C&VG


Tass Times
By Activision
Commodore 64

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #62

Tass Times

Tonetown is where it's all happening. Get some bodystyle, jump into a Troppo, and flash your hooplets! Tass? I should think so! You're no Jonboi tourist - you've got ultra tone!

Off to Fast Freddie's for a GloBurger and Fizzie, before hot-footing it to Tonetown Party Night. Being the septmoonual time of year, Zaha and the Daglets will be in concert at the park, playing their latest hit, Tass, on the Zagtone. Enough to zap your cranium!

But it's not all fun in Tonetown, there's some serious work to be done. Gramps has disappeared from the lab in his winterised log cabin. Seems he went to sleep with the hoop on, and disappeared into another dimension. Left some notes about investigating the rip in space, something to do with anchovy pizza. So, in a bid to find him, through the hoop you go, too, following Spot, your faithful dog.

Tass Times In Tonetown

You emerge in a building site in Tonetown, owned by the fearsome Franklin Snarl, to find that Spot has undergone a radical change, and become Ennio, a canine reporter for the Tonetown Times.

All does not go smoothly on your arrival. Tourists are definitely not welcome, your appearance is, well, Jonboi-ish to say the least.

The locals, who are a pretty ultra bunch, snigger "Stupid Tourist" behind your back. But tourist you are - why, I bet if you were to put a guitar-pick into the nearest float-fone, you'd only get a recorded message, when you really want to speak to someone on H728!

Tass Times In Tonetown

All the time you're giving yourself away like this, the local bigwig, Snarl himself, tracks you down with amazing regularity, and feeds you to the crocogators.

Just as well there is a Quicksave feature for you will surely make good use of it, time and again, until you learn to become really tass, and have the ultra-touch.

Tass Times is certainly a different adventure. It was written by the team who wrote Mindshadow, and comes in the same format as Borrowed Time. That means you get a large graphics window top left, a text window below, pictorial inventory top right, and common command icons bottom right.

Tass Times In Tonetown

The vocab leaves a little to be desired, and although the parser accepts multi-word commands, it sometimes gives a screwy answer. Like SPOT GO TO THE LAB resulting in "You can't spot the lab the go." Still, I suppose it's a screwy game, anyway!

Like Borrowed Time, many of the graphics are animated, and there is one superb sequence, with Spot jumping back and forth through the hoop in the lab. There also are sound effects. The clock ticking in the first location will slowly drive you mad, whilst switch the hoop on, and you will get a very realistic power effect. But my favourite location has to be the open-air rock concert, where the tune is a real foot-tapper!

There are plenty of puzzles to solve, and a pretty dramatic moment, when you are just patting yourself on the back for having done a good job for the Tonetown Times editor. Quite inexplicably, everything goes wrong, and you get a real rocket. Just like life under Metcalfe, really!

The package comes complete with a four-page tabloid Tonetown Times which contains clues and background information to the zany world in which you'll find yourself. I loved this adventure - I'm sure you will too! Go out and blue a few picks! Don't be a stupid tourist, get Tass Times, or I'll feed you to the Allidiles!

Keith Campbell

Other Commodore 64/128 Game Reviews By Keith Campbell


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