Showing posts with label Dan Aykroyd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Aykroyd. Show all posts

Monday, 20 July 2020

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The Joliet Blues

Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood, harnessing their trademark pseudo-serious demeanour, embark on "a mission from God" in the 1980 Saturday Night Live spin-off movie of the same name. Namely, to grant a reprieve from foreclosure for the Catholic orphanage in which they grew up. This entails reuniting their former R&B band and fulfilling gigs to settle the orphanage's hefty tax bill. In between, they perform various musical numbers, which as it happens, turns out to be a bit of a hindrance time-wise. Then this is a musical comedy.

Plenty of scope there for a worthy computer game translation you might imagine, given the simple task-centric premise, police car chase sequence, and so on. Titus - who were awarded the conversion rights - largely ignored this potential, developing a standard one-player, disc-collecting, running, jumping platformer in which our only weapons are chuckable crates. Regardless, it's a commendable effort, evoking the movie's sentiment and fun-factor, exceeding all expectations normally associated with licensed action game fare.

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Friday, 26 June 2020

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A storm in a proton pack

Ghostbusters II's pixely interpretation sequel is a menagerie of three disparate arcade-action mini-games that attempt to capture the exhilaration of a key sequence taken from the celluloid blockbuster. Comprising 2D scrolling and isometric viewpoints, they range in difficulty from hair-pullingly insane to a walk in Central Park, some more tedious than challenging as a result. Whatever the case, they're at least instantly recognisable and artistically reimagined.

Foursfield took on the developmental duties, whilst it was published by Activision in 1989 for all the popular 8 and 16-bit systems of the era. My assessment attempts to cover them all, tracing each element back to its source material, reviewing the game and movie in synchrony.