1st May 1988
Releases from Superior's stable are always to be taken seriously, and the latest game, Quest, is no exception. It is an arcade adventure - always one of Superior's favourite themes - in which you play the part of Walter Cobra, a clever but absent-minded young chap who has two favourite hobbies - exploring and inventing.
One day you stumble across a faded old map which shows the route to a buried object marked as the Golden Dragon. The starting point is a wishing well located a couple of miles from your home.
The next day you amble over to the well and climb down it. Only after reaching the bottom of the well do you remember the map, which is still at home. However, having come this far you decide to press on regardless and so - according to the cassette inlay - begins the greatest adventure of your life.
The objective is to seek and retrieve the legendary Golden Dragon shown on the original map. In the process, twelve power crystals must be collected and you must destroy three reactors. Destroying a reactor is achieved by getting inside it and firing a stun grenade - one of Walter's little inventions.
You control Walter with three keys: Left, right and jump. He is equipped with another of his little inventions - a pair of jet boots which will only function in rooms containing large triangular objects called transmogrifiers.
A great deal of the game's strategy derives from how you use these boots. Some rooms are so lethal it is safer if you fly through them. But no transmogrifier means you have to build up each momentum from a neighbouring location to literally coast across in free fall.
Scattered throughout the maze are eight computer terminals, which can be interrogated if you are carrying the right object and know the password.
I played this game for a long while without ever encountering a terminal, let alone a crystal. This goes to show just how large the adventure is, and it should certainly keep the old grey matter buzzing for a long time.
Quest lacks the clean-cut feel present in some of Superior's other games. While remaining an extremely challenging and very stimulating arcade adventure, little things niggled me. The screens are very clustered and sometimes it's not too clear just what is going on.
Some floors can look solid, but you will fall through them because the screen seems to contain some actual program data, which lies across the bottom of the picture.
Summing up, Quest is a nice arcade adventure, following in the footsteps of Citadel and Quest. The addition of gimmicks like the jet boots and computer terminals keep the interest up and I can certainly recommend it for its addictiveness alone.
Screenshots
