** 1 page PD review / 725 words **

Pie Bill Gates

Shuiming Lai and Mad Butscher couldn't resist this one...

** PBGINTRO.GIF here **

Anyone who's ever spent a day on a PC re-booting Windows (and that's just installing it...) will love this fairground style game. It's an opportunity to recreate that historic moment in February 1998, when Bill Gates visited Brussels and got custard-pied by a Belgian prankster notorious for publicly humiliating the famous.

That's not to say having a bone to pick with the Microsoft Supremo is a pre-requisite to enjoy this game because in fact, it's actually quite good in its own right.

The action resembles a coconut shy, except you have Bill's head popping up momentarily from cake bases dotted over the screen, and you have to guide the cursor to the right position before pressing fire to splat him, TisWas style!

There are two modes of play (plus one trainer) which gradually build up the number of bases from which Bill can appear; the idea being that you clear a quota of hits before the timer runs out. If you want to make things harder for yourself, the other main mode deducts points at the end of each round for missed pies.

At first, it seems too easy but later on the pace becomes a lot more frantic. A steady eye and good memory help. The Bill sprites are sufficiently large so as not to make them too hard to hit, and the cursor has a little inertia with just the right weighting. Without this it would require painful concentration and response.

A choice of music is on offer, from Yamaha chip tunes employing advanced programming techniques to produce fat, rasping bass (often called SID music after the old C64's famous sound chip, which typically produced such noises) to realistic digital tracker music. The latter is a jolly piano ditty during the game, which also plays out of the Falcon's DSP port, firing up my Jam PRO box nicely. I wish more games programmers would do this.

While we're talking about sound, my only real criticism is the lack of conviction due to the absence of sound effects. You don't really feel the pies hitting. Some creamy squelches and howls of anguish, with perhaps a few frames of animation of the pies and debris... I'm sure that would make it all the more messy and fun!

** boxout **
2nd Opinion

Pie Bill Gates kicks off with some good graphics and there is some nice soundtrack/chip music. Three cakes are displayed and Bill Gates appears at random from one of the cakes at which point you have to target and hit him using the mouse.

If you're successful you're treated to the spectacle of Bill Gates getting a pie in his face, which is very satisfying, if you miss Bill escapes and you have to try again.

That's the gameplay out of the way now there are three different modes to choose between:

** UL **
* Timing: Hit Bill as many time as possible in two minutes, each hit scores a point
* Decreasing: Same as timing, except if you miss Bill you lose 10 points
* Mega decreasing: Same procedure as Decreasing mode, except you start with 100 points and you even lose 10 points every time you Bill escapes.
** /UL **

It's such an obvious knock at Bill Gates the gameplay isn't really the point - so I haven't rated it. That said it's not as easy as it looks so you do have to concentrate to end up with enough points to progress to the next level - before each level you're given a target number of points to achieve to reach the next level.

There are versions of this game available on other platforms (Amiga, PC, Linux and probably others) which shouldn't come as any surprise - I wasn't!

Mad Butscher/Foundation Two
** /boxout **

** product boxout **
Pie Bill Gates

Author: Sector One
Download at: http://sectorone.atari.org
Requires: ST(e), TT or Falcon, 320x200 screen mode (ST low)

Pros: Good control, accelerator-aware (doesn't affect good timing of gameplay), Falcon external DAC support
Cons: No sound effects, graphics slightly bland

79% Sound
73% Graphics
83% Gameplay

78% OVERALL
** Remember to include the OVERALL % as a black bar across bottom of boxout **
** /product boxout **

** Images and captions **

** PBG_GAME.GIF **
Sorry, no intergalactic-shooter-style power-ups here. You'll have to rely on manual skill and single shots