"Easy to get a hang of, tough to get good at" describes this game perfectly.
Ogg, the caveman, has just discovered a new form of transport - Kickstart the turtle. All day long he tries to train Kickstart to jump and run. However, the turtles isn't too keen and Ogg keeps falling flat on his face.
Help Ogg ride Kickstart, avoiding the snakes, pterodactyls, holes, dinosaurs, toadstools and any other prehistoric hazards. Get him to the 'phone box' so that he can tell his wife that he'll be late for tea!
Z and X let you move left and right, respectively. Return lets you jump. Q and S turn the music on and off, respectively.
When you start the game, you'll be jumping over the divots with Return. Running into them will cause you to fall flat on your face and lose a life. Other things you'll need to watch out for are dinosaurs who stretch their heads out from the right side of the screen and take away from the amount of room you have to move around on the screen, flying pterodactyls that you'll need to avoid jumping into, snakes that move up and down and can only be avoided with careful movement and positioning, mushrooms,
To avoid the snakes, make sure they are up as they move up and down when you pass by them. To avoid the mushrooms and other ground-based hazards that are not divots in the ground, you'll need to hold Z and then jump to jump over them.
You have three lives, and if you lose them all, it's game over. You can get an extra life, but you'll need to get 5,000 points to do it, and in order to get that many, you have to clear the first loop! When you lose all your lives and start the game again, you'll need to move all the way to the left, as the game remembers where you were positioned when you got a game over and sticks you there when you restart, which can throw beginning players off guard.
If you get a high score, you can use Z and X to select between the letters at the bottom of the HUD, then press Return to choose a letter. Amazingly, the HUD handles everything that the game does.
Aside from the three eggs that serve as your lives as well as your score, you also have a bone that serves as a progress meter that fills up from right to left. It starts at blue, then goes to green, then yellow, and then red. When the gauge is filled, you'll enter the next area. At the bottom of the screen are flags, much like in Galaga, and the more you have, the further you are in the game.
In Level 1, there are just divots in the floor. You can just stand in place and jump over them with Return.
In Level 2, there are pterodactyls in the air above your head. You can still jump over the divots in the ground like before, but you'll need to make sure you're ahead of the pterodactyls so that you don't hit your head on one and lose a life.
In Level 3, you'll be avoiding snakes as they move up and down in the trees above. Don't jump, and make sure the snakes are moving upwards when you move past them.
In Level 4, there are mushrooms. You'll need to move towards them and press Return to jump over them at the right time, and if you don't get the timing down, you will crash, lose a life, and start the whole level over.
In Level 5, you're jumping over...something. I'm guessing they're supposed to be logs. Jump over these the same way you did the mushrooms in Level 4.
In Level 6, there are frogs that leap up and down. You'll need to jump over them when they are not airborne, or else you won't make it. You may have to move towards them before jumping over them.
In Level 7, you're jumping over what look like rocks in a cave. While you can jump over these like you did the mushrooms in Level 4, the main problem I have in this level is that the dinosaur head usually shows up and effectively cuts the amount of area I can move around in by more than half.
In Level 8, you're doing the same thing as Level 7, but the pterodactyls are back. Once again, you'll need to be ahead of the pterodactyls to ensure you don't hit your head on one. I only reach this level and the next one once, and it is during the longplay.
In Level 9, the level is the same as Level 2. You should know what to do here. When you get past this screen, you'll reach the phone box, then you'll play a second loop where the levels are a little different once you get past the second level. You'll even have a little flag on the lower-right corner of the screen proving that you beat the game.
As you play, sometimes you will see a dinosaur stretch its neck and poke his head out from the right side of the screen. As long as the dinosaur is there, you'll have much less room to maneuver in the current level, and it can make some of the higher levels a pain.
This is a fun game, but it is challenging and it can be frustrating and aggravating. The trial and error nature of the game will keep you on your toes, but it does make the second half of the game frustrating, especially when you keep losing all your lives in it and have to play up to that point again just to get there. Is it still worth checking out? Why, yes. You won't be playing it for long and you'll eventually go to something else, but it's still a fun arcade-style game for the BBC Micro and is definitely worth giving a go.
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