Flimbo s Quest

STORY / GAMEPLAY
In this multi-scrolling platform game, 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 passwords. The game is pretty tough at times but yet it's not frustratingly difficult to play. But, the player must have in mind that Flimbo cannot duck, so he must be careful of the multiple platforms that an enemy strolls and can easily hit Flimbo in the head and kill him. Also there is no energy bar here. If an enemy touches Flimbo, it's an instant loss of a life. Apart from its toughness, Flimbo's Quest is among the most decent platforms games developed for the 16bit home computers.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Atari ST version offers nice and colorful graphics (16 colors for the main gameplay area and a few more for the panel at the bottom). The scrolling suffers a bit but in an acceptable level while the sprites are nicely animated. The backgrounds are detailed and move nicely enough using a few levels of parallax scrolling. On the downside (and this stands for the Amiga version as well), the foreground scenery is at times almost identical to the background parallax, making it difficult to avoid the attacking enemies! The Atari ST version features a cool intro music and some nicely composed in-game tunes, along with a bunch of decent sound effects (though they are not sampled compared to the rival Amiga version). Overall, I really like this game and for the ST standards, it looks and plays like charm.