Apidya
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Apidya is a horizontally-scrolling shoot-em-up computer game released in 1992 by Kaiko for the Amiga.
The player controls a magical honeybee that can spit damaging energy projectiles. There are five levels in the game, and each level is divided up into a number of stages (usually three). There are also a number of secret bonus levels.
At the end of every stage is a different boss, which must be defeated to progress to the next stage or level.
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Levels
- Meadow's Edge: A grassy meadow, pitting the player against various insects.
- The Pond: A pond, featuring various fish and aquatic creatures. The player can fly either above or below the pond surface.
- Sewers Blast: A sewer pipe, containing some bizarrely mutated enemies, both animal and inanimate.
- Techno Party: A level apparently set inside some kind of bio-technological machine, featuring many homages to R-Type.
- Boss Panic: A dark, atmospheric level, which pits the honeybee against five final bosses.
In the first two levels, nearly all the enemies are real insects and animals that can be found in a meadow or pond.
Gameplay
The gameplay is standard for a horizontally-scrolling shooter, with some elements borrowed from early, classic shoot 'em ups.
The game uses the power-up bar system pioneered by Gradius. Destroyed enemies sometimes leave behind a power-up in the form of a red-and-yellow flower. The player may collect these flowers and activate new weapons and enhancements using the power-up bar at the bottom of the screen.
The game also uses a 'build-up' weapon very similar in operation to the 'beam' weapon in R-Type. If the fire button is held down for a second or two, the player's bee makes a hissing noise. Releasing the fire button will then cause the wasp to fire a large, organic rocket which can wipe out waves of small enemies, or damage larger ones.
Miscellaneous information
The musical soundtrack to the game was composed by renowned game musician Chris Huelsbeck. An Apidya suite was performed live by a full symphonic orchestra in 2003 at the Symphonic Game Music Concert-series in Leizig, Germany.
In 2002, Stefan Becker began writing a PC remake of Apidya called Apidya 2002, using graphics and sound ripped from the original game.
The name Apidya appears to be Japanese. On the title screen, four katakana characters spell out 'A-BI-JI-YA'. This could be a Japanese transliteration of the Latin Apidae, which is the name of the taxonomic family to which the honey bee belongs.
External links
- Project: Apidya (http://apidya.vg-network.com/) - homepage of Apidya 2002
- An Apidya Fansite (http://avians.net/hawthorn/apidya/)