Smurf: Rescue In Gargamel's Castle

"Insipidly true to the cartoon and rather pleasant. A sort of light music for video games."

Smurfs were a big craze when Atari was popular--there must have been a hundred of the little blue guys with white hats. They even had a TV show and a silly theme song that sounded a lot like J. Geils Band's ''Centerfold,'' although I'm not sure which came first. I guess the Smurfs were a bit more wholesome entertainment, even if fringe right-wingers might frown on an all-male community, or if they suffered increasing backlash as the fad wore off and progressively more boxes of SmurfBerry Crunch went unsold at the grocery store. After a few years the Smurfs bowed to either Family Values or a good marketing idea and annexed a female, Smurfette. There would later be four Smurflings, two of which were female, but the main thing about the Smurfs was that they, under the guidance of Papa Smurf(white beard) all fought together against evil Gargamel, who hung out in his castle with his cat, Azrael. Of course, in this game you go at it alone, running left to right and avoiding obstacles(you touch ANYTHING, even the edge of a pit, and you die) over four difficulty levels to reach Smurfette within a time limit. You can't climb up or down, but pushing the joystick up can help you to jump over obstacles. More than one jump in a row will make all later jumps huge leaps, which can get you more points too. You can also back out of a screen if a monster approaches you and you're not prepared.

There are only seven scenes in one level(two are identical,) and on difficulty level X you have to go through the same scene X times in a row, with the monsters maybe moving differently, before advancing. You start off at your Smurfy house. There's no way to die here, but at the next scene there is a fence you need to jump over. The next scene is a stream that you can rather quaintly drown in, followed by a scene with a series of three plateaus(more jumping) and then a scene with a spider in a pit--you have to jump in and out of the pit, and the spider goes up and down on the screen, so you need to time your run past it. After another stream scene, there is a final scene where you must jump on blocks and get to Smurfette. You then are sent to the next difficulty level, or you play through it again if you're already at level four. On level two, more monsters appear: birds you may need to super-jump on the plateau and fence and castle scenes, and a snake that moves randomly back and forth on the stream scene. As difficulty levels increase, the monsters go faster, too. You need to think out a strategy in advance, but it won't hurt your brain to.

The graphics are quite good. You can see clouds moving in the background in the stream scenes, and although the final room is quite spare, it's rather cute when your smurf touches noses with Smurfette. The static backgrounds are perhaps a minor version of Pitfall, although I like the Smurf house. The normally smiling Smurf sitting down and frowning when he ''dies'' is also amusing and might remind people these days of Beavis.

This game is a good esteem builder at the lower levels, and on the easy level, you will need five minutes. On the other hand, the final level is worth a try, because it's not too easy, and there is some variation in the scenes with a snake or bird. It's too bad Gargamel and Azrael are left out, but Smurf Rescue is a very cute Atari game and deserves a mention. Many others fell short of what their commercialism promised, but this one has unique challenges, even if there are ultimately only a dozen things you can really do.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/24/01, Updated 04/24/01