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### Animal Party [Atari XE/XL]

#### http://atari.limitevisual.com/

#### http://atari.fandal.cz/

#### Reviewed By J. Monkman

Last year we were all completely blown away by the sheer brilliance of Yoomp! and Crownland, both high-scoring entries in the ABBUC 2007 SW Competition amongst several other games. Unfortunately, the line-up of entries for the 2008 competition weren't quite as impressive - in fact, out of the two game entries submitted in 2008 (Animal Party and Blackbox) this is the only one we can actually review as none have us have figured out how to play the other release (Chris Martina and Adam Powroznik, some instructions would have been really appreciated!)

Achieving 2nd place in this year's competition (the winning position went to 8-Bit Atari applications XDOS and Yash), Animal Party is a solid, well presented arcade reworking of Creative Engineering's 'Whac-a-Mole' coded by Mario Caillahuz (the same man behind last year's acclaimed M.U.L.E tribute 'Mule Wars'). Now, I sincerely doubt that there's anyone out there who hasn't played or at least heard of Whac-a-Mole (variations of the game can be found at just about every fun-fair, amusement park or seaside pier in the UK), but in case anyone out there is new to the game, it basically involves the player wielding a large rubber mallet and smashing small furry rodent puppets on the head as they pop out their burrows at random, attempting to hit as many as possible within a time limit. However, bear in mind that we are talking about a live action game here and not a standard arcade machine coin-up; you physically hit the frantic little puppets with a real rubber mallet, and to be honest it's pretty good fun. Unfortunately though, lacking the real-life sweat and satisfying thump of the hammer, it's a concept that doesn't translate particularly well to the home computer format.

On paper it sounds alright; Animal Party is a fast-paced reflexion game based on a simple concept that is well within the capabilities of a vintage computer and really tests your hand-to-eye co-ordination to the maximum. The nine holes from which the wide variety of animals pop-up from are directly mapped to the nine possible direction states of the joystick, and pressing fire whacks your mallet down on their heads - it's a really simple control method that works well. On the presentation side, it's evident that a lot of work has gone into the cartoon-like graphics and animation to give the animals character, and the music fits the game perfectly. "So what's the problem?" I hear you ask. Well, in a nutshell it's this; Animal Party just isn't particularly fun to play in comparison to its real life equivalent.

Some real-life games just don't convert over to the screen well enough to justify playing them instead of making the effort to play the real thing, and in my opinion, Whac-a-Mole is one of them. I'm not criticising Mario's work - he's done a great job in attempting to port the game to the 8-Bit Atari, and I certainly recommend loading it up and giving it a go. However, the bottom line is that unfortunately Animal Party is a case of a poor concept executed well.

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Graphics: | 90%
Sound: | 87%
Game Concept: | 50%
Gameplay: | 69%
Lasting Appeal: | 62%

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