US Gold
£7.99
Ya-roo! Yee-hah! At last, it's here, the Wondrous One - after a year's wait, (anticipation only adds to the enjoyment) US Gold has finally released Goonies, just as the video of the movie peaks in the charts.
US Gold's pedigree is steeped in blood - normalizing Moscow, busting dams and blowing up Beach heads, so it's refreshing to report that Goonies, true to the Spielberg innocence of the film, is based on co-operation and helping your buddies in peril. Go-it-alone Ramboism won't help you here. It's a complex platform game requiring enough forethought to count as strategy. But though the problems are mind boggling the emphasis is always on fun rather than frustration.
Your goal is the treasure on board One Eyed Willy's pirate ship. Only by working with Mikey, Brand, Mouth and Co can the wicked Fratellis be avoided and your home sweet homes saved. You can play two up, but it's fascinating on your lonesome - provided you remember to hit fire to change characters.
Movement's fairly conventional and you won't find much originality in the various ropes, tunnels, ladders and holes you have to negotiate to get around the screens. However, you're not allowed to move from a screen without both your Goonies. And though it might be relatively simple to get one through, two will sometimes seem downright impossible. Suffice to say you'll have to work like those great partnerships of yore, Sharp and Lineker, Brahms and Liszt, Robertson and his golly, if you want to get anywhere. And if that isn't enough, in between you'll be solving puzzles and negotiating action sequences and diversions that've been created in apparently unconnected parts of the screen.
Not only will this project you into your next pit of horrors but you'll gain points. All this with just five lives to play with! However, successfully negotiate the cannonball chamber and you'll win three extra Goonies, and five thousand points for every Goonie you've still got left.
After such a wait you might well have expected something with a little more razz-a-matazz - some of the graphics slip toward stick man standard - but otherwise you can't go far wrong with this. Go on out and get them Goonies!
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