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Pandemonium is a platform game, published by Crystal Dynamics, for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, PC, and Nokia N-Gage. It features Fargus, a joker, and Nikki, who unwittingly casts a spell that destroys the town. The goal of the game is to reach the Wishing Engine, where they can wish the town back to normal. For each level, the player can choose which character to be. Each has a special move - Fargus can deliver a special spinning attack, and Nikki can double jump. The game consists of a great variety of unique gameplay objects, such as watermelons, clouds, spider webs, and logs, as compared to many other platform games. The Playstation and PC versions have 18 levels, while the N-Gage version has 11.
In the PlayStation and Saturn versions, rather than using a memory card as in most games, progress is saved using a password system.
Pandemonium 2, the sequel to Pandemonium, was released in 1997 for PlayStation and PC.
Gameplay
While Pandemonium renders polygons in a typical 3-D fashion, gameplay is 2-D. The area of gameplay can be described as a two-dimensional surface twisting and bending in a three-dimensional world. Occasionally, this surface will overlap itself. For example, the main tower of the second level is a cylinder with a spiral-shaped floor.
Along the way, the player can gather treasure. Collecting 300 treasure grants the player an extra life. The player can also activate a bonus level by collecting enough of the treasure in one level. (It is unclear how the limited-time × 2 treasure modifiers affect the percentage of treasure collected.)
- If the player gathers 80% to 94% of the treasure on a level, he activates "Speed Greed", a bonus level in which one must collect treasure while simultaneously keeping ahead of a pursuing vortex.
- If the player gathers at least 95% of the treasure on a level, he activates "Full Tilt", a pinball-based bonus level. In this, the player directs the character around a giant pinball machine in order to gather treasure and activate special areas of the board. Upon reaching the end of this bonus stage, the player can achieve as many as three extra lives as well.
There are three unique powers (other than metal, which provides limited invincibility) that the player can collect. Each shoots a beam of limited range in the forward direction, somehow affecting the first enemy it hits. The red power harms the first enemy in its path. This will destroy most enemies in one hit, but it will take some enemies three or even ten hits. The blue power freezes an enemy, and upon touching a frozen enemy, it will shatter and be destroyed. The green power shrinks any enemy, whereupon it can be destroyed by stepping on it. Shrunken enemies grow back after a limited amount of time, and likewise frozen enemies will thaw after a similar amount of time. None of these powers affects bosses. A player loses all powers when hit.
At several points in the game, after passing a certain area the player will turn into a unique animal; passing another area will revert the player back to a normal character. The player will become a frog, a rhinoceros, a turtle, and a dragon throughout the course of the game. The frog can jump extremely high, the rhinoceros can kill any enemy by charging at them, the turtle can become invulnerable by hiding in it's shell, and the dragon can breath fire and fly. The challenges of the level then reflect the abilities of each animal until the character reverts to normal later in the level.
Like in Zelda games, the player has a limited number of hearts, representing health. Rare bonuses allow the player to add to the initial two heart containers, so that the player can store more than two hearts at once. Loss of all hearts results in the loss of a life and the return to the latest checkpoint. Loss of all lives ends the game.
Heart containers
The aforementioned heart containers are the most coveted of all treasures and are nearly impossible to find. In order to gain access to a heart container, the secret area where the heart container dwells must be located. Despite being a platform game, Pandemonium's heart containers are extremely difficult to locate, as certain things may distract one from seeing the less obvious path leading to the container, or simply because the area is hard to reach. For example, in level 10, there is a floating lilypad bridge that begins to fall before the checkpoint on the bottom part of the level. Crossing this bridge takes much skill, and falling brings one to the next checkpoint, and leaving one unable to try a second time. Certain passwords have been discovered in which the character has eight heart containers, meaning a total of six heart containers exist throughout the game's eighteen levels. However, no one knows of anyone who has found the location all of the heart containers and come forward with the information, although there are rumors. The levels that have heart containers are:
- Level 3 - Dungeon Tower
- Level 10 - Canopy Village
- Level 13 - Honcho's Airship
- Level 16 - Efreet Palace
- ? (Likely will be Level 15 - Cloud Citadel because no one has managed to get more than 88% treasure on this level)
- ?
References
- Chambers, Chadd (2003). N-Gage: Pandemonium Review. Retrieved Jan. 19, 2005.
- Schwarzenbach, Blake (2000). review - PC - CNET Reviews. Retrieved Feb. 3, 2005.
External links
1996 computer and video games | Platform games | PlayStation games | N-Gage games | Windows games | Sega Saturn games
"Pandemonium (video game)"