Andrew Fisher (693) on 3/9/2023 5:19 AM · edited · Reply · Permalink · Report

AAARGH! takes me back to Christmas '89 and my first ever home computer game, not AAARGH!, but it was in the PC/DOS section at my local computer shop, way out of my price range and the box art was slightly disturbing! The following year the price had dropped right down, but it was then I learned that the game didn't support CGA-4 colours. Our family PC hadn't really been intended for games when we got it. I eventually got to play AAARGH!, Amiga and DOS games and I like to picture how I'd have felt if I had gotten the game at Xmas '89 or '90. Well the DOS version is actually a bit half-arsed and the game shots on the back cover have a serious error, for a start they're of the Amiga game, but worse they show the one-on-one battle between the lizard and ogre back at their lairs, which it turns out was cut from the DOS game. The DOS had a least one improvement, you can now walk diagonally, something you could have done with previously, though you still have a problem manoeuvring, changing direction is a bit stiff and takes a lot of effort sometimes. A persistent problem is the punch system, also used for picking up things. It's just bad. Having to press two keys together for high and low punches, it's very easy foul the timing end up doing a standard mid-level punch, missing your target and allowing them to hit you and frankly your "monster" is very weak and dies easily making it necessary to be agile and accurate, you do a low punch to pick-up things like fast-food for life-up and you can end up farting about getting him to low punch in the right place and there's a time limit too, if you don't find and pick up the roc egg quick enough, you'll move on to the next town. As with a lot of games, I think the concept is good, better than Rampage where you're destroying city after city, I like the fantasy island idea, moving between fantasy towns of different themes e.g. tribal, castle, old Japan, Roman, Egyptian, western etc. and finally the volcano where you find the golden egg and become "master of the island". The graphics are nice, your gory death is interesting as much of the rest is quite cartoonish. I can almost say it's worth the hard work of getting used to the bad controls.

OK now I'm thinking that the DOS game is an unfinished con-job. Does anyone have a copy of AAARGH! for DOS that actually keeps track of your eggs and doesn't forever read Eggs=0? Because all screenshots I can find say Eggs=0 and I'm thinking that they half-arsed the port and didn't even include the last stage, the volcano as seen in the arcade and Amiga games, that is after collecting five eggs the player should be taken to the volcano next to claim the golden egg, but in the tenth stage, the harbour, there appears to be no egg and on destroying all the houses and ships, you're simply sent back to the ancient Egypt stage. To think that I saw this game at my hometown computer shop in the DOS section for about $80 back in late '89!