Rampart

Rampart by Tengen
Players: 1-2
Levels: 8 single player;8 additional(different) ComLynxed
YOR: 1992
Stereo: Yes
Manual: 5 languages

Your castle and your lands are under siege! Enemy hoards attack by land while seaborne invaders bombard your castle walls with cannon fire. Somehow, you must defend your realm. But it won't be over until you conquer your enemies and regain all the lands for yourself.

Rampart is one of the most impressive Lynx games I've played so far. I have played the arcade version, and the Lynx version just seems better, even though it's on the smaller screen.

The game starts out with some really cool animations. This is very impressive to watch. Then after the title screen, you can chose novice or veteran skill level. We'll start with novice. You can chose from 6 different places you want to build your first castle. The amount places to chose varies on the part of the island you play at. Chose the place, and a sqaure wall goes up around it. After that, you get 16 seconds to place cannons. You can only place cannons where there's a red and black checkered pattern. Those patterns show the enclosed space. The number of cannons you can place also depends on where you're at. After that, the graphics change to more detail, and the battle begins!

The battles last about 10 seconds or so. You have a little target sight(A fires, B makes it faster), which functions is obvious. At first, your targets will just be weak ships(brown), but they get much stronger as the game goes along. Green ships can take a little more, then grey, and then red. Red ships fire cannon balls that will leave a fire in the spot they hit for several turns, where you can build over. The graphics in battle mode are really cool. Lots of scaling and much more detail. The static screens have killer animations. There is nothing to compare with the other hand-helds, even on another 16-bit system. All the non-game screens rock. Another killer part of the game is the digitized speech. It sounds so clear, and it in itse;f sets it apart from other hand-helds. The music is done equallly good as well.

Rampart is the game to get if you like finger-burning action and quick thinking, with beautiful Lynx graphics and sounds thrown in. Among the best Lynx game IMO.

RATINGS-

Graphics- A++ - Killer! So much color and detail throughout most of the game. Very impressive.

Music/Sound- A++ - Like the graphics, they rule! "Ready...Aim...FIRE!"

Control- A- - I found it way better than the arcades. As for control overall, it's pretty good, although it's something you won't whip out on the first try.

Difficulty- Average to Hard - It can get quite challenging. It's not to frustrating either.

Fun Factor- A+ - This game is really fun, the only thing bringing it down is the difficulty, which may get in the way a little bit:)