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                       "PINGO '98" by PICK'N'PAY COMPUTERS
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system .... Falcon, 4 MB RAM, RGB, VGA

credits ... code - kod of germs
            grfx - kod of germs
            msx  - arpo of charon

release ... o3/98

url........ http://mitglied.lycos.de/mipran/atari_tos.html

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Here comes another quite unknown release by KOD of GERMS, or better ARGE MIPRAN,
what  ever this should  mean... we also can  say PICK'N'PAY COMPUTERS. I have no
clue what of those 3 is right as all are mentioned, splitted image, eh? :)

"PINGO'98" is obviously  another conversion  of a 8bit game, originally known as
"Pengo" or "Pingo". The aim  of the game is quite simple. Your running around as
penguin in a playfield and you have to kill the baddies that are running around.
To kill them you have different possibilities, so  at the beginning of the game,
the baddies are still frozen in an ice block that is displayed as brown blinking
one. If you  run fast enough over to  it and pick  on it with your beak, the ice
block and the enemy are destroyed. You also can pick on one of the blocks and it
will slide untill it will hit the enemy or another block or the edge of the play
field. If an enemy is hit, it is  destroyed or captured in the block, so you can
pick the block and destroy him.

Another possibility is  to pick onto  the edge of the  playfield. If an enemy is
running along the same edge, it will be frozen for short  time and you just have
to run over it. All other contact with the enemies has to be avoided as you will
always die if you get in touch with them.

So the aim of the game is clear, kill the enemies to reach the next stage... And
since this is already all, let's take a closer look onto the game itself.

The game starts with a colourful picture  showing an icy  landscape and also the
menu for the two different game modes. While this picture is displayed, a module
is replayed but I have  heard it before  somewhere. As the author  is stating in
the readme file he has taken both, the picture and the module, from some CD ROM.



The title screen... so far so good (...)

This version is an unfinished one and maybe we  will never get hold of the final
one as this was  already finished  in March 1998, nearly 5 years ago...

The problem is now that  this version  just features an one-to-one conversion of
the 8bit version, arf, and not the  announced truecolor version, even if I think
I saw much more colourfull screenshots on the homepage of the author but since I
can't verify this anymore I can't say more about it here... too bad.

Ok, one-to-one 8bit conversion means that the grafix are converted straight away
from this version and so the playfield looks awfully colourless... After all the
playfield  uses just  6 colours while the  game runs in  truecolour  mode as the
author states  in the readme  file... arg! The sprites are quite big but awfully
bad animatedð with maybe 2 or 3 animation steps. Furthermore the sprite collision
detection  seems not to work  properly as  well as  it seems as  the sprites are
masked in some strange way. So for the eyes the game is a real pain...



How to waste truecolor grafix ability...

There are no sound fx included, but you can listen to an original module done by
the guy mentioned in the info part  above, but that is of  a quite mediocre, not
to say, bad quality, boring  style and quite oldschoolish, but still better than
nothing at all.

You can control your penguin with  the joystick, that works quite ok since there
isn't much you can do wrong here.

On top of the  screen the number of lifes left is displayed as well your current
score... It seems as no highscore or  something like  that is included as if you
loose all your lifes you start again from the first level while  your score will
be deleted... this point isn't a real motivation pusher as well.

So there is nothing left to write about here... as only the...

...final words... PINGO'98 is called to be a conversion of a 8bit game and looks
                  like it, converted one to one. To be honest, I still don't see
                  the point to do such stuff on a machine that offers truecolour
                  mode and enough power for better resolutions  and more sprites
                  on the screen that can be much better animated as well.
                  At least the sound does its  job, if we don't take a look onto
                  the fact that fx are completely missing and the quality of the
                  used modules is only mediocre.
                  The controls are doing  their job but in the  end this doesn't
                  helps to avoid it to kick that game into the ton. A truecolour
                  version surely would have been interesting and also the use of
                  motivation risers as save able highscore and  maybe some extra
                  gimmicks... but there isn't anything on board of those. So you
                  missed much so far...

___ratings______________________________________________________________________

visuals .....  1o % - 6 colours on the play screen... hicolour intro picture
audio .......  5o % - 2 different module soundtracks of mediocre quality, no fx
controls ....  9o % - controlled via joystick, does it's job good
idea ........  5o % - so far I can't remember another conversion of this game
motivation ..  1o % - the awfully visuals kicking down any motivation

___overall_____42_%_____________________________________________________________

With a few further works it would be possible to make something out of this game
concept, but in the current version you can forget it...

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_11/2k2_