Mogul Maniac (Amiga)
I'm kind of confused here.... Why would Amiga... THE Amiga make a game for the 2600? And why is it a skiing game? Now I'm sure just about every one of us know who Amiga is, Heck... even I know who Amiga is and I've proven, on many occasions, that I don't know squat about classic computing, If you don't know who Amiga is... Google them, it'll be a fun evening. After reading the little bio provided on AA it seems Amiga wanted to be the 'peripheral' guys, you know, the company that always has a unique controller for their games, think Guitar Hero or Rock Band. It seems that Mogul Maniac had it's own special controller, It's called The Joyboard, and it was meant to give the game 'full body controls', and from the looks of it this thing is rare, so don't bother trying to find one, it probably sucks anyway. This is liable to be a rather short review, since this game is so incredibly simple, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. In fact I'll likely have to pad out the review by either going on a rant, or writing a sentence that has absolutely no bearing on the review whatsoever, much like this sentence, (see I'm self aware so that means I'm funny)... please laugh.
This game consists of seven graphical elements: The rather nice background, your skis, the red poles, the blue poles, the trees, the start 'line', and the title screen. I imagine all of the memory was taken up by all of the sprites because this game has some of the smoothest sprite scaling I've ever seen on a pre-NES console. I'm actually very impressed, the smooth scaling really puts you in the game, and when you're going really fast, it conveys movement very accurately, top notch stuff. But here's the main problem with this game, unlike with Activision's Skiing, which sets the bar when it comes to skiing games, you have ONLY the colored poles on the screen, no trees to avoid or mulligans to hop over, and it leads to stagnation very quickly, it also limits course design since there are no obstacles to avoid.
This game has very basic sounds as well, even for 2600. This game has, like, four sounds: The opening music, which is an on-key but off-beat rendition of the first few bars of the Olympic Anthem (or the Canadian National Anthem, either one), there is the whoosh of your skis when you turn, which is actually a rather soothing sound, kind of like a white noise machine. There is the angry BEEP when you miss a gate/slalom, and the crashing noise when you hit a pole, which you'll likely end up doing intentionally since it makes the screen flash with many pretty colors. That's pretty pathetic, even for 2600, I'm not expecting anything and yet I'm still disappointed.
In this game you ski through gates, and around slaloms, in first person, I'm serious. Despite the first-person gimmick this game has almost no substance to it, sure in the higher difficulties you can move faster, or there are more gates to ski through, but that's simply postponing the boredom for a few seconds. I'll admit that this game is fun for a few rounds on difficulty 9, but all the other levels are either too slow or too long or both. Perhaps it would be more enjoyable with the Joyboard, but I have a better chance of winning the lottery than finding one of those, but I'll keep you posted on that. Unlike Activision's Skiing, which can keep you playing for over an hour due to the immense variability of the different levels, Mogul Maniac can barely keep my attention for more than five minutes, since It all just starts to feel the same.
I bequeath this game to the Collector's Zone... It was a unique idea that simply couldn't beat it's more traditional competitors, and simply wound up being a cool tech demo in sprite scaling. This game is also more expensive than Activision's Skiing, it's aver 10$ for a loose slightly beat-up cart, while you could easily find a copy of Skiing in the box for not much more than that. I'd say don't bother, especially when there are more enjoyable alternatives for much cheaper.
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