Captain Planet

Title		Captain Planet
Game Type	Platform
Publisher	Mindscape, 1991
Players		1
HD Installable	No
Compatibility	A500
Submission	Christopher Lord

Review
Well a bit of an oddity this one, probably most of you will have played
it, it came free with one of Commodore's A500 packages, I think maybe
the Cartoon Classics pack? Anyhow the first thing that strikes you is how,
well.... very average it seems, a straight forward platform game, small
sprites, yawn.........Buy hey give it a chance, it hides a pretty cool
game under that dull exterior.

Okay, here we go with the story line part of the review: "THERE IS HOPE
FOR MOTHER EARTH, WILL YOU BECOME ONE OF THE ECO SUPER HEROES?", asks the
intro at the start of the game. Pretty much you pick a level to start on
(2 available at the start), and you get to control one of the Planeteers
and clean up a load of toxic waste. The neat thing here is that each
character has a different ability, like firing fireballs or making ice
ledges, kinda like an ecological version of the X-Men. This adds loads of
variation to the basic game, and also makes you want to find out what the
next character will be. This helps to make your perseverance feel worth
while.

Another great aspect of the game is that around the levels you will find
the odd vehicle that you can hop in and use it. On level One it is a
rocket ship type affair, and you get to fly this around a big area at the
top of the screen and shoot down balloons (no I have no idea why), when
you shoot the balloons a little man jumps out on a parachute, you need to
catch him before he hits the ground sort of like in Defender, well cool.
Another aspect I like is that when you detox the monsters they shrink down
to there original size and trail along behind you, it cool having this
stream of little beasties following along behind you, like the pied piper.

Well now to the bad bits, the controls are what really let this game down,
they are pretty unresponsive and wooly. Everything seems like it is playing
in treacle as far as contolling your little man. The animation on your man
is really poor too, consisting of only two frames. Despite this I used to
play this game a lot 10 years ago and I had a lot of fun with it again when
I played it for this review. Give it a try even if just to see the pretty
sunset.

Alphabetical list.