Developed by Terramarque:
Main programming by Antti Toiviainen and Jani Askolin
A.I. programming and supervision by Stavros Fasoulas (uncredited)
Graphics by Antti Kallioinen
Music by Aleksi Eeben
Sound effects by Ville Hyvönen
Published by Renegade Software for the Commodore Amiga in 1994.
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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS
It's time to exploit this blog's Finnishness once again, by doing another review of an old Finnish game. This summer's selection is the last game ever to be published with any notable input from the C64 legend, Stavros Fasoulas, and simultaneously, the first and only game to be published by Terramarque, who would later join forces with Bloodhouse of Stardust fame to become Housemarque - the oldest still active Finnish game developing company, who turns 30 years old exactly today, on the 19th of July, 2025.
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THE REVIEW IN ALL ITS NOT SO COMPACT GLORY
In order to play Elfmania, you need an Amiga with at least 1 MB of RAM, although the game's manual doesn't actually specify, what sort of RAM is required - whether it is chip RAM or slow RAM. However, in most cases, where "1 MB" is mentioned in the box, a slow RAM trapdoor expansion card is enough. External disk drive is supported, but if you want to have the game installed on your Amiga's hard drive, you are going to have to search for a WHDLoad version for that, since the original disk release doesn't support such a thing.
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| Opening sequence |
Now, we have to remember, that Elfmania came at a time, when the arcades and some home systems already were blessed with some arena fighting games of the generation, such as the first two Mortal Kombat games, the first two Street Fighter games (including a few upgrades to the second one), Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting and some others. And of course, Primal Rage and Killer Instict would be released within the next six months after the release of Elfmania, so it would be likely lost in the already oversaturated market dominated by the consoles. So, the only thing going for it would be the primary market area of Finland, and the relative lack of competition on the Commodore Amiga, which itself is commonly berated by fans of fighting games of this generation for having stuck to the old single-button joystick controllers. In other words, it's not looking good to begin with.
Before you get to your first fight, you need to select your fighter from three possible options. Janika is the game's only and obligatory female fighter, who can whip her long black hair as a weapon. Tenko is a semi-bald young guy with a stripe of short hair in the middle on his head, wearing a white sleeveless vest kind of a thing, and he has got some power in his arms and legs, but is rather slow in his moves. Taiki has a longer hair than Tenko, a bit more muscles, and wears a furrier vest, but he also moves around more nimbly than Tenko.
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| Match location and character selection |
Selecting your fighter happens over the map of the game's imaginary location, which is called Muhmulandia. When starting the game, you have no control over where you will start your game, but once you have won the first match, you can start working on the grid. The grid is divided into 36 squares/counties (6x6), and in order to win the game, you must get an unbroken line of six conquered locations in the grid. So, losing a match is not necessarily a Game Over, but it is an inconvenience.
Each of the three protagonists will appear in the game as your potential opponents, but eventually, you will get to fight some higher tier opponents. Matiki is some sort of a royal person wielding a sledgehammer, Seven is an Arabic guy wielding a sword, and Kosken has the appearance of a slightly Hawaiian sumo wrestler.
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| Fighting locations and different fighters. |
Elfmania is as much of an arena fighter as the other arena fighters are, but it actually does have something quite special going on for it. For starters, each of the fighters have their own special moves, which are activated by keeping the fire button down and repeatedly tapping the joystick into a certain direction, which will reveal the special move. For instance, Seven's special move is rolling the sword, as the manual already reveals. Taken into consideration, that the classic single-button joystick is your given controller in Elfmania, it has been made surprisingly agile. You can perform kicks and punches by pressing fire and moving the joystick in any of the three forward or backward positions - kicks are activated by performing a backwards move, and punches in forwards moves. Blocking happens by either pressing fire and pulling down, or the other way round; both ways do different types of blocks. Another unexpected feature is, that the fighters can get off the screen, because there is no camera zoom, and the focus then remains on the other fighter. Usually at this point, though, the fighter outside of the screen has already been beaten.
Secondly, the way the arena system works in Elfmania is very unique. When you start your journey, you have 75 coins to spend on your first fighter, which basically means, that you are renting this fighter for the current match, and once you start making progress, you have a chance of seeing your potential opponents in the grid. Coins are collected while fighting by hitting or kicking the coins, and when you win the match, valuable items will drop from the sky, which you can also hit to collect money. Winning a match wins you a certain amount of coins, and the ability to choose to fight as the fighter you beat, so by winning matches, you're basically collecting fighters into your roster, but higher tier fighters cost more money to rent than the first three fighters. Obviously, these fighters will likely be more effective fighting against other higher tier opponents. Collecting enough coins in a match opens up bonus rounds, which can be either an object-hitting game, where the broken things turn into coins; or a normal fight with a double score multiplier.
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| More variety. |
While the unique progression system in Elfmania makes the game surprisingly interesting and definitely worth having a proper look at, the fact remains, that the lower tier fighters are too powerless against some of the higher tier fighters, making the game sadly unbalanced on the whole. You only need to take a look at the Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter games to realize that all the fighters therein are more equal to each other, once you get to know their many special moves. More than that, though, the controls are always quick and flexible in these games. Elfmania's worst stumbling block is its fighters' long reaction time and unnecessarily long and detailed animations for every move, necessitating your fighting moves to be made in advance to how you would normally play these kinds of games. With that in mind, I think the coin collecting part of the game is a bit too much in the mix, and should have just been made in the style of platforming games - collect a coin just by touching them with whichever part of your body.
As a relic of an uncertain time in the evolution of game development, I think Elfmania is still more worth to remember and talk about, than it currently is. It does exactly what Finnish games so often did in the olden days: take a familiar concept and do something completely unexpected with it.
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OVERALL + VIDEO + AFTERWORDS
The only other Finnish-designed Amiga game that I can think of, that I could compare Elfmania to in any manner, is Stardust. Not only because it was made by the other company that would merge with Terramarque into Housemarque shortly hereafter, but because Stardust is the only other Finnish Amiga game that shares a lot of similar production qualities. In terms of graphics and sounds, it's hard to believe this wasn't made by some proper Japanese or American pedigree game developer company - that's how good it is. Of course, the katakana styling of the game's title slightly wrong in the title screen (e-ru-fu-ma-ni-fu) compared to the correct spelling in the cover art, is something one could consider a game industry insider joke (although who knows), and could be a nod towards the Japanese game industry in general. The gameplay does let it down a bit, even though you can actually get used to the delayed moves. The lack of a true fighter balance does make the game less worth replaying than the more classic arena fighters, but it's still worth a look due to its uniqueness.
GAMEPLAY 6
GRAPHICS 9
SOUNDS 9
REPLAY VALUE 7
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OVERALL 7.75
If you're not completely sure, whether you should try Elfmania for yourself, do take a look at this brief clip compilation of the game in action, authored by yours truly.
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