Retro Weekends Episode 32: Antiriad

"This is a relatively fun game but I feel like it could've been longer, there was also no background music during gameplay but I guess that was true of a lot of games from this era. One thing that annoyed the hell out of me though was the controls, they were so janky, and on top of that there was a lack of fairness at points, with enemies spawning inside you or killing you before you could fully recover from your last death."

"So Antiriad is an early Metroidvania game where you look around for armour upgrades to allow you to power up and enter new areas. It was actually in development at around the same time as Metroid itself so its really at the forefront of this sub-genre. The game has some interesting elements such as the battle armour that you can get into and exit at any time and the two energy bars you have to keep an eye on, one for the armour and one for you. Graphically it looks reasonable, using the hardware to a good standard with mixed usage of C64 high and low resolution elements. I think the game is flawed, but a lot of that has to do with the time in which is was made, it was ahead of its time in a lot of ways and was an important release."