I never thought this Amiga classic made it to the PC, but obviously it did. The conversion was done by Astros Productions - so keep your expectations low.
For those who are not familiar with the Amiga original, The Lost Patrol is a classic hybrid game with action, adventure and RPG elements. After a helicopter crashes in the middle of Vietnam, you have to lead the 7 surviving soldiers into freedom, across 58 miles packed with Vietcong soldiers, camps, and the most feared booby traps.
Gameplay combines the elements from many genres, and in many respects are closer to a "simulation" than standard strategy game due to a strong emphasis on realism (for example, you must pay attention to your troops' fatigue level, and there is a variety of Vietnam-war weapons in the game, including some infamous explosives).
The PC conversion of the great Amiga game just shows again how important music and sound effects are to create a decent game atmosphere. As both are missing, the PC game is only half the fun - if at all. Also for some reason, mouse support has been left out. The game supports VGA, but the graphic conversion was done poorly as it only uses 16 colors instead of the 32 found in the original. Other than that, it's a somewhat acceptable conversion of a still interesting and unique game - but with the best things missing.
Review By HOTUD
Comments and reviews
Spent hours on this game, thin I made it about halfway...... Once.
i have played this on Amiga, and i do remember having tiny video sequences or just few low quality frames, i think it was Amiga FMV. any way that was first encounter of a "movie" on computer i had, game is OK. but hard. check it out.
Where can you find this game for Amiga nowdays? I have Amiga 600 (still? i know fu i love my Amiga) and where can i buy original games so i can play it one more time?
I played this game on the Amiga 500 and I actually liked it a lot. I still play it every now and then on UAE and I still like it a lot. Sure, it is not the best game in the world and ridiculously challenging, but bringing your whole team home alive is absolutely doable.
But in case you want to try it out, try the Amiga version, which looked and sounds a lot better.
Game is hard as crap. Wish there was a remake, but yeah, play the Amiga version.
...This game got a lot of scathing reviews at the time, and most gamers who wanted to frack with it anyway pirated it, and never regretted it. Not even sure it's worth downloading now for free.
At eod this was just a collection of digitised caps from films and images that were quite a novelty in it's day. I remember wasting £25 on this 20 years ago, so about nearly 50 quid today. The entire game is actually in the screenshots above or just look at it on youtube if you want to cure the curiosity of two decade old nostalgia.
but I never really liked mixture of action minigames with strategy game.
Play this one on the amiga and forget about the pc version.
No comment nor review for this game at the moment.