A Classic Reborn ? – Solomon’s Key 2

Solomon’s Key has always been a game i thought worked best on the C64, yes that is correct, but that said i have only tried the C64, Arcade, Amiga, and Atari ST versions, which might change over the years. The music, the feel and the difficulty are one of the reasons, and while the controls can be quirky as hell, i still think it is a fine game.  The Amiga version came out a few years ago, and it’s a reverse-engineered version of the ATARI ST game. It is actually an ok game, and i really appreciate Asman’s hard work on getting it onto the Amiga.

Ok, Over to Solomon’s Key 2, much to my surprise, this game popped out of nowhere a few weeks back, and while i did see an article on Facebook, i failed to realise it was a new ported Amiga game of the NES game from 1993. The Amiga version is not a port but a remake with the original NES assets and some changes here and there to fit the format and knowledge of the developer.

I had never even heard of Solomon’s Key 2 until recently. While I was never particularly into the NES back in the day, I still kept an eye on it through various multi-format sections in classic gaming magazines, where top games from other platforms would occasionally pop up.

When I first booted up the game, I immediately noticed something odd—it didn’t follow the same style as the original Solomon’s Key. In fact, the funniest part is that the key gameplay mechanic from the first game is completely missing this time around. That’s right: in Solomon’s Key 2, you’re not actually looking for any keys!

The more I played, the more it started to feel like a “push and pull” puzzle game—think sliding ice blocks to crush enemies and solve spatial challenges. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good Push and Pull-style game, so I wasn’t exactly disappointed. But curiosity got the better of me, and I ended up heading to YouTube to check out gameplay from the original Solomon’s Key 2—just to see if the Amiga version had been altered somehow.

The NES version turned out to be virtually identical, so in terms of faithfulness, this remake holds up really well. Watching gameplay footage of the original, I noticed the graphics and animations were nearly a one-to-one match—everything moved and looked the same, which reassured me that this port is a solid effort.

That said, a few elements didn’t make the cut. Notably, the final boss battle is missing, along with some of the more elaborate animated background effects. According to the developer, these were intentionally left out due to platform limitations or other constraints. More info on the website.

This Amiga remake was created in Assembly code, and it started as a learning project, and that alone is a very good thing, as this might give us more games in the future. Creating games/programs in Assembly means most of the time that the specs needed to run the game/app are low, and unlike Meynaf and Asman’s stuff in the past, this thing works on every Amiga out there (at the speed it should work in). Oh, and by all means, this was not meant as an insult /* attack towards Meynaf nor Asman’s games.

The Full Intro is in the game, watching it made me all mushy and i felt like i was 10 again… ok i was 18 in 1993 but i had been
An Amiga-only gamer since 1986, by then, so watching NES games in 1993 felt so very old school.

The Level selector, by the looks of things, the original NES version had a much superior system/look, maybe there will be an update for this Amiga remake in the future?.

Ok, I’m off to play this remake some more now.