Paperboy

The Good
I liked the originality. At first glance, it seems a rather odd game to make! A game based on a paper route? Weird. Until you play the blasted thing! VERY challenging game indeed. It is a surprisingly hard game to master, which makes it fun because it is so damned frustrating! It makes you WANT to master it. It teases you, taunts you and mocks you into doing better. It has a weird dual personality, it SEEMS simple, but is hardly the case!
Not only does it dare you to complete your route and deliver your papers to all your customers, but you must do so quickly, efficiently and at the same time, avoid all sorts of obstacles!
A lot of the game play is fun and funny. Some of the obstacles are funny; a swarm of bees, a break dancing kid, a couple of guys fist fighting, kids playing with a remote control car etc.
Another fun thing is at the end of each level you ride directly into a bonus race course full of jumps, bonus points and targets.

The Bad
A few things. First while very challenging, it defeats the fun by being TOO hard.
The difficulty comes in many forms. The first is the overall difficulty. The first one or two levels are somewhat easy, with practice, to master. After that forget it. The houses come too fast, the streets are too full of obstacles and you find you're loosing more and more customers, and soon a trickle becomes a wave.
The most obvious thing that makes this hardest is the odd diagonal direction you travel on the screen. It is VERY hard to get used to and is not a favorable view. It doesn’t seem natural and fools the eye and depth perception, making your throws difficult to say the least. While original, after a while it does become a bit monotonous and doesn’t really offer much new past a few levels.

The Bottom Line
A different kind of game, but fustrating.
Lots of replay value because of the difficulty. It is more of an arcade classic, and difficult, is a keeper and one to keep in a collection. Pull it out on a rainy day once in a while to waste some time.

The Good
Maybe it's because I've spent half of my childhood on the street doing a paper round, but there is no other video game character I could identify with more than this Paperboy.

The Bad
From today's perspective, neither the graphics nor the gameplay suit modern standards, but you have to consider that this game is about 30 years old. The high difficulty is the only thing that was always a bummer and ever will be.

The Bottom Line
Other players might know similar games like Paper Wizard (on iOS, not available anymore) or Stickerboy without even knowing that there is a predecessor for this genre. Well, there is. So if you want to get straight to the roots of a paperboy simulation game with a lot of fun, you got to start your journey here.

The Good
Pick up your old push-bike, put on your peaked cap, and imagine yourself braving the streets of an American suburb. You are the Paperboy (duh) and your job is to deliver copies of The Daily Sun to customers by throwing them in every mailbox you see, and you have to do this while avoiding obstacles such as cars, workmen, drunkards, and lawnmowers, and also, skateboarders, joggers, and dogs. You have a limited supply of newspapers, so don't waste them. In order for customers to get papers via their mailbox, they must be subscribed, and you can tell whether customers are non-subscribers: they're the ones with the black houses.

You must survive seven days delivering newspapers and avoiding those obstacles, and delivering papers score you points. Be warned that superb riding skills and a steady throwing arm is required to get you through these seven days. You can miss any mailbox in the street, but the rules are that at least one or two papers must successfully be thrown in a mailbox, otherwise you'll get fired. Breaking windows and knocking people out will also get you fired. You can ride on the sidewalk so you can collect old newspapers from the previous day, and these also score your points.

You might get away by smashing the windows to non-subscribers. You'll make a perfect delivery if you manage to get papers in every mailbox in the street. At the end of each day, you can try your luck at the obstacle course where you must get through to the finish line before time runs out. You can also hit targets with newspapers to score points along the way. Making it through to the finish line will also score you a lot of bonus points, but how many points you recieve depends on the remaining time.

One thing I love about the game is that your status is displayed on the front page of The Daily Sun, where the main heading is "Amazing Paperboy Delivers" or "Paperboy calls it quits". The text reads no other than "Blah Blah Blah, etc." And as for the houses, the doormats of each house make it clear who you are delivering to. I like everything in this game: the colorful graphics, sound, and music, although the music is nothing compared to the C64 version. When I played this version, you are provided with easy-listening music while you deliver newspapers.

The Bad
At the start of the game, you have to choose the route you want to take, which include Easy Street, Middle Road, and Hard Way. I believe that these routes indicate the difficulty levels, but while playing the game, the difficulty is the same, no matter which route you select.

The obstacle course stinks. More often than not, I just keep running out of time when I'm about to cross the finish line.

The Bottom Line
If you want to be a paperboy in the near future, then this game will test your skills. If you don't want to be a paperboy but if you like games where the object is to deliver shit, then this game might be your cup of tea. ***