Ed Hunter is the official¹ PC game by Synthetic Dimensions, based around popular metal band Iron Maiden. Released in mid-1999, the game received rather negative reviews from PC magazines, who complained about poor graphics, sound, gameplay and repetitivness. The game has a 15 rating, which is not really fairly earned. Yes, the zombies do explode in half when you shoot them, but that's not going to give you nightmares, is it?

While these complaints are true, the game does have a good few strengths in it, which will be examined (in the loosest sense) here.

The game - how it plays

Ed Hunter is an on-rails arcade shoot-em-up, much like Virtual Cop and Time Crisis. You play Ed Hunter, a former roadie, freelance jounalist and private investigator, and have been given a packet of cash to free somebody. This somebody is Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie. This is the first of many links to Maiden and their songs.

As mentioned, the game is on-rails, meaning you have little freedom over where you go. This is one of the first complaints people have. You sit there and shoot people until you are moved one. These are the sorts of games that you either love or hate.

There is a two player mode, but this is largely unused by players. You and a friend take turns to do a level, which means that the game takes twice as long to finish. This is another thing that critics didn't like.

Graphics and music

In December 1998 the Official Iron Maiden Website ran a contest to find out what were the fans' top 20 favourite Iron Maiden songs. These songs were used as the music on each level of the game. The track listing is as follows:

• Iron Maiden (live)
• The Trooper
• The Number Of The Beast
• Wrathchild
• Futureal
• Fear Of The Dark
• Be Quick Or Be Dead
• 2 Minutes To Midnight
• Man On The Edge
• Aces High
• The Evil That Men Do
• Wasted Years
• Powerslave
• Hallowed Be Thy Name
• Run To The Hills
• The Clansmen
• Phantom Of The Opera
• Killers
• Stranger In A Strange Land
• Tailgunner

The graphics are almost completely 3D, and are of good quality. Close-up enemies come out a bit pixelated, however, and have jaggies (technical word for rough lines in close-up images). But this hardly ruins the flow of the game.

Ties with the band

On the first level you see places like The Horse And Cart, Ruskin Arms and 22 Acacia Avenue. The first two are places where Iron Maiden played in the 1970s. 22 Acacia Avenue is the home of Charlotte The Harlot. Charlotte... is a song on Maiden's first album, Iron Maiden, and 22 Acacia Avenue is another song, on their third albumThe Number Of The Beast.

Also on the first level are posters of the covers of Iron Maiden and Killers, Maiden's first two albums.

To get extra lives, you have to shoot the disembodied heads of band members.

The levels bear relations to album covers, but most of these will noy be immediatly obvious.

The Tips section of the manual uses a song title to summarise each point.