rave.N7 Oct 2015
Drol is the best sophisticated animation using hi res and artifacting, the authors were so proud that they added the word "scrolling" to the catalog and boxcover across this page to describe "scrolling underground corridors". And That's a far out story in the instructions.
Must be tricks to how this animation works, mainly that there is mostly only one Pillar on the view at any time. The trap doors might be player missiles, hallways probably only scroll what's needed, amounting to just a few dashed lines on upper surfaces. Your character stays in the center, reducing what would be intense user movement along the X axis.
Artifacting is correct in screenshots, although the glow effect of CRT is greatly exaggerated. Little girl is "red-haired" on box covers and "red-headed" in the Ad here. Those aren't Atari screenshots in the documentions, the small white rectangle at top right of Atari screen is seen at top left in docs screenshots, plus pillars and the floors are same color on Atari.
There's a (probably unofficial) low res color conversion of Drol which makes Blue/Red replace Blue/Brown and they were careful not to reverse them, this once. Drol is a better game than Aztec which also has hi res and low res with Red/Blue. See Ultima IV & V for a lot more notes on artifacting.
Andreas Koch16 May 2008
Well,
regarding the colors of Drol, afaik the original version used Gr.8 + artefacting, thus there were no colors on PAL machines. But later some hackers/crackers made a colorful Gr. 15 version available... -Andreas Koch.
Dave S.11 Mar 2008
One of my all time favorites. Graphically superior and very fun to play! Excellent!
Jim Kuchera22 Dec 2006
By today's standards, this game is inane, though has a quaint 'look' and 'feel' to it. I thought it was great, and a real tiger to beat, if that's even possible. Sound effects were clearly brand new, but later duplicated by other games. Broderbund games always got a second look from me, and usually went out the door under my arm. Like Bandits, this title has strange coloration to it. I liked that fact. I can't recommend this game widely, but personally liked it because it was so very different. Take a look at Bandits, which has greater playability in my estimation.
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