Toki

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game's hero is a tribesman called Toki. Toki's girlfriend Miho was kidnapped by an evil witch doctor called Bashtar, who also put a spell on Toki turning him into a cartoonish little chimp. So Toki is about to start a dangerous mission in order to rescue his love interest gain back his human nature. Toki has to fight through five hostile environments until he reaches Bashtar's lair. Luckily, his transformation gave him the ability to spit energy fireballs from his mouth, which are actually his main weapon, as well as the ability to jump in higher grounds. The game is a classic platformer in which you must travel through a variety of levels and battle hordes of jungle monsters, cope with physical hazards (deadly pits, spikes etc) and fight a mini-boss at the end of each level. The ultimate goal of course is to find and kill the evil wizard. Toki is a really nice coin-op conversion and among the best in its genre. It follows typical action platformer moves in all eight directions. You can jump on several platforms in order to avoid enemies or grab a few bonuses, including energy portions. The level of difficulty increases as you progress and it's seemingly impossible sometimes to guide your little ape into safety, as nasties and some static hazards (spikes etc) dominate the screen in such a way that, there is no chance to avoid contact with them and thus, you lose your energy easily! Toughness aside, Toki is one of the most renowned arcade platform games and offers intense action and lots of fun!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Atari ST conversion is technically fine and it keeps the arcade style. The graphics vary in colors and backgrounds as you progress through each level. In the visuals area, there are some noticeable differences between the Amiga and the ST version with the Amiga having more colors and background details (as usual) that are missing on the ST (as usual as well). Also, there are times when frame rate drops especially when big sprites appear on screen. Overall, apart from its flaws, the ST conversion looks and plays good. Sonically, the gameplay tune is nicely composed and resembles much the original. The music is followed by several sound effects during gameplay (but not sampled on this conversion).