Hewson

Hewson was a publisher/developer of quality computer action games in the 1980's and early 1990's. Their name isn't well-known outside of Europe unfortunately. A few of my favorite Hewson games are:

Slayer(1988)

http://www.c64gg.com/images/S/Slayer.ss.gif

Quite a good shooter for its time.

Gribbly's Day Out(1985)

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/G/Gribbl...Out_ingame.gif

This game had quite a bit of personality. You fly around searching for little guys to rescue. I never did play the sequel.

Zamzara(1988)

http://user.tninet.se/~lrv840n/platform/zamzara2.gif

A nicely animated run 'n gun game. Very cool.

Cybernoid series(1987/1988)

http://simon.mooli.org.uk/LXF/Spectra/pix/Cybernoid.gif

These shooters were brutally difficult, even by Euro standards. The first game was released on the NES by Acclaim.

Nebulus AKA Tower Toppler AKA Castelian(1987)

http://www.tld-crew.de/games/n/nebulus.gif

This neat little platformer came out on many non-computer formats: 7800, NES, and Game Boy.

Some other Hewson games are: Alleykat, Herobotix, Subterrania, Anarchy, Uridium, Sunburst, Netherworld, Zynaps, Firelord, Cyberdyne Warrior, Mr Wino, Paradroid, Maze Mania, Lunattack, Eagles, Exolon, 5th Gear, Ranarama, Insects in Space and Head the Ball. I have played about two thirds of these. Most of them are shooters. Any opinions on them would be appreciated.

Remember the controversy over the Genesis version of Stormlord by Razorsoft?(Such a big deal over naked fairies). Stormlord was originally a Hewson game. I don't think the game is anything special anyway.

http://www.c64gg.com/images/S/Stormlord.mp.gif

Any fans? Any information on individual authors would be great.

this might be the first history thread that i don't know anything about. i've never even heard of hewson before.(

edit: i think i might have seen castelian at some point, but i'm probably confusing it with another title.. interesting thread, in any case.

I have played the Gameboy version of Castelian a few times. It was a fun little game, from what I remember. I always assumed the main character in the game was a little pig, but that screenshot makes it seem like it was something else. What is that thing, a frog? An alien?

Castelian is probably one of my least favorite NES games. The way they handled the platforms winding around the tower was fairly impressive though.

Good memories of:
Zynaps, Ranarama, Cybernoid 1 & 2, Uridium, Paradroid and Exolon.

Bleh memories of:
Nebulus and Stormlord.

Haven't played any of them in years, but I can definitely remember the shooters being very hard.

Wonder if I still have any of them around here?

/me goes off to check

What's Ranarama like? It doesn't look like an action game from the screens I have seen.

Well, I found my old trusty Atari ST and Zynaps, Nebulus and Cybernoid 2. I *know* I have Ranarama around here somewhere, so I'll post info after I find it.

Nebulus
Credited to John M Phillips.
Still don't like it, but it doesn't seem as annoying as I remember. Probably 'cause I've only been playing it for five minutes, lol.

Zynaps
Credited as being converted by "Microwish" (Howie, Pete Lyon & J. Dave Rogers)
Horizontal scrolling shooter, much harder than I remember it being :(

Cybernoid 2
1989, ST version by Tony Cooper (of ID2) and Mark Jones. Apparently the original Cybernoid was done by Raffaele Cecco.

Another tough shooter, but at least this one still plays as I remember it :)
I still love the music (typical ST/Amiga/C64 synth stuff) too.

They acknowledge this one's a toughie as well, when you die it comes up "Game Over, please stick to Cybernoid 1" :p

/me continues to search for Ranarama and Exolon

Cool. Thanks for the info. I haven't played most of the upgraded 16-bit versions of Hewson's games but I remember Cybernoid being an improvement over the 8-bit one.

I forgot about Amiga stuff like Zarathrusta and Moonfall. Has anyone played them?

http://users.pandora.be/peter.verswy.../Jungle_03.jpg

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ca...ALL/SCREEN.GIF

All ST games published by Hewson, with some screenshots :D

Little Green Desktop

and some Spectrum Hewson Links..

All the Spectrum Hewson games covered by Your Sinclair - with some of the reviews.

Info from the "World of Spectrum" Infoseek

I didn't know there was an ST version of Slayer. I have play that some day. It looks very nice.

I had Cybernoid for Nes, and its one of the few games I didn't have the patience to go all the way through. Someday I'll get back to it. I've seen Castelian many a time, but never did play it. Zamzara looks like a pretty cool game too.

Hewson is one of those developers I always read a lot about, but except for Castelian/Tower Toppler I've never played any of their games.

Pretty good company, as I recall.

I had Tower Toppler on the Atari 7800. It was an excellent conversion of the original computer game.

Uridium was a very good shoot-em-up game on the Commodore 64.

I remember everyone wanting to play Storm Lord because of the fairies. :rolleyes:

I wasn't surprised that it played as bad as it looked.