Rad Warrior

1987. The monitor glows in a darkened room with that characteristic blue tint of the CGA palette, and I'm watching a figure in massive mechanical armor wading through a post-apocalyptic landscape. Rad Warrior. The name sounds like a title from a video rental store.

The game came about as a PC conversion of Sacred Armour of Antiriad, which Palace Software originally released for Commodore 64. The setting is classic eighties dystopia — a world after nuclear catastrophe, you in the role of a warrior clad in powerful technological armor, which you progressively upgrade. The objective is straightforward: survive, fight, move forward. No surprising plot twists, no philosophical digressions.

The gameplay is action-oriented; you move across screens, eliminate enemies, and collect armor upgrades. The controls are functional, though not exactly elegant — but that was 1987 being 1987. The gradual unlocking of armor abilities gave the game a light touch of exploratory action that was more ambitious than you'd expect at first glance for its time.

What really deserves mention, though, is the graphics. The CGA palette with its limited four colors was a curse for most developers, spawning visual disasters. Here they took care — the backgrounds are thoughtfully composed and the result looks more believable than many contemporary attempts. The game received solid reviews in the press, though the gaming community never embraced it en masse. It's actually a typical case of a decent title that came and went without unnecessary fanfare.

Today Rad Warrior stands as an honest testament to what could be squeezed out of PC hardware in 1987 when you really wanted to. It's not a title that'll grip you for hours, but as a half-hour excursion into an era when every kilobyte and every pixel had to earn its keep, it has its worth. It'll suit those who love short action pieces from the first era of PC gaming and are interested in cross-platform conversions — comparing it with the C64 original is an interesting exercise in itself.