The Great Giana Worlds

Who of the former C64 gamers among us has not loved The Great Giana Sisters? This Super Mario Bros. clone cast its spell on almost every kid that had a C64 in the middle of the eigthies. SID music by Chris Hülsbeck, 32 well designed levels and quite a few hidden items and warp zones were the main qualities of the best known platform game on c64.

Giana Sisters was also available on Amiga with an even better quality of the music and graphics. Yet most people remember Giana Sisters from C64. With the nostalgic movement that started in 1996, also Giana Sisters experienced a comeback. With time, various remakes of it appeared on PC. One of them is Giana 32k by Myth, which was presented at Mekka & Symposium 1998 and was ranked 1st by the party audience. After several updates of Giana 32k with more levels and new features, this same Myth released a completely rewritten remake of Giana Sisters: The Great Giana Worlds.

The Great Giana World is based on DirectX. Actually the game was never finished yet, it was only published in beta state. However, version 0.7 beta already featured nine fully playable levels. It was the first officially released version, presented at Evoke '99.

 

After waiting until the game has loaded, you get to the traditional Giana intro. It looks very much like in the original game, but there are some additional details: for example, the background is not simply blue, but there is a mountain landscape overcast by beautiful clouds. The foreground and the background layers scroll by at different speeds - classic parallax scrolling, just like you know it from the 16-bit video game area. At the same time music by Instant Remedy composed exclusively for this Giana remake is playing. The beginning sounds just like Hülsbeck's original Giana theme, but then it starts taking off with a new melody which really encourages you to start your adventure.

In general, the capabilities of the PC have been well used, and both the graphics and the music look superior to the original. It was an excellent idea to implement background animations and transparency effects. But most important for the good atmosphere is the background music by Virgill/Haujobb. It is three XMs which, although not originally written for the game, fit the three different sceneries (grass world, cave, and ice world) perfectly.

A feature of the original Giana Sisters the remake lacks is some extra items. While there were no extra items in Giana 32k at all, at least you can now destroy blocks and throw fireballs after finding the appropriate gimmicks. But the clock, for example, is still missing. Also, there are only nine instead of thirty-two levels. An experienced gamer is able to play through Giana Worlds at once. However, the levels that are available are original, long, and apart from a few minor defects well designed.

As Giana Worlds is freeware and only 3 MB, it's definitely worth checking out - if not for the game then at least for the music.

A longplay video can be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3hJ6yVDHQU

Credits for the game:

Code: Myth, TMB Inc.
Graphics: Arthus, Kyp, Shine
Music: Virgill, Dalezy, Instant Remedy, Pink
Levels: Kojote

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