INTRODUCTION
A company which will always be associated with the hugely popular Pinball series of games is 21st Century Entertainment. Pinball Dreams, Fantasies and more recently Illusions have delighted gamers for the past couple of years, but because of their enormous popularity this causes a slight problem for the company.
I'm sure that the Oxon-based software house wouldn't want to be labelled as 'that' company that created the pinball games. No, I'm sure they would rather be known in the future as a damn-fine company that creates some of the best computer games that money can buy.
The first step in this march towards software success is the introduction of Marvin's Marvellous Adventure - a platformer that dares to stray away from the theme of pinball.
STORYLINE
After the creation of his latest invention, a fantastic brain scanning device, the old Professor decides to celebrate with his favourite food - pizza. After ordering a large deep-pan pepperoni with extra cheese, the Prof decides to take a short nap before his food arrives.
An evil being called the Dark-One takes his chance to steal an important piece of the brain scanner in order to blackmail the Professor. When Marvin the pizza boy arrives, the professor awakes and goes to answer the door.
Before he gets there, the Dark-One switches on the brain scanner and fires it at the Professor. He disappears, but the ray continues to bounce off the laboratory equipment until it hits the Dark-One.
Marvin, during this time, is getting a little impatient and opens the front door, only to trip over a loose power cable and fall directly into the ray. Marvin goes the same way as the previous two victims of the ray and disappears.
The ray has zapped Marvin into another dimension and it's his job to make his way around many weird locations to find and rescue the Professor. Marvin must also retrieve the missing part from the brain scanner and thus defeat the evil Dark-One.
SOUND
Hmm, I have a problem with the tunes in Marvin's Marvellous Adventure. If you own a A1200 the you get an array of second-rate, heard it all before, cheesy musical offerings - basically the sort of tunes that you thought had died a long time ago.
If, however, you're the proud owner of a CD32 then you get a cracking tune that helps make the game flow around at a rather nifty pace. It's all very Whigfield, but at least it's got a quality bass-
The rest of the sound, in both the CD and A1200 versions, is virtually the same, with a smattering of tings, bings and bleeps in all the right places. CD owners get the extra sound of a 'Bill and Ted' guitar riff whenever they complete one of the levels. A tale of two games. The A1200 version gets a thumbs down and is ordered back to music school, while its CD counterpart gets a thumbs up and is promoted to top of the class.
70%GRAPHICS
The first thing you notice about the presentation side of things is just how small everything is. The main sprite is incredibly tiny, but thankfully he is reasonably well animated and jumps and bounces around the screen just as well as any other platform character.
The graphics are all displayed in a wonderful 256 colours via the AGA chipset, although due to the bright colour scheme you sometimes don't realise this fact. The backgrounds are well-drawn in a cutesy/
The animated introduction screens are nicely done and give you a good run-down on what Marvin's adventure is all about. The introduction doesn't feature 256 coloured ray-traced graphics or a pounding atmospheric soundtrack, but you'll soon be skipping past it to start the game anyway.
Graphically, Marvin's doesn't astound you with anything that you haven't seen before. The chunky and brightly coloured graphics will make it appeal to the younger section of the games market.
75%OPINION50%
With its chunky and bright graphics, you may be thinking that Marvin's Marvellous Adventure is aimed at the younger end of the games market. It is, in a way, but with its 60 huge levels Marvin's will be a tough task to complete, even for the most platform-
The various levels feature a host of puzzles and sub-games which start off relatively easy and get progressively harder and harder. Most players will have to be fairly proficient with their joysticks as the game contains a lot of jumping, most of which has to be spot-on otherwise you'll lose one of your precious lives.
There are some nice touches in 21st Century Entertainment's platformer, like the help boxes which contain either a helpful piece of information about the level or a highly useful pass
One of Marvin's biggest problems is that it gets quite boring after a while. There doesn't seem to be anything in the game to excite and make your platform-
I guess if you're a platform addict then you might fancy 21st Century Entertainment's latest offering, but other gamers might want to steer clear.
It was a big and brave step away from the highly successful three pinball games and although Marvin's isn't going to be that successful, I'm sure it won't be long before the 21st Century Entertainment is back invading the charts with something else.