NEXT SHIFT TIPS
Great to see that classic 8-bit gameplay never dies in this smart Spectrum Next game. Here are a few tips to get you going…
It’s a test of your hand-eye coordination as you must move the two Henrique chaps up and down at the same time. I remember similar games on the old VIC-20 — great fun! Just keep one eye on the top-left conveyor at all times — this is where the Nexts first appear for you to man-handle through the machine.
Just take your time to get used to the rhythm of the game while things are slow. The machine soon speeds up!
Have you got any playing tips, cheats or POKEs to share? Email: chris@ fusionretrobooks.com
The Nintendo Game & Watch series will always have a special place in every retro gamer’s heart, so I was overjoyed to discover this remake of Donkey Kong Jr from
1982 called Funky Monkey Kid. Here are some retro playing tips…
For those not in the know, the Game & Watch games had LCD screens where every game sprite was always there, just either on or off. That made for jumpy animations, but meant you could always see parts of the game you may have missed by looking when the screen initiated and showed everything!
The baby monkey must rescue his papa from the evil Italian plumber bloke (no brand names here — Ed). He does this by jumping over the snapjaw crocs and avoiding the flying birds. As the animation is not smooth, you need to anticipate where those critters are moving to next and press early to jump or avoid them.
The baddies can even be eliminated completely by knocking the blue fruit out of the tree and banging them on the head.
The game gets extra tricky once you’ve got on to the top level and close to the cage. There’s a swinging key up there. You need to time a diagonal jump perfectly to catch that key… four times! Papa monkey will be freed a little each time, his cage flashing red, and the game will speed up a bit.
If that’s not hard enough for you, you can switch to Game B where the amount of time you are allowed to hold onto a vine is reduced from 10 seconds to 5 — but let’s not do that eh?