Game Review

Disney was apparently keen on getting into the video games market, and why not? Seems like a great way to make some money licensing stories and characters. And by 1988 they weren't new to this either, with Disney themed games going all the way back to the early 1980's with several Atari 2600 titles, a few from Sierra, and many more having been released. Matterhorn Screamer! for the IBM PC is yet another, this time from Hi-Tech Expressions and featuring Goofy trying to climb the famed Matterhorn. Conceptually, it's not a bad idea; it might not be particularly innovative or anything, but if done right could be a fun game with a popular Disney character. Unfortunately, this one turned out terrible. Graphically, the game is pretty decent for 4-color CGA graphics. However by 1988 CGA only graphics was a little dated looking but this was typical for Hi-Tech Expressions, likely to keep development costs low and the game budget priced. The main issue with the graphics isn't so much how they look as how they animate. Characters are very flickery! Additionally, when Goofy jumps horizontally he disappears entirely for a moment and reappears further over making the whole horizontal jump confusing and cheap looking. To make your way from screen to screen can take some guesswork and memorization; it's not always obvious where the point you can jump from one platform to another is, and in some cases a mistake will cost a life. To jump, you need to move the joystick a direction and push the button — up to jump up, down to jump to a lower platform, and so on. I found it's a bit unintuitive, actually, plus it's not always clear to new players if you should jump horizontally, down, or up when the platforms aren't too far apart. Given that jumping to different platforms is a key part of the gameplay, that's not a good thing to have happen. The controls are rather sluggish too, making avoiding the goats and snowmen more difficult and annoying than it should be whether you have a joystick or just the keyboard. Too bad, as overall, the control issues and flickering kill what could have otherwise been a fun little game. There were also Apple II and Commodore 64 versions which each have graphics that are more colorful but not as sharp as the PC version; they also improve on the animation greatly, so they are definitely preferred to the PC release. Unfortunately, the clunky jumping mechanism remains so those versions, while better, retain that annoying jumping factor so they still aren't as fun as they should have been. Soundwise, there's not much - the PC and Apple II versions have typical internal speaker sounds, but the Commodore 64 version is really disappointing - despite the capabilities of those computers the game only uses a single voice sounding not that much different than the other versions.