Strangely enough the Atari would see another Asterix game before its death. Obelix is a strategic arcade action game where Asterix and Obelix must work together through timing and precision to take out the Roman soldiers invading the village.
Each time Asterix runs into a soldier, the soldier turns white and will freeze. Obelix must then drop a menhir (a stone) on the stunned Roman by pressing the action button, and then you’ll score points. The faster the Roman soldier is moving when Asterix stuns him, the more points you’ll receive. If a stunned Roman is not knocked off by Obélix’s menhir, he turns red with anger and can attack Asterix if they touch which causes you to lose points. Asterix can only overcome angry Romans if he catches a drop of magic potion which Panoramix drops from above. During this time, Asterix will flash and you can knock down the Novels by running through them. Unfortunately, the potion wears off quickly and as soon as it does, Asterix is vulnerable to red Romans again. You control Asterix left and right along the field and you can go up and down by lining up with the red bridges which appear randomly on the map. There are two types of enemies: Small solders and fat centurions, with the centurions giving more points per knockdown.
Unlike the first game, this one is not a conversion or rehash of an older title. While the premise sounds original and fun, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Even when held to the standard of other Atari games which were all quite simple, this game gets really old quite fast and feels slow. Waiting for Obelix to line up with the frozen enemies becomes unbearably tedious and you’ll soon line your finger up with the power button and shut the game off. Even though the game is named after the portly shaped sidekick, you don’t actually control him beyond making him drop menhirs. The graphics are a definite step up though, and it sports some nice animations, especially for Panoramix. The sound effects are vintage Atari and there’s a little jingle to start the game which sounds appropriate, so in terms of presentation it is superior to Asterix . Only released in PAL regions, it is quite rare today because of the limited release due to the video game market collapse.
