Zzap


Klax
By The Hit Squad
Commodore 64/128

 
Published in Zzap #87

Klax

I can imagine all the Zzap readers can imagine reaching for their dictionaries and looking up the word "Klax". You won't find it there, but being a smart ass I can tell you it means "a collection of at least three tiles of the same colour either vertically, horizontally or diagonally". The player is faced with a single flipper and loadsa different coloured tiles thundering toward it (help mummy!). These tiles then have to be caught, and dropped into one of the five bins in an attempt to create Klaxes. If a tile is allowed to drop off screen without being caught, it registers on the 'Drop Meter' (a sort of lives system), and depending on which level you start (three choices) your 'Drop Meter' is higher or lower.

As I said before, you must get at least three tiles of the same colour whammed together, but for more points be a clever git and go for either diagonal Klaxes or, for maximum points, a 'Big X'. On earlier levels the speed of the tiles is very sedate, but later on the pace becomes totally hectic.

Issue 64 saw the original release of this mega game, and it's as good now as it was then. Lightning reflexes are needed to shuffle the tiles around to get them in the bins, and as the flipper can hold five tiles at a time it's panic city ahoy. It's a most excellent game, buy it now if you were gimboid enough not to the first time around.