Reviews

Simple but truly challenging ... !!!

1984 Ocean Software Ltd (UK)
by Christian Urquhart, Nick Pierpoint and F. D. Thorpe

This was my second Pengo game on the Speccy. And again I felt cheated. You see, I was a fanatic of the arcade game and although I wasn't expecting an exact port of the original, at least I was expecting the same addictiveness. But no, It hasn't. Unfortunately Pengo never got the deserved conversion it should, which is a pity, really. On the other hand, Eskimo Eddie is still a fairly good clone, better than Pengy from 1983, but spoiled by the Frogger level at the beginning, which is useless (this is Pengo, not Frogger) and too long, although cute, I must say.

by Christian F. Urquhart, Nick Pierpoint, F. David Thorpe
Phase 1: help three penguins cross the pack. Phase 2: be a penguin, play Pengo.
Graphics and sound are cute, but I find the Pengo part hard, and after a [brief] while it becomes boring going through the Phase 1 all over again, just to be crushed in three seconds in the Pengo section once more.
Sorry to say it, but this game just leaves me cold.
2/5

What is it with Ocean's arcade-inspired games having pointless mini-games at the beginning? Mr. Wimpy had it and now I load up Eskimo Eddie and it has one too! First we have a Frogger type game where you have to avoid clouds and polar bears to retrieve a penguin at the top of the screen and bring him back down again, and repeat twice more. I hate this part, it took me ages to get past it and so then I was finally able to play some Pengo which I was expecting at the beginning, and then that's pretty crap also and thus it wasn't worth the effort of the previous screen, enough!