Game Review: Roller Kong (Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Melbourne House)

Melbourne House established themselves for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 system with a string of releases early in the machine’s life.  This did give them some form of head start.  Here, the brief was clear: to get in and make a platforms and ladders game in the style of Donkey Kong before anyone else could get one out there, and steal a march on the opposition.  Certainly, looking at the back of the cassette inlay, with its promising graphics and claims of 100% machine language, you were hopeful that the game could deliver.  Of course, this did mean a slow blue screen loader to load the game though, so definitely it was worth doing something else during that time.

Control Conundrums

When the game shows its title screen, with an image of Kong on screen, there is a selection of control methods, toggled with the F1 key.  This is always set to keyboard, and each time the title screen appears, it is set back to keyboard, so if you are playing with a joystick, you have to set it each time.  That can be somewhat annoying if you want to get back into the action quickly, and could have easily been resolved – or even better, default to joystick, which realistically is how you want to play the game anyway.

An Axe to Grind

Once you start, the first level is shown.   This has a number of ladders to negotiate, flowers to collect, and also both barrels and fire bombs to avoid, which are being thrown by Kong from the top left of the screen. You can effectively jump the barrels by pressing fire, but the jump needs to be careful as the collision detection does favour one side of the barrel, more noticeable when you play some more too.  The other key here is that you can head towards the axe, and jump to get it – although you cannot jump straight up, it is always in one direction, left or right.  Once you get the axe, you can smash the barrels, but you cannot climb up or down the ladders whilst this is active, so of course, use wisely.

Boris the Spider

On this first level you will also see a spider at the top of the screen which acts like a timer of sorts.  You will need to get to your maiden before the spider does, or else no matter how close you are to the maiden, the spider getting her means a loss of one of your three lives.  The fire bombs are also rapid and can come down at a diagonal rate, which does represent a tricky hazard to avoid if on a ladder particularly.  The barrels can come down the ladders but also roll off the sides which can be handy as they can often just avoid you, giving you more time to reach the maiden.  Once you do, your character dances around like a loon as the small level complete jingle loops a number of times.

Elevator Action

Should you complete the first level, the second level shows several elevators which take you up to the higher platforms and indeed to rescue the maiden once again.  The axe is at the bottom middle, and you can use that for extra points to smash the little monsters, called spinks, and gain extra points whilst doing so.  You can jump over them too, and the fire bombs also make an appearance and these coming at you diagonally makes this level trickier.  In addition, if you are going on the elevators, you need to jump off before that hits the ceiling, resulting in a loss of life when you do so.  This did prove to be tricky because the random timing of the fire bombs could mean that it hits you when attempting to make a jump over to the next elevator.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are reasonable for their time, with well defined platforms and ladders, some animation on your main character, and the maiden at least looking like one.  Kong himself has some animation when throwing the fire bombs, spinks or barrels, and all of those are reasonably drawn if small.  The blue sky backdrop maybe does not work as well as say what a black background might have done.  The sound is mainly sound effects, for loss of life, jumping, hitting an enemy with the axe, and a level complete jingle that repeats and gets very annoying indeed.

Final Thoughts

Roller Kong does at least show some early promise for the system, with some reasonable graphics and animation, albeit with not much sound.  The gameplay is key here, and although sometimes the collision detection can be a little off, it does at least give you a fair challenge to work your way through the two screens.  For me, and certainly memory would have allowed it, more screens and different layouts would have made the game have more of a lasting appeal, whereas now once you get past the second screen, even with the high score to aim at, the temptation to play any further fades away.  What could have been so much more ultimately is playable but a bit of a let-down.

* * *

You know what we think but why not share your thoughts on this game! Let us know what you think of it in the comments below, or add your own score using the slider in the summary box at the top of the review!

Please follow and like us: