IF YOU SUFFER from feelings of being trapped with nowhere to go, Loony Zoo, produced by Phipps Associates, is not calculated to offer relief. The storyline is that while surveying another planet, you have been captured by its vastly superior inhabitants and put into one of their zoos, together with various other alien specimens.
It is possible to escape by jumping from ledge to ledge to reach the door pressure-pad located at the top of the screen. It will let you into another cage with new and more menacing inmates, and another, and another. More than likely, however, you will not need to worry about the next cage as you will find it extremely difficult to get out of the first.
In spite of its relatively simple graphics and slow pace, Loony Zoo manages to be infuriatingly addictive, especially if you enjoy a challenge to your reflexes.
In a similar vein from Phipps Associates is Killer Knight, in which, because of a freak time-slip, an evil knight has dragged away your girl friend whom you must try to rescue. The medieval trappings cannot disguise the basic Kong pattern.
The hero's flea-like hopping movements are novel but otherwise the difficulty of getting very far into the game without starting again, and the fact that it is possible to notch a high score by running back and forth along the bottom level, make it slightly inferior to some variations on theme.