And now for something completely different.... MAGIC BOY --------- Written by : Blue Turtle, Published by : Empire Software Played on a 386/33 PC Reviewed by Richard Batey 1 Introduction Following my first review for SynTax (Drearcliffe Manor which I failed to complete, the game that is, not the review) Sue sent me this PLATFORM game to review. What are you trying to tell me, Sue? (Sob sob). Pride badly dented, I inserted the disk and prepared to push my reflexes to the limit. 2 Plot Little Hewlett is a clever little boy. He is an apprentice Wizard at the Sorcery School and regularly comes top of the class in the exams. He even stays behind after class to do extra homework. One night however, he makes a terrible mistake by opening the trapdoor that leads to the basement of the school. What he did not know at the time was that the Grand Wizard kept all his magical creatures down in the basement and now they have all escaped to the magical landscapes surrounding the school. Hewlett has no choice but to search through the four different lands and recapture all the creatures before the night is over. Good luck Hewlett, you are going to need it! 3 Technical In order to play the game you will need 640k RAM and DOS 2.0 or higher. You can play in either CGA, EGA or VGA graphic mode and the game can use either a Roland, Ad-Lib or Sound Blaster sound card. If you do not have a sound card then the game will use the internal sound chip on the PC. If you are one of those people who have a joystick you can use that to control the game, if not then the keys are the only other option, no mouse support. I do not own a joystick so I could not test how the game plays with one but I can say that the keys were responsive and worked rather well. You only use five keys in the game, the four cursor keys and the space bar for left, right, jump, down and fire. Simplicity itself. One nice surprise is that the game plays directly from the 3.5" disk so there is no need to install the game onto the hard drive if you do not wish to do so. With space a premium on my hard drive this was very welcome. All in all, virtually every PC computer ought to be able to run this game with no problems at all. 4 The Game It is a platform game. What? You want more details than that? Very well if you insist. Well, for a start there are four different lands, Sand Land, Wet Land, Plastic Place and Future Zone. In Sand Land the escaped creatures are animals such as Cats, Birds, Snakes and an assortment of 'fluffy things', in Wet Land the creatures are all things fishy, sharks, crabs, oysters and eels. In Plastic Palace the creatures are toys such as planes, dogs, bears etc while in Future Land you will find robots, UFOs etc. On each level you need to 'shoot' your magic wand and stun the creatures then if you touch them you automatically put them in a sack. Press down and you will deposit any creatures in the sack back in the basement. Collect every creature on the level to advance further. There are eight levels to each land but you will have to visit each land twice before you have completed the game. This gives a total of 64 levels for your enjoyment. I have managed to complete 34 of those levels because you are given 3 lives to start the game with plus 3 continue games, in effect giving you 12 lives. You can pick up additional lives and continues if you are lucky (or skilful, though that does not apply in my case!). With practice you can go a long way in the game with that. What would a platform game be without platforms....? No idea. The platforms in this game are by no means original and include: Dissolving Platforms - They dissolve. Ice Platforms - Try stopping on these. Sticky Blocks - Slows you down. Conveyor Belts - One way only like it or not. Springs - BONNNNNG! Pistons - Pushes you in the air. Toxic Pools - DEATH on contact. Trap Squares - Spikes and skulls, nasty. Bonus Squares - Walk on them all to collect points. There are, of course, platforms which are perfectly safe to walk and jump on. What other little bits of information can I tempt you with. There are lots of points to be had by collecting: Fruit - Points (no high score table though). Power Ups - Make your wand do interesting things. Spell Books - Takes you to a bonus room. Rainbows - Automatically completes the level. Stars - 5 of these = an extra continue. Letters - E, X, T, R, A, (Guess). Hook - Makes you indestructible. So there you have it, jump around on platforms collecting creatures and any other things that take your fancy. Solid. 5 Graphics Nothing to fancy but everything is clear and colour is used well in the VGA mode. I did not play it in EGA or CGA but if your computer only has these options you are unlikely to find many other games that will allow you to play in those modes. Magic Boy is very well animated though if you leave him alone for a while doing nothing, nothing happens, he just stands there. These days you would expect him to clean his fingernails or something. Another thing, he wears a cape and looks more like a teen superhero than an apprentice wizard. I suppose it looks pretty. 6 Sound Yuck! If you have a Sound Blaster card and you want to listen to the worst music possible that can be produced by that card then this is the game for you. Plink plink plonk plink plonk. That was the best bit! Horrendous! Take my advice and do what I did, turn the sound off and play a CD instead. I chose both Carter USM and The Great British Punk Explosion in order to help me generate the aggression needed to play the game but hey, whatever works for you. If you decide to ignore my advice, HUH, then please turn the sound down so as not to upset your neighbours (believe me, they will much prefer the punk!). The music generated by the PC sound chip is just as bad but you can get away with just having the in game effects if you must. 7 Conclusion What started out as a punishment from She Who Edits turned out to be an enjoyable experience which came as a pleasant surprise. You do not have to be an arcade wizkid for this game because...(a Christmas slogan used by all the toy manufacturers coming up...) it's Easy To Play And Fun For All The Family. The only thing that spoiled it for me is there is no save game or password option so once you are dead dead you have no choice but to restart the game from the beginning again. Now my reflexes being what they are means I will never get to the end of the game, but I would liked to have done so. 8 Recommendation The game is very good and I can recommend it to anybody who wants to take a break from adventuring for an hour or two. I see Sue is willing to sell or swap the game, I can confirm that as far as platform games go it will be a purchase well worth the money (do I get a commission now, Sue?). 9 Additional You also get The Cool Croc Twins platform/puzzle game for free. No review as such but I will say that it is not half as good as Magic Boy, but as a bonus nothing to turn your nose up at. - o -