Ugh!

The Good
Ugh! is one of those games that on paper should not be especially good. The graphics are OK for the machine, the sound pretty limited, and the game lacks complexity, being effectively a two trick pony- grab the eggs, run to base, and avoid the monsters. Nonetheless, the game play for me makes this a bit of an underrated classic, especially considering it is relatively early in the Dragon era. This was a time when so many games were pac man clones and testosterone fueled space battles, mainly with a ludicrous green background thanks to the Dragon's limited colour suite and the equally limited nature of the programmer's imagination. This game then is a breath of fresh air, and has a much wider family appeal. I found it ridiculously addictive back then, and still do, whilst my daughter loved this game- at the age of five and six, the game being simple and the characters appealing to that age group- a Pterodactyl dropping eggs and a remarkably agile T-Rex whose main method of assault is to squash you in a probably intentionally humorous way, which makes sense when you think of the difficulty in programming a more grizzly and realistic death at the hands of the beast. As ever, extra credit is awarded for making the Dragon's colour suite work- and as it stands green for grass, blue for Sky, red and yellow for the objects makes a lot more sense than some games. As things go on the game gives only small variations in the later stages, but the game retains the "just one more go" quality that the best games have. In many respects this was the sort of title Dragon Data should have been putting out instead of much of their catalogue of often fiendishly difficult popular arcade clones and supposedly educational software- their tag line was the "family computer" after all, and this game more than most lives up to that billing.

The Bad
The graphics and sound are fine for the machine, but nobody is going to get excited, and I suspect a couple more screens would have been well within the Dragon's capabilities.

The Bottom Line
A underrated family classic.