Game Review: Silkworm (Amiga, Virgin Mastertronic)

While Mastertronic may have dabbled with arcade licenses on their own with the likes of Double Dragon and Gaplus, joining forces with Virgin opened up new doors to licensing games from some of the arcade giants. With a bigger budget at their disposal, more arcade games were converted on a more regular basis, including the side-scrolling shoot-em-up Silkworm from Tecmo…

Silkworm – The Game

Unlike most arcade shooters, Silkworm adopted a contemporary setting and offered a novel twist on the genre giving the players the choice of controlling a heavily armed helicopter or jeep. As is the norm for these types of games, simply shoot everything that moves (or doesn’t), get to the end of each level, take out the boss and move onto the next.

To make things a little easy, two players can attempt to take on the challenge – one controlling the helicopter and one the jeep – and each has their own strengths and weaknesses. To help you along the way, powerups are dropped from mini-bosses you’ll encounter along each stage, shields (released from destroying ground based targets) and smart bombs that destroy everything on screen (collecting a second shield when you already have on in use).

Multiplicity

Silkworm, like many other arcade games released under the Virgin Mastertronic label, actually saw the light of day several times at retail.  Originally released by Virgin Mastertronic as a full-priced “big box” title, it eventually earned its spot as a budget re-release on both the 16-Blitz and Tronix ranges. This wasn’t the only game to have been released multiple times by the company, making it a nightmare for completists!

Amiga Conversion

For the most part, the Amiga port of Silkworm seems to be pretty faithful to the arcade original. Understandably the graphics aren’t quite as sharp or colourful as its arcade counterpart but considering the Amiga was released four years before this came out in the arcades that’s understandable. Overall though, when it comes to the visuals, everything is clear, well animated and the parallax scrolling is silky smooth.

Sound wise is something of a mixed bag. The in game sound effects are quite sparse and there’s a title tune which isn’t particularly impressive, especially compared with other games at the time. While not directly credited, it appears that the music was composed by Barry Leitch who went on to create the stunning music for Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 for Gremlin so this is something of a surprise.

One significant improvement over the original is the in-game music. On the arcade original there is a short piece that loops continually throughout play that very quickly becomes annoying and as you would expect there’s no way to turn it off. Fortunately – and I assume this was done because of the 4-channel limitations of the Amiga’s sound chip – there’s no in-game music and it’s a welcome improvement.

Playability

It has to be said that Silkworm doesn’t offer anything particularly original when it comes to gameplay. With so many horizontally scrolling shooters out there, the only thing new that Silkworm offers to the player is the jeep option. This is somewhat reminiscent of the old classic Moon Patrol, controls are not as refined or fluid so for single player games most will opt for sticking with the helicopter.

I will say that the Amiga conversion is far more forgiving than the arcade original which does make it more appealing and frankly far less frustrating. Certainly you’re less likely to be shot down by enemy craft that appear out of nowhere behind you or off screen, but gameplay wise it’s just too repetetitve and bland to be that exciting.

Longevity

I mentioned repetitive gameplay and that’s the biggest problem with Silkworm – both in the arcades and on the Amiga. Once you’ve completed the first two stages, the end of level bosses keep repeating with the exception of the final stage in the underground metal complex. This lack of variety – with the exception of the changing attack patterns and occasional new craft you encounter during the stages themselves, takes away a lot of the incentive to keep playing.

This is a real issue with the design of the game itself and this is no fault of the Amiga version – it’s from the arcade original. Once you’ve figured out the attack patterns of the two bosses (both of which are pretty easy to defeat) the only real challenge throughout the game comes from the later stages as the game changes from a regular side-scrolling shooter into a bullet-hell shooter. It then becomes more frustrating than anything else, and combining that with the lack of variety beyond the background graphics, and it takes away any desire to return to it.

Overall

Silkworm is a good conversion of what is frankly a rather dull arcade game. While it’s technically accomplished and plays better than the arcade original, there’s just not enough variety in the gameplay to keep you engaged long enough to want to persevere to get through to the end.

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