There has been a fair number of films about marauding zombie creatures. From the recently televised 'Carnival of Souls' to the more frantic, violent films of Sam Raimi and George Romero. Beast Busters owes more to the splatter genre of the latter directors rather than the former classic Sixties suspense drama, with heavily-
Day of the dead
The game places you as part of a troubleshooting team that has been sent to the city to try and determine the cause of the strange disappearance of the inhabitants. The previous attack teams didn't last long, sending back very little apart from some garbled messages about shambling forms emerging from the ruined buildings and quickly overpowering the investigators.
The powers that be have come to the conclusion that everyone in the city is dead: overpowered by the strange creatures there. This time, the investigation is to take on a more military approach. Two mercenaries have been selected to enter the city and blast their way through until an answer to the mystery has been found. However, as you enter the shopping mall on the outskirts of the city, you discover the depth of the problem. The building overrun with zombies, crawling out from every corner and they are intent on destroying any interlopers.
After a short skirmish, you decide to flee the city, only to find yourself trapped by a hoard of zombies. There's no going back - you must defeat the creatures and solve the mystery.
The game itself is an Operation Wolf-
As well as all manner of strange monsters to kill, you will come across floating pick-ups which drop from the decaying structures. These include ammunition clips to reload your gun, rockets, grenades, fragmentation bombs and gas grenades to take out a wide area and medical kits to repair damage.
Zombie Holocaust
Beast Busters is not the first Operation Wolf-
The graphics of the coin-op have been converted reasonably well, giving a fair Amiga representation of the zombie-action. The sound, on the other hand, is pretty dire, sounding weak and feeble rather than menacing.
On the gameplay side, the action has suffered a great deal during the conversion. The going is painfully slow, with the difficulty being in moving the pointer fast enough to keep up with the juddery animation. Things jerk about the screen so much that it becomes close to impossible to work out where the hell you're supposed to be firing, a point which isn't helped by the cursor being the same colour as some of the backgrounds!
It has been proved that this kind of game can be done on the Amiga, but unfortunately Beast Busters hasn't really converted well at all. The action is far too slow, disk access is pretty hefty and there isn't really a great deal of challenge. After only one go, it can almost be completed.
Fans of the Beast Busters coin-op should tread very warily before buying this version. In fact they'd probably be better off saving their money and clocking up a few credits down in the arcade.