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Old age is bad enough with rickety joints, wrinkly skin, and not being able to hear the TV properly, but the Red Indians had a sure way of making it worse. According to Silmaril, they used to take their old folk out into enemy territory, tie them to a stake, and leave them so they could die the 'death of a warrior'1 Makes your average, gestapo-run OAP home seem quite charming, doesn't it?

You discover this strange custom when trapping beavers in 1880 USA. Stumbling across a group of indians you shoot them all, except for an old man who promises to give you a treasure map if you give him a proper ritual death. You oblige and start the game searching for a lost gold mine in a flick-screen arcade adventure of 100-plus screens.

Besides moving left/right and into the screen, you can also swap between having bare hands or holding weapons such as a musket, axe and knife. You can also use, or if appropriate read, any special objects you might find via the function keys. In addition, if you find Mac Biggle the storekeeper you can barter anything you might find for the various items he has. You cannot save at will, but only at special locations.

Besides the core beat-'em-up, arcade-adventuring action there's an impressive canoeing section. To get to various locations you can jump in the canoe to zoom down the Mississippi river. But watch out for logs, rocks, and boulder-throwing and canoeing injuns who'll try and stop you reaching dry land.

Takes me back this one, what will all those flick-screen rooms, beat-'em-up action and working out which object to use where. It's an arcade adventure in the classic format, with the addition of a top-notch canoeing section, 16-bit graphics, and sporadic sampled spot FX.

Joystick response is a tiny bit slow, but once you begin exploring you soon remember what made all those aardvarks (as we used to call them) so popular. Fun to play with plenty to do and see this is well worth a look.

Despite having a rather over-familiar game style, Colorado is very well executed. The graphical detail is a source of constant surprise - the way you reload your musket, the bird-like souls of killed Indians, and such baddies as the bear are all very impressive.

This certainly contributes to the urge to explore, while combat is really quite good and the canoeing section works much better than Chase HQ's 3D effect.

Presentation 78%
Good save/load option using game disk. Fairly frequent in-game disk accessing a tiny bit irritating.

Graphics 80%
Lots of variety and detail, with a very good canoeing section.

Sound 71%
Mediocre intro tunes, in-game sound restricted to okay sampled spot FX.

Hookability 74%
The urge to explore is strong with quite a few different routes to take and baddies to kill.

Lastability 81%
Plenty of exploring to do, some good combat scenes, and an impressive canoe scene.

Overall 79%
A very enjoyable aardvark!