Newzealand Story : The

Copyright : Ocean Software | Reviewed by : Corazon

Tiki the kiwi has narrowly escaped capture by the evil walrus! However, his friends were not so lucky. Pick up your bow and arrow Tiki, rescue your friends!

An absolute arcade classic gets the conversion treatment, but how faithful was it?

Graphics

Although blocky and rather bland, Ocean have done a good job keeping much of the content as close to the original as possible. Although many of the level layouts are completely new, or drastically changed in places, all of the varied enemy characters are present and are easily recognisable. The same goes for the various weapons and modes of transport found throught the game (a floating toy ducky?!)

Sound

Fans of the arcade version will instantly recognise the cheerful melody that plays continuously throught the game. Aside from that, all the little twangs, bleeps and explosions from Tiki?s various weapons sound as good as can be expected for a conversion.

Gameplay

So far so good, the sound is accurate and faithful and so are the graphics in some respects. A faithful conversion? .... Oh dear.

Unfortunately here, the game falls flat on it?s face. The original game was a fast paced, frantic race against time, with each goal being to reach one of the many captured Kiwis at the end of the level. In this version however, our hero not so much runs around, but jerks from one spot to the next. The terribly slow framerate and awful scrolling makes the game difficult to control and almost painful to play.

Perhaps the most glaring problem is with the levels themselves. Each and every one has to be loaded from either tape or disk. Baring in mind that each level is finished within the space of a few minutes, owners of the tape version (like myself) will end up climbing the walls with frustration by the fourth level (like myself!)

Because of these reasons, only diehard fans will find some enjoyment with this poor conversion.