frolik
Bass Invader
Flimbo's Quest (1990)
Review number two is a game which has split many C64 gamers, it seems either you love it, or you hate it. For me, I love it, it feels well polished from seeing the box artwork right down to the the game itself.
The Game:
When I first played this game I thought it had 16bit quality graphics, they just looked so colourful and characteristic, along the vein of the cutesy sprites that were doing the rounds on the consoles back then. The sprites are very well animated and each level has it's own distinct style of monsters and scenery to match - some of the beasties even look a bit deformed and scary! Another thing that was impressive for it's day was the parralax scrolling, the landscape and the foreground move at different speeds and produce a really nice effect.
Just listen to the music that accompanies the game and the title screen,... what?... you don't like it? well it's an aquired taste maybe, but fits the style of the game perfectly. Those German guys knew how to make a decent cheesy tune for games like this, and I recently saw the Danish band 'Press Play on Tape' and one of the tunes they played was the Flimbo's Quest theme, suffice to say that my nostalgic side was aroused.
The game consists of running back and forth shooting meanies, collecting the credits they drop and finding the scrolls and returning them to the shop to complete the level. Along the way you will find rooms of treasure (pickup the pink ones first for extra credits), potions, hearts, and you can gear yourself up at the shop at any time.
The Criticism:
As I said at the start, some hate it. I will try to see it from this point of view to cover the downsides to this game.
So it's simplistic, there's not a hell of a lot of originality here, and the levels don't offer much different to the last which could get boring. The difficulty level gets pretty heavy around level 4, and the time limit set is very unfairly, you must remember to buy more time from the shop.
The Emulation:
You want to play it on your GP32? No problem, however, the versions I've tried don't want to load the following levels unless you turn on 1541 cpu emulation, it's easy to load up the game normally then turn it on when you get to the title screen. I tend to remap one of the buttons to 'up' on the joystick to make it easier to jump accurately.
The Last Word(s):
Playing this game on my GP32 has allowed me to get into this game properly, I used to have the tape version on my C64 which often didn't load levels and really put me off and I never got very far in the game, now I can play it as it should be played and using a button to jump is ideal.
If nothing more, you should load it up and give it your best shot, if you don't like it, you probably didn't have a C64!
Feel free to comment on this review
EDIT: Press Play On Tape are danish, not german
Review number two is a game which has split many C64 gamers, it seems either you love it, or you hate it. For me, I love it, it feels well polished from seeing the box artwork right down to the the game itself.
The Game:
When I first played this game I thought it had 16bit quality graphics, they just looked so colourful and characteristic, along the vein of the cutesy sprites that were doing the rounds on the consoles back then. The sprites are very well animated and each level has it's own distinct style of monsters and scenery to match - some of the beasties even look a bit deformed and scary! Another thing that was impressive for it's day was the parralax scrolling, the landscape and the foreground move at different speeds and produce a really nice effect.
Just listen to the music that accompanies the game and the title screen,... what?... you don't like it? well it's an aquired taste maybe, but fits the style of the game perfectly. Those German guys knew how to make a decent cheesy tune for games like this, and I recently saw the Danish band 'Press Play on Tape' and one of the tunes they played was the Flimbo's Quest theme, suffice to say that my nostalgic side was aroused.
The game consists of running back and forth shooting meanies, collecting the credits they drop and finding the scrolls and returning them to the shop to complete the level. Along the way you will find rooms of treasure (pickup the pink ones first for extra credits), potions, hearts, and you can gear yourself up at the shop at any time.
The Criticism:
As I said at the start, some hate it. I will try to see it from this point of view to cover the downsides to this game.
So it's simplistic, there's not a hell of a lot of originality here, and the levels don't offer much different to the last which could get boring. The difficulty level gets pretty heavy around level 4, and the time limit set is very unfairly, you must remember to buy more time from the shop.
The Emulation:
You want to play it on your GP32? No problem, however, the versions I've tried don't want to load the following levels unless you turn on 1541 cpu emulation, it's easy to load up the game normally then turn it on when you get to the title screen. I tend to remap one of the buttons to 'up' on the joystick to make it easier to jump accurately.
The Last Word(s):
Playing this game on my GP32 has allowed me to get into this game properly, I used to have the tape version on my C64 which often didn't load levels and really put me off and I never got very far in the game, now I can play it as it should be played and using a button to jump is ideal.
If nothing more, you should load it up and give it your best shot, if you don't like it, you probably didn't have a C64!
Feel free to comment on this review
EDIT: Press Play On Tape are danish, not german
