My one real wish is the game allowed multiple lives instead of making you start over every time you die. The graphics are blocky – aside from a few extra colors, this could easily pass for something from the original CoCo's. The game allows keyboard or joystick control, a nice touch, and it's fast and increasingly challenging at a pace that's reasonable. This requires "magic" bricks (another type that can be collected) which, like permanent ones, are also indestructible. Mazes get more difficult, of course, and the ultimate objective is to trap the evil Malcolm in his boss-stage lair. On the other hand, if you've trapped all the creatures, a yellow brick road will show the way to the now-open exit for that level. But they cannot destroy walls you've made permanent and therein lies a problem: If you put yourself in a situation where you cannot escape or have insufficient bricks left to trap the creatures, the game ends. This can be used to try to blow up creatures (very tough to do) or blow up temporary walls. In addition to your limited supply of bricks (more can be collected in the mazes), you also have dynamite at your disposal. You can prevent the latter by making the bricks you lay "permanent," but this has a potentially game-ending drawback we'll get to shortly. Some can also shoot and others can destroy the bricks you lay. Touching the nasties is obviously bad news. Rick", who wanders around scrolling mazes trying to trap evil creatures by laying bricks to trap them so he can escape. Sold by Tandy in cartridge form, it had the advantage of being far more widely available than higher-quality third-party titles, so most CoCo fans are likely familiar with it. This arcade maze/strategy game is the sort of thing I enjoy a bit more than this grade indicates, but I also realize the concept isn't overly original and there are games of this ilk with better depth, variety, graphics and.well, just about everything. But a good overall effort of delivering what the title promises. Plus the game itself isn't all that deep, so it's unlikely you'll be playing all that often. It's not an overwhelmingly great title, however, due largely to graphics that flicker an awful lot and sound effects that are just short of annoying. The ball physics are pretty good, as is the control with the paddle (and thankfully the ball angle varies even with dead-on hits, so there's no endless cycle of the ball covering the same ground over and over). You use the joystick to control a translucent paddle that knocks a ball "down" the chamber to the bricks below, arranged in a square instead of stacked on one another like the 2D version. Thanks to all of them for their huge efforts in keeping our beloved titles of the past alive.Ī pretty good version of what the title indicates, a three-dimensional version of the ageless game Breakout. Curtis Boyle's invaluable CoCo games site. The individual games offered for download come from L. Games with a "play online" option can be found at Brad Grier’s amazing JS Mocha site that’s evolved over a couple of decades, plus the far more complete Color Computer Archive that’s updated frequently and links nearly every title for the CoCo and Dragon computers to an online version of the XRoar emulator. Brutal as it sounds, I would probably lower all scores anywhere from half to a full letter grade if matched against competing platforms. Also, these are graded on a curve relative to other CoCo games. These are graded from "A" to "F" based mostly on my opinion of them, although the collective opinion of reviews from the era and the CoCo gaming community also factor in a bit, especially when I feel my opinion might be seriously out-of-whack with the majority. Want to submit a review or offer a second opinion? E-mail me and I'll post them. New to the Color Computer? Learn a bit about it and the terminology I use here.
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