I first played Karnov on the old trusty Amstrad CPC 6128 (the one with the built in disc drive that used ridiculously priced discs which held a whopping 178k). I'd never played the arcade game (even though I was a keen arcade player back then), but I first saw Karnov as a review in an Amstrad gaming mag (yes they made them too).
The game itself looked like a straight up 'Sinclair to Amstrad' port which was very common and very frustrating for Amstrad owners.
Karnov is a sideways platform game where you control a big Russian man who throws various weapons at bad guys as he makes his way through the maps.
It's pretty much a 'red' ripoff of Ghosts and Goblins, but also has a bit of a Bionic Commando feel to it as well. The weapons you can pick up work in different ways (eg. knives, bombs, etc) but in the end all they seem to do is change the way you tackle the enemy rather then offer you a new dimension to the game.
Now my memory here gets a bit vague, but I do not recall exactly a huge amount of animation in the game. Comparing it to something like 'Savage' which had huge and beautiful sprites, Karnov looked very grainy and VERY basic. There was only 4 colours on the screen at any time, with most of them being red. This didn't
phase you too much as it added to the whole 'ruski' feel.
But what Karnov had going for it over something like Savage was far better game play which gave me many hours of fun and frustration.
Although basic, the graphics and collision detection was very precise which made the game play quite well.
(Ghosts and Goblins was horrible for collision detection, and your armour used to blast off you even if the enemy got close).
Sound effects .. I can't really comment on as ALL 'Sinclair to Amstrad' ports suffered from the auful 'bleep bleep' sounds which was all that the Sinclair could produce .. and no one ever bothered to improve them.
Karnov was a fun game which, if I remember corectly, got quite good reviews in most mags. However it did get rather difficult, and the maps on each level were quite long. I think it only had around 8 odd levels to it, however getting that far into the game required some serious 'Karnov precision' as the game would be very unforgiving the further you got into it.
