Summary
One of the most addictive games to grace the PC.
The Good
Supaplex was, maybe with the exception of
Digger, the single most popular game in Israel in the early PC days (IBM PC and compatibles were only beginning to gain popularity here around 1989). It was so popular, in fact, that it's hard to find anyone who has ever used a computer and who hasn't played it.
Supaplex is a terrific puzzle-game which is, as Luiz mentioned
(Actually, I mentioned it; you never know when or where the Editor will strike! Muahaha... -- Ed.), remarkably similar to the old (and inferiour IMO)
Boulder Dash, while featuring better controls, smoother gameplay and overall better audiovisual quality. It features terrific VGA graphics (for the time and in general) and ran perfectly smooth on a 286, and had a fairly good tune (as far as I can remember) in the beginning. Once you got past the great graphics you will find an amazingly addictive game that is simply hard to beat, with a myriad of levels, some of them so amazingly challenging that you'll spend days and even weeks just to pass that one level. People here often bragged about where they managed to reach in Supaplex (most of them getting stuck around level 60 and the best managed to reach the hundred-ish levels), and playing it in groups was not uncommon.
In short, Supaplex is a phenomenon - a technical wonder with gameplay surpassing the popularity of recent successes like
DX Ball.
The Bad
Some of the levels are just too damn hard -- I don't recall ever getting past level 80, and the entire game is based on trial and error - but
some other games, at least it is obviously so and doesn't presume to be something else.
The Bottom Line
A terrific, challenging and addictive game. Get it, play it, love it. I know I did.
