Harlequin

The Good
The storyline is rich and interesting, creating a believable fantasy world free of cliché and ensuring that you really come to empathsise with Harlequin. The main character's animation is quite vivid and Prince of Persia-esque.

The Bad
It's not very smooth though, and further sacrifices have been made in terms of the bland backdrops and uninspiring enemies. The main sprite's clothes appear to have been chosen by either Elton John or Stevie Wonder - a real fashion nightmare.

The level designs consist mainly of making a succession of minute-precision jumps, missing one because of a weasely little clock getting in your way, and falling down to the point of having to make the last 15 jumps again. This is forgivable once or twice, but soon becomes the bane of your existence. Instead of having lives, you have a depleting energy bar, which drops without you really noticing, and prevents you from really knowing how the game is progressing in the heat of the moment.

Inexcusably, there are 4 disk swaps before the game even starts. The third of these spins the disk for about 2 seconds, and the fourth of them doesn't access the disk unless you complete the first section - if you don't, you'll instantly have to swap back. It doesn't even recognise a second disk drive, let alone a hard drive.

The Bottom Line
A platform-based game with a strange setting, by many of the same people as the Switchblade and Zool titles. It's one of the few Gremlin titles of the era not to get at least one sequel, and that (not it's impressive reviews in the Amiga magazines) might be the best indication of its lack of quality. I've never met anyone who likes it - prove me wrong.