"Glurg...'Waiter! Next time, I'd like some FUN with my weird!'"

I suppose we all have people we've just gotten used to, maybe because we've even tried to, and we've convinced ourselves they aren't half bad. Somehow along the way I've given a few video games a similar benefit of the doubt, and Mr. Do!'s Castle(MDC) is surely one of them. Although it only gives you two lives(the less to forgive your mistakes with, my dear) and seems to be purposely clueless about now-obvious control conventions, I've found there is strategy and gratification whacking the pudgy wiggling unicorns that smother the platforms where Mr. Do must run around and surrepititiously bang his xylophone mallet. Yes, it's the worst of the Mr. Do games, not counting the original Dig Dug rip-off. And it seems to cheat. But when you figure out how to mass-murder a few of the stupid deviously smiley unicorns despite how they feel like they cheat, it's almost worth it.

Mr. Do would make a decent novelty tune songwriter if he were an actual person and with his clown costume he looks the part, too. If nothing else you can say his games have variety, and here, although you are stuck in a row of platforms six high, it's the illogical physical barriers you have to overcome that give MDC legitimate challenge. Each platform is made up of several tiles which you can whack with your mallet. This creates a hole that you can fall through, but unicorns chasing you will get stuck there for a few seconds. You'll have to drop something on the unicorn's head to kill it, and there are bonuses for making them drop far. And the kicker is that unicorns can pass their comrades who got fox-holed, but can you? Like heck. All this means it's tough to get past unicorns and you'll have to use swiveling ladders, which you can push from side to side, or roundabout ways to get past unicorns who often stand around and move back and forth. They're good at it. Why don't they just run at you predictably like good dumb animals? As it is they often stop to catch their breath.

It all makes you mad enough you wish you could just whack the unicorns on their head with the mallet. Not that that does anything after the first couple of levels. They just back up out of the way and they often slink together so you can't tell there are two--in which case a swing of the mallet separates them. One chases after(and gets) you while the other backs off. And you can't really wait around to match them either as eventually red unicorns will change to green or, worse, split into two helmeted blue beetly unicorns. Things get even more amoebic shortly and you're left with no hope despite the blues being incredibly stupid. Suddenly they become fast, and you're toast. Even when unicorns pause randomly on an earlier level it's not all good. Often they'll do so just as you swing your mallet, which you must time right, and then they run in on you. Once the levels have cycled(there are eight layouts) the blue beetles appear right away, and skilled players will be able to jump around for a whole half minute without much killing before they go to the inevitable. Woo-ha.

There's also a problem with controls. Sometimes if you knock out a tile on a platform and try to climb a stair, the game thinks you want to fall down the hole you created. In that case it's only ninety degrees off but just you try climbing up one of the stairs you can swivel and moving left/right a bit early. You'll climb right back down! It's one of the most malicious things I've ever seen a game do. I figure it assumes if you're stupid enough to throw in a couple of quarters(on the first one you'll just get wiped out by the unicorns, whom you have no clue how to kill) it can play stupid too.

The regular Mr. Do themes such as a diamond for a free game(even better: you get out of the mess of a level you're in) and bashing yellow television-shaped monsters with E, X, T, R and A inside them for an extra life--and a cute cut scene where Mr. Do pulls down flags before Mario got in on the act, saved me from going completely crazy. There are three key tiles on the board that you can swat, and a door opens up at the parapet where you can pick up a shield and go after the ex-unicorns. It doesn't last very long, but you are relatively much faster and have the option to go bashing tiles to change the blobs' letters. Flailing about in holes, they're rather more cute than the red-and-green unicorns, maybe because they're not lethal.

Fortunately there are weapons of mass extermination besides the shield which give the game a saving grace. Knocking one unicorn onto another, or lining them up vertically in holes, is quite a treat. And there are also skull tiles--hit the first and last, and all the monsters on your hastily made bridge go crashing down. It's also refreshing to know you don't have to bash the unicorns to solve the level. You can also take out all the cherry tiles. So you can have fun with gratuitous violence, the sort you need after probably getting nowhere in your first ten tries. However the most fun I had was creating a ledge where monsters couldn't approach me from the other side. I bashed out every single square except for the last bridge one. Then with the monsters all together--boom. But when the best part of a game involves waiting and taking a break from the unfairly taxing parts, it's not a good sign.

The sound, neutral bubbly background music aside, is excruciating, but not quite up to the unicorns' screamy drops to start things off; you'll be using your mallet a lot, and it makes a cross between a screech and a springy noise. The environs blend your typical colors one just doesn't see in men's suits outside those involving satisfaction of prurient urges, and although they don't hurt your eyes you're left with the realization that anything drab would be a small improvement. The flags raised with each letter monster you bash are a nice touch, but I wish they'd put in some other fruits than cherries in the tiles, though.

Overall there's a fine line between weird and adventurous, and Mr. Do!'s Castle is pretty far on the wrong side of it. It is one of the uncoolest things I've ever seen that involved a castle, and it will serve you best when you are in one of those life's-not-fair fits and actually want to do something about it, or if you need a daily dose of strangeness. But you may be best off not looking into things even though eventually there's a way beyond the unfairness of animals acting smart and computers acting dumb. If the game made me madder, and I was the sort of person who lost my temper, it could drive me to something crazy like running around bashing cherries with a xylophone mallet. Or something.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/01, Updated 09/15/03