Between the time of the Maganavox Odyssey and the rise of the plumbers of Nintendo, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Cona—I Mean Tomarc, destined to wear the jeweled crown of mediocrity upon a pixilated brow. It is I, his reviewer, who alone can tell thee of his game. Let me tell you of the days of not-so-high adventure. Call me crazy but if they could have I think Xonox would have preferred Conan the Barbarian over Tomarc the Barbarian, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t really have anything more to say let’s just get on with the graphics.

I’ll admit that the graphics are pretty advanced for the 2600, if the style of the graphics looks a bit familiar it’s because the same guy who made Tomarc also programmed both Sir Lancelot and Motocross Racer for Xonox and his style bled through a little bit. Just because the graphics are advanced doesn’t mean they aren’t ugly though. The designs for Tomarc, Senta, and Dak the Prison Guard, are all but ugly. Tomarc has a perfect bowl cut, Senta is a faceless stick figure, and Dak looks like a Tele-Tubbie. The advanced part of the graphics are the environments that Tomarc is moon-jumping through, each of the nine rooms are colored differently and have exits placed in different locations across the edges, the gradients on the floors and ceilings are quite nice to look at and are fairly easy on the eyes. Overall the graphics are serviceable but ugly.

Sounds are the quintessential Atari screeches and beeps, there is really nothing to say about them except that they’re there and they’re ugly.

The gameplay is original and unique to the 2600 but it was unfortunately ruined by one thing. You as Tomarc must run about nine screens on three levels to fine and collect a sword while avoiding monster rats. As Senta you must shoot down vampire bats that are attacking you while immobilized in a magic cage. Once you collect the sword as Tomarc you must make your way to the center topmost screen and jump through one of the two openings at the top, once you do a scene will play of Tomarc walking to the magic cage and you do the whole thing over again. After every successful rescue the sword changes position and the monster rats become more aggressive, and Dak still does nothing whatsoever. Sadly this game is just awful to play due in large part to the jumping mechanics, you cannot control yourself when you jump, if you jump while moving you will be launched at an angle and will continue in a straight line until you hit something, then you will fall straight down. It is incredibly obnoxious trying to find the exact spot to launch Tomarc at because if you are just a pixel off you will hit the wall, or ceiling, or ledge and fall straight into a pack of rats. It is a game of trial and error and it doesn’t help that each exit is placed differently in every room so there is no way to find a sweet spot. This finicky jumping greatly elongates the play time, I got lucky and played a perfect game where I got the sword immediately and hit the sweet spot on every jump and it took me less than ten seconds to get to Senta. I don’t know if the jumping was programmed like it was to intentionally increase play time or if the programmer just couldn’t do it any other way, but either way is totally ruins the experience of what would otherwise be an original and enjoyable, albeit simple, adventure game.

This game is just not fun; I didn’t even get to Senta and the vampire bats mainly because you’ll never get to them. You’ll just shut the game off before you can actually get to any of the deeper gameplay just because of the incredibly frustrating jumping controls. If you just really need a copy of this game then there is a loose Single Ender with an incredibly damaged label on Ebay for $35.98, according to Pricecharting.com, loose copies have sold from between 18-90 dollars over the past couple of years so I’d advise you to bide your time if you ever want to own a copy for yourself. If it isn’t evident enough this game goes straight to the Collector’s Zone for criminal underuse of Dak the Prison Guard.