Balloon Rescue

The Good
Alligata Software was one of the few companies that made great games for the Commodore 64, and one of their earlier titles was Balloon Rescue, a puzzle game that reminds me of Crazy Balloon, a Taito game where the object is to guide a swaying balloon through a maze without letting it hit the spikes, and you need to do this before the time runs out.

Unlike Crazy Balloon, however, gravity plays an important role here. You control a hot-air balloon which is sinking fast, and the only way to get it up is by thrusting it upwards. The object of the game is to collect a series of fuel canisters without hitting the walls, and to do this you need to move the balloon left or right until you are hovering above them, and go down in the right position and at the right speed. You also have a time limit, but it resets after you have collected one of the canisters.

I like how Alligata leaves you instructions before the game starts, given that there are none on the case itself. You can use the keyboard or the joystick in port two to make your balloon go left or right. You can also hold down the Commodore key or the fire button to give the balloon a thrust. I wouldn’t recommend holding down this key for long, since you will crash into the ceiling if you do.

Having said that, I am not very good at this game; I can’t make it past the first chamber, and I enjoyed watching the balloon crash down to the bottom if I manage to make it to the top. Once you get a canister, the balloon is taken back to the middle of the screen, but the way it gets taken back is quite neat. If you take a specific path to the canister, the game reverses that path as it is taken back to the middle. It is an incentive to make some interesting patterns. For instance, you can zig-zag your way to one of the canisters, and let the game mirror that.

The screen is laid out nicely, with the main action to the left of the score bar. The balloon sprite is well designed, and the screen layout looks nice, with the main screen wider than the score area. The number of lives are represented as balloons, and I like how the balloons are intertwined with each other. Of all the sound effects in the game, I like the one where you are crashing down; it really sounds like gas coming out, causing the balloon to deflate.


The Bad
I don’t like the way the balloons look like in the score are; the colors look a bit off to me.

The Bottom Line
Balloon Rescue is a great and addictive game for the family, where the object is to guide a hot-air balloon using the joystick or keyboard to fuel canisters scattered around the chamber. Try to do this without crashing into walls or running out of time. The physics are amazing and the sound effects are quite good. A definite title to add to your C-64 collection, but novices would be put off by the game's increasing difficulty.