Old New Stock #11: Solid Snail

Welcome to issue 11 of the Old New Stock series. It is time for a game again. A while ago we contacted Edwin Weijdema in search for content. In the 90s Edwin was the coder of Vivid, which was evolved from Experience Soft. In edition 7 you could already get acquainted with their first Vivid game called Gold Rush.

This time it's Solid Snail's turn to see the light again. Edwin sent us some real old new stock left overs of the game to get it properly hacked by MRC user Louthrax. And receive a nice piece of photo art by MRC admin hamlet.

Solid Snail is an action RPG/platform game released in 1994 for any MSX2 or MSX2+ with at least 128kB RAM and VRAM and a double sided disk drive. The game will not run on an MSX turbo R. Unfortunately Edwin never got it to work and Louthrax couldn't let his magic make it happen either. Additional hardware that can be used are MSX-Music and/or MSX-Audio. Connect them both at the same time, each to one speaker, to get the famous MB-Stereo music.

The game is the life story of Jaques. Jaques is a Snail who was born in 1983 and had a tough youth. To prove he wasn't a softy, he joined the army and got promoted to be the leader of an elite commando unit where he got the nickname Solid Snail. One day he got the order to eradicate a group of terrorists and this is where you take control of Jaques' fate.

Graphically and musically the game is a masterpiece. The game play however demands your every skill. If you think the game is a tad too hard for you, you could find a cheat at Generation MSX to make Jaques' and your life easier.

Thanks again to Edwin Weijdema for his cooperation. You haven't seen the last of his work yet, although Solid Snail was his last MSX game. His earlier games will appear as Old New Stock some day as well.

Relevant link: Solid Snail