Top Banana (Commodore Amiga, 1992, Hex)

I am not the one to diss a game for being weird. I previously wanted to create a segment specificaly devoted to such games, but have found others have done a far better job of it, so I decided to stop. But I do enjoy a particularly tripy game every once in a while.

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about scumbags
destroying our planet - rugby players.

Top Banana isn't one of them. Oh sure it can be described as being weird, but then again, that doesn't mean it's automaticaly playable.

First of all, from the moment you turn this thing on, you wouldn't imagine it's supposed to be an enviromental game. The presence of chainsaws and evil radiation logos is pretty much the only connection I can think of. Gameplay wise, you have to climb up verticaly through the level to escape the ever rising water level, kind of like Rainbow Islands, only infinitely less playable. In your way stand a whole bunch of very poorly drawn enemies that most of the time you only have the vaguest idea of what they represent (I only assume the thing throwing coins at you is some kind of evil tycoon/capitalist person, because the sprite itself looks less human then the main character of Non Human). Your main mode of attack (read:only) is to throw hearts at enemies. There is exactly one upgrade to this, and this make them actualy have some range, but is taken away the moment you get hit.

The third boss. Because.....pilots are inherently evil right ?

The items themselves are a realy oddly designed: in order for them to do anything, you have to shoot them, then they grow big and then you can collect them. If you try and pick them up without shooting them first, they hurt you. There are three items: the shooting target (weapon upgrade), fawcet (stops the water for a short while) and finaly, the flower, which activates platforms....yeah I didn't notice them at first myself and ended up screwing myself over.

I know it's hard to see, but there's three enemies ontop
of that middle platform. Scout's Honour !

Now, whenever you get hit by an enemy, or an item that you haven't shelled, you not only take damage but fall through the platform you're on. Oddly enough, getting hit makes the water recede (not sure why, but not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth).

Probably the biggest flaw the game has is your jump. There's no way to jump lower then usual, which 90 % of the time means you're going to hit an enemy as high as two platforms above your starting position, and get hurt. For a game that supposedly boasts that it's just as good as Mario or Sonic on the box, this is realy shameful.

World 4 adds backgrounds that consits of 70 % of
mutlicoloured squares nearly indistinguishable from the
backrground - because the game wasn't hard
enough to make out.

Adding insult to injury the second world adds a section where you have to get up to a certain height before your seperate "radiation" bar runs out, or you take dammage. The reason these are so annoying is because not only does the level invert colours, but it also speeds up by 50 plus %, meaning that getting ontop of moving platforms in that very short and very merciless time limit is a chore. But this wouldn't be so bad if these were only present in the "atomic" level, but no, we have an annoying "innovation" and by god we're going to use the ever living heck out of it ! Out of 12 levels, 9 of them have this segment.

Then there's the bosses. Not much to say, except they seem realy random. The first three have very easy patterns of just jumping up and down across the screen (none of them attack you in any other way) which you can easily sneek under. Only the last boss recquires you to actualy use the platforms present to jump over him.

And finaly, even though on the screen you have two hearts peeking from behind your score, this does, in fact, mean absolutely nothing as you are only given one life to finish the entiere game.

And after all that, what is your reward ?

Looking at this for fifteen seconds and then inputing your high score.

God this was a waste of time.