Shanghai II (more review)

[ltchean@iss.nus.sg (Lim Thye Chean)]

Hello, it is me again. I have written a small review on Shangai II about
two weeks ago. I am off for a holiday, so I am not sure whether there are
any follow ups on it.

My opinion slightly changed after I played with it more often, so this is
an update to that review.

By the way, although Shanghai II has very lousy graphics (the default
tile set is bad compare to the original shanghai), the tile set of the
original Shanghai is there, but you will have to load it from disk.

Surprisingly, the new colour scheme makes the tile set looks better than
the original Shanghai. In fact, I really like it a lot. This makes me
wonder why the authors don't make it as a default, or even let the user
choose it from the menu. You will have to load it from custom dialog 
everytimes you run the game.

(Fortunately I have Kangaroo, I just set up a submenu, that't it. Buy
Kangaroo! - end of advertisement)

The sound is quite nice too, except for one particular sound effect which
is very irritating.

Shanghai II actually consists of 3 parts:

1) The enhancement to the original shanghai - more layouts, more tile sets,
   animation and sound effect.

2) A new game called Dragon Eyes

3) Shanghai tile editor

Unfortunately, Shanghai II for GS don't have the tile editor! That is, you
got only 2/3 of Shanghai II on other machines. Fortunately, for game player
like me, this is not important.

I have almost completed all the layouts, and it is actually quite
enjoyable. It is still quite slow, even with animation switch off, and
running at 9MHz. There are some minor interface problems too, for example,
the word `File' and 'Option' on the menu have unballance spacing...
although it is minor problem, I still use a resource editor to edit it, and 
make it looks nicer.

Overall, I do recommend the game if you enjoy the original Shanghai.


--
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          Lim Thye Chean: Lim is my surname. My name is Thye Chean.
     My address: LTCHEAN@ISS.NUS.SG, or 9, College Green, Singapore 1129