Punchy

Nasty Punch has locked Judy away in the Punch & Judy booth.  You must rescue her by guiding brave Bobby the policeman across the stage.  To achieve success you must, amongst other challenges, make Bobby leap the obstacles, land on a flying carpet and Rock the Baby.  All the well known characters from the traditional Punch & Judy show make an appearance in this unique game.  The graphics and music combine to produce one of the best programs available for the Vic 20.

• Full graphic display.
• Multi screen (16 screens)
• Demands high skill.
• Super Soft Sprite Action.

That’s the blurb out of the way!  The game is a clone of Hunchback set in the Punch & Judy universe.  Most of the elements from Hunchback are present and this is a better game than the official release by Ocean.  To begin with the graphics are big, bold and colourful.  There is a mixture of double width multi-colour pixel graphic elements and higher resolution single colour graphics, all combined to make a perfectly designed game screen.  There are even transitions between screens which is a nice touch.

You control Bobby the Policeman, who moves with “Super Soft Sprite Action” which basically means moving a pixel at a time - although one fat pixel at a time.  This is still a marked improvement on Hunchback for the Vic.   Using the joystick you can move left or right and do so at a decent speed.  You can also jump with the fire button, which is essential for most of the obstacles that face you, but unfortunately you do so at a painfully slow pace.

The game is incredibly difficult from the start.  On the first screen you get to practice those slow-mo jumps to avoid a fireball that hurtles towards you (I don’t remember fireballs in the traditional Punch & Judy ;)).  With some practice you can time these jumps fairly easily.

Next comes a screen with a flying carpet you must jump onto while watching out for a flying sausage overhead.  Jump at the wrong time and you’ll either end up at the bottom of the pit for the crocodiles or get brained by the sausage!  Practice again makes perfect but it’s a bit of a chore because once you loose all your lives (you have three) you go back to screen one and have to work your way back.  This gets more of a frustration the further you get.  Once you have mastered a screen you can move on to the next.  The trouble is that every jump and every collision is unforgiving and requires pixel perfect precision.  Making your way to the end is going to be tough…making it past the third screen is going to be tough!

Punchy is a unique take on the Hunchback game with great graphics and decent sound.  It’s just very tough and requires a lot of time and practice to get even a screen closer to the end.  If it’s possible for the average gamer to complete I don’t know … I don’t think I’ve ever got past the fourth screen!

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2 Responses to “Punchy”

1. Infamous says:

   Monday 9th March 2009 at 8:00 am

   Ahhh the flickery sprites, the bright gaudy colours! the bloody annoying preschool music that was somehow very assuring at the time and them jumping mechanics which would help me to learn some very interesting swearwords at a young age.

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2. theSmiths says:

   Friday 11th September 2009 at 9:51 am

   Ah this was one i did not enjoy to well..
   The music did not bother me…

   The game reminds me a bit like quasimodo(i loved that game)
   What i don’t like about it is the flashing screen…so anoying!

   Thanks for your great work here!

   Reply