The Great Gianna Sisters, or Gianna Sisters for short, was released back in 1987 by the German company Time Warp. It was created by Armin Gessert (code), Armin Trenz (graphics) and Chris Hülsbeck (music), who later were all inwolved in many games, including the Amiga version of Gianna Sisters, Katakis, R-Type (C64) and many more. Being an obvious copy of the successful Super Mario World (Nintendo), Gianna Sisters was soon withdrawn from the stores under the threat imposed by Nintendo.
The title screen
Your mission
You are Giana, a girl with magical powers. You must finish some 35 levels filled with hostile characters. At first you can only eliminate those characters by jumping on them (does this sound familiar?), but by picking up magical items (see pics), Giana can bash rocks and fire deadly shots. When losing one of her lives, Giana also loses her magical powers.
A bathing ball with magical powers
The lightning gives Giana the power to fire shots
The graphics are bright and clear and suit the game perfectly. The levels are well designed and get increasingly harder as Giana makes progress. Even after long playing sessions you can still discover new things in the game, such as the secret levels.
Avoiding that bee in the underground
Both the loading, intro and in game music are some of the best ever made on the good old SID chip.
You'd better jump that giant ant!
Overall impression
Since Super Mario World was never released on the C64 The Great Gianna Sisters is the closest you can get. Unfortunately the game was withdrawn due to its similarity to SMW, but any way the game is a all time classic on the C64.
Rating
This is my personal rating of this game. If you like, you can make your own general rating using the voting function to the right.
