Reviews

This game is the epitome of unfriendly controls.

Original coin-op was equally a hard game.. maybe too hard. But its difficulty were fair.

This conversion has a lot of good points. Good graphics which resemble to the SNK arcade, good scroll. Also retains many of the weapons and power ups.

But control of Athena is horrible. Rough response and awkward to turn direction.. something which is key to confront enemies. Also the crouch system is equally clumsy and unfriendly.
Jump difficulties are basically similar to the ones of the coin-op, but worst.

These flaws makes that other minor problems with enemies get magnified. Something that other way would've been easily acceptable.

A wasted opportunity to have an early good cute manga arcade on our Spectrums.

Converted from one of the least known (to me, anyway) SNK coin-ops, Athena is a large and lovely platform where the eponymous heroine must battle her way through nine levels against bizarre creatures, using a variety of weapons including an impressive flaming sword that's almost as high as the playing area (!) Useful objects like pieces of armor and weapons can be found by destroying rock blocks, and walking upon certain locations can make a rose bloom, which in turn releases a heart that will replenish Athena's energy when collected.

Cute and detailed graphics, nice sound effects and tunes (on the 48K!) and frantic gameplay make Athena an interesting, although a bit repetitive, arcade game.

The dreadful controls absolutely ruined this for me. The graphics are well detailed and the sound is excellent with some great beeper tunes, but playing the game is a nightmare. You can't turn back quick to hit enemies behind you, it's just so slow. I described Zaxxon, my previous review, as a disappointment, this disappoints me a lot more.

Athena must be the sluggish goddess around. Slow and unresponsive, while being hit from every side, left, right, up and down - without her being able to do much about it. She must be feeling the gravity very much, because she can't jump very high - and even if she finds a pair of magic sandals, she's going to lose them very soon along with the lives she loses every ten seconds. It's a massacre. Luckily, Zeus or somebody gave her the chance to continue her adventure, if you decide so, and you decide it in 9 seconds - so she can be slaughtered for some more minutes.
Zeus has a perverse sense of humour.

Not even the weapons she eventually pick ups up by killing one of the everpresent nasties is of much help. Some of them even completely misses the target, at least if it is too near. In fact, the only real target is Athena herself - as most of the creatures can't be avoided. Those tiny things crawling from out the trees and biting her toes are the worst. Little bastards. Anyway, exploring the monochrome cyan forest she finally found a sort of wild monster running back and forth and she actually defeated it, using the kamikaze tactic, more than her strength, really. After multiple, uncountable deaths, it eventually gave up - and she was ready for the second level, a yellow place that reminded me of Renegade III: The Final Chapter. After all, the programmers are the same: the Deakin/Horn dynamic duo, and this is no Operation Wolf.
I'm not sure, but I think that Psycho Soldier - Athena sequel - received worse reviews - but, really, at least it's playable.

2,5/5