¢SOFTWARE SCENE - ISSUE 9¢¢PART 2¢Chuckie Egg / Pengon¢¢¢¢CHUCKIE EGG¢¢Reviewed by Kevin Cooke¢¢¢ As Page 6 are now offering many cassettes at a budget price, it seems an ideal time to review (or re-review) some of them.¢¢ CHUCKIE EGG is one of the games that is currently on offer, and quite a good one at that. An initial look at the inlay card might put you off a little as apart from the loading instructions, everything else is not only sparce but scarce (in fact, there are no game instructions on the inlay as it quotes them as being included in the program). Not to be put off, I waited for the short load before being greeted with the friendly title screen. Pulling back on the joystick brought the instructions to the screen, where I found out that it was my task to guide HEN HOUSE HARRY around the hen house to collect eggs. Collecting corn would add extra points onto my score, but I was also warned to watch out for the ducklings that would peck me to death if I was caught.¢¢ Pressing fire returned me to the title screen and pressing it again took me to the first game screen. Here I was met by a platform and ladders game in fairly basic but bold graphics. In the top right of the screen was my time ticking away so I decided to try moving. The joystick response was good, and I progressed onto the second screen at the first attempt. Addicted, I tried again, and progressed a little further. By now I was already hooked, and after a few more goes, decided to rest my tired hands.¢¢ One point worth mentioning is the four player option, which allows up to four players to take turns at playing the game (unusual, as most games only allow 2 players to play). Although not totally original, it may come in handy for those who's friends often turn up and get bored waiting for everyone else to finish their game.¢¢ Another slighty strange feature is the function of the ESC key. On many games this serves as a pause key, but on this game it quits the game without asking you if thats what you really want to do. There doesn't seem to be a pause key at all, so if you have just got to a new level and the doorbell rings you'll have to lose your place on the game (if I were you though, I'd leave the door and carry on with the game!).¢¢ Obviously, CHUCKIE EGG isn't up to the standard of some full price games, but for 1.95 (or less if you buy more than one cassette), what can you expect. Disk drive owners may also be interested to know that I transfered it to disk on my first go with HOWFEN DOS, so you have no need to worry about long cassette loads.¢¢ Overall, if your looking for a cheap game with lots to keep you entertained, why not have a look at CHUCKIE EGG. It really is a bargain.¢¢¢¢PENGON¢¢Reviewed by Kevin Cooke¢¢¢ One of PAGE 6's recent additions to their accessory shop is PENGON. This game comes on a cassette which can be bought for a budget price.¢¢ From the description in the magazine, I assumed the game to be more of a puzzler, but while re-reading the description after playing the game, I found that I had misled myself.¢¢ The players job as Willy the penguin is to kill the mutant sea lions by pushing the ice blocks in the room to crush them. The title screen is the first screen that is seen when the game is loaded, but it contains some almost unreadable text stating the games publisher. Once the game is started, the player is met with a very basic screen of graphics showing Willy in the middle of the screen with ice blocks arranged around him. These ice blocks seem to change position each time the game is played,allowing more challenge(?) to be had.¢¢ After your character has been on the screen for about 3 seconds the "mutant seals" appear ("Mutant",as the instructions describe them, is an apt description as they all look exactly the same, and they all look like ghosts from pacman who have just finished a diet!)¢¢ You are then left to run around and push the ise blocks into them until either you or they are dead. If you manage to kill all of the seals, you are then put onto a new level to repeat the process.¢¢ The game was copyrighted in 1984, and to be honest, really shows it's age. Your character is all one colour, and whoever wrote the game had probably never seen a seal before. There is also an annoying tune playing throughout the game, made even worse by the fact that it can't be silenced. The seals also partially disappear when they collide (in true spectrum style) and it is far to easy to be killed as soon as you start to play. ¢ On the plus side, the game has a pause mode, and is fairly addictive, if only for a short time. It also has a very short loading time (the game takes up less than 16k of memory), so you wont have long to wait before playing it.¢¢ Pengon is not not exactly the best game ever, but someone might enjoy it. I haven't become addicted to it, but lets face it, if you don't like it, you won't have wasted much cash and could even use the tape as a blank cassette (sounds like a good idea to me!).¢¢¢¢CHUCKIE EGG and PENGON are available from PAGE 6, PO BOX 54, STAFFORD, ST16 1DR.¢¢¢ Reviewed by KEVIN COOKE.¢
