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Once upon a time a little blue-haired chappie called Ollie was happily trolling down the street minding his own business. Suddenly he saw a factory, and being of an inquisitive disposition, he decided to pop inside and see what was within its mysterious portals. Little did the bijou fellow know that this factory was evil and that no humans worked there - only devilish robots who loved to destroy their creators. Once he'd entered he discovered that the only way to get out was to go through the 24 different rooms, trouble indeed.

Each room fills one screen and is made up of platforms and various automatic factory bits. Ollie can leap about from platform to platform, although care has to be taken to land on the platform safely - he can only fall a limited distance or lose one of his five lives. Each screen has an exit which Ollie must reach to escape from the screen and get automatically transported to another more difficult screen (on later screens a key has to be collected before the exit becomes operational).

The robot guards and other automatic adversaries trog up and down the platforms, killing Ollie on contact, but they themselves can be killed - dotted around the screen are various power pills and if one is collected Ollie turns into a homicidal robot killer for a limited amount of time and can dispose of the robots by touching them. After a few seconds he reverts back to his normal placid self.

On later hazards other meanies appear - sparks, fans, laser beams and deflectors among others. Some of these can be rendered harmless while others just have to be avoided. Later screens also introduce new factory fittings which can be used to Ollie's advantage - pipes can be jumped into to lead him to another part of the screen, transporters whizz him to more inaccessible parts of the screen. There are also sliding platforms and balls for bouncing on to reach the other side of the screen. Escaping from an evil factory is never an easy task!

Ollie's Follies isn't a bad game at all. Although the scenario is from the ancient regime of computer games, it's well implemented and there are some neat puzzles, features and challenging bits of screen to leap around. The graphics are reasonable, the sound isn't too bad, and the whole game plays very nicely. If you like platform games then go out and buy it, it's not bad at all.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ollie's Follies isn't all that bad, despite its age. The graphics and sound aren't much cop, but as platform games go, it's good. There are some nice gameplay elements throughout - although some of them are very similar to those in Bounty Bob (but which came first?) - and I enjoyed playing Ollie's Follies quite a bit.

At first I thought that Americana were releasing a game about the past exploits of our very own Mr Frey. However, Ollie's Follies is nothing as interesting, instead it's merely the exploits of a blobby sprite across a three-dimensional platform background. The graphics are quite good, especially considering the age of the game, and the sound effects are alright. But, in the end, it's just another average budget title. If this is your sort of thing then have a look, otherwise...

Presentation 79%
Pleasant title screen which cycles through various screens to give the user a taster of things to come.

Graphics 66%
Although the colour scheme is a bit bland, the characters and screens aren't bad at all and work quite well.

Sound 67%
A jolly title screen ditty and some OK FX.

Hookability 70%
The first couple of screens are suitably easy and addictive...

Lastability 68%
And after a while it starts getting very tricky.

Value For Money 75%
Twenty four screens of action at a price everyone can afford.

Overall 70%
An oldie, but goodie, platform game.