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On the strength of this conversion, in-house Ocean programmer Richard Palmer was picked to handle the C64 RoboCop conversion. His abrupt decision to leave the company plunged that project into chaos, probably resulting in the abandonment of a Spectrum conversion in favour of the more original, console-flavoured project by Painting By Numbers.

The New Zealand Story helped establish Richard's name with a 93% Sizzler in Issue 53. Like Rainbow Islands, The New Zealand Story was a Taito coin-op with huge playability but not particularly spectacular graphics - tailor-made for computer conversion really.

The star of the show is Tiki the kiwi, who once quite happily lived in a zoo. Then one dark day, a big blue walrus came visiting and sadly he didn't quite understand the concept of a zoo - he thought it was a fast food restaurant! Anyway, he scooped up 21 of Tiki's friends and made off with them, intending to roast them for tea.

Tiki's quest to save them is a true epic consisting of twenty levels split into groups of four or so for multi-loading. At the end of each group there's a mega-monster such as a whale in ice and an octopus! Initially armed with a bow-and-arrow, Tiki must take on boomerang-throwing toy soldiers, teddy bears on flying platforms (which you can steal), penguins riding geese and much, much more.

To begin with, the levels are fairly simple: just run rightwards, shoot the baddies and soon enough you've found the caged kiwi you must free to complete the level. The game soon gets more complicated with some huge, multi-directionally scrolling mazes. As you'd expect of Taito, there's loads of bonus items, from power-up weapons such as fireballs to extend time to invulnerability. You can even steal a spaceship and go zooming around in that!

Steve Walid's graphics are superb, perfectly capturing the coin-op's cuteness with Tiki himself looking rather like Cutey Pie! Jonathan Dunn does his customary class job with the music, a simple but entertaining soundtrack which really adds to the atmosphere. Richard Palmer's programming provides some fast, slick scrolling and although a tight deadline resulted in a fair few bug-ettes, this is a great game.

Robin raved that it "overflows with fun, feathers and fantastic playability" back then, and it still does.