Switchblade

Switchblade is a side-scrolling platform game with run and gun elements. Players assume the role of Hiro on his quest through a subterranean labyrinth in Undercity, fighting against enemies and avoiding hazards in order to reunite 16 scattered fragments of the sacred Fireblade sword and use it against Havok, an evil entity who broke free from his imprisonment.

The player guides Hiro in a flip-screen environment, where unexplored areas of the screen are obscured from view until the player character enters them. Depending on the level of charge, Hiro can use melee attacks against enemies and he can also use weapons that are found in either crates, hidden on certain rooms or suddenly appearing in the area, which are equipped into his cybernetic arm.

Switchblade takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where the Undercity in the Cyberworld of Traxx has been submerged into chaos and slaughtering with the awakening of Havok, an evil entity who broke free from his ten thousand-year-long imprisonment once the sacred Fireblade shattered into pieces and lost its power, along with the death of the Blade Knights order. Hiro, the last of the deceased knight order, embarks on a quest to restore the Fireblade and defeat Havok to end his evil regime.

Switchblade was solely created by Core Design co-founder Simon Phipps in his spare time and became the first title he wrote for the Atari ST, but due to the nature of its development process, it took approximately eighteen months in reaching completion while he began and finished various other projects at his company, most notably Rick Dangerous, with Phipps stating he desired producing a project that felt similar to arcade and home console titles during this era due to his fascination with Japanese artwork.

Several pieces of media from both Japanese and Western pop culture served as sources of inspiration for the project such as Akira, Blade Runner, Cities of the Red Night, Mad Max and The Wild Boys music video, as well as video games like Bubble Bobble, Ranarama and Underwurlde, which would influence various gameplay mechanics in the final product, in addition to disadvantages with the ST hardware that also affected its design structure. Phipps stated that he enjoyed making the game, as he did not face deadlines and pressure, citing his then-artistic and technical abilities as the project's only limitations. However, Phipps said on his personal web page about the game's development cycle that due to his constantly improving programming experience while working on other titles at Core Design, he regressed back to previously written code for improvement, referring it as the only negative of the project. The music was composed by Ben Daglish.

Switchblade received mostly positive reception since its release across multiple platforms.

A sequel, Switchblade II, had already been in development by the time Switchblade was released eight months on the market and garnered critical success that prompted its creation, but Phipps had no direct involvement in its development and was handled by a new team instead. It was released in 1991, the same year that the enhanced Amstrad GX4000 console port of the original was published and received positive reception from critics and the general public.