Sword of Sodan

Sword of Sodan is a hack and slash video game released for the Amiga in 1988 by Discovery Software, which also commissioned a port for the Apple IIGS (but not made public until 2018).

To protect his twin children, son Brodan and daughter Shardan, Lordan arranged for them to be taken from the castle across the Cthol mountains to the farthest corner of the land.

The character walks in a horizontally scrolled world from left to right, defeating enemies with their swords, wielding either standing or kneeling.

Sword of Sodan was created by three Danish engineers from Discovery Software in 1988, while a simultaneous conversion port was worked on for the Apple IIGS by Visual Concepts.

Two years later Innerprise Software, who purchased the game rights, created a scaled-down port for the Sega Genesis system which differs in reduced graphics and sound quality, as well as notable changes in overall gameplay.

Soon after, a three level self-playing demo was released and displayed in stores, virtually indistinguishable from the Amiga version in terms of graphics and animation fluidity.

[3] Originally set to be released in mid-1989, it was pushed back several months when its programmer, Scott Patterson, was fired for misconduct and a replacement had to be found.

Despite these developments, appearing in magazines ads, on display in stores and the game being included on vendor's price lists, the port remained in limbo and never released.

Nearly 30 years later, on May 26, 2018, the unreleased Apple IIGS port was unearthed and made public, revealing an entirely playable and very polished version of the game.

The original 1988 release for Amiga got mostly favorable reviews by the magazines, with praise for the graphics, which included large, detailed sprites, unusual for that time.

For the Sega version, websites like I-Mockery.com or Somethingawful.com mocked the game for its bad graphics, annoying sound effects, frustrating controls and difficult gameplay.

Amiga screenshot