SWIV / Super SWIV / Mega SWIV (Firepower 2000) Soundtracks

SWIV is the unofficial sequel to Tecmo’s 80’s Arcade shooter SilkWorm. Like Silkworm the game was 2-player shooter with one player in a Helicopter and the other in a Jeep, however while SilkWorm was a side-scrolling shooter, SWIV was a top-down shooter. Apparently the title “SWIV” was originally an in-joke with the development team, standing for SilkWorm IV (4 in Roman Numerals) and meaning 4 times better than SilkWorm.

SWIV had a few interesting features. Firstly there are no loading screens between levels, in fact when you beat the boss of a level, the next level continues straight ahead of you without interruption. This was fairly unique among games at the time which often interrupted the flow of the game to jump you to a new environment, SWIV simply adapted the landscape in front of you as you traveled. Secondly, during the title screen sequences, there were blueprint wire frames of the Jeep and Helicopter which would develop to fully detailed images of the vehicles. This was done through graphical trickery in order to keep the file space as low as possible.

One of SWIV’s most impressive parts is its music. Sadly no music accompanies you in-game, but the title track (called Decimation) is truly one of the Amiga’s greatest tracks. Originally written for an unreleased independent game called Decimation, Andrew Barnabas (the musician) was taking his demo tape to companies in the hopes of getting employed. During his interview with developer The Sales Curve, he and the interviewers were talking and laughing as the music played which Barnabas states was common in interviews. When Decimation began, suddenly the interviewers went dead quiet and Barnabas felt the jolly atmosphere take an immediate change. Then one interviewer turned to another and simply said “I think we’ve found the title to our new game”. That game was SWIV.

Release Date: 1991
Developer: SCi / Sales Curve
Publisher: Storm (AMI)