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My Pengo review


Giles N

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One my reasons for getting an Atari 5200 console in the first place was to see how a home console, contemporary with the arcade machines I played very early, performed.
So, Pengo, Star Wars Arcade, Pole Position and Robotron 2084 were Arcades I remembered to have played from the period 1982-84.

So: Pengo...

I played it both with a refurbished orginal controller and an moderated Neo-Geo joystick (which works on many, but not all games).

Pengo have you playing the Penguin Pengo in randomly generated mazes of ice-blocks. It is on one screen at a time. You view it from birds-perspective (a bit of a pun there I guess). You can move Pengo in four directions, up, down, left and right, and if you walk to the ice-blocks making up the maze and push the firebutton while moving against the ice-block, you send it across the screen. You are hunted by some strange, but kind of cute´n cartoony creatures called Snow-bees. If they touch you, you are knocked out, and loses a life.
You must take out the Snow-bees by pushing the ice-blocks on them, which takes them out. Also if they move along the edge of the game-area, and you also happen to be there, you can turn toward these walls and push them, making the walls occilate and knock out a Snow-be for a few seconds. Move over it, and you wipe it out. Every level has more Snow bees to get of rid. Every time you get rid of all Snow bees on a level (displayed on the top of the screen), you get to another round, new level. You can also push tree diamond-blocks - distributed randomly on levels - in a horizontal or vertical line - to have all Snow-bees on screen knowked out for some seconds; move Pengo over them to wipe them out and get bonus-score. 

So how is the game?

In my my view: awesome!!

Multicoloured sprites makes it look very nice. Pengo is cute. The Snow-bees are done really well. It retains the basic feel of the arcade. 
The music is different than the arcade which had «popcorn». Now, I never liked «popcorn» so I think its a bonus to have original Pengo music for the Atari 5200.
Playing it with a third party arcade-stick/joystick (like Wico etc) is the best way, but its not unplayable with the orginal stick; just make sure you really have the stick overtly moved up/down/left/right, not just a little, but all the way, in a firm way, till it touches the edge, etc. But if you have a third-party joystick or an adapter that enables you to use a normal joypad, do that.

Unfortunately, I don´t think you can complete the game; not sure, but I think it goes on and on until you spend all your lives.

I´d rather prefer like 50 or 100 levels, then a «you made it» comment.

I may be rong here, and please comment.

So here is my score.

(I use 1-10, including 1,5...3,5 ... etc)

Graphics: 9
Sound: 8
Playability: Joystick 8,5 / Original Controller 6,5
Lastability: 8
Amusementability: 9

Overall: 8,5

Pengo is awesome, a classic and must-have for the Atari 5200.

By: Giles N


Please let me know what you think.

 

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Edited by Giles N
correcting spelling
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41 minutes ago, fiddlepaddle said:

Pengo used to be my main coin op. I never could do as well with the 5200 stick...it just makes everything harder (than the coin op).

But I still really like the game.

Have you tried with a third-party joystick/joypad (wico or similar)?

 

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1 hour ago, jaybird3rd said:

Thank you for the review!  There are so many outstanding games for the Atari 5200 and the 400/800, and it's great to see that they're still being rediscovered by new players.

Thanks!
Yes, I was really positively surprised at how strong the games for the A5200 system generally were ... even though 69 official titles is not all the world, like many times less than the Sega Master and NES, the quality of the games actually produced was very high.

I mean, technically, Resque on Fractalus is mindblowing... for a home-console system from 1982-84... 

Sad the joystick-problems got in the way (of its general popularity, both back then and now as compared to NES and Sega Master).

Should have been a way of getting someone or some company to mass-produce Atari-5200 joysticks of high endurance and quality for a fair price...

But I have really enjoyed playing Pengo (and other games for the A5200)

And am in the process of getting into more of these games.

I also collect for the A7800, so I´ll probably do some commenting and reviewing on that (system and game-collection) too.

But I´m not the sort of collector who just want to have a game sitting on the shelf.

Ok, fair ´nough if its rare and expensive I´ll perhaps make a back-up cartridge and use that instead, but I want to actually play these games a bit... getting the feel of them...

;-)

Edited by Giles N
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  • 2 weeks later...

I really love Pengo!   It was not a game I had as a kid, so I've only been playing during my "collector" era, but its grown to be a favorite for me on the 5200.  I appreciate how its different every time, so the gameplay is not as boring as the ones that always start the same.  I also like how there are multiple paths to success on any given level.

 

I usually play with a Supreme 78 controller patched through an original Master Play adapter.

 

Ed

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