Reviews

As Centipede games goes this one isn't too bad. The graphics are varied and colourful enough and there's a decent bit of sound.

The odd thing about this one is the control method does away with the up and down keys and instead has you press left and right together to move up; Moving back down happens automatically. While it gives an interesting strategic twist (you can use the mushrooms to stop falling back down) it doesn't help when the pace hots up, especially as all movement is character based.

It's also a little difficult to distinguish between normal and poisoned muchrooms so you can be caught off-guard when the centipede drops down the play area and the spider can tend to appear out of nowhere but these don't hurt the playability as much it sounds.

While it's not the best version I've played it has its charm and is definitely worth a go if you're a Centipede fan.

An interesting twist on the maze game but a little too frustrating to be really enjoyable.

In this one you just have one adversary, a ghostly robot that resembles a Recogniser from the film, "Tron". It's able to move over the walls towards you as you're trying to navigate through to retrieve a data disc and exit key. It does move a lot slower than you, so it's not a completely lost cause.

The strategic element is in luring the Recogniser (there's no point in calling a spade a shovel here, this is from an era where nearly every second game was inspired by Tron in one way another) into a position which will allow you to dodge past it further through the maze. You have to be careful not to choose the wrong strategy though or you could trap yourself in a corner. There's no time limit so your only other enemy is really yourself.

It does have that "just one more go" element going for it, although the colour schemes of the maze (and use of the FLASHing attribute) do count against playing it for more than a couple of times a session.

Could be one of those games to have a couple of people takings turns yelling out how the player should be doing it!

Top-down scrolling rally-style game but poor design decisions make it an annoyance to play.

Your controls are left, right, accelerate and brake and you're driving a race car up a track that moves left and right as well as changing width.

The basic driving mechanics are similar to "Spy Hunter" but there the similarity ends. It wouldn't be so bad except for not being to accelerate and steer at the same time! This becomes especially apparent when the track narrows to only allow two cars through and the other car is veering all over the place.

Your fuel gauge is the time limit here but it's debateable whether you'd actually play it long enough for it to run down. While it has promise, it's frustrating and repetitive and not really worth playing other than to imagine what it could have been like with an extra bit of work on the game design.

Fairly standard carnival shoot game.

This consists of two alternating stages. The first is the typical moving lanes of targets with a row of harder to hit targets behind moving walls. The second stage is a bonus stage where you just hit the single target as many times as possible as it tries to escape across the screen.

It's not a bad game just a bit boring. The graphics, while nothing special are servicable and cute enough and the scrolling of the lanes is smooth. The only thing that makes it difficult is the time limit which (depending on your view of these things) either makes it a frustrating game or a challenging one!

Either way, it's competent enough but doesn't have enough variety to maintain interest: Once you've figured it out it's more a case of playing until your attention wanders enough to cause more errors than the time allows for.

Yes another Frogger clone and poorly executed.

Looks promising to start off with. The graphics are colourful but we have the addition of an electrified maze between the road and the river and very finicky movement. It also seems like the road has also gained parking lanes at each side as well.

While it looks OK, the gameplay is just not up to scratch at all. The movement of the frog relative to the hazards is off just enough to make accidents frustrating rather than acceptable. It's very difficult to maintain any kind of enthusiasm when playing this especially with the touchy controls.

There are much better variants of Frogger than this and it's probably not worth bothering with unless you've tried them all.

Promising shoot-em-up let down by poor controls.

This starts off promisingly. You control a chunky little spaceship shooting at the marauding aliens. It's colourful and moves quickly but the main drawback is that only one control works at a time! You can't move diagonally or fire while moving. This is enough to make the whole exercise a waste of time and as it's written in machine code there really is no excuse.

The only reason I won't give it an "awful" is because the graphics really aren't too bad and it could have been so much better if the control code had been implemented properly.

"Burgertime" effort which isn't too bad despite some clumsiness.

This isn't shockingly bad but just tends on the wrong side of the line when it comes to choosing whether to have another go or not.

Movement is character based which can be a bit of a nuisance when trying to use the pepper or get onto the ladders in a hurry. The monsters also have an odd habit of getting stuck for a few seconds for no apparent reason. Thankfully though the annoying and overlong sound effects so present in other Blaby productions are kept to a minimum here.

Despite a great, simple loading screen and nicely drawn characters it doesn't really compare well to Mr Wimpy.

Rescue the lost men by shooting away the ground surrounding them so you can go in and pick them up.

In theory this should be a great little game and has a lot of promise but the control is just a little bit too clumsy to ignore. The premise of the game is sound enough - The bottom third of the screen is the ground and you have to manoeuvre your helicopter to shoot down or across to clear the ground out of way, fly in and pick up the stranded person.

What makes it difficult is a plane which is constantly flying overhead dropping more earth down, filling up the holes and possibly hitting you or blocking you in as well.

The controls are the typical chopper-game ones. You can fly up, down, left and right and moving in the opposite direction transitions through a facing-out direction which lets you shoot vertically down instead of horizontally.

The problem with this game is that you have to be really delicate with the controls which makes movement slower and more awkward than it should really be and makes you more prone to being hit from above.

It could have been a lot better with a bit of playtesting to catch the dodgy control issue.

I'm not sure whether this one is familiar because I've seen it before or it's a copy of something else but it's not great.

The screen is divided up into six rows which have aliens moving left or right. As they exit off the side of the screen they appear on a different row. You move your ship up and down the rows via a vertical corridor in the middle of the screen.

While it sounds like it should be exciting enough it's repetitive and boring with little or no variation in the gameplay as time passes. You just shoot as many as you can. There is an element of strategy involved in a bonus item which appears at the extreme left or right of one of the rows so you have to venture in to collect it making sure to time it so that no aliens are going to disappear off the screen which could reappear directly in front of you!

Other than that there is very little to do here and there is certainly no incentive to play for more than a couple of minutes. The graphics are really no more than functional and don't do anything to make things interesting.

Frogger crossed with Lunar Lander giving dubious results.

As the pirate of the title your task is to descend from your mothership, navigate through the lanes of space traffic and grab an item from the conveyor at the bottom of the screen. Then, make your way back up to the mothership (all against a fuel limit), refuel and do it all over again.

As movement is character based within the confines of a single screen it's pretty unforgiving but playable enough. It does get a bit boring though and it's only really your own clumsiness that ends the game.

Not bad but very limited gameplay.

"Pengo"-style game that spends more time making silly noises than you do playing it.

Instead of being fun like the original game this is more inclined to be annoying instead. Movement is based on 2x2 character squares which makes everything very jumpy and despite the limited number of characters on screen it's quite flickery. The controls are not very responsive leading to a frustrating experience.

"Dig-Dug" effort that manages to be as boring as the original.

I'll be honest up-front - I think Dig-Dug the arcade game is a nice looking game but I just find it very boring and feel it could have been much better.

Likewise with this, although it feels a bit faster paced there is still very little to do other than dig around for the treasure and drop rocks on the baddies. There is very little to compel you to play for more than a couple of levels unless I've missed some additional elements on the later screens.

The first "Boulder Dash" did this sort of thing much better and had more character.

Interesting game let down by poor implementation.

The first level of this is a stealth game where you have to make your way to the prison gates avoiding the torch beams of the patrolling guards (this makes it sound more exciting than it is but bear with me). After getting the hang of the sloppy movement and getting past the gates you move on to the second level which involves avoiding the gates flying up and down a grid while you negotiate your way up each row to the top of the screen by getting to each alternate side of the screen (also avoiding another guard and collecting items along the way).

There might be another screen after that but I haven't bothered trying that hard yet because the movement of the main character is clearly designed to confound any efforts at intentional control. I won't give it an "awful" (although it clearly deserves it) because the mechanics of the game are interesting enough to make you try playing it a few times just to get that bit further.

Platform "Painter" game which succeeds despite horrendous control.

It's a bit like "Painter" but you colour in platforms as you walk over them and it's a bit like "Donkey Kong" except without the gorilla and barrels.

Once you get used to the game mechanics it's actually not too bad and there's enough scope for variety in the screen layouts that makes you want to get further into it. One handy thing to remember is that when standing still Harry will jump in the direction he was last travelling. This makes it much easier to jump over the "nasties".

[edit 21/9/11: Having finally seen gameplay of Miner 2049er, courtesy of Steve Benway, this game is very similar]

With a bit more polish on it this could have been good, but as it stands is just average.

Mediocre graphics compound horrible controls to make an awful version of Donkey Kong.

It could have been much better if it wasn't for the fact that you can only jump vertically. That's right: To jump over the barrels you have to jump up and let them roll under you! You don't even get a hammer in this one to destroy barrels, you jump up to collect a burger (?) instead.

Clumsy unresponsive controls and character-based movement make this a forgettable playing experience. A few minor tweaks could have fixed this and made it at least a passable Donkey Kong game but I'm afraid even Ocean's first attempt is better than this.

Collect the coloured keys maze game.

It seems that Percy Pluggit, the IC with legs has got lost and needs to be guided back to his socket. Unfortunately various baddies and locked gates are trying to impede him. Find the coloured keys to unlock the matching gates and blast anything in your way all against the time constraint of your depleting energy.

It's pretty basic (compiled BASIC to be exact) but reasonably entertaining and short enough that you don't feel that's it's an interminable back-and-forth collecting the various different keys to progress through the maze (with lethal walls). It's a pity there isn't some kind of random aspect to the maze though as it only consists of about 8 screens. Not sure I would have been happy paying for it back in the day though.