you can defeat by jumping on them, well... some of them at least - some others are only defeatable with extra-weapons you find. Collect diamonds to increase your bonus and get an extra-life (though this version includes a cheat that lets you select unlimited lifes, time and weapons). Nostalgic feelings are overwhelming me when I play this one, but it's not only the fact that I played it 10 years ago on my C64, but also that they've just created a game that lives for years and stays enjoyable.

Mario clone, converted from Commodore 64. Maybe the C64 version is better, the capabilities of Amiga are not really used. It's a simple clone. But the music was resampled and sounds quite well. If you haven't seen the C64 version, try this!

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

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