About half a decade ago, a strange platform game appeared on the 8-bit machines. This game looked crude and sounded dire but managed to pick up a strong following. It pitted the player as the mighty doer of mighty deeds, Hercules. Years later, the game has been moved to the Amiga.

You play Yolanda, daughter of Hercules and general gorgeous blonde, who has been cursed by the evil goddess Hera. Hera is extremely envious of Yolanda's little body, flowing blonde hair and curvaceous... (that is quite enough of that, thank you!) and has placed a curse on her, which decrees that anyone who falls in love with her will die within a wekk. Unless Yolanda manages to repeat her father's prodigious effort of solving twelve great tasks.

In the game, each task must be completed by negotiating a series of platform-filled screens in an attempt to reach a goal. Various hazards block the way, such as venomous spiders, deadly crabs, combustible platforms and precarious vines. If the goal of one screen is reached, the next screen of that task appears. If, on the other hand, Yolanda falls foul of the terrible dangers involved, then she is given a chance at one of the other labours.

LASTING INTEREST

Yolanda starts off by being an incredibly difficult game, and proceeds to get harder. Only those with a plethora of platform game completions under their belts will manage to get any distance with the game, whereas the part-time player will more than likely destroy her or his computer, joystick or monitor (delete as they collapse) before abandoning the game completely as just too frustrating and too dated in its concept.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

The sprites and platforms in Yolanda are remarkable. Not due to the detail, nor the animation. What is really incredible is the size - they are TINY! This would not be too bad if the positioning required was not so precies, since the miniscule Yolanda can all too easily miss a spindly vine by inches and plummet to her death in the fire pit below. How frustrating? The soundtrack is racy enough, though, with some pretty powerful instruments being used but it still seems a tad out of place with the mythical background to the game.

JUDGEMENT

Platform games do need to have a considerable amount of challenge, but when the game is as frustratingly hard as Yolanda then things are going too far. The appearance is a little on the dodgy side, with tiny sprites and bland backgrounds, which makes playing the game extremely difficult. Even if you are a hardened platform fan, Yolanda may still be too much to handle, making the air turn blue as you stretch the old rude-word glands to insult the game for the umpteenth time. Classic or not, Hercules is an outdated and ver-plagiarised game.