Homebreviews - part 7
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
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And the reviews continue... this time it's the games of UA Limited.
(Okay... so these are reproductions, not homebrews. But "Reproductionviews" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Cat Trax, Funky Fish, Pleiades Bundle (this will include all three reviews in the store review)
2/5
Lost games from a long-forgotten company, these have been rescued from obscurity and finally released more than 20 years after they were originally written. The newly-created packaging is first-rate, but the games themselves are typical examples of the below-average fodder that was cranked out by the ton in the early 80's - victims of the very glut they helped to create. Pleiades is okay, but otherwise this set of games is probably for collectors only.
And the individual games...
Cat Trax
2/5
In Cat Trax, you're a cat being chased around a maze by three dogs, and you have to avoid them as you run around picking up pieces of cat food. Every once in awhile, a magic potion will appear that will turn you into a dog catcher, and let you round up the dogs. Basically, it's Pac-Man with cats and dogs. Unfortunately, it's just not as much fun. Cat Trax has decent graphics and sound, but the controls leave much to be desired. You can't quickly reverse direction (this is supposed to be a cat, after all), and the spotty collision detection will often allow a dog to catch and kill you from around a corner. All of this, plus only one location to pick up the magic potion from, makes Cat Trax far more frustrating than it should be. Even if those aspects were improved, it's still just a Pac-Man knock-off, and a second-rate one at that. The game has a very nice box with it, but unfortunately, the game is likely to stay inside it most of the time.
Funky Fish
2/5
Funky Fish is a port of an obscure arcade game, in which you're a fish that spits at various undersea creatures. Spitting on them turns them into fruit, which you can then eat, and then you swim over to other, larger creatures and pick up fuel from their dying, bloated corpses. Don't you just love the early 80's, when almost anything was grist for the video game mill? Despite its weird premise, the arcade version of the game has some decent and unique gameplay. Unfortunately, the 2600 version didn't really capture it. While the sound and graphics are about average for the time (although I have to wonder why the ocean is green), the controls are unbearably sluggish. Faster movement is needed to make this game even remotely playable. And while the arcade version isn't exactly lightning-fast, at least it's responsive. Funky Fish is an interesting curiosity. A leftover from a doomed video game company, and nothing more. The nice box that it comes in just can't make up for that.
Pleiades
3/5
A vertical shooter and wannabe sequel to Phoenix, Pleiades has three stages: shoot at enemy formations attacking your planet, shoot at a big mothership and the aliens defending it in the depths of space, and finally land back on your home planet to start all over again. Of these, the landing stage is the most unique to Pleiades - as you have to weave your way through a landing strip full of parked spaceships - unfortunately, after the first level it becomes difficult to the point of almost being unfair. Pleiades is a decent attempt to bring the original arcade game to the 2600, and although the arcade game had four stages rather than three, at least the middle two arcade stages have been combined into a single stage here, rather than eliminating one entirely. The graphics are pretty good, and the sounds are decent as well. The problem is that Pleiades itself is just an average game. There's nothing that makes it stand out above other games in its genre. It lacks that "something special" that made other games much more successful, and much more fun. It's not bad, but it's not great. The box it comes in is nicely done, but it would have been better to put that effort and money into a more deserving game.
Up next... four completely unbiased reviews! 
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