C&VG


Cruncher

Categories: Review: Software
Publisher: Kingsoft
Machine: Amiga 500

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #74

Cruncher

Hurray! What am I cheering about? Well, one of my all time favourites has finally been produced on the Amiga. What is it? Pac-Man of course.

Yes, they've finally brought out a Pac-Man for the Amiga. I thought that being such an old game, software houses would forget all about this classic and it would be lost forever. This Pac-Man is not the original as produced by Atari, but it's by Anco and is called Cruncher Factory.

Your aim in Pac-Man is to guide your little yellow 'ball with a gob' around a maze and eat all of the little white dots or pills. This would be quite boring on its own, so you also have to watch out for the ghosts. Woooooh!

Cruncher Factory

The ghosts are nasty creatures who like nothing better than to chomp on your bones. There are four ghosts in Pac-Man, and so there are four in Cruncher. But Cruncher Factory has one special feature. Well, it's not exactly a feature. More a gimmick. With the press of a few keys, the ghosts will all transform themselves into nasty little Atari logos, and your little yellow spheroid will turn into the famous 'Amiga Ball'.

This has no real use, but nevertheless it is quite fun to see an Atari logo legging it away from a little red and white ball which has just consumed a power pill.

A power pill? Yes, a power pill is a small green pulsating dot which will give Pac-Man super munching strength for around 15 seconds, more than enough time to get his revenge.

Cruncher Factory

There are four power pills per level, well at the start anyway. You see, one of the interesting things about this great version is the fact that, if you wish, you can create your own Pac-Mazes, or edit an existing one. The disk comes supplied with 30 different mazes and an extra 40 can be added. This brings me to the only sour note.

The game disk is copy-edited, to protect piracy and the like. Smart move, right? Wrong. Because the disk is protected, it means you can only save your mazes on the original disk. Very dodgy. What Anco should have done is offer a non-protected version for a few pounds more if you send them the original disk. A number of companies are already practising this, including Electronic Arts, authors of the fantastic Deluxe Paint.

Still, that's only a little problem. Nothing to affect gameplay.

So, what have we got? A really neat and extremely fast version of the arcade classic with extra bits like a screen editor. Nice graphics, although not what you call Amiga standard, and the sound isn't much cop either, but it has it where it counts.