in which Al drags the waters of his collection of recent Spectrum titles and has a nosey at the oddest he can find...
GIMMICK! YUMETARO ODYSSEY
(GreenWebSevilla, 2018)
I picked this game not because it looks odd, since it doesn't particularly, but purely for the intriguing Oriental-style title. It's actually a remake of a NES game called Mr. Gimmick from 1992. Wonder how many modern Spectrum games have been inspired by consoles and computers which we would consider ancient by now, but actually came after the Speccy? Anyway, this one was written by Antonio Perez who has made many a fine game in his time, like Tokimal and the Ninjakul games. He's a veritable King Of The Platforms.
I've read the plot a few times and due to some confusion over personal pronouns, I can't quite suss out what's going on, or whether the protaganist is meant to be male or female. It doesn't matter, you're cute and blobular anyway. It seems that you've been zapped into a digital world and have to find your way home to the more boring one. You have to find seven magic balls to invoke a vampire dragon to help you obviously.
There are levels which are homages to Mario, Sonic and various other familiar games of yore, even Ghosts 'N' Goblins later on (I peeked again) and brilliantly done they are too. It's easy and fun to have a quick go at, but boy will you need to platform to God Level to complete it all.
This is a cracking little platformer which deserves a lot more press than it has received. Guess that's why I'm here then - just watch everyone else play it in the next few weeks and put it on Youchoob and FaceSpace! Still, this site is here to spread the good word, so if I can do my bit to help keep our mighty machine to the fore long into the future, then by gum I'll do it! Erm, that's enough pontificating, back to the review. Soooo the graphics are ultra cute, there's colour everywhere and great music too. THIS is how you do this type of game - many should take note.
HAMON IV
(Ascendancy Creative Labs, 1997)
Wow, this is an interesting proposition. It comes from Belarus unusually and has the subtitle "Return To Home From Deathmanland". Another version I've spotted calls it "Hell" but how much more compelling does "Deathmanland" sound?
There's a show-offy demo at the start, a familiar (Bela)Russian kind of thing to do. And also probably the reason why this game is 128k only! Aha, next comes a big long intro story with some pretty pics. Shame for me it's all in Russian, mind. I thought this was an English version, I've apparently been duped. There's some exceptional presentation on the menus. Intro, music, everything. It's a real treat for the senses.
Then comes the game. Ah well, nothing lasts forever. Clearly these guys are talented demo makers, but are not quite playing at Zosya level when it comes to the game itself. It's a basic maze affair where you have to find the right object to remove the corresponding obstacle. Cheese feeds mouse, pickaxe breaks wall, knife stabs ghost (?), ring burns microchip, pliers cut wires, snacks feed Scooby Doo (cue lawyers). I could go on.
Your progress depends greatly on whether you can recognise what the graphics actually represent. They're not bad pictures at all, but it's still frequently hard to make them out, so trial and error is your bedfellow. Once you've sussed out what defeats what, it pretty much repeats itself for maze after maze, with no real variety apart from the odd music change. Ah well, it's certainly weird, so is ideal for a weird feature such as this ;)
