Reviews are back in action! The couple of opportunities mentioned before are a new job with Spacedesign where I'm working on software used in the space industry, and Stay Frosty, one of the games in Stella's Stocking, this year's Atari Age Holiday Cart.

I'm going out of order for the next 2 reviews, the normal sequence will return in January with a review of Crazy Balloon. I'll post this review in the store tomorrow in order to give time for feedback.

Toyshop Trouble, by John Payson w/Zach Matley, Bob Montgomery and Thomas Jentzsch

5/5

It's Christmas Time once again at Atari Age, but this year instead of playing Santa you get to be one of the elves frantically dashing around the production floor of Santa's Workshop painting toys.

Toyshop Trouble is the Atari Age Holiday Cart for 2006. This was the fourth year of what's become an annual tradition here at Atari Age. Don't fret if you missed out as Toyshop Trouble is now available as a regular non-numbered homebrew.

When you power on the game, you're presented with a really slick title screen with some nice holiday inspired music, falling snow and a Holiday Light Show similar to those fancy light kits that flash the lights in sync with music.

Start the game by hitting RESET or FIRE and you're presented with the production floor were once the shift whistle blows you have to paint a bunch of fire engines red as they glide along the 5 conveyor belts. An intermission screen then shows up with instructions for the next toy to be added to the mix. Hit FIRE once you've reviewed the painting instructions to advance to the next round(this also makes for handy pause feature between rounds). I did find it odd that the first toy had no instruction screen to let you know to paint fire engine red, but when you run over a toy the status area at the top of the screen will let you know the proper color(s) to paint a toy.

The first bunch of toys are pretty straight forward to paint as each are a single color. The next bunch of toys required 2 colors each, and toys after that require the 2 colors to be painted in a specific order! When a toy is finished it's rendered with exquisite multicolored detail. Unfinished toys are a single color, which makes it easy to tell which toys are done or painted the wrong color.

Controls are straightforward and responsive, with the fire button being used to make you run instead of walk. And you'll need to do a lot of running to paint all the toys in time for Santa's departure!

Besides the afore mentioned title screen music, the in-game sound is very good. There's a shift change horn and specific distinct sounds for when you've applied a proper color, finished painting a toy, or screwed up and applied the wrong color to a toy.

The graphics are phenomenal, with lots of colors for everything. Your character is rendered with different animated shapes for left/right/up/down and even all the diagonals. I'm really impressed that John was able to pull this off. Nathan Strum did an excellent job in designing graphics that could take advantage of this.

The really nice manual and label were once again done by David Exton.

Next up, Gingerbread Man.