Downland

The Good
This is a simple platform game that actually deserves the ubiquitous but frequently misleading "arcade/adventure" label. This is as much about strategy as reaction time, the aim being to travel through a series of caverns undertaking perilous jumps and avoiding the inevitable nasties- in this case lethal acid dripping from the ceiling. Needless to say any fall is lethal and jumps must be timed to perfection. Graphically it works quite well in the green colour set, but if you can get an American NTSC Dragon by Tano (or TRS-80) it looks best in artifacted black mode. The sound is simple but effective, a step beyond some of the earlier Dragon games and a hell of a lot better than the machine's BASIC commands could have produced. The game is identical on the Tandy Co-Co, where it is pretty universally lauded as being one of the finest games of its type.

The Bad
The game takes quite a long time to finish, and of course having to plod through many screens you have done multiple times already to get just that bit further is inevitably frustrating- an ability to start at a half-way point would have been fab.

The Bottom Line
It still works today, as charming and addictive as in the 80s.