"Once upon a time, Sierra made a clunky yet entertaining VIDEO game."

Sierra may have had a lot of annoying video games in their Space Quest adventures, but they are also responsible for an occasionally annoying and lamentably forgotten video game. In this game, your big-haired protagonist(his orange coif is as tall as he is, and he's got a sizable conk too--err, that's old-fashioned slang for schnoz) must get to a platform at the top, so he can repeat the task on the next scenario. The game itself cycles through three scenarios, which brings up memories of Donkey Kong, although it lacks the purpose and memorable antagonist. But Mario never had hair this big, and it never spun around when he died. One thing I still don't understand about this game is that it allots bonus points for each level you complete, yet there are no other ways to score points. On higher levels this can be rather distressing--you can complete one and get no points. This doesn't seem an acceptable way to add to the underlying surreal atmosphere, which the level requirements already sufficiently emphasize.

The controls aren't totally logical either; I mean, yeah, you don't have to rotate or flip your joystick to make MOVING him intuitive, but when you jump on a swinging rope, you have to hold down the button you used to jump. It's probably a good move to force you to hold the joystick button down if you want to jump higher(jumping up from a trampoline takes three jumps)

So what are the three scenarios in Sammy Lightfoot?

In the first scenario, you're stuck on the bottom right. You jump on a trampoline, bounce up, then jump off a trampoline to the next platform(you can jump past the trampoline or short of the platform on the bounce,) then swing on a rope, jump on a trampoline to a top level, touch a white pad which starts a rope swinging back and forth, and catch the rope and jump onto a small platform at the top where an orange smiley face that seems to have glasses moves back and forth. Sammy then treats you to a little dance. The only things in your way are cue balls that pop up from the upper left and take two possible paths--lower and upper right.

In the second scenario, there are two large platforms at the bottom and four in between. You must jump across the four while avoiding six blue blocks that bounce up and down, and you need to watch out for the disappearing middle platforms, too. They always disappear in a certain order for each level, although the missing platform may switch rapidly or quickly each time you try to go through the level(note--if you fall off, you don't even get to see Sammy's hair spin.) When you get to the left, the end platforms rise, and you must jump on top of the six blocks back to the right. From there you must get on a platform that looks like a scrub-brush. It zooms around, and you must maneuver Sammy to stay on it to see his end-of-level dance.

The third scenario has Sammy go in an s-shaped pattern to the top. At the bottom he must evade a ball that bounces diagonally off a wall, whether by jumping over or running under it. Fortunately it starts out slow and is not the tough part. He then takes an elevating platform to the second challenge, where thick, unidentifiable blue and orange lines spaced like black piano keys drop down from the ceiling and are pulled back up. He must time his run to avoid them, and if he can, he must swing across two ropes in a row over a fire(which he doesn't touch if he falls in) to land on a small platform and avoid our orange friend from the first scenario. His reward? Do it again on the first level!

On subsequent levels, cue-balls come out from the upper edge, and eight-balls, which bounce wickedly, appear as well. There are also more pool balls to deal with. The scrub-brush in the second scenario moves wickedly, and the blue boxes may move up or down quickly. In the third level, the lines drop down more quickly, and you may deal with more and quicker ping-pong balls.

The graphics aren't great, although the platforms have some level of detail in them--basically very flat rectangles with a design inside. I think they've mixed up what color the Apple has pretty well--not much clashing in any scene, but the colors are well varied between scenes. The orange guy that is Sammy's nemesis is pretty cool, and Sammy's emotionless walk, like his mustache, is slightly dorky and quite funny. Although Sammy's quite a guy, Sierra probably did the right thing in not making him their main character as Nintendo did with Mario. The sounds--ahh, the sounds, they rate among the best for an Apple game. There are different jingles for each scenario and level you start, and the spinning-hair tune works out OK. Add the boing noise when you hit the trampoline, and the sounds work as well as you can reasonably expect on the Apple.

While most games with repeating levels seem to flame out or get too tough too quickly, Sammy Lightfoot manages to get logically and incrementally tougher with each cycle. However, much of your strategy will revolve around waiting, and as there's no way to get points or extra men, the lack of rewards may turn you off. Without a level choose options(I believe there's a cracked disk with one) the game can become an extreme exercise in concentrating on something not ultimately important. If you are looking for classic games, you could do worse than Sammy Lightfoot and his rotating hair. You'd be hard put to do weirder, though.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/28/01, Updated 05/28/01