Pub Trivia Simulator
(Code Masters, 1989)
If your brain is full of useless facts and you feel like learning some more, then try this game. Up to four players can test their knowledge of music, sport, showbiz and trivia. Each round consists of answering five questions where you score points, followed by the ‘money maze’ where you can score both points and money (allowing you to continue if you get a question wrong). This pattern continues until you become bored. Eventually, after seeing the same questions many times, you will get past the first round, but with only three sets of questions that can be used, and not enough variety, it’s not a game to become enthusiastic about. (The answer to the question in the screenshot is “March”, by the way.)
In this game, you play either Puffy or Pufyn, who must make their way through 34 dungeons filled with traps, monsters and treasure. The game itself resembles a mixture of Gauntlet (monsters, keys and magic items) and Pac-Man (collect all the dots to exit). There are larger blue dots to be found that assist your quest; the more you collect, the better the bonus or power-up you will receive. Graphically, Puffy’s Saga looks very nice, with no flicker and acceptable scrolling. Music plays on the informative title screen with a few in-game sound effects, including digitised sounds on 128K machines.
Pulsator is a puzzle game in which you travel around a flip-screen maze looking for the exit. Certain parts of the maze are blocked by locked gates; each one is numbered between 1 and 6. To open these gates, you have to look for and travel over a numbered tile found within the maze. Retracing your steps over the same numbered tile closes the gate. Certain parts of the maze are one-way routes and many instant death tiles act as walls in places. Several nasties occupy the maze and drain your energy if touched, but thankfully you can shoot them down. Colourful and smooth graphics, simple effects and a nice tune add to a very challenging game.
Pulsoids
(Mastertronic, 1988)
It’s Breakout time once again, although I have to say that I actually like this one a bit. Instead of a ball, though, there is some sort of laser pulse which bounces about the screen, and if it collides with one of the creatures that roam at the top of the screen, it splits into two pulses, and if there are lots of creatures, there are going to be a lot of pulses, and things get quite hectic! Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to get extra lives, and you’ll need them. The graphics are nothing special, but the gameplay makes up for it, and you must listen to the music... it is truly excellent!
Punch and Judy
(Alternative Software, 1989)
Punch’s stall has been dismantled and the pieces are scattered all over the seaside resort of Bridlington, with all its tacky cafés, shops and amusement arcades. You’ve got to find all the pieces and then find the cast who are also wandering the streets, before the tide comes in. Don’t run into Mr Policeman, though, or you’ll be arrested! When you’ve done this, the show starts and you have to hit each of the cast repeatedly, again avoiding Mr Policeman. The graphics aren’t bad at all, but there are very few sound effects, and it becomes very boring as you wander the streets looking for the cast members.
A total rip-off of the 1983 arcade game Hunchback, the aim of Punchy is to get to the left of the screen to the right, avoiding boulders and holes on the way. Once Punchy achieves his aim, it’s on to the next level. And... that’s it – really! Zero marks for the storyline! Anyway, the graphics are, to be honest, appalling (it was an early game, but still...), the sound is nothing special, and the difficulty veers crazily from absurdly easy to impossible (I mean this literally, as the level I’m stuck on has a huge pit, two ghosts and no way of getting across). Still, for all its negative points, it is still quite a lot of fun and is also quite addictive. Just don’t expect to be blown away by it!
Watch YouTube videos of this game by: Amstrad CPC World, Axelino.
From the off you just can’t take this game seriously. Let’s start with the sampled speech. It’s certainly a “What the...?!” moment. What type of game is Punk Star? Well it’s a flick-screen platform shoot-’em-up. There aren’t many colours on display but it features unusually large sprites, both for you and the various enemies which are nicely animated. I’m not sure what your method of attack is supposed to be – spit bubbles? You can use a giant bubble to float through the levels, though. There is a little bit of sprite flicker at times and the controls could feel better – and for a punk-themed game, it’s eerily silent!
Watch a YouTube video of this game by: Metr81.
Purple Saturn Day
(Exxos, 1989)
Seven alien contestants and one human contestant (that’s you) are about to participate in the Purple Saturn Day games, which consist of four events – Ring Pursuit (a high-speed slalom race around Saturn’s rings), Tronic Slider (a bit like ice hockey), Brain Bowler (a very original game in which you attempt to light up chips on an electrical circuit), and Time Jump (collecting sparks of energy in the hope that you can travel through time). The graphics are of an extremely high standard, and all of the events, with the notable exception of the Time Jump, are great fun, although it will take some practice to master them – especially the Brain Bowler! My only complaint is that there is no two-player option.
Puzzle Bobble
(Crazy Piri, 2021)
Taito’s coin-op arcade game Puzzle Bobble (also known as Bust-a-Move) appeared not long after the end of the CPC’s commercial life in the early 1990s, and this unofficial conversion recreates it very well indeed. At the bottom of the screen is a machine that fires coloured bubbles, and you must aim the machine so that three or more bubbles will be joined together, causing them to pop and disappear. The aim on each level is to clear all the bubbles from the screen. Graphically it retains the cuteness and colour of the coin-op version, and the backgrounds and tunes are based around some of Taito’s other games, such as Chase HQ and The New Zealand Story. There is a choice of two difficulty levels, and the game is a lot of fun to play. Finally, when the game is over, a QR code is displayed so you can upload your score to Crazy Piri’s web site – nice!
See also: Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands.
Watch YouTube videos of this game by: Amstrad CPC World, Novabug, Saberman.
Puzznic
(Ocean, 1990)
If brain-teasing puzzles are your thing then you’ll like this. It simply involves matching tiles with the same pattern on them together, and making them disappear. The difficult bit is that there is also gravity, and you might move a tile into a place where it’s blocked and can’t be matched! Additionally, later levels require you to remove three tiles at a time. Another nice feature of the game is that you can choose several routes – if you have trouble with one set of puzzles, you can try another. The excellent graphics add to the appeal of this great game.