Previous Next

Who out there is man enough to guide Hoi the dinosaur through the deranged and dangerous Madlands on his quest for female companionship? Jim Douglas thought he was...

If you thought Saurs were the sort of thing you developed in your lower facial region after spit swapping sessions with an insufficiently vetted member of the opposite sex, prepare yourself for a shock. Saurs are, in fact, baby dinosaurs from a world strangely similar to our own. Unlike humans, Saurs waste no time killing and maiming each other, but instead single-mindedly pursue their goal of evolution into a super-race of omniscient beings.

However, breeding Saurs isn't as easy as it may sound. For the females of the species, thanks to a rather unco-operative decree by the Saur elders have been moved to the far side of the Madlands, a strange and hazardous place. And 5o it's the player's mission to guide his Saur through the Madlands (four levels and a final stage), avoiding the obstacles and collecting the bonus points as he goes, eventually reaching the other side and - ahhh - his prospective question, is endowed with particular abilities appropriate to the level he is currently exploring. During the first stage, he can walk left and right and jump, relying entirely on his smooth movement to avoid contact with the baddies. Later, deadly orbs issue from Hoi's mouth and he even sprouts a jetpac to negotiate the tricky third stage.

The biggest question, of course, since you have already worked out that this is a big scrolling arcade adventure is, "has it got anything new to offer?" Well, let's see shall we?

So what, you will surely ask, can warrant Hol's simply soaring scores. After all, it's only an arcade adventure, isn't it? Well, yes. But Hol is an arcade adventure so pure that it brings back all those memories of what games used to be about. For a start, since Hoi's controls - at ther most convoluted - only involve left, right, up and shoot, the player's attention is focussed on making the character work properly and inventively, rather than running through a limitless number of permutations of possible moves.

Hoi's environment is also very simple. Essentially, it's just a group of four landscapes with a number of checkpoints for each. But this simplicity makes it possible for the individual problems facing the player to be made more tough.

Graphically, it's pretty standard fare. Regulation parallax backdrops scroll behind stone and wood foregrounds that we've seen many times before, But even here there are plenty of innovative touches, such as the stage where platforms are hidden in the parallax background and only available when Hol moves, making an otherwise predictable ascent up a narrow shaft positively gripping.

Inevitably, Hoi will be dismissed by many as simply another arcade romp and there's no doubt that elements seen here have been done better in the likes of Robocod and Harlequin, but for all that, it seems to offer something just a bit more rounded than either of the other two in my book.