Doodlebugs. They were those strange looking bombs with wing-
Impressed? Don't be - I found all this out from the dictionary. The first and only thing that sprang to ind when this disk arrived in the office was that awful song from a few years ago, whereby the banal chant "Do-do the doodlebug" was repeated about 300 times to the lacklustre rhythm of a couple of snare drums and an acoustic guitar.
Given the above information then, you would be forgiven that this page is dedicated to a strategy game set around 1945, where you as the hero invade hostile territory atop a flying bomb in search of minerals (using your non-
Or possibly not. Doodle Bg is in fact a cartoony platformer set, astonishingly enough, in the world of Cartoonia.
The king of Cartoonia is up in arms - his beautiful daughter, the Princess Lady Bug, has been kidnapped, spirited away in the dead of night by a large shadowy figure with an evil cackle.
Herein lies the problem - obviously the king would like his daughter back fairly sharpish but Cartoonia, but its nature, is a bit short on large, shadowy evil people who might be up to the job of rescuing her.
You see, most inhabitants of this unlikely land are small, bright and friendly, and much better suited to working as a stunt double for Tweetie Pie than as a destroyer of dark overlords.
There's always one though isn't there? In this case it's you - a 'brave little bug-
The king is grateful of your offer - so grateful in fact that he promptly presents you with a few magic pencils and various other pieces of brightly coloured stationery to assist you on your quest.
A long-handled sword, a pocketful of grenades and the odd automatic weapon would have been nice, but hey - you got pencils! C'est la vie.
Toyland is your first port of call, and very nice it is too. Jack-in-
It is here where you realise that the magic pencils aren't quite useless as they first appeared. For instance, when thrown, the blue pencil turns into an umbrella which will slow down your descent should you, say, fall off a doll's house or something.
Other pencils will turn into balloons (to tale you to higher places), potion bottles (for temporary invincibility) and stopwatches (freezes the enemies a few seconds).
Don't despair if you find yourself in a tricky situation - Doodle Bug carries a rubber at all times which rather handily doubles as a kind of smart bomb for instant disposal of hostile creatures.
Other levels are in a similar vein - bright colours and cute creatures asunder relating for the theme - Forbidding Forest and Fortress to name but, erm... two.
What else then? Well, Doodle Bug has quite a nifty spin attack with which he can do away his adversaries, and there's loads of stuff to collect such as money, fruit and power-ups, all of which add a little to your paltry armoury.
The sound throughout is really good - Liz the art girlie is driving me mad humming the tune as I write. Amiga owners will be chuffed with the numbers of effects, and the graphics are great.
Although they don't come right out and say it, I guess this game is aimed at the younger market, just in time for Christmas.
The truth is, I had a good time playing it - it's a little bit easy, but fun, and there's loads of going on so you, or your beloved off-