Apidya Special Review (Switch)

It seems now people have worked out how to get the Amiga emulating properly across platforms there is no stopping the surge of games being remade and ported. We’ve already had a host of cartridges for the Evercade and even new games made for the Amiga, but now we have the classic horizontal shoot’em up Apidya, rebuilt from scratch with the original team involved and given the ‘special’ treatment. It certainly won’t be long before we will all be expecting the Amiga versions of games in all these compilations that are releasing on an ever-increasing basis.

For those not fortunate enough to know their Amiga history, Apidya is an insect-based side scrolling shooter where you pilot a bee through various urban environments, shooting other bugs and the occasional giant mammal. This gives the game a unique look compared to the usual sci-fi themes generally seen in these games as you zoom through grass and other more naturalistic environments.

There is a plot about an evil lord cursing someone to be a bee buts let’s not worry too much about that. This is close mechanically to something like Gradius. You pick up powerups which can be cashed in for bombs or more speed much in the same way as the classic space shooter, just instead of enemy ships you are shootings ants and butterflies. It’s crushing tough just like Gradius as well, though there a couple of options players can use to help them out.

The special edition has been rebuilt from scratch with 24-bit pixel graphics which do look pretty good on the Switch screen. The game still plays much the same so don’t worry. This isn’t an R-Type 3 situation. You now have ability to play the game in widescreen as well the original look and aspect ratio. Before starting a new game, you can change the difficulty settings, alter your number of starting lives and most helpfully, change if the level resets to the start upon death or not. But that is about it. The maximum number of lives you can go up to is five and you still have only three continues. The game does save when you complete a level but that will only let you continue with the same number of lives and continues you had when starting it. There are also no quality-of-life features such as rewinds. This is one for the shooter purists out there.

One thing we did find an issue was the colour palette. This isn’t because of something that has been changed in the new version though. As the game is naturalistic in its design there are a lot of greens and blues present and anyone who is remotely colour blind is going to struggle to see oncoming fire and even some of the creatures. It makes an already tough game even more difficult.

In terms of if the game still holds up then the answer is a resounding yes though. It still has an aesthetic that sets it apart from everything else out there. Taking on a giant praying mantis or a mole entrenched in its hill may play off traditional pattern-based tropes, but the new unique design and look helps keep everything fresh. The controls are tight as well and when you die its because of your error rather than something being off.

Overall, Apidya is game more than worth giving a second life to. It’s going to be difficult for newcomers to get into due to the crushing difficulty but fans of the multitude of other shooters found on the system should adjust quickly and find something unique and enjoyable here.

Overall 8/10