Bigtop Barney

Copyright : Players | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Another great sporting classic hits the CPC though this time it?s not something you?ll find on Television very often or on your local cable provider.
Bigtop Barney is a circus act who night after night has to jump hoops, collect money, avoid crazy monkeys and much more before the time limit expires.

Graphics

Graphically Bigtop Barney is nothing special, they do look a little dated but when we consider the age of the game it?s not hard to see why. The sprites (barney, obstacles, backgrounds etc) still look great and certainly put the then ageing Atari range of machines to shame, colours are pretty basic but they do the job and considering the efforts by some better known developers (Cascade for example) they are pretty great.
Animations are a little basic, your character doesn?t appear to move his legs as you walk along the platform and the only sign of real animation is when you jump through hoops or over the other obstacles in the game. Of course there if nothing here that is going to take your breath away but there are no major bugs and nothing to distract you from playing the game itself.

Sound

Sound on the other hand is superb, the introduction music alone is something that shows the shear power of the CPC as a musical machine, in-game sounds are little to none though but they have once again added a touch of music to the death screens. Have a guess what music plays when you loose a life!?

Gameplay

Now the game itself does have a few tiny problems, as we said earlier animation is nothing special as it looks like you are sliding still on a revolving floor and being dragged towards the obstacles. There is no way to stop yourself moving forward so getting over the objects, collecting items etc is simply a matter of timing rather than skill with the joystick.
You do have a few chances to clear the level but considering you have to start from the beginning of the level after you loose a life it soon becomes more than a little frustrating and the replay value begins to fall. This still remains a game worth playing but if you don?t have a good temper then you will soon loose interest and wipe it from your collection.