Game: Oh Mummy
Console: Amstrad CPC 464
Developer: Gem Software
Release Date: 1984
Upon initial inspection Oh Mummy seems like a very simple game for the CPC. Players make their way around a grid with 20 squares, and once a square has been completely encircled its contents are revealed. These can range from nothing, to treasure, a key to escape the level, a mummy which must be found before exiting the level, an immunity scroll or worst of all a guardian mummy which will make its way out of being trapped and follow the player around. As the levels progress, the guardian mummies follow players, leading to there being rather a lot on the fifth and final level of each pyramid.
Players control a member of the excavation party, of whom there are 5 to start, moving around the maze in order to collect the mummy, key and any treasure they can. Contact with any of the guardian mummies in the level will result in the loss of an excavation party member unless an immunity scroll has been discovered on that level, in which case players get one free pass to get rid of a mummy without reducing their party. The game is scored on points for completing levels and collecting treasure, with 5 levels per pyramid and the difficulty level increasing with each pyramid.
The speed and difficulty level of the game can be adjusted, which is a nice feature since things can get a little easy at times. The game runs at a great speed considering its on Amstrad CPC, and its generally pretty enjoyable. The music isn't great with a single short backing song that repeats ad infinitum until players turn the volume level down on the CPC, but the sound effects are bearable at least.
Overall I had a lot more fun with Oh Mummy than I thought I would; there's a good amount of powerups featured in the game which affect the strategy needing to be used in each level, and since the guardian mummies carry over from level to level, players must also consider whether or not to explore in order to find the immunity scroll and reduce the overall number of them by one per level, or chance fighting more in the later levels. Good stuff!
Rating: 65/100
Grade: C
Game: Bad Cat
Console: Amstrad CPC 464
Developer: Go!
Release Date: 1987
Bad Cat is a strange game, even for the late 80s. Without reading the box, you'd have nearly no clue as to what's going on in the game. The box says; 'Seoul prepares for the Olympic Summer Games. The dignitories [sic] and celebrities prepare their speeches and wait for the huge crowds expected to attend. Beware, there are still the straying city-dweller cats - despised by all. The infamous cats are well known for they are planning their own competitive games. Will Bad Cat live up to his name?'. To be fair that description doesn't help all that much either, but together with the game we can probably work out what's going on.
Players start on the screen featured below; needing to jump over 3 water gaps to progress to the next section of the level. Once they reach the right hand edge of the screen the tape loads the next section for about a minute or so. This continues as players pass each set of obstacles and can mean that at least 6 separate sessions of loading occur in the entire section. After this there's a part with a city map where bad cat must drive, avoiding obstacles to a destination, at which he competes in an athletic event of sorts. These vary in quality, the amount of time they take and difficulty.
I'm not entirely sure what the overall goal of the game is; whether we're playing as the despised city cats and trying to stop the Seoul Olympics from being held, or whether we're trying to redeem all of cat-kind by winning their version of the Olympics. The messages to the player on each part are fairly humourous though; The water is wet? Thanks, Sherlock! Graphically the game is pretty poor, somewhere between Atari 2600 level and NES, and there's not too much to enjoy in the way of music and sound effects.
Overall Bad Cat is more of a confusing experience than anything with an array of different controls for each part, no real instruction, a poorly explained story and very basic graphics. What can be played is definitely a game of sorts, but between the massive amount of loading from the tape, and trying to work out what needs doing in each section, there's not much gameplay or enjoyment to be had.
Rating: 33/100
Grade: E
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