Systems > Apple II > S > Sammy Lightfoot > User Review
Sign up for a free user account and you can leave feedback for this review or even submit a game review of your own!
Review by aschultz
May 20, 2009
Controlling Sammy is pretty simple, though it is exasperating to hold down a button when he swings on a rope five times back and forth until the coast is clear, or even to bounce him higher on a trampoline. The real challenge is figuring out what to do: platforms vanish in a different order in each sub-level, and pool balls come down from different sides and bounce several ways. This is upsetting, as players new to a level will have to sit and watch for a while, and in order to get anywhere, they need to watch their bonus count down to nothing. You can still win a level without a bonus. But there is a steep diminishing return to scale of points scored versus effort.
The three sub-levels to navigate are sufficiently bizarre that you will definitely want to go through them once. The first level has a sequence of trampolines. You start in the lower right, bounce on one to get to a new platform, running jump to another, then bounce on one under the upper left. Jump over a gap, touch the pad on the right to start a rope swinging, then fall off the rope to land on a platform with the evil orange smiley you may remember from Russki Duck. Along the way, pool balls roll from the upper left, over the last trampoline, and from the upper right. Each one can bounce at you a different way, and you need to account for either random move they may make. Unfortunately, there's little to stop the same ball appearing four times in a row, which gets exasperating even when you know what to do. In later levels, balls bounce differently, and depending on their color, it may be better to duck them than jump over.
The next level has you jump across four platforms that disappear in a fixed order. Boxes bounce up and down to distract you, and once you get to the left, you need to jump back on these boxes, which have different speeds going up and down. Make it across and you go to the upper right, where you get on a platform that bucks and swerves almost randomly. By level six it is impossible to predict which way it'll go. I had a murderous time with save states many years later, and a colossal amount of memorization is involved. Most people would rather save that memorization for a good RPG or text adventure.
The final level has Sammy run through a box of bouncing balls, jumping over them as needed, then going up and running past pipes that bash up and down while a ball rolls along the floor. The pipes are asynchronous enough that Sammy can eventually run through, but as in the first level it's a case of battling your impatience more than anything else. You'll get to the top where you jump from one swinging rope to the next and land away from that orange smiley.
The only real payoff here, besides a top ten list the game saves to disk(VERY snazzy in the eighties) were Sammy's amusing little penguin-style victory dances. Unfortunately, they do not change with the levels, so if you get through the first wave, there's no excuse to go on. The game just gets pickier, the only real wrinkle being the bouncier pool balls in the first scenario.
When put up against games like Hard Hat Mack, SL fails because it is either way too random, or the sequences to win are much too complex to remember. This game really needed to quit around level seven, with a funny winning scene, or at least loop back to level zero as a sop to someone who was able to fight through the entire game. It's a pity as the canopies and platforms you jump over are rather colorful, the disappearing platform ideas are rather clever, the overall scenes are well thought out, and both the death and victory scenes are funny. It's just that the game really only shuffles what happens, and once you know what to do, you have to sit and wait a long time to go ahead and do it.
Rating: 4/10
|
|
|
Most recent video game reviews written by aschultz
Dragon Wars (Apple II) [February 06, 2012]
Eternal Dagger (Apple II) [January 21, 2012]
Othello (NES) [January 09, 2012]
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (Apple II) [November 15, 2010]
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (Apple II) [November 14, 2010]
|
You can click the tabs on the above bar to choose whether you wish to read comments from visitors who have posted on Facebook, or from registered site users who have left feedback on the forums. Please leave a comment of your own if you have anything to say!
|
|
|
Follow Us |
Advertise exclusively for 1 month... only $1000!
Recent Forum Discussions
+ JoeTheDestroyer's Tales of Phantasia review
+ Alpha Olympics 2012
+ holdthephone's Final Fantasy XIII-2 review
+ Where's SkyWard Sword's review ? And please bring back the rating feature.
+ JoeTheDestroyer's Area 51 review
+ zippdementia's Mega Jump review
+ [News] Schafer has pitched Psychonauts 2, Minecraft dev says 'let's make it happen'
+ playstation vita, yo.
+ RotW January 29 - February 04 2012
+ Games to be added to the database...
+ The Final Fantasy XIII-2 thread
+ [News] Final Fantasy X HD will be a remaster, not a remake
Staff Game Reviews
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim |
| SoulCalibur V |
| The Simpsons Arcade Game |
| Quarrel |
| Star Ocean: The Last Hope |
| Pushmo |
Site Staff
 |  | ||
 |  | ||
 |  | ||
 |  | ||
 |
Featured Reviews [+]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Rayman Origins |
| Othello |
| Scarface: The World is Yours |
| The Last Express |
| Golden Axe II |
| Assassin's Creed: Revelations |
Exclusive User Reviews [+]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Tales of Phantasia |
| Mega Jump |
| White Knight Chronicles |
| Dragon Wars |
| F-Zero GX |
| Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door |
Info |
Help |
Privacy Policy |
Contact |
Advertise
© 1998-2012 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site--from reviews, guides, cheats and editorials to message board posts--may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Sammy Lightfoot is a registered trademark of its copyright holder. This site makes no claim to Sammy Lightfoot, its characters, screenshots, artwork, music, or any intellectual property contained within. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors.
