Posted By
Luca
on 2025-09-13
14:13:57
 |  Re: The Death Sector Claims Another Victim...
Death Sector looks like another significant milestone in the field of the Plus/4 game scene, because it seems to represent a sort of compendium of all the positive features we've found in bigger and smaller slices, into the latest successful projects that we've had the luck to play. If KiCHY's Adventures In Time has been the beginning point of the Plus/4 games' new trend, Death Sector is the point of reached maturity.
Let's have a brief list of the contents boasted by this game.
scene history's witness: Death Sector promotes a scene prod of the late golden era, which would have been lost forever otherwise. But, instead of slavishly "complete" it as supposed to be and not a tad more, it improves the basic idea of the original game, then gets enriched with a whole series of contents from a modern era's gameplay.
a gripping narrative: in spite of the linear nature of an flip-screen action game, the engine of Death Sector has been based on the storytelling – either by event, and by location – which counts a lot into it, and the story itself simply works, decisely works for the best!
collisions shut you up: this is the major point, the most important, and puts the whole gear to worth playing. In a game where your skills in driving your ship thru the narrow passages and the differentially moving obstacles literally make the difference between your play sessions' scores – prolonging the game's overall longevity – fair collisions truly are the most important feature amongst all. Usually one can have some good results using sprites in bitmap mode; but here we have charmode, and I perceive a very careful and not at all easy work here, to obtain the most precise collision routine.
movie-like musical score: Csabo has been spoiling us for years now, constantly improving TED music, both technically and in terms of composition. But this time, the project is in his hands, not an external commission, and this is a situation where he can fully leverage his long-standing experience, giving the game's soundtrack a profound overall cohesion. It features 21 tracks, the majority of which are in-game, and it achieves three things: it respects a main theme, enriches the flow of the narrative, and highlights the game's events. His best work yet.
readable and inspired graphics: the 1992 original stole some cool sprites from C64 (Armalyte I guess, as in Terra-X), the current release shows some very nice brand new sprites, moving into a sci-fi landscape of desolate googie technology and lost nature with toxic colors. Nonetheless, the game starts showing some initial screens which seem to be not that distant from the former mechanics previously used by Beast – shooting mushrooms! – declaring a certain form of respect to the parent game, in a tangible connection between past and present.
variety first: I said action game, but I didn't mention that the game breaks the monotony of traditional flip-screen games with many unexpected graphical touches and the occasional logic minigame. Once again, it takes a simple genre and evolves it into something with its own personality.
fully equipped: all the accessories imaginable are present. The game is distributed on disk and tape, has a physical distribution on cassette, a dedicated IRQ loader that plays music while loading (tape), a giant logo directory (disk), a text prologue, four difficulty levels, bitmaps of the titles, ending(s?), and it provides both the music box and the remains of the original game on disk. I don't know, what more do you expect? For me to bring you hot coffee in bed in the morning?
Clearly, this is the kind of game where interest wanes after a while, and the gameplay itself has its own weaknesses. But before you abandon it, the four difficulty levels are a great way to make sure you're gonna spend more time than one can expect.
However, this does not at all affect the symbolic value represented by the production of Death Sector, which aims to be a new standard of quality on the Plus/4. Well done Csabo KiCHY and Unreal, my congratulations!
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