Petch

The Good
Pengo is a rather simple game where you control a penguin and the object is to push ice cubes into innocent snow-bees to earn some points. You will lose a life when a snow-bees touches you. Once all of them are dead, you move onto the next level. If you manage to complete a level within 60 seconds, you receive a bonus.

The game was a classic at the time that it was released, with its simplistic gameplay, along with the suburb graphics and sound. It was also the first game that allows you to modify the structure of each level as you try to slam the snow-bees into the wall with the ice cubes. Due to its success at the arcades, Pengo was ported to home systems, including the Commodore 64.

The C64 version is faithful to the original coin-op, with the graphics and sound being similar. The game even has that catchy theme song that can be heard during the game, although it is slow and much shorter.

The Bad
Unfortunately, although the game plays the same as the coin-op version, I can think of two things that are wrong with it. For example, yellow eggs are displayed in the game's status bar, telling you how many enemies will respawn, but yellow eggs or no yellow eggs, there will still be respawns. However, the level eventually ends after about ten seconds. The introduction, where several penguins run toward the screen and fall down a hole in the ice, seems to be missing.

The Bottom Line
So in conclusion, the game remains faithful to the coin-op version, despite some slight modifications. If you are looking for a version that remains too close to the coin-op version, then the C64 version is it.

Rating: **½