Aldo's Adventure

Moby ID: 9468

Description

You are Aldo (who for some reason looks incredibly like Mario of Donkey Kong). Your mission is to successfully reach the upper levels and obtain the treasure chest that lies within. However, beware of the falling barrels (yes, barrels) that inhibit your progress and threaten to 'flatten' you into the existing background. Control Aldo by fast moving, jumping and climbing ladders to reach the pot of gold on the top level.

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Average score: 2.6 out of 5 (based on 6 ratings with 1 reviews)

For sure it's an adventure

The Good
The game is easy to pick up and play, short and the difficulty can be selected manipulating the number of barrels that can appear on screen at the same time. It's also one of those games that, if tackled in the right way, can become a challenge among friends.

The Bad
The physics of the game don't make any sense at all and this is the biggest and more recognizable (and upsetting) flaw of the game. The platforms behave differently depending on how you approach and from what height and the fire sometimes does burn you, sometimes it doesn't. The total absence of sound or of a minimum range of sound effects makes the game boring, even because the graphics, although it's 1987, are definitely not top-tier. In many, many occasions the game seems even more broken, like when Aldo can "erase" the background and/or the timer and his life count just by passing in front of it. The game has no real ending and after you beat the original 10 levels you replay them in a "negative" version (with dark background) but this time you have less time to complete every level: after playing it for years I can say it's very hard to play more than 24-25 levels (so two "cycles" and a half)

The Bottom Line
I have to be frank and the first times I played this game I was absolutely furious for the incredible amount of glitches that made the game almost unplayable. Then, moved by I don't know what kind of force, I played it more and more and I started to speedrun it and, although all of the flaws and glitches were of course still there, i felt like the devs left them in the game on purpose and built the game around them placing platforms, barrels, chests that change their behavior depending on the level you're in. This way, a sort of "hardcore player" would consider them as a challenge and would think that probably the game has been playtested more than what it appears at first glance. That's the reason why for months I kept discovering how to use the glitches to my advantage to the point of lowering the playtime to less than 3 minutes. Anyway all considered, you can't give it a 10/10 just because you had fun with it with some friends, although I'd love to get in touch with the Ibachs and talk about the game.

DOS · by benez256 (7) · 2023

Trivia

Custom number of barrels

By default, a maximum of eight barrels can be moving across the levels at once. However, the limit can be set by appending the number as a command-line parameter when starting the game, e.g. launching it as "aldo 6" to have at most 6 barrels on screen at once. Although reducing the number of barrels makes the game considerably easier to play and achieve high scores in, the reason the game gives for offering the option is one of performance. The number of barrels should be reduced if the computer the game is played on can't handle updating all 8 barrels at a fluid frame rate. While the instructions state that the number cannot be reduced to less than 4, it can actually be lowered down to a single barrel.

Level sequence

The game contains ten levels in total in version 1.0, and 12 in version 1.1. However, after beating the last levels, they are all repeated in sequence with a changed color palette, until the player runs out of lives. Each time a level is played, the initial time limit is lowered.

Developers

David and Benjamin Ibach are a father and son, who used the development of the Aldo games as a way to spend time together.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Indra was here.

Additional contributors: Daniel Saner.

Game added June 21, 2003. Last modified August 17, 2023.