Sega Classics Collection
PS2 (2005)

If you’re a fan of both Sega and import gaming then you’ve probably already heard of the Sega Ages 2500 line of games. If you haven’t, Sega has been giving facelifts to some of their greatest classic hits over the past two years and releasing the updated versions at budget prices. Until now, these updated Sega classics (such as Space Harrier, Outrun, and Golden Axe) have only been available to Japanese gamers (or importers). With only one game per release, collecting them all can get expensive.

Sega has given US gamers a break with Sega Classics Collection, which includes ten games and sells it for a bargain price ($20). At $2 per game, you’ll get more than your money’s worth out of some of them (and lament you paid that much for others).

Sega Classics Collection contains updated versions of the following games: Alien Syndrome, Bonanza Bros, Columns, Fantasy Zone, Golden Axe, Monaco GP, Outrun, Space Harrier, Tant R, and Virtua Racing. Each game plays basically like the original but with updated graphics (some more updated than others). The upgrades work better on some of the games. Virtua Racing and Outrun are both as fun as ever, while Golden Axe and Monaco GP both lose something (a lot) in the translation. Some of the games such as Alien Syndrome, Columns and Bonanza Bros don’t seem much different to me than the originals did. And of course, Space Harrier is as fast and frustrating as ever. For the most part, the less a game was updated, the better off it seems to play (Golden Axe is unfortunately one of the worst games on the disc).

In a world full of emulation, repackaging old games and reselling them is getting more and more difficult. Sega has made an effort to give gamers something new here by updating the graphics and tweaking game play options a bit. There’s no denying that getting ten classic games for $20 is a good bargain, although my guess is in the not-so-distant future gamers will forget about these recent facelifts and go back to playing the originals on their system of choice.

Sammy Lightfoot
Sierra On-Line (1983)

From the success of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong came, well, lots of games that were similar to Donkey Kong. And while Donkey Kong’s plot (especially compared to the games of today) may seem incredibly simplistic, many of the clones that followed it had even less of one. Such is the case with Sammy Lightfoot. Like Mario in Donkey Kong, Sammy is a portly fellow who has been tasked with reaching the top of a series of platforms. The games box art and documentation describe Sammy as a circus performer, ostensibly to explain the trampolines and trapezes located on each level. This is where the plot ends, and the action begins.

Sammy Lightfoot (the game) consists of three levels, each with different obstacles blocking Sammy’s path to the top. Like most 2D platform games, stepping off a platform or touching just about anything leads to the player’s instant demise. Maneuvering through each level involves lots of jumping and swinging. Each level is built on patterns that are easily memorized, so once you’ve beat one a few times you should be able to blast through it at top speed. Once all three levels have been completed the game starts over on the next difficulty setting. The difficulty ratings ramp up quickly; I can beat the first difficulty setting in my sleep, and I’ve yet to beat the third.

The game’s sounds and graphics are a bit of a letdown. Sammy Lightfoot for the C64 looks and sounds almost identical to the Apple II version — the in game tunes are produced with a single voice, and the color palate of green and purple girders looks to be lifted directly from the Apple’s color scheme as well. Even in 1983, C64 programmers were capable of more than this. It’s a shame the C64 version of Sammy Lightfoot wasn’t tweaked to take advantage of the Commodore’s capabilities. I suspect that if the game had been ported later in the C64’s life, the game would have been more detailed.

Although Sammy Lightfoot is a fun game, there’s not enough there to keep players interested for long periods of time. It’s one of those games that I play every time I pull my C64 out of the closet, and quickly remember why I stopped playing it. The C64 version of Sammy Lightfoot certainly holds its own against the same game on other platforms, and while the game isn’t particularly deep, it’s a perfect half-an-hour time killer.

Rumble Roses
PS2 (2003)

Twenty-two beautiful women in skimpy costumes beating the crap out of each other. No, it’s not my Christmas wish list — it’s the basis of Rumble Roses, Konami’s new all girl fighting game for the Playstation 2.

Built upon Yuke’s SmackDown! engine, Rumble Roses follows in the footsteps of Tecmo’s Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball for the Xbox. While the one-on-one fighting genre has always been a popular genre among young teenage boys, Konami has made sure there was no question about the game’s intended demographic by including some of the sexiest pixels ever to grace the gaming screen. The game contains all the punches, kicks and extreme moves seen in other similar fighting games and adds plenty of jiggling and wiggling to the mixture. Similar to professional wrestling, most of the roses fall into neat stereotypes (strict schoolteacher, naughty schoolgirl, southern belle, dominatrix, etc.) It’s as if a brawl broke out at the Playboy Mansion over Halloween, and somehow, you got invited.

Similar to DOA Volleyball, Rumble Roses gives players the option of fighting quick exhibition matches, playing through a story mode, or simply looking at the girls with a virtual camera in the locker room. The story mode makes the plot of Mortal Kombat look like Shakespeare’s work (something about stealing the girl’s DNA to create super female wrestlers) and is obviously only there to give players a structure to play through.

Under the skin (so to speak), Rumble Roses is actually a pretty decent grappler. Yuke has already worked out the kinks in their engine, so there are no major bugs in this department. The gorgeous ladies of Rumble Roses can strike, grapple, counter, perform and receive limb damage, use weapons, and perform finishing moves. And of course, most of the moves are designed to show you the maximum amount of virtual skin possible.

Like most gimmicky-games, the biggest problem with Rumble Roses is, after a few hours of playing, you’ve seen it all. Each fighter only has a few cut scenes, funny comments and special moves, and after two or three fights you’ve seen most of them. Rumble Roses is a good game with good graphics draped over a B-movie plot and cheesy voice acting. Unless you can see yourself spending weeks upon weeks laughing over bitmaps in bikinis, I’d recommend renting Rumble Roses first and making sure you don’t tire of it quickly. That is, unless you’re in a fraternity — then I’d buy it and super glue it into my PS2. Then I’d super glue down the PS2.

Rig Racer 2
Nintendo Wii (2007)

They’re big, slow, cumbersome and hard to control. Welcome to the exciting world of big rig racing. For gamers who are drawn to racing games for their selection of exotic cars, high rates of speed and exciting racing action, get ready: Rig Racer 2 has none of those things.

Rig Racer 2 is the spiritual successor to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, released in 2003. Big Rigs received a 1/10 rating from GameSpot, a 1/10 from Thunderbolt Games, and a 0.0 from NetJak before being voted the worst videogame of 2004 by GameSpot. Rig Racer 2 appeared on the PC in 2005, and has been released for the Wii in 2007. Rig Racer 2 is slightly better than the original, which still isn’t saying much.

The biggest hurdle racing game developers have is conveying a sense of weight and speed to the player. Pixels don’t inherently conform to physics; they have to be programmed to do so. Nothing in Rig Racer 2 feels real. The trucks do 0-60 in just under 3 seconds, which leads me to believe none of the programmers have ever been stuck behind one at a traffic light. Even when you are cruising along at 120mph, it looks and feels like you are only doing 30mph. The slow pace gives you plenty of time to stare at the crappy, Gamecube-quality scenery.

Rig Racer 2 uses the conventional Wii “ExciteTruck” control scheme: the Wiimote is held sideways and turned to steer, with the 1 and 2 buttons serving as gas and brake/reverse. The trucks are automatic (which is good, I think, as real semis have something like 17 gears) and extremely nimble (I was able to do a u-turn in a two-lane stretch of track). The A button acts as a hand brake (which I didn’t even even know semis had) for sliding around corners, although the minute you release the button, the truck stops sliding. When you are at a stop, the brake button also propels your truck in reverse — of course doing so instantly switches the camera to a rear view mode, which is kind of like backing a boat while looking in a mirror. It’s just one of many instances within the game that probably looked good on paper, but doesn’t work right in the game.

The tracks are fairly uninspired; the game’s first track, “Paris,” might as well take place in Montana. The track is lined with trees, chain link fences and billboards, none of which budge an inch if your rig happens to plow into them. Each track is surrounded by grass (which slows your truck down even more) and sand pits (which practically stop it). Sand takes you from 120mph to 30mph in a split second — who knew? They should sprinkle sand in school zones and parking lots. Along the sides of each track are dollar signs that can be collected along your journey and traded in for new rigs and race tracks. Unfortunately they cannot be used to purchase another Wii game. Each track also contains a pit row, where your rig can be repaired at 80mph.

Rig Racer 2 is filled with tons of annoyances. For example, the menus use the conventional Wiimote control scheme (pointing and clicking) but the game itself doesn’t. If you pause the game and want to make a change you’ll need to point at the TV, unpause the game, and then quickly rotate the Wiimote sideways. I’m not being nitpicky; it’s more annoying than it sounds. Another problem I ran into more than one was, in 3rd person view, having trucks get between my rig and the camera. In most cases, only some of the polygons are drawn, resulting in weird boxes and triangles blocking my view. These are things I ran across within minutes of firing up the game, which makes you wonder just how long (if at all) this game was tested.

So far, Nintendo’s Wii has been able to keep up with the more technically powerful PS3 and Xbox 360 by releasing innovative and fun games, but not-so-fun games such as this one make the gap obvious and hurt the system as a whole. If Rig Racer 2 were the only game available for the Wii, I’m still not sure I’d play it again. Anyone considering purchasing Rig Racer 2 should keep on truckin’.

Return of the Jedi
C64, Dormark (1988)

Back during a time when most companies pressured programmers to code home versions of popular arcade games as quickly as possible, software publisher Dormark took a cool four years to bring Atari’s Return of the Jedi videogame to the home computer market. Far different from the color vector style used on the first two Star Wars arcade games, Return of the Jedi placed gamers in a Zaxxon-esque 3D perspective world, and contained several levels based on scenes from the movie. Dormark ported the arcade game to several platforms in 1988, including the Amiga and the Commodore 64.

Each level within Return of the Jedi consists of multiple scenes. The game begins with players controlling Princess Leia during a Speeder Bike chase. In an isometric view (moving from the lower-left hand corner of the screen toward the upper right), players must navigate their speeder bike through the Endor forest without crashing while being chased by Biker Scouts on speeder bikes at the same time. Allow a Biker Scout to trail you long enough and he’ll blast you to bits, so you’ll need to either outmaneuver them through the forest, or ram them into a forest object (tree, tree stump, etc.). Also on your side are the Ewoks, who have set up traps throughout the forest. Fly between two logs with a biker on your tail and the Ewoks will smash him – fly over a rope two Ewoks are holding, and they’ll clothesline a baddie. Be warned though; Ewoks, while cute, aren’t necessarily bright – they’ll gladly smash or clothesline you as well if you’re not careful. Yub Yub! The level ends when you reach the Ewok village.

The second half of the first level puts you behind the controls of the Millennium Falcon as you fly through the inside of the Death Star, destroying TIE Fighters and ultimately destroying the main reactor core. It only takes a few moments of playing to realize that this is essentially the same as the first level. Fly, slalom between objects, and shoot enemies.

Level two begins again with the speeder bikes, but contains different subsequent scenes. There’s a part where you take control of an AT-ST and must once again traverse the dangerous forest. Unlike Pitfall, which required players to jump over rolling logs, these wooden enemies can be blown to splinters by your Emperial gun turrets. In classic videogame logic, only logs rolling toward you can be destroyed; stationary ones kill you. So much for technology. The next level consists of gamers piloting the Millennium Falcon once again, this time traveling through space with X-Wings flanking you. You’ll encounter TIE Fighters, dodge Star Destroyers, and not need the Force to realize that every level in this game is essentially the same, but with different graphics.

One interesting aspect of gameplay, and something that really captures the spirit of the film, is that beginning the second level the levels will begin to flip back and forth between one another. You’ll be engaged in the middle of a TIE Fighter dogfight when the game will flip to the AT-ST level, where you will suddenly find yourself contending with oncoming logs. Clear those obstacles and the game will jump back to the TIE Fighter sequence. The game’s layout mimics the film’s sequences, and while initially jarring, the action does keep you from getting too bored with any one particular level.

Star Wars (the arcade game) is considered by many to be not only one of the best Star Wars games of all time, but one of the best arcade games of all time as well. Return of the Jedi had a lot to live up to and was met with mixed reviews. While certainly not one of the best games of all time, Return of the Jedi is okay in its own right. The levels are pattern-based requiring a slight amount of memorization to master, and the game itself is fairly repetitive with all the levels being basically the same save for graphical swaps, but it’s still not a bad little game. There are much, much worse Star Wars games available.

Rampart/Gauntlet
GBA (2004)

Gauntlet will be forever imbedded in my mind as the first four-player cooperative quarter eater. From the day I first saw it way back in seventh grade, the game has always held a special place in my heart. At least that’s the story I told my wife as I was moving a vintage Gauntlet arcade cabinet into our home gameroom.

DSI’s port of Gauntlet to the Gameboy Advance is surprisingly good. The speech samples, the sound effects, and graphics are all on par with the original. In fact, the Gameboy version’s only two flaws come from porting the game to a Gameboy. One, the game’s entire structure (insert quarters for more life) has never worked on home consoles, and it doesn’t work here either. Some versions allow you to insert virtual coins to add as much health as you want; this version doesn’t allow for any additional coins, although you are allowed to continue after dying. Fortunately the game starts players out with 10,000 health, which should be more than enough for almost any gaming session. The other problem comes from taking one of the arcade’s most famous multiplayer games and turning it into a single-player game. While the game is certainly playable in single-player mode, it’s not nearly as much fun. Other than that, the only thing conspicuously missing is the between-level music.

Rampart is a completely different style of game from Gauntlet. I fell in love with the game’s combination of strategy and action the first time I played it in the arcade, and ever since it’s held a special place in my heart. At least that’s the story I told my wife as I was moving a vintage Rampart arcade cabinet into our home gameroom. I have a very loving and understanding wife.

Rampart consists of two different game sequences. After choosing a castle to defend, you’ll have to fire you castle’s cannons at a fleet of ships that are firing back at you as well. Each well-placed shot from an enemy takes a randomly sized chunk out of your castle’s outer perimeter. This phase of the game takes place for around a minute. Once completed, you’ll get a short amount of time to rebuild your castle. I’ve always felt this phase of the game resembled Tetris. The game hands you randomly sized and shaped pieces that must be rotated and used to repair the damage to your wall. If you do not completely repair the damage to your castle before the timer expires, the game is over. Repair your castle and the game continues. There are also other castles near yours that can also be encapsulated. As you expand your territory you’ll earn additional cannons, which means more firepower in the wartime rounds. The game continues until you fail to repair your castle’s walls, or you destroy all the enemies and move to the next round.

The original arcade version of Rampart used a trackball controller. The game was later converted to work with joysticks, but it always worked best with the original trackball system. That becomes the weakest link in Rampart’s own defenses; controlling your cannon’s aim accurately and sinking enemy boats is nearly impossible because the cursor simply moves way too quickly. Other than that, everything else is great. Rampart is probably DSI’s most accurate arcade translation to date.

Rally Speedway
C64, Commodore Business Machines (1984)

Rally Speedway is one of those games that is more fun than it probably should be. The goal of this simple top-down racing game is to complete laps with the fastest lap time possible. Despite the fact that the game features tons of tweakable variables and sports both one and two player modes, it’s probably best remembered as, “the game where your poor guy catches on fire.”

In one-player mode, there are no opponents to race against — it’s you against the clock. Using the game’s default control scheme, forward accelerates, left and right steer, and the button mashes the brakes — that last one is most important, as you’ll need to ride the brakes long and hard to make even the most gradual turns without exploding into a fiery death.

For the most part your car stays in the center of the screen and rotates while the track itself spins and scrolls by. The penalty for leaving the race track is sudden death — any collision with a house or tree causes your car to explode in flames. And yes, occasionally your driver will catch on fire as well, forcing him to stop, drop and roll before waving his arms wildly at you.

By default your car’s top speed is 60mph, but that can be bumped all the way up to 200mph. At 60mph I had trouble making turns without riding the brakes constantly, and at 200mph the game lasts merely seconds between crashes. Trust me — the trees won’t know what hit ’em.

From the main menu, players can configure road conditions (dry, wet or icy), top speed (40, 60, 100, 150 or 200), and acceleration speeds (slow, normal, or fast). You can also choose between “real life” (the normal setting) and “only in a computer”, which turns off all sprite collection detection and lets racers drive across houses, trees, and swimming pools.

In two-player mode, you and a friend can race one another at the same time. If one player leaves the other behind, a five-second penalty is awarded to the slower racer, and the cars are lined up again. This happens frequently — expect a normally 90-second track to take five or more minutes to complete in two-player mode.

Rally Speedway also allows gamers to create, load and save new tracks. The map editor is joystick driven and odd-looking at first, but with just a few minutes players will be able to create their own tracks, which are easily traded between racers.

There’s not much to Rally Speedway, but that’s part of what makes it so enjoyable. Once you memorize the basic tracks it’s fun to see just how quickly you can zip around them (fastest times are saved), and with a friend you can get some serious head-to-head competition on.

Playboy: The Mansion
PS2/Xbox (2005)

Videogames give us the gift of escape. By simply turning on our favorite console and picking up a controller, we can forget who we are during the day and temporarily become a fighter pilot, or a Navy Seal, or a medieval warrior, or whoever you wish to become. Games like The Sims and The Urbz have taken this concept one step further, by allowing gamers to portray another person altogether in a “life simulator” of sorts. The latest game in this “real life” genre is Playboy: The Mansion, a game that gives gamers the opportunity to become Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy empire.

Presented in the now familiar Sims-pseudo-3dish point of view, gamers assume the role of Hugh Hefner, playboy extraordinaire. The long-term goal of the game is to build the Playboy Empire to the huge success that it has become in real life. To do that, you’ll need to complete all the tasks assigned to you throughout the game, from making business contacts to scheduling photo shoots to schmoozing rock stars in hopes of landing them for an interview in next month’s magazine. And, along the way, you’ll throw a ton of parties and have a lot of virtual sex.

Throwing parties in Playboy: The Mansion is a requirement. After picking the time of day, the dress code, and who’s on the invite list, Hugh’s pad will soon be hoppin’ with some of the biggest-breasted pixels you’ve ever seen. Each person you meet in the game can be engaged. While talking with them you’ll see a meter that shows your relationship levels with each person in the areas of relationship, business, and romance. While talking with NPCs, you can select how to steer the conversation by clicking on such bubbles as “talk business”, “flirt”, or “tell a secret”. Each choice moves one of the three meters either up or down. As the meters move, different choices become available. Compliment leads to Flirt; Flirt leads to Hug; Hug leads to Kiss; Kiss leads to Make Out; Make Out leads to Sex on the Couch. During Sex on the Couch, your female visitors will drop their tops and perform a weird kind of lap dance, complete with lots of giggling and jiggling and PS2 controller vibration.

The bigger goal in Playboy: The Mansion is to put your monthly magazine. By inviting the right people to the right parties, you’ll begin making business associates. You’ll need to hire photographers, authors, and interviewees, as well as hot virtual ladies in order to get your magazine off the ground. Once you get your centerfold picked you’ll need to schedule a photo shoot, a process that involves picking outfits, locations, and even snapping the sexy pictures yourself.

As your magazines begin to roll off the presses, the money will start coming in. You’ll use your growing income to buy amenities for the mansion and hire bigger and better staff members. Of course the more money you have, the bigger your parties will be, which ultimately means the more people you’ll be able to have sex with.

So with all the sex, parties, and virtual boobies contained within Playboy: The Mansion, what’s wrong with the game? Unfortunately, plenty.

For starters, moving around within the mansion is often a pain in the butt. It’s too easy to get trapped between a piece of furniture and a Playboy bunny standing around having a drink. In fact, a lot of the character sprite-collision system is wonky. Often times when you’re making out with one of your cyber-honeys, your arms will burst out through her chest like some sort of strange horror film. And if you think that’s weird, just wait until you make Hef try to get up after having sex – half the time the woman of your dreams will stay where she is, dry humping your expensive furniture long after you’ve left the area.

Of course the biggest problem with Playboy: The Mansion isn’t the collision detection; it’s that it gets boring, really quickly. Once you’ve humped all your party guests and staff members, all that’s left to do is work on the magazine. This stays pretty boring, as hiring people and wooing famous celebrities to your magazine gets pretty monotonous. Of course this is done by inviting them to your parties, where they get to stand around and watch you have sex on the couch with your staff members. And so on and so forth.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure it’s a heck of a gig to have in real life, but if I’m going to play a videogame and fantasize about being someone else for a while, I’d rather be Luke Skywalker, or Dirk the Daring, or even Mario than Hugh Hefner. I don’t need to be reminded that it’s Friday night and the only boobs I’ll be seeing tonight are virtual ones.

Playboy: The Mansion feels more like a nudity hack for The Sims than a game worthy of the white bunny’s approval. It’s certainly not dirty or interesting enough to keep older gamers’ interests, and yet it’s a bit too risqué for younger gamers. That leaves … nobody, which is who I predict will be playing this game a year from now.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!
Xbox (2005)

I never realized this before just now — Sid Meier’s Pirates! is the original Grand Theft Auto. Think about it. You cruise around in your boat, you shoot other people’s boats, you create a gang of not-so-nice people, and you take other people’s turf. Sure, you use boats instead of cars and drink ale instead of hot coffee (cough), but Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the Xbox takes the open-ended adventure feeling from GTA and brings it back to where it all started — the open seas.

Pirates!, written by Sid Meier and published by MicroProse, first appeared on home computers like the Commodore 64 and Apple II way back in 1987. A port of the game was released for the NES in 1991, and an enhanced version, Pirates! Gold, appeared on many platforms, including the CD32, Genesis, Amiga and PC.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!, now available for the Xbox, is essentially the same game it was almost two decades ago. Like the original (and Grand Theft Auto, for that matter), the game is completely open ended. Whether you decide to follow the game’s suggestions is entirely up to you. Sure, you *could* seek revenge against the Spaniards who wronged your family — or, you could simply sit around, shooting ships as they sail by in the ocean blue and acquiring food, treasure and a crew as you come across them.

Once you’ve decided to which country your loyalty lies, the real game begins as you seek out ships from other lands and blow the crap out of them — hey, you are a nasty pirate after all, right? As you stop in various ports across the land, you can do things like recruit new members for your crew or buy items. As you work your way up through the ranks, you’ll spend time taking down enemies and dancing with various ladies across the land. Did I just say dancing? Yes, alongside your handiwork with a blade and your navigation skills, you’ll have to perfect your dance moves in order to win friends, influence people, and get financial backing.

The rest of the adventure is up to you. You’ll have to decide whether you wish to avenge your family, become a treasure hunter or an explorer, or become the finest dancer in the land — and who knows, maybe you’ll do all three! Sid Meier, author of such games as Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon and Alpha Centauri, understands where the fun in gaming lies — not in complex controls, but in allowing the gamer to go on an adventure. Sid Meier’s Pirates! is an open ended game which throws dozens of potential missions and goals at you at once and tempts you with tons of unlockable features. There is no “beating” of this game, only the retiring of one pirate and the birth of another. It’s addictive, it’s fun, and it’s highly recommended.

Park Patrol
C64, Activision (1985)

In Activision’s Park Patrol, you play the role of a litter-collecting park ranger. Your goal is to keep your lakefront property clean by picking up litter (cans and bottles). To do that you’ll need to use your handy-dandy motorized raft to pick up the trash floating in the lake, and run as quickly as possible to clean up debris lying on the shore itself.

Of course, you won’t be alone in the water. Snakes, swimmers and other obstacles will be floating along side you. While snakes and swimmers will poke a hole in your raft and sink more than your hopes of winning, hitting the end of a log will jettison you straight up in the air. If you can pull it off, you can land on top of the log and start running lumberjack-style in order to gain bonus points. If not, it’s glub glub glub, bub.

The shore is no picnic either, with turtles and ants constantly nipping at your heels. If a turtle happens to slip off the shore and fall into the water, you can take it out of commission by running over them in your raft. Likewise, dropping one of your limited snake repellant pills into the lake can dissipate any snakes in your immediate area. You’ll also have to keep an eye on those swimmers – occasionally one will start drowning, and it’ll be up to you to rescuer him (yeah, the same swimmers that will try and kill you. That’s gratitude for you).

You’ll have to do all of this while racing the clock as well. The park ranger has a hut on the shore where you can duck in and get some more time (think “air” in the swimming level of Jungle Hunt), but it won’t be easy running past all those land critters.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this game. The graphics are cute and enjoyable, and the musical tunes played throughout the game gives each level a bit of personality. A built in level editor in the menu allows players to set the difficulty of each level (and even choose between a boy or a girl ranger), something that was pretty uncommon back in those days. Park Patrol is what classic gaming is all about to me – a fun little platformer with bright graphics, happy music and lots of action.