Punchy

The Good
From time to time, two puppets known as Punch and Judy would entertain audiences in England and around the world, and other cast members would feature during a performance. One of these is the Constable. Now Commodore owners have the opportunity to control him. The premise of the game is Punch has imprisoned Judy in the Punch and Judy booth, and has placed obstacles in the Constable’s path to make sure he doesn’t get anywhere near her. These obstacles include crocodile-infested waters and even pits in which Punch himself pokes a spear up at anyone trying to make their way across.

You control Bobby who has the ability to jump over these obstacles with the fire button. Sixteen screens need to be negotiated, and each one is completed by touching a pole a baby (?) dressed in a cute suit is on top of. Your progress is shown at the top of the screen. You can jump up and get a sausage flying your way to warp to the next screen. The game imposes a time limit; let this run down to zero, and the baby will slide down the pole and you lose a life. You also lose a life if you touch an obstacle. The game ends when all lives are lost.

I think the screen layout is excellent. Two groups of information, at the top and bottom of the screen, are presented in scrolls. The graphics are also colorful. The moving clouds below the status area are a nice touch, and the platform you walk Bobby along is reminiscent to the actual Punch and Judy booth. The two pictures on either side of this pattern look good, and Bobby’s walking animations are impressive.

The Bad
Because this game was poorly programmed, it faces several problems. Even though the game requires 16KB, the game slows down if there is enough activity on the screen. You really have to time your jumps, but due to the inconsistent speeds, this is not possible.

The game also expects you to jump from a particular spot at the right time, otherwise you may end up losing a life. An example of this are screens with moving platforms where I was careful to find the spot I needed to jump from, but since I jumped at the wrong time, I fell through the platform after I landed on it. Even if I made it to the other side, pressing the fire button to jump off would result in me falling through it again.

The timer counts down from 10 000, yet this runs at turbo speed. There are times when I felt the urge to pick up my keyboard and throw it across the room because I was about to reach the pole just as time expired, and all because I had to time when I should jump over obstacles on the same screen.

The Bottom Line
If I have to pick between Hunchback and this game, it would be Ocean's. Mr. Micro's version of the game has good, colorful graphics, but it is badly programmed that it is impossible to finish the game. I didn't talk about the sound because there is hardly any. Waste a waste of 16K!