As with every Sunday, we are in competitive mode and trying our luck against our fellow retro gamers in various Facebook Groups. This one is the Arcade 20p Challenge from RetroTech100 Facebook group and this week the challenge is 2 credits (20 pence used to buy 2 credits on a game back in the day, hence 20p challenge) on a game called Osman.
Osman is a run and fight platform style game, very much in the style of the Arcade Great Strider. Your character is tasked with defeating the foot soldiers and ultimately the antagonist, using his fighting, jumping and climbing skills to get there. Along the way you can collect power ups, and use your special attack move which destroys everything in the vicinty (or in the case of bosses drains a significant amount of life). As with many of the arcade games of the era (1996) Osman has a pattern for the enemies, and with practice you can learn the patterns and make headway.
Well you can learn, I never seem to learn at all, and pile in headlong to either death or glory (mostly death though). In this case the game is savage, and will punish you for your lack of learning. Despite this I actually enjoyed playing Osman, as I like Strider which is obviously an influence on the game mechanics. With varied levels, great graphics and some excellent foes (robotic sentries, tigers, killer trucks) it gives a very tough challenge but with continues and a little time it should be ultimately defeatable.
My advice would be to fire up your emulator of choice and give this a whirl if you enjoyed Strider. Osman works well under Retroarch or MAMEUI64 which is what I used for the video below. Leave a comment here, or on Youtube and let us know your opinion of this game too.
