In a week which has seen some crazy, scene destroying stuff go down in the ZX Spectrum scene (Hungry Horace is involved, say no more) the small island of sanity that is the Retro Games Forever ZX Spectrum Challenge presented us with Pogo to challenge our game playing skills. As usual my skills weren’t in evidence to any extent, as they don’t actually exist. Nevertheless I gave it a shot, and found yet another new game to enjoy on the old 8 bit Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
For anyone who has ever played the Arcade machine of the most sweary character in gaming history, Q’Bert, this game will be extremely familiar, as it is basically a very good clone of the Arcade title. It has all of the same enemies chasing you down, the same diagonally traversed pyramid to change the colour of, and ever increasing difficulty of the classic game. Pogo plays extremely well on the Speccy, with some big colourful sprites, very little colour clash and the same great gameplay as the game it copies. There isn’t much in the way of sound, but you are concentrating more on not falling off the pyramid while avoiding the nasties.
So that’s Pogo, in a nutshell, it’s Q’Bert. A very good clone of it, but still basically Q’Bert. Fun arcade style gaming but on your ZX Spectrum using a joystick or keyboard.