Piranha
£9.95
Reviewer: Tony Worrall
It's more than a poor reviewer can bear. That little teddy of a bear young Boo-Boo has been forcibly abducted and is even now struggling with the bars of his cage way over on the other side of Jellystone Park. But hey hey hey! his good of pal Yogi is on his way to rescue his bosom buddy, and that s no mistake.
It's time for all good bears to take a good long kip and hibernate for the season. Yogi and Boo-Boo are no exceptions to this rule. Yogi has but a short time to find and release his short friend before the winter blues set in. But if you go down to the woods today you're sure of a whopping great surprise. Not only has Yogi got to contend with natural hazards such as black holes and running rivers, but the woods are alive with all kinds of animal life.
Yogi being the greedy bear he is, needs to stock up regularly on campers pick a-nick baskets, plus the odd fish nabbed from an anglers rod. Fail to keep Yogi topped up and his energy levels reach rocky bottom, and the game's over. While Yogi is on the look out for food, you need to be on the look out for campers or Ranger Smith. One touch of 'em is fatal.
Yogi Bear is a flip-screen arcade adventure with large sprites and a cute but silly plot. Yogi begins on screen 200 and has to find his way, by travelling as far right as he can go, to screen number 3 to rescue Boo-Boo. Several screens can be happily by-passed by the clever use of the cave system. The problem is toffee apples have to be collected along the way, six in all, to be converted by Boo-Boo into a code. This code, a series of shaped stepping stones, needs to be used on the screen next to the end to enable Yogi to collect the key to Boo Boo's cage without alerting the bear-napper himself. This is all easier said than done of course!
In fact Yogi is not the smart bear he thinks he is. He tends to fall into every trap available along the way. Well, in my control anyway! This makes the game very frustrating. It's not so much the gameplay, because the basic idea works well enough. It is the maddening quirks of the programming that make it so infuriating, and so playable at the same time. The collision detector is a bit of a joke, but this can also work to your advantage at times. You may be pixels away from the edge of that pit and you fall in, but at other times you can bound straight through it quite safely.
The naffo joystick response can lead to a drain on Yogi's bear necessities, and get you into more hot water as you attempt a pixel perfect leap across a stream. Bad news.
I started the game in a bad mood (bear with a sore head?) but after about 20 games I began to see the fun part of it. It is addictive in an odd sort of way. True, there is no music or high score table like the Commie version, and it makes no technical or graphical quantum leaps - but I like it, so there! if you think you are smarter than the average game player then try Yogi and see if it fits.
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