Mega lo Mania
After populous was released, which was the first god-game ever, a lot of games came out that used the same basic formula with some additions. Mega lo mania is god game in which you can select one out of four gods and the aim of the game is to make war on your opponents and conquer their lands. You can do this by having your people invent weapons, build them and to attack the enemies that surround your people. The levels are divided in epochs which represent different levels of technology ranging from the stoneage all the way to the spaceage. Each epoch has three islands which have to be fought for and the only way to advance it to conquer all the islands.
You start the game with 100 people and it’s up to you how many you place on each island but the aim is to use as few of them on each island because when you finish an epoch the remaining people are taken into the next epoch. This is important as the final level called the mother of all battles will require as many people as you can spare so it’s important not to waste people early in the game. Once you select the number of people and the location where to place them you start the level. Each level starts with one castle already built and it holds all of your people which is shown in the main screen. On the left side of the screen is the menu and here you can do things like gathering materials, inventing and equipping your people to go to war. At the start it’s easy to gather materials which are the building blocks for your equipment but later on you will have to build mines and other thing to extract metals from the ground. When you find something that you didn’t have before, like precious metals, it will often mean you can invent something new so if you’re stuck with out of date weapons it might pay to find some new materials.
The first epoch takes place in the stone age and the weapons you can invent are simple stones and spears. In the later epochs you can get things like swords, airplanes and finally atomic bombs to wipe out an entire square of the playing field. Apart from inventing weapons you can also invent defence systems and new buildings and once you have enough you might gain a tech level which will give you even more options. Luckily failure in winning a level is not harmfull to you in any way as your original population will be brought back to life and you can give it another shot. You might think this would make the game easier but it’s a simple addition which makes it easier for you to concentrate on playing without having to constantly save/load the game. The save/load feature of the game gives you a code which only contains the epoch and the number of people you have so if you do save the game remember to do so at the start of an epoch or you will lose any islands you have already conquered.
Mega lo mania is a godgame with an emphasis on battle that you won’t get bored with quickly. The difficulty level isn’t too high and the tech levels advance steadily throughout the epochs so you can keep playing and new features will be constantly available. If you get stuck on a particular island you can always opt to use a few more people making the island easier and allowing you to continue. The graphics are mostly the same throughout the game but they get the job done and the game doesn’t need fancy graphics anyway. All in all this is an excellent strategy game and well worth recommending.
Overal rating: 8.5/10
This game was released for several different systems here are some notes:
| Amiga | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed with winUAE v0.9.91. Excellent speech and good graphics, this is the system the game was originally released on. |
| Atari ST | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed with Steem v3.2. This is a one disk version but to save space everything is compressed and has to be decompressed during the game so if you see flashy lines when playing it simply means the computer is decompressing some speech. |
| DOS | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed on a DOS PC. This has the best graphics of the lot but the speech is done using the pc speaker which is pretty bad. The game plays without problems but when entering codes for the levels the keyboard reacts way too fast and you have to tap the keys quickly or you will get a lot of same letters. |
| Megadrive/ Genesis |
Released in 1991 released by Virgin. Game has been tested but not completed with WGens v2.11. This actually plays quite good because the joypad doesn’t simulate a mouse but uses a system where if you move the pad it will simply move to the next option. |
| Date added | Feb-08-2005 19:47 |
| Name | Mega lo Mania |
| Developer | Sensible software |
| Publisher | Image Works |
| First released | 1991 |
| Genre | Strategy |
