Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

I like Your highly subjective and vivid reviews. I know You've been criticized for just that, but the point is: You give the reasons for Your subjective viewpoint very clearly. Because of that, I can decide for myself if I would have the same opinion or not, given Your explanation.

This is much more helpful to me than the reviews that give a crappy (sorry) game 5 points where even a real, real, real fan of the game would reasonably give a maximum of 4, praising the game as if it came from heaven.

It seems to me that, most of the time, You spare me a disappointing experience. Thanks a lot!

You didn't mention that this really is an old game, straight from the first years of Amiga. On that platform, at a certain point in time, it was one of the best-looking games around (and it certainly looked better than this pc port); the "big icons" interface was created to experience the "full power" of the then-revolutionary mouse pointer! :brain:

This said, gameplay always sucked, so I agree with your review. I always ended up playing 5 minutes of Barbarian and 4 hours of Kick-Off... god, I need a decent amiga emulator :titan:

Hey, I played this game on my old ZX Spectrum+. There were infinite lives in my version so it was easy to complete it. I agree it's really difficult game (I died at least five times in every room where enemies were) but it's not THAT bad. You just need to know what to do.

My gripe is that this is not the predicessor of Barbarian II. Barbarian II was the sequel of Death Sword. Read both the reviews for those game and it'll make sense.

That's why this game is not cross referenced to either of those two. They are completely unrelated in every way except the name. But if anyone has any suggestions for game that if you liked this one you should try, let me know.

Ahh. This hails back to an era when games were about memorization. There wasn't a trap in this game that you'd find in any other way than by falling into it, then trying to remember which tile not to step on the next time. I remember this game was punishing even by the standards of its time, however.

I played it again recently and found I'm still decent at it, although I still die to enemies too often when the Barbarian randomly decides to use a slow overhead swing (you cannot control which attack he uses when you mash the button, and some just take longer than others). I didn't get to the point where I was stuck as a kid, either; some mage type that your arrows pass right through, and that I only managed to get past once by running at him, somersaulting over his fireball and then falling into a bottomless pit in the room right after him, with no other way to go.

I never figured out what I was *supposed* to do, either. Maybe he was some sort of final boss and you actually had to get up close and hit him with the sword, or block the fireball with that shield you pick up later on, or whatever. I think I had 78% completion at the time. Nowadays, I don't have the patience for old school gameplay that I used to, so I don't think I'll ever find out.

That game was not the prequel for Barbarian II, not at least in my ZX Spectrum and I think not in the rest of systems.

There were TWO Barbarians. Barbarian by Palace Software (see it in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbari...mputer_game%29 , it was the TRUE prequel to Barbarian II) and Barbarian by Psygnosis (wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian_%28Psygnosis%29 ), a totally unrelated game.

I think Barbarian by Psygnosis came out for sale at rougly the same time Barbarian II by Palace Software, but I can not be so sure.

Not saying that this game is good, but i do like the drawing of the main char.

ive been looking for this game for literally years,
i only ever played a demo on the amiga and thought it was mental,
im not going to bother downloading it for the pc cos i remember the graphics being better than that 10 years ago... if only i could get an emulator to work

oh, sweet memory!

i agree with the editor, the control really sucks, its the worst control ever seen for that kind of game.

But i remember one wonderfull thing about that game:

The intro had the first digital coded piece of human voice if had ever heard so far; it says:

BAAAAAARRRRR-BARIaN!

Really Impressive, i´ve thing of the old hardware; the sound was only pc-speaker, no extra sound card!

I think i´ll download the game, not for playing, but for sampling the old piece if intro sound :)