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Games Computing
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Lionel And The Ladders (Intrigue)
Having fallen for the princess from Andromeda, Lionel sets out to rescue her from deep in the labyrinth where she is imprisoned by the suns of Mars. Under keyboard control, Lionel can be made to go left and right along pathways, climb ladders (but not descend), jump to retrieve keys and leapfrog nasties, unlock doors and finally release the princess. In his pursuit he has to avoid the suns of Mars, the shades of wrath and the death stars. To reach the princess he must collect keys to unlock blue doors. On being opened, they become green and thereafter allow free passage to and fro. Red doors are exits which cannot be re-entered. If Lionel falls down two levels or bumps into an adversary, he loses one of his three lives.
Both door keys collected and lives left are displayed at the bottom of the screen. Lionel can also collect treasure on the way for bonus points. Only after all doors are unlocked, can Lionel release the princess, in which case he gains an extra life and the game repeats until he loses all his lives. Since the long program is written in TI Extended Basic, there is a time lapse between keyboard entry and screen action, which is frustrating to say the least. However, with a little practice, this can be overcome and, to some extent, conquering the delay becomes an addictive part of the game. A couple of manoeuvres were found which go unpenalized. It is relatively easy to accumulate a good score without opening a door or losing a life by repeating the same circular tour of ascending a ladder, walking a pathway, jumping down only one level and walking back to where you started. Nasties can also be avoided by moving Lionel between adjacent screens indefinitely until they pose the least threat.
High scores can be entered into a Hall of Fame and the keys controlling Lionel altered to your own choosing.
But beware, because if you press Return as a default when setting your keys you will end up stuck in a game with no controls. Apparently, this occurs because the main program fills the whole TI memory and error checking routines had to be limited by necessity.
The game is stylishly packaged with full instructions and is challenging, if somewhat constrained by the TI Basic. That apart, well done Intrigue for supporting the TI with a good value game.
Scores
TI99/4A VersionOverall | 70% |