Aunt Arctic Adventure

 

Amiga 1500, Aunt Arctic Adventure (1988) game

Triple A? In title, yes, but not in content. The thing about this game is that you think it's playful, maybe it even likes you, has a sense of humour to poke and prod you a bit: "Hey, I'm fun," it seems to say, but it disguises a heart closer to the malicious than the inviting. It is basic, both in premise and audiovisual departments, but to its credit it's not about absolutely pin-sharp, pixel-perfect jumping, it's more of a maze you have to navigate in your search for bananas (very 'Donkey Kong'). Compared to most 2D platformers it at first appears quite generous: you can fall from any height without injury (your Charlie the chimp character seems to have the weight of a spider!), you're awarded an extra life every thousand points, and these can be earned through collecting those requisite bananas, or bonus treasure chests, or even by killing enemies, but don't take too many risks and lose a life in the quest for points as that nullifies the point of the points in the first point! Even if you die, so what? It lets you start at the beginning of whichever level you've reached - what could be fairer than that, especially in the era of no passwords, no saves and expectations of rock hard gaming skill in players dedicated enough to see the end? The only real cost is time: it must be completed in one go, which for me was about a four-and-a-half hour commitment. It doesn't sound all that much, but when you think how many hours were spent preparing for the final attempt, it adds up. Still, with all these benefits it shouldn't be too tough to complete. Should it?

You start to feel a little bit had when you get to Level 26 which is set in pitch darkness, the only visible 'landmarks' being the pole you slide in on, the musical note to switch the music on, and a single, solitary banana (assuming you go the right way). You have to travel left and right until you somehow blindly find your way to the exit pole, but it's a moment that shakes you. 'What if they do this to me again, but worse,' hovers in the back of your mind. But that's soon forgotten with the arty visuals of the next couple of levels where everything is in silhouette and it looks so dramatically different. Not to say the graphics are gorgeous in this game, far from it, but they are neat, tidy and functional. Precise, sparse and colourful could be another description and the simplicity and sharpness makes them stand out, as well as the variety of the various visual themes which can run for a few levels. Looks aren't that important, however. It's the moment the true cruelty behind the game's brain hits you between the eyes: Level 35. If you miss one little banana earlier in the level, which is easy enough to do (it's like they planned it that way - horrors!), and take that leap of faith down into the pit to get what you assume is the last one which should vanish away the arrow blocks surrounding the exit, they don't disappear like normal. You missed one. And now you're stuck in that pit. And there's no way to die and restart at the beginning of the level. It took me a good three hours to get there after having trained up on previous attempts (getting to Levels 15, then 33 before I ran out of time).

The only options are 'P' to Pause, or 'Q' to Quit. There's no way to execute yourself, extricate your chimp from any trap back to the start of the level, and it's a real kick in the face from a game you'd thought was pretty fair. It's a reminder that games of the 80s were not designed to be beaten easily. The only 'easily' about this one is that it's easily the most malicious game I've played in a long while! Still, I buckled up and knuckled down for another three hours, scoured the level and made absolutely sure I'd got every last fruity pickup there was. Relief. But it was to be short-lived. Two levels later a similar thing happened - this time I've got all the 'nanas, am happily bouncing down to the exit pole... but I didn't look closely and right next to it there's another pit, one you need to avoid or you'll be stuck down there. AARRGGH! I've made the same mistake again: stuck in a pit there's no way out of, forced to discard hours of progress and begin back at the very beginning yet again. Truly cruel. It's fair to say that ever after this I was in a heightened state of tension. That bit at the end of Level 35 was the worst, simply because even being pretty certain I'd collected all the other bananas, throwing away the last few hours of careful, skilful progress is terrible. At least with Level 37 there was a banana on the arrow blocks which you could leave as the last pickup and be certain to get on the right side of the wall to drop down to the exit. I was seriously on my guard for the last thirteen levels, certain there'd be other game-ending traps and while on the previous attempt (I set aside a whole day to complete it), confidently believing I'd be done in half that time, I was caught out, this final time I was warily less sure of myself in the face of such danger.

As it turned out, while there were tough levels to come (another pitch black one, though this time you were dodging daggers and jumping pits, and they generously allowed you to see these adversities, as well as your character; then there was the one with all the keys and doors which could have been a real trial, but wasn't so bad after all), there was nothing at the fiendish levels of torture of those previous two traps, for which I was greatly relieved! In fact the final level, Level 50, was also one of the easiest - you could collect the bananas and treasures or not, as you chose, since it had no bearing on anything other than score: all you had to do is time it right to drop down when the villainous Big Borus, Ringleader of this circus, and foul kidnapper of your good Aunt, is moving away from the passage you have to go down to reach her. Then it's a brief shot of the three of you (Charlie, Aunt, and Charlie's friend, Penguin Pete), and it's all over. No doubt the real games-players would say you've not really completed the game properly unless you did it without any continues, surviving solely on the (admittedly generous), lives you could accrue with careful play, but while I deign to believe I could have done this, it would have cost more days of dedication and there are other games to get to. For me it was enough that I finished the game at all (on the first of two difficulty levels). High scoring was never much of a draw for me, perhaps because I never really had anyone to compete against and I was sufficiently proud in this case that I got into the 30s before I lost my last life (don't remember the level number, but it was one of those with daggers flying in from both directions about three different heights - I had around thirty lives which I just couldn't help but lose over and over).

There was one other semi-cruel level worth noting, just to remind how craftily unfair the game could be: Level 47 has only one banana to collect and it's right below the pole you slide in on. Your natural inclination is to grab it as you had to in every level before that, but if you do you can't get out of the level because the arrow blocks marking the exit form a staircase that disappears when the banana is collected! Fortunately, though they were cruel enough to play this one final trick on you, they do at least allow you to die, there being spikes on part of the floor you need to leap over. Otherwise there'd have been no way to restart and avoid the banana and it would have been one more start from the beginning. So they weren't utterly ruthless, just mostly. Looking back with the rose-tinted glasses of success and relief I do find that I quite enjoyed it overall. I came to know those early levels very well and never felt bored by having to do them just because they were nicely varied in length and skill. While the controls were limited by a Joystick with one button you still had some abilities to learn: leaping over moving enemies at the right time (though not pixel-perfect you still had to be reasonably accurate with the larger ones), punching at the right distance (easy to lose a life if you're too close when you make the attack), and jumping between ropes or poles. One required skill was to be able to leap between poles so you could progress upward, an action very tiring on the hands as you had to go from side or diagonal movement to upward on the stick, otherwise you start to slide down. Ropes were much easier as you could climb up and down with impunity, but those poles could only be climbed by leaps.

There was some variety in the enemies you faced, but it was much more about the environment than fighting, even though I liked the tactical aspect of the chance to gain points, and thus lives, by risking attacking enemies (the little skittering bugs or spiders of which would march in predetermined directions, allowing you the opportunity to run up behind and whack them, but if you failed to realise where their route ended they might suddenly turn on you on the way back), but which could cost a life in the attempt. Timing was very important. Sometimes there'd be hidden routes, such as the first time you meet Borus and he runs away - if you follow him you come to a wall and if you jump at the wall you find an easy way out of that level, otherwise it's lots of climbing and jumping to achieve the same result, so it did encourage exploration. You can even skip the first four levels if you lower yourself to use one of the four names of the makers of the game, though that means you don't get to put your name in the high score table, a price not worth gaining the fifteen-to-twenty minutes you'd save! In keeping with the impression of harshness there was no temporary invincibility endowed upon you to ease you back into a level when you begin at the start or in a triangle (if you touch these you restart there - another tactical side as some might not be in the place you'd want to go back to). Sometimes you'd die, reappear at one of these places and then die again immediately because an enemy was passing! Unfair, to say the least. That's why you feel the game ultimately does hate you, or at least it has its funny moods until you get near the end and it starts to acquiesce and go easier on you since you got that far.

There are many ways it could have been made fairer: what about carrying keys across from other levels, how about showing your key tally (you just have to try and keep in mind how many you've picked up), or, just as important, how many bananas you have left to pick up in a level to open the exit? But the game doesn't condescend to give any assistance like that, adding to the impression that it's a very unkind taskmaster, even while it'll occasionally throw in a fun level where you merely have to drop down and collect bananas in the air. Though basic in looks and sounds this somehow added to its charm, or perhaps is its charm? The precise visuals are accompanied by precise sounds, such as the patter of your tiny feet on the occasional wooden surface, or the sought-after ring of a banana or treasure being collected. It's a shame the music supersedes the sound effects if you run through a musical note, as while I quite liked most of the tracks, I'd prefer to have heard the sounds as well. Among the limited options at the opening screen you can choose to disable the music, but then you might miss a new track (there were only five of them reused throughout, excluding the main theme and high score table), and you can choose '1' or '2' difficulty levels. There's also the option for two-players though I never had the chance to try that out (your penguin friend collects fish, as is only fitting). I can see players from the time getting many hours of play from this, as once you've beaten the fifty levels you may well want to try it on the harder difficulty, or do it two-player, or simply get the biggest score possible. For me, completion was enough, and as a game that I played briefly as a child and never got anywhere with it is with great satisfaction I can now, all these years later, say that I completed it! In complete honesty I couldn't say this game was that good, but it deserves its extra star for being a challenge, and one that was doable.

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