Moving through the UK #1 games of the second half of the ‘80s, there’s been a general trend away from small developers doing different things and getting their chance independently, towards a more homogenous lineup of licenced action games from the same few names. 1990 has a fightback of sorts with a set of CodeMasters-published games that are as varied as 1986 or 1987 had to offer. The Guardian Angel was developed by a Spanish company called Dinamic, showing it wasn’t just the UK having a golden age of home computer game creation. Unfortunately, that’s about the most interesting thing about it.
I offered Shadow Warriors as proof that there can still be an interesting spin on a genre that people have been making games in on the same computers for at least five years at this point. The Guardian Angel is an example of what happens when a game fails at that. I didn’t realise coming in to this project that side-scrolling brawlers had quite such a hold over the British public around 1990, but here we go again, and it’s diminishing returns writ large.
Originally called Freddy Hardest in South Manhattan, this was the second in a series of games based around an intergalactic, vaguely Flash Gordon-sounding hero. After being transported to modern New York (I wonder if he ever ran into the Last Ninja?), there’s not much of that character left except for the blonde, ludicrously balloon-chinned cartoon portrait that sits below the letterbox of screen in which the action takes place. His set of kick and punch moves are very standard, and with no platforming or moving into or out of the screen things are vastly simpler than Shadow Warriors or Renegade. Managing crowds of enemies and working out whether to kick the ones on your left or right first is as much as it offers, and its as limited as it sounds.
Counting in favour of The Guardian Angel is some extremely detailed background art bringing the docks to life, even if the CPC version being in Spectrum-like monochrome feels a bit of an unnecessary waste. It doesn’t even do as much for a sense of place as the monochrome art of Last Ninja 2, though, existing at a distance from the two-dimensional gameplay. It exists at a stylistic distance from even the framing graphics, which sums up a lot – a game ill at odds with itself even in screenshots.
