NES - A really good level of detail, good brickwork and sprites, The background is pretty good for the most part though a little inconsistent as sometimes it has some elements not apparent in other versions (great) but at others is also missing parts from the arcade and Master System versions (making it look sparse). The graphics have been scaled down somewhat with some of the big wide open sections and background graphics now much smaller (the huts in this version are half the size of the MS and arcade versions and are a little crude looking). The end of level opening portal is just black with no background (unlike the MS version) I tend to think that the NES version looks the neatest though.

Master System - The main brickwork and sky could be better which is a shame as these are pretty prominent elements in the graphics, however the MS version has much more going on with it's background graphics from one level to another in comparison to the NES, there seems to be more of an effort to put the extra environment details in, like signs, huts and trees, these are also better drawn with proper shading, as such many sections look better than in the Nintendo version, the end of level portals also have background graphics here.

C64 - The level of detail here is pretty good, whilst nowhere near the standards of the console versions it at least makes a proper attempt at re-creating the graphics and backgrounds of the original arcade. I think that a much better job could've been done with the character and enemy sprites as they are a little bit on the small side and look to be worse drawn than in the other versions (except the Amstrad version's diabolical looking sprites) The levels are also a little bit zoomed out compared to the original arcade.

Spectrum - This version is very minimalistic, there's pretty much no background detail to speak of at all and as such the screen looks pretty empty, the character and enemy sprites on the other hand do look pretty good and detailed and the bosses are excellent in this regard too (check out the pic of the whale boss and compare it's size and quality to those of even the console versions) Seeing as the background is such an important element of the screen I would say that overall the detail is very poor.

Amstrad - Well, at least there's a background here, which would put it ahead of the Spectrum version if not for the fact that the character and enemy sprites are actually much worse here and are very blocky. I think the detail is maybe on par with the Spectrum version (poor), though for different reasons.

NES - The backgrounds are well coloured in a clean, clear and crisp fashion, but the character, enemy sprites, and items are very basic in their colour use and often only use one colour.

Master System - This is a difficult one here as in my opinion the colours chosen for the backgrounds are a little bit less well suited and, for lack of a better word can appear more "murky", I would certainly say that the background colour choices are slightly worse than those in the NES version, on the other hand the colour use in the sprites absolutely puts the NES version to shame, many of them such as the flying guys with shades look really impressive. This unfortunately causes a bit of a dilemma, I think that I have to give the NES the win in this area as the background is a more instantly noticeable feature of the graphics than the sprites (hard choice).

C64 - It's alright, not anywhere near close to the two console versions but I think it's pretty much as good as could be expected when taking into account that it's an arcade port so the developers had to choose best fit colours from the C64's limited colour pallet.

Spectrum - What can I really say about bright yellow monochrome? colour is terrible and basic, I'd imagine that the developers decided (probably quite rightly) that if they put colour and detail into the backgrounds then colour clash would've made the whole thing confusing and too difficult to see seriously affecting the game play.

Amstrad - Colour is garish and a little on the crude side, as such I wouldn't say that this version scores very highly in this area but is certainly much better than the Spectrum version.

NES - Pretty good job overall

Master System - Very good, I would say this version has the best, most close animation to the original arcade but there's very little between this and the NES version

C64 - Good amount of frames and smoothness but lacking the character of the original (Tiki usually walks with his feet moving in a flip flop fashion, but here it's very regimented with small steps)

Spectrum - Not great but it does the job, I think there's less frames here than the Amstrad version but the added speed to the movement helps the animation to look better

Amstrad - Quite poorly animated, the frames are there but it's very slow and really the character is too blocky to animate properly (drawing his legs in different positions in nigh on impossible with this level of blockiness)

NES - Faultless scrolling

Master System - Faultless scrolling

C64 - very good scrolling

Spectrum - The scrolling here is push screen and so is certainly worse than the preceding versions, it's relatively fast though so only has a small negative effect on game play (mostly when you're flying diagonally) but does make the game look uglier in motion. The scrolling is much smarter than in the Amstrad version as it will scroll once and stay in place when you move forwards or jump (more on this in the Amstrad section below)

Amstrad - The scrolling in this version is horrendous, it's push screen, choppy and very slow, you often jump causing the screen to slowly scroll upwards only to have it slowly scroll down again as you drop (this means that much of the time you have an up and down effect going on with the scrolling as you move), in this case the scrolling is so bad that it seriously effects game play

NES - The music in this version is extremely high quality, it was composed by celebrated sound smith Tim Follin (who also worked on Solstice and Silver Surfer's soundtracks as well as a lot of stuff for 8-bit micros) this is, I believe the only version with the full track.

Master System - Very good job, though the main song is shorter than it was originally.

C64 - I don't think the Sid chip really suits the music to this game very well (it sounds a little overly synthetic here) but it still does a pretty good job.

Spectrum - Very good, great use of the 128's sound chip.

Amstrad - Same as the Spectrum.

NES - Really great, more distinctive sound effects.

Master System - Very good job on the sound effects here.

C64 - You can't have both music and sound effects, you have to choose between the two before you begin the game.

Spectrum - Not bad though nothing special.

Amstrad - The sound effects in this version are half alright, I guess they do the job. They sound similar to the Spectrum ones but in lower quality.

The New Zealand Story is a platform game from the arcades, you run about firing arrows and jumping over hazards, one of the great elements here is that you can commandeer different vehicles which allow you to fly, you can even hijack the bad guys' vehicles and push them off. The levels are massive and labyrinthine with virtually all of them containing a secret warp somewhere (the warps are found because they stop your shots in mid air, shoot them multiple times and they appear) searching and exploring the levels for warps is a very important aspect of the New Zealand Story experience.

NES - Not as fast as the Master System version which is a shame but seriously! what an amazing conversion! impressively nearly all of the arcade's warp points have been retained, it plays very accurately to the arcade original with most enemies and hazards in the correct places, the whale boss actually rushes forwards and eats you like it's supposed to (this feature is missing from all other 8-bit ports), you can glide by tapping jump (again another feature missing from all other ports) and you get a healthy amount of continues (not too many, not too few). On the downside the levels are a little bit scaled down making some sections which used to feel out in the open less impressive, and, unfortunately the accuracy does not extend to the flying platforms as their placing is usually wrong, and for all intents and purposes the different vehicles are just sprite swaps (originally the different vehicles had their own strengths and weaknesses) this factor can't really be held against the NES in this particular comparison though as all the 8-bit ports are guilty of this oversight.

Master System - This version plays extremely well, it's faster paced than the NES version which has a positive effect on the game play, it controls well, and plays smoothly. There are however some problems, the most crushing of which is the difficulty, in this version you get no continues at all and have to complete the entire game with only 3 lives and whatever you can pick up along the way! this pretty much makes the game impossible to complete without collecting lives through spamming against the enemies or finding and utilizing all the level warps. This version is much less accurate in comparison to the NES version, it has more warps missing, most of the underwater enemies are absent, often wall mounted guns are missing, and one of my personal favourite sections is gone as the whale boss no longer eats you anymore it just moves back and forth firing spike balls.

All of the other 8-bit versions are completely missing secret warps, they have none at all, zero, zilch, sometimes this has the effect of making their level layout seem a bit strange (there's loads of paths that used to lead to warps but now just end in a pointless dead end)

C64 - The game play here is very nice and smooth, the action is fast and for the most part the game plays well, however there are multiple issues that need to be addressed. In this version if the platform you are traveling on is shot you die (in every other version the platform bursts and you fall) this means that whilst flying your hit box is doubled, You cannot shoot spike balls coming towards you and instead have to jump them (this isn't too much of an issue thankfully), and lastly the jumping is pretty inaccurate and at times can be extremely frustrating as the height you jump is seemingly random and difficult to judge (sometimes a small press will jump you only a small amount off ground whilst at others you'll go double the height) I've actually had this particular version since my childhood and even after all these years there's still jumping sections where I will end up going around in circles multiple times, or jump too high and hit spikes above me. Funnily enough this seems to be the only version where they remembered to include the letters to spell EXTEND.

Spectrum - The game play in this version is actually pretty good, it's not as smooth as I would've liked but the scrolling isn't so bad that it ruins the experience, most of the time you feel like you have a good amount of control over Tiki (nowhere near the console versions though) and the game handles a lot of enemies and onscreen action without slowing down too much. The boss battles in this version are actually very impressive as they retain more of their size than in the other ports (except the Amstrad version) whilst running at a pretty good speed (unlike the Amstrad version) another cool thing about them is that you can bring flying platforms with you to help you in the boss fights (just like in the arcade) which is an aspect missing from every other version but the terrible Amstrad version.

Amstrad - To be frank the game play of this version is bad, the whole thing moves quite slowly to begin with but the choppy, badly implemented scrolling makes matters even worse, much of the time you'll be trying to dodge and shoot whilst having to put up with the screen moving up and down, back and forth slowly (and whilst this is going on the controls become extremely unresponsive). When there's a group of enemies on screen the game also suffers from extreme slowdown, which when added to the already mentioned problems effectively makes you feel like you're playing in slow motion. The boss battles are appallingly bad as they run at a snails pace at all times, and you feel like you have virtually no control over the character at all it's so unresponsive during these sections.

NES - There's a picture of a map of New Zealand between levels

Master System - This is the only version with the intro of the leopard seal kidnapping the kiwi's (though it's cut down a bit), it has the map screen between levels, and also has a better quality ending.

C64- Awesome loading music

Spectrum, Amstrad - nothing particularly noteworthy

The NES port was programmed by Software creations whilst Ocean handled all the computer ports, it was released in North America under the title Kiwi Kraze.

The computer versions are all bordered and use "up" to jump instead of a button, these controls are actually better suited to the game play in this instance as you can fire repeatedly while you jump, as well as fly upwards whilst firing when on a moving platform without having to swap between buttons.

The Master System Version was only released as a PAL exclusive in Europe and Australia, is 50hz only (on 60hz if you can manage to get it running the game and music plays too fast and there's glitchy artifacts appearing all over the screen), and as such runs with vertical borders.

Unfortunately in this instance the computer versions aren't really competitive as their graphics are much worse and at the same time they don't really have anything to set themselves apart from the console versions in the game play department either, they are all also missing the secret warps entirely. So it's between the two console versions, The Master System edges it with the graphics as it has better backgrounds overall and much better sprites, however it loses out to the NES version in the sound department, and more importantly in game play too as it is much less accurate in comparison to the NES version and there's a lot of sacrifices due to this, I also feel that one of the most damaging elements to the Master System version is the fact that it gives you no continues as this makes completing the game a fairly impossible task for most people.

Where the computer versions are concerned the Amstrad version is pretty much abysmal in every respect, not only is it not a very good port in comparison to the other versions but it's simply a bad game (the other versions are all still playable despite their problems). The only thing it has going for it is that the backgrounds and colour are better than the Spectrum version, but that's hardly an noteworthy feat.

I think that the C64 version has to win out in the 8-bit computer competition, mainly because it has proper backgrounds and plays quite smoothly, it does have a lot of issues game play wise though which cause it to be a much more frustrating game than the Spectrum version (vehicle deaths, inaccurate jumping controls), even though I'm going with the C64 version here I'd like to note that in my opinion the Spectrum version probably plays a little better, it's just brought down a lot by it's graphics.