The sequel to the classic Miner 2049er, Bounty Bob is very much in the same vein. It's one of those games you'll either love or hate. For the un-initiated, it's kind of in the Chuckie Egg style of single static screen with platforms. You jump about between them, but in this case you have to touch every platform before you can get to the next level. However things are made more tricky by monsters skulking about on some of the plaforms. Fortunately there are weapons placed intermittently on the platforms, which you can use to hammer the enemy.
The graphics aren't bad for the XL, but they don't exactly push it to it's limits, the same can be said for the music. Despite this, the game does have a certain polish to it. The 'High Score Factory' is decadance to the extreme for example, particularly on an 8bit. Basically if you like this sort of thing then the game could be for you. It's got a good learning curve, if you spend time learning the jumps and the positions of the platforms. If you don't, you'll find it a tad frustrating. The jumping, which in many cases has to be pixel perfect, can be skull crushingly tedious.

Zogging Hell Rating: 80%

California Run

Another racing game, bearing a graphical style similar to the Great American Cross-Country Road Race (I certainly won't be mentioning that again in this review section. What a mouthful!). The graphics are alright, though the car looks decidedly ropey when cornering (the wheels go completely lop-sided). It's fast, but also distinctly un-controllable. The competing cars also have a nasty habit of popping up directly in front of you. Ah well, an also ran I'm afraid, but alright if your a fan of the genre.

Zogging Hell Rating: 79%

Chop Suey

An 8bit classic, and a pretty good beat'em-up in it's own right. The graphics aren't bad at all. Your fighters look reasonable, and there's a nice crowd watching your every move. The sounds reasonable, and the animation is pretty good stuff. The moves are a bit limited, especially compared to Barbarian, but there we are. Some of the limited kicks and punches are rather unspectacular to say the least. The exception to this is the absolutely ludicrous flying kick. Your character literally jumps from one end of the screen to another, in the most outragious fashion. It's absolutely brilliant, in an entirely unrealistic fashion. Every so often in the game a scorpian drops from the ceiling and K.O.s any player who touches him. While this may annoy the karate game anoraks out there, I found it a reasonably exciting distration from throwing another boring punch. Pretty good stuff, but don't reach for your pampers, as you won't be wetting yourself over it's brilliance...

Zogging Hell Rating: 80%

Electric Starfish

I remember playing this game on my friends Vic 20 when I was about 11. I was interested then to see what the expanded graphics capabilities of the XL could do for the game. Er nothing. Electric Starfish is about as basic as they come. It would look equally as good on the ZX81 as it does on the XL. But hey, graphics aren't everything are they? Gameplay wise, Electric Starfish is kind of like Mindsweeper, Space Invaders or Patience. Appalling when compared to your mates next gen console masterpiece. But if it's the only thing to play when you've got some friends round, then it suddenly becomes a monster, and a real high score battle developes (especially in work environments!). It shines when there's nothing better around, but up against almost anything else, it's crap. So a real enigma then, awful but not awful. Hhmm I feel like I need a lie down.
The graphics are terrible, the sound virtually non existant, but hey the name is fantastic. I should really give it 90% for the name alone, what guts 8bit programmers have. So much variety, just compare the XL's games titles to the Dreamcast's endless games called Soul Something....

Zogging Hell Rating:60%

Feud

Excellent game of battling wizards. Your wizard has to race about collecting various herbs and plants so he can zap the enemy wizard, who unfortuantly is doing exactly the same thing. Unfortuantly the sneaky bast always gets to the goods first and things can get quite tense as you scarper from him while trying to get enough herbs to give a taste of his own medicine so to speak. Its hideously inferior graphically to the Amstrad CPC version, but the gameplay is intact and rather nice it is to. The graphics aren't all that bad for the Atari, even if everything is a shade of grey or yellow.

Zogging Hell Rating: 91%

The Great American Cross-Country Road Race

Pretty excellent road racing game. You choose your track from the various American city to city routes, watching out for bad weather and road closures. Then you jump in your car and try and race to the next city. This is where the fun starts, and the game really shows its metal. Tonnes of nice touches are in there like rush hour traffic, road works and night time racing. Watch out as well as the cops are, as usual, lurking about with speed cameras (shouldn't they be out catching real criminals ;-)). Get one on your tail and you can stop or try to outrun them. It's all quite fabulous really and kind of reminds me of Overlander on the 16bit.

Zogging Hell Rating: 89%

The Lone Raider

A slightly strange mix this one. The first level is a shoot'em-up, as you attempt to get to a door (hold on thrill seekers). The second is a sort of extremely frustrating maze game. And the third, well, I don't know what the third's like as I couldn't get past the second. It was all a bit tedious really.

Zogging Hell Rating: 45%

Manic Miner

Zogging Hell Rating: 70%

Pitfall

Pitfall, is one of the fathers of modern platform games (I say one as there are many potential fathers and I'm sure not that anyone should completely be blamed for some of the worst excesses of the SNES era). It's a sideways scroller, where you character is stuck in the jungle and must escape. This involves swinging on vines above huge pits, leaping onto crocodiles and escaping runaway boulders. It's excellent fun, even if the timing required to complete some of the more tricky tasks is based more on luck than anything else.

Zogging Hell Rating: 90%

Pole Position

Quite possibly the greatest racer of it's era, until the arrival of Outrun and Super Hang On, Pole Position is a racing tour de force. The graphics are lovely, the gameplay is the most natural on earth. It's just good really. No other Pseudo 3D racer comes close to this on the 8bit.

Zogging Hell Rating: 92%

Sidewinder II

Sidewinder is one of my ST favourites, although the follow up was a considerable dissapointment. Staggeringly the 8bit version of Sidewinder II is pretty good, especially graphics wise. It's certainly the best and most interesting vertical scroller I've had the pleasure of playing so far. In fact I go so far as to say this is the Xenon II of the Atari 8bit. Blimey, can't fault that can you. Now if only I can get hold of Sidewinder 1 on the 8bit.

Zogging Hell Rating: 80%

Star Raiders

Pretty much in it's ultimate form on the Atari 8bit, Star Raiders was a game very much of it's time. The gameplay was to advanced for the old crusty consoles like the 2600 to keep up with, but then again it was just to simple for the 16bits. Graphically Star Raiders broke new ground (not that these screen shots would give credence to that), and it had bags of gameplay to boot. It hasn't aged all that well unfortuantly, kind of like an ageing punk fan in fact, or someone who still thinks Pink Floyd are the pinnical of music (and blimey if ST Format are anything to go by there are enough of those on the ST platform). People brought up on Playstation etc (or even the Mega Drive) are unlikely to find much in it's fiddly control system. Persevere though and there's a lot on offer here....

Zogging Hell Rating: 80%

Star Wars

When I first loaded up this game I was expecting the worst. The ST version was arcade perfect and I knew the 8bit was never going to be handle the same amount of 3D data the ST was throwing about. The 8bit version is however a pleasant surprise. The graphics, despite comprising for the most part of sprites with a few vector graphics thrown in when there's space, are very similar to the full on vector graphic images of the arcade. It might not move as freely as it could, and the joystick is always going to be a bit limited at this sort of thing, but it's quite playable as well. Sounds alright, even without the fantastic arrays of samples found on the 16bit versions. Very nice game and well worth adding to your collection.

Zogging Hell Rating: 90%