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Much of RoboCop’s challenge comes from working out what your actually supposed to do half the time. For what appears a simple run n gun, there are a few WTF moments! Combined with trying not to run out of power (time) there is a significant challenge here!

Of all the tie-ins from LJN to make it across the pond, I think its strange to see a game based on a cartoon that was never released here, which in turn is based on a public service announcement for wearing a seatbelt, also never shown over here! Yes that’s right, this game has its roots in road safety! While we had Darth Vader as the Green Cross Man, America had the incredible crash dummies, telling folks not to be a Dummy and wear a seatbelt.

Perhaps the biggest difference in Donkey Kong Jr vs Donkey Kong is that this time, Mario (known as Jumpman still), is in fact the villain of the piece. Instead of saving Pauline from Donkey Kong, you control Donkey Kong Jr (better known simply as Donkey Kong on Super Nintendo), and must save your dear pa (the villain of the first game) from the clutches of Mario. It’s a nice touch to spin on the way heroism is portrayed and credit to Nintendo for a fresh approach.

While Donkey Kong is nothing but charming, it holds more in common with a generation of games that preceded it on Atari systems than it does with what followed on the NES, a period in gaming driven by high scores not end-screens. By the time you can make a cup of tea, you could have complete this. Not much challenge but a joy to play regardless.

Soccer was one of many ‘Black Box’ launch titles for the NES. These mainly consisted of short arcade ports of already existing Nintendo games, along with some original games including crackers like Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Metroid, Zelda, Kid Icarus to name a few. It also included Soccer! Quite possibly the worst, (though there’s still a lot to come) football game on the system.

Besides being based on the same movie, the two games couldn’t possibly be more different. Activision’s offering had all the charm and aesthetic you’d expect from what was essentially a cobbled together collection of mini-games, none of which were particularly fun to play, all of which felt particularly phoned in. It was also a difficult game to beat. Hal Lab’s entry is the polar opposite. Perhaps not crafted with quite the love of their later Kirby game, but nonetheless created with a seemingly effortless expertise that instantly shines a proton beam at Activision’s lacklustre failure.

After MANY attempts, I still couldn’t make it past the first level. With only 3 lives it just didn’t seem possible! The manual eluded to there being continues though I couldn’t find one and with Google results being anything from misleading to completely wrong, I was fighting a losing battle to find it. Eventually, I find if you shoot either the word ‘game’ or ‘over’ you can continue from the beginning of the stage. You get one chance at this, miss and your back to the start of the game! Its Adventure Island all over again! What is wrong with these developers? As if the game isn’t already hard enough. Inevitably you’re going to mess up the continue at some point (4 times for me), its a cruel, final middle finger to the player.

Remember Bucky O’Hare, the fearless green rabbit and his band of intergalactic do gooders? No? Well neither do I to be honest bar the theme song for some reason. It was a short lived cartoon in the 90s. I do remember buying a figure off the show as a present for a party of a primary school friend. He cried when I gave it to him. It’s okay though, I didn’t like him much anyway!