** Maggie page review / 338 words **

A "Cymvention" 24-hour game

The Stupid Balloon Game by Eddies Cat...
STe and Falcon 030
Entertainment - Freeware

** BALLOON.GIF here **

This is a classically simple game, apparently based on some obscure piece of ancient arcade heritage currently being emulated on one of the multi-arcade emulators on the PC.

The game objective is very simple, you steer your ball/balloon around the screen, which looks like a contour relief map of one of the trickier Norwegian Fjords, collecting star symbols to gain points as you go around. You have to take care as if you touch one of the prickly points of the landscape, your balloon deflates and you lose a life. After three lives, it's all over. It's all a matter of fine control, and people who are comfortable with Asteroids type games will be happy with this one. The other game that came to mind was a very simplified E-Motion. Control can either be through traditional 9-pin crap access to ports style joystick, or much more user-friendly Jagpad.

There is also a pretty tight 30 second timer running as well, and failure to complete the screen within that time means a brutal exit to the title screen to contemplate your misfortune as well (Though if you do lose a life, it does have the happy knack of resetting the timer for you!).

The game runs on the STe and Falcon, it uses the DMA hardware to replay a bunch of Fast Show "Jazzclub" samples when carrying out different tasks, and for one awful moment, I was flash-backed to the Reservoir Gods ASCII demo from the previous summer. The graphics are nothing exceptional, but they are nice and show touches of the genius of Donkey Island days.

The only minor quibble is that Ed's exit routine from this game is not very Falcon friendly, a horrible yellow on yellow GEM environment being the end result. This is but a very minor point though, and this 24 hour(ish) game is a credit to its creator.

Overall: 70%