There, I said it. I already thought so when I red Schatten's review on shmups, stating: "Fortunately, Blood Money beats its predecessor in every aspect." but I didn't want to question him on what it may have been, after all, a matter of taste. However, doing a quick search on the internet I saw the opinion that DMA bettered themselves on their second attempt is widespread, and it dates from the games' releases, even:
http://amigareviews.classicgaming.gamespy.com/home.htm
Menace:
CU Amiga (july '88 ) - 7/10 (reviewed as Draconia, the early name)
Zzap! Christmas Special Issue 44 (december '88 ) - 79%
Blood Money:
CU Amiga (june '89) - 76%
Amiga/ST Format (may '89) - 92%
Zzap! issue 51 (july '89) - 94%
You can also check some online database like www.lemonamiga.com or www.thelegacy.de and see that current opinion is more leveled. However, www.amigachapterone.com reviews are recent and even there Menace scores 71% while Blood Money 76%.
I played both games recently on my Amiga, and asked myself why the press was so favorable towards BM while it seemed obvious to me that it's worse than its prequel, or at the very least, it aged worse. I came to conclusion that maybe in 1989 DMA earned more respect from the press, probably because the previous game sold well. Kinda everyone getting hots for FF8 because they played FF7 and assumed it could only get better. But imho everyone has been fooled by graphics in this case.
Menace was a decent attempt to clone a Japanese classic such as Salamander... It had none of the speed and fast paced action of the original, but it boosted visuals that had yet to be seen on the Amiga back then. It was a classic bedroom programming effort, and Jones wrote it during his exams sessions.
Menace also became a blueprint for european hori shmups - the emphasis on the pretty detailed backgrounds, smoothly animated sprites, small enemy waves that require lot of firepower to be taken down, lack of truly interesting enemy patterns and behavior, these traits, for better or for worse, came from Menace.
Menace was by no mean ambitious - besides graphics, it offered a very barebone experience. But it was still effective in its simplicity. Score mechanics was as simply as it could: destroy a whole enemy wave to get a 10.000 bonus, then shoot it to get weaponry instead: like Twinbee bells, but straight and easy to get.
Blood Money on the other hand was much bigger in scope - you could easily tell just by looking at the several sources of inspiration, ranging from Mr.Heli to Section Z to Forgotten Worlds - but it just didn't live up to its ambitions.
--Gameplay--
Menace's power up system isn't one of the most friendly ones: you need to pick up a selected weapons twice: to activate it and to get a first ammo clip. Not only that, but heavy weapons add a little weight to your ship, resulting in a slight loss of speed. That, and limited ammo which has never been a good idea in a shmup. There are a couple of things they got right, however, like the "bits" which are set on a "reverse mode" (a la Gleylancer), and the shield which offers good protection.
Blood Money isn't better: you can purchase new weapons at shops, similar to Fantasy Zone. However, the weapon selection is far from exciting - some depth bombs and a three way shot are among the best of the bunch.
In both game however, once you lose a life you get back on your pea-shooter. This brings up the energy bar issue: both games feature it, but while the one in Menace is more or less effectively integrated into gameplay (it's a looong energy bar, and will keep you alive enough to survive if you scratch some physical background or until you manage to grab a shield or energy pow), the one in Blood Money is just a joke - it goes down so quickly you can pretend it isn't there. Sure, Menace has no lives - once your energy goes to zero, is game over - but you're allowed to restart at the stage you reached. BM gives you three lives and the possibility or purchasing additional one with your hard earned cash.
In both games the controls are on the sluggish side, but Menace's ship is more tight, and with one or two speed ups you'll feel almost alright. While the Menace can at least grab speed ups, and has more room to maneuver, the four BM ships can't upgrade speed and are constrained into corridors and cramped spaces.
What "kills" BM nowadays is level design, or so I feel. The emphasis on highly detailed graphics (those rendered asteroids still look better than the ones seen in recent games...) forced DMA to reduce the scenario from Menace' six to just four. The previous game was already criticized for being greedy on no° of stages; to balance this BM's four stages were made huge. Where huge stands for "incredibly long and boring". The fact that you could turn 180° degrees and shoot to the left could have made things a bit more interesting, but it didn't help much in the end.
Finally, the choice of four worlds each with its unique ship is slightly misleading - it gives the illusion of versatility but difficulty aside all the stages play the same, with maybe the exception of the ice world, whose little spaceman has a better hitbox and controls better than the rest.
--Graphics, sound and other technicalities--
On a technical level, Menace introduced differential parallax scrolling to the Amiga users, which gave depth to hories stages. However, Blood Money ditched that in exchange of more colors on screen and more sprite animation frames. Stages also boosted some very brief vertical scrolling sections - actually, they are so brief you wonder why they bothered.
The music: both games feature a single track for the whole game - so you'd expect they'd be even. Far from it. In Menace the music peacefully coexist with sound effects, which even featured some excellent speech sampling like "Cannons" or the creepy "Danger! Danger!" when approaching a boss.
In Blood Money it's either the one or the other, and no speech whatsoever. If this is a result of the heavy graphics, it's a steep price to pay. And there's more: Norrish's tune for BM might be of great atmosphere but it adds a sense of slowness to an already slow-paced game. On the other hand, Whittaker's rocking music will prevent you from falling asleep on your joystick.
All considered, you get the impression that Blood Money didn't make the best use of its doubled disk space, and that most resources must have gone for the stunning intro animation.
--Conclusions--
As an horizontal shmup, Menace still fares well today, even if somewhat slow, very basic in gameplay and not very exciting. Its six stages are around the proper length - and Tony Smith's graphics still retain some charm. At the very least, it stands out as a good early amiga effort, (I admit I'd pick this one over Project X any day); at worst, it can be labeled as an inferior Salamander clone.
Blood Money, on the other hand, is quite broken in gameplay and frustrating. You can collect money and buy weapons, but don't expect variety like seen in Xenon 2 or X-Out. The slippery controls and the unforgivingly cramped backgrounds will soon detract any enjoyment from the game. I compared Menace to Salamander, it would be fair to compare BM to Section Z I guess. But the environment in Section Z allows decent maneuverability, while the same cannot be said of DMA's game.
None of these two games are highly regarded by gamers today. They were surrounded by great hype during the Amiga days, but nowadays comparing the two probably brings to mind the old joke about internet debates and paralympics.
The only way to understand these games today is to avoid any serious comparison with the Japanese shmup scene, which was literally years ahead. A gap that in the end, when it comes to the genre in question, the euro scene was never able to catch up.
So, with that in mind, please refrain to post just to post ironic comments on euro garbage. We already know.
Another quite misleading comparison which often pops around is with amiga games released a lot later - don't begin to say that Disposable Hero (1993, five years later - the timeframe between Galaga and Salamander) is a better game than Menace. Duh. If you want to suggest fair amiga comparisons keep them between the same timeframe.
Agree? Disagree? Couldn't care less?
Ah, well...
What was the release date for that new Cave game, again?
