The NeverEnding Story II: The Arcade Game (DOS)

The NeverEnding Story II

Platform: DOS Year: 1991 Developer: Linel

For other games in the series, see The NeverEnding Story.

The NeverEnding Story II: The Arcade Game is a multi-genre action game. It features several styles including platform, flying, racing, and more all forced into a single game. Unfortunately, The NeverEnding Story II is a pretty dreadful game with poor play control, and annoying game mechanics. Most of the game is simply memorizing the safe route through a large room full of hazards that will kill you outright. Also, death means having to restart the entire level from the beginning every time.

The first section is a dangerous platform run through Silver City where you must avoid giant creatures and push them off cliffs. Trial and error will let you eventually figure out the way through to long and monotonous city exit. A single misstep at any point means instant death. Very few players have the patience to finish the first level. The second section lets you ride Falcor through a canyon where you must be careful not to crash into the walls. Halfway through you encounter a flying beast tries to push you into the walls. Near the end you must avoid storm clouds that will strike you with lightning. The third stage involves climbing a wall with a multitude of hazards that can knock you off. Like the first stage, you just need to memorize a safe path to the end, little skill is involved. The fourth stage is a half side-view half top-view climb down a circular staircase where you must spray paint giants in the face in order to make them fall to their death. You must do this over and over again. Stage five has you riding a horse through a treacherous landscape of bushes, rocks, and attack birds. You must jump or duck depending on what gets in your way. It's fun at first, but it drags on for too long. In stage six you have to swim through a dangerous river and avoid rocks and whirlpools. Its one of the easier stages. After that, you simply have to answer a multiple choice question to defeat the final boss. And of course, the answer matches up with the movie, so as long as you remember the movie, you're assured victory.

Screenshots

The title screen. The story book introduction. Avoiding the mechanical giants. The Nothing is slowly taking over Fantasia.

This page needs more screenshots.

Music

The game uses a pretty powerful AdLib tracker which gives the music a strong polished sound. All of the tracks are lengthy and competent. The rearrangement of Giorgio Moroder's theme from the first movie is pretty accurate to the original as is Joe Milner's Dreams We Dream from the second movie.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Listen	Download
01	The NeverEnding Story	Giorgio Moroder	Michael Tschögl	2:23		Download
02	Death	Michael Tschögl	Michael Tschögl	2:53		Download
03	Dreams We Dream	Joe Milner	Michael Tschögl	2:17		Download

Credits

• Ripper: Denis Julitov
• Recorder: TheAlmightyGuru
• Game Credits:
  • Not Credited: Michael Tschögl
  • Not Credited Composer: Giorgio Moroder
  • Not Credited Composer: Joe Milner
  • Not Credited Arranger: Unknown

The game lacks credits. However, Michael Tschögl is credited in the Commodore 64 and Amiga versions which has similar music, so he probably arranged the music for the DOS version as well, though, someone else may have ported it to the AdLib format. Because two of the tracks are rearrangements of the movie's soundtrack, the Death track is probably one as well, but it has yet to be proved.

Game Rip

This rip is missing songs.

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

Denis Julitov ripped the game's AdLib music and created the NES format to house it. The music was played with his NeverEnding Story II Player program and the OPL data was logged into DRO through DOSBox 0.74, and finally recorded using AdPlug 1.8.2.

This game may be missing some tracks. The Commodore 64 version has several additional tracks that aren't found in the DOS rip. More research into the DOS port should be made to see if the remaining tracks exist.

Audio Devices

Music
Sound

(No Source)

The game auto-detects any OPL2 device.

Releases

USA Title: The NeverEnding Story Platform: DOS Released: 1991-??-?? Publisher: Merit Studios, Inc.

Links

• mobygames.com/game/dos/neverending-story-ii-the-arcade-game - MobyGames.
• gamefaqs.com/pc/935945-the-neverending-story-ii - GameFAQs.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neverending_Story#Computer_games - Wikipedia.