Flimbos Quest

STORY / GAMEPLAY
A mad scientist called Fransz Dandruff has created a machine that can draw for him the life energy of every living thing, thus extending his own life infinitely. To provide this energy, Dandruff kidnaps Pearly, a beauty queen from Dewdropland. Her boyfriend Flimbo sets off to save her. You control Flimbo through seven distinct levels, collecting scrolls for the wizard Dazz Bazian, to help him create a spell that will send Flimbo to the next level. The levels are free to roam and some exploration is necessary to find the scrolls from enemies dotted around the lair, as well as to reveal other secrets, such as banks and various power-ups. The power-ups can be bought in Dazz's shops, along with individual letters or complete words of a code.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The CPC version uses nice colorful graphics and smooth sprite animation but parallax scrolling at the background (used in the Commodore's version) is not available. Another downside (same as in the Commodore version) is that the foreground scenery is almost identical to the background, making the game difficult to avoid the incoming enemies or jump onto platforms! The things are getting worse as the game runs in flick-screen mode while the action is way slower compared to the Commodore. Soundwise, the CPC version is acceptable, featuring a well composed main menu tune (but inferior to the C64 version, which is almost identical to the Amiga stereo music!) and there are a few decent sound effects during gameplay (but no in-game music). Note that the C64 offers an excellent in-game tune!