PrinceWatercress plays Pendragon

Let's follow up a Pengo clone on BBC Micro with...another Pengo clone on BBC Micro. Yeah, that's what I get for randomly selecting BBC Micro games for playing at times.

Longplay

Pendragon is a clone of Pengo for the BBC Micro written by Gordon J. Key and published in Volume 4, Issue 4 of Micro User from June 1986. Much like in Pengo, you'll be kicking blocks around not only to make a path around the level, but also to temporarily get rid of enemies.

In this particular close, you play as Polly Pendragon, a parrot working in a sugar processing factory. The factory is infested with an enemy known as "the yellow peril" (we're better than that), which eat the sugar as well as attack anyone who is in the factory. You'll need to keep them at bay while pushing four large emeralds into each corner of the room in order to move on to the next room. If you run into an enemy, you're losing a life.

Z and X move Polly Pendragon left and right, : and / move up and down, Space pushes the block you are facing, and M toggles the music, which can get a little annoying after a while.

You start out by facing one monster in the first stage, two in the second and the maximum of three in the third. After that, it's three monsters for every stage after the third. Dealing with enemies is easy: just kick sugar cubes or emeralds at them. It is possible for your attack to miss the enemy, causing them to be unaffected, so keep that in mind. Enemies are best dealt with by giving yourself some space and hoping that the enemies line up with you so you can kick something at them. The more distance you have, the better, for it they are right near the sugar cube you are about to kick, they will destroy it before you can attack. Thankfully, they can't destroy the emeralds.

Placing the emeralds in the corners is a pretty unique way of clearing the stages compared to Pengo as well as other Pengo clones, but it is possible to kick emeralds around in such a way that you cannot get the emeralds into all four corners. If that happens, kiss your chances of moving on to the next level goodbye.

After making a Let's Play out of this game, I wasn't as frustrated with this as I was with Mango. The game controls well as Mango did, and I had a little more room to maneuver. I also liked some of the presentation, such as the diamond on the title screen opening up when you press Space, the instructions being typed out one letter at a time, and the vortex that gets drawn on the green screen before the game begins. 1986, from what I've gathered from the games I've played up until this point, signifies a time when people who were still making BBC Micro games even after the 16-bit micros started taking over knew more about how not just to make a game, but also do some pretty impressive stuff. With that said, this is one of the better arcade-style games that I've played for the BBC Micro, and it's hard to believe that this is a type-in game. If you're looking for a good Pengo clone, this is a good place to start.