Marvin's Marvellous Adventure

The Good
The graphics are truly colourful. They shine and cheer you up after a rather rainy or bad day at work. The game seems to be massive at first and is very well presented with various options, nice introduction screens and a story. The sprites are really tiny, most of the enemies and Marvin himself have the size of a flea. This game is not just your standard Amiga collect 'em up. It has many ways to eliminate your enemies and there are lots of things to do such as collecting all the stuff, stars and coins. Moreover, you can hit some sort of blocks in a Super Mario way to reveal and earn more collectible stuff. There is much to do in this game. Exploring all the levels and collecting all the stuff may keep you busy for a while.

The Bad
The game tends to be very easy. You have a full life bar and can take a lot of hits before you eventually lose a life. Also, the CD32 version I played didn't have any sound-effects in it. And that is really essential. There are no confirmation sounds when you pick up the various collectible objects, which can be a let down. Therefore you don't have the feeling you are really collecting the stuff. Also the stuff falling off the screen is chaotic and make you think you didn't collect it correctly. When you have collected the coins it doesn't allow Marvin to use his kick ability anymore, so you automatically only use the jump attack to get rid of the enemies in order to save the coins (I think they are coins but can also be gold stones). This can be a bad thing, especially when you are walking in a narrow tunnel or passages and an enemy is blocking the way. Also, the gameplay can get repetitive very quickly and the Mario-ish hitting blocks isn't very original.

The Bottom Line
It is a very colourful collect'em up platformer, and is generally a good game but it has it's shortcomings. Marvin's Marvelous Adventure is certainly worth a try. Be aware that Marvin is never a Mario, Crash or Rayman, but more like a Zool or Alfred Chicken.