Americana
48k Cassette £2.99
1/2 players
1/2 joysticks
At one time Atari owners would have paid almost £30
for a copy of PREPPIE and still considered it a bargain. Now, this
old favourite has been re-released on the budget Americana label at
only £2.99.
Based on the arcade game 'Frogger' it puts you in control of
Wadsworth Overcash, an unfortunate Prepster (American for
'schoolboy') who has been set to work retrieving wayward golf balls
on the infamous 'Nasty Nine' - the world's most treacherous golf
course. Hazards abound in the form of deadly lawnmowers, golf-carts,
bulldozers, logs, canoes, crocodiles, snakes and even a gigantic
killer frog!
Back in the good old days, PREPPIE was an innovation
as it introduced Atari owners to the joys of multiple colours
onscreen at the same time. These days many programs feature
'Rainbow' colour bars using DLI's, but Russ Wetmore, author of
PREPPIE, used the colours in such a way as to make it seem as if the
Atari had a 26-colour graphics mode. A unique achievement and, to
this very day, no 8 bit game can boast the colour range that PREPPIE
has - even the title screen features text in 14 different colours!!
PREPPIE also broke the sound barrier, being the first
game (as far as I can remember) to feature music in 2-part harmonies
using proper attack, sustain and decay envelopes. Yes, those were
the days folks, with everybody going around whistling the PREPPIE
tune like it was Number One in the Top Forty. Four years on, the
PREPPIE music can still hold it's own against the very best of
computer sound tracks.
The game has a lot of humorous touches, such as the
way Preppie gets squashed to ten times his normal size whenever he
collides with a moving object. The original game also had some
pretty zany instructions, which included a riotous tale of
Wadsworth's life story. Alas, these have been forsaken for something
a little more in line with the new budget package.
Apart from that, it's exactly the same PREPPIE of old and, even
though it is showing it's age somewhat, no software collection is
complete without it. I read somewhere that PREPPIE is the biggest
selling Atari game ever. If it had been priced at £2.99 in it's
heyday it would have been the biggest selling computer game of all
time, no sweat! Buy it now and show all those Crappydore owners what
full colour graphics are all about!!
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