Beauty and the Beast

"Climbing buildings is fun.....wait a minute! I'm not the beast!"

Beauty and the beast was an Intellivision game that ripped off Donkey Kong. In this game, you play as a dude in a yellow trenchcoat whose name begins with B (Billy? Barry? Barney?), who has to rescue a beautiful girl from a King Kong-like beast. It should be noted that this game has nothing to do with the Disney movie of the same name, which might not be a bad thing. In any case, you do this by climbing a building that spans 11 screens (Huge for an Intellivision game!) in order to rescue this random girl who got kidnapped by a gorilla.

Graphics: 6/10- Well what do you expect, it's an Intellivision game! Your character, Mr. Yellow Trenchcoat, moves around well, and you can at least tell what everything is supposed to be--birds, boulders, etc. This is more than can be said of a lot of other games of the time. As might be expected, there isn't a whole lot of animation, though what's there is funny, particularly your character falling off the building back to the ground floor.

Sound: 5/10- There's almost no music, except for a few short ditties on the title screen and one or two other places. As far as sound effects go, there's one when you lose a life that almost sounds like a buzzer, and another that sounds like ''Bweeoooooooo'' with the pitch lowering as you plummet off the building. There isn't a whole lot that's memorable here, but at the same time, nothing that serves to leech the fun out of the whole experience.

Control: 7/10- Considering the Intellivision controller (If you don't remember it, be glad), the game controls quite simply and quite well. Left and right move you back and forth quickly, while up and down make you climb up and down windows to bring you closer to your damsel-in-distress. There isn't really anything else to the controls, despite the Intellivision controller.

Gameplay: 6/10- While it isn't particularly original--in particular, it derives from Donkey Kong and its ilk--Beauty and the Beast is an interesting game. Here's how it works. You start at the bottom of a massive building. Beauty and the Beast are at the top. Unfortunately, you don't have any helicopters or any other such devices that will enable you to quickly reach the top. So you have to do things the old-fashioned way--climb up this building on the outside, from floor to floor, stopping on the scaffolding of each floor. You do this for a total of 11 screens, all the while dodging things from birds to boulders. Oh! Did I mention that it's quite possible to fall off the horizontal edge of each floor, meaning essentially you have to start all over? Well it is! Isn't that great?
It's also worth noting that the game has an ending in the Contra vein. After you complete the game, you get a brief reward and then get to do the game over again. It's amazing that a game like this even had an ending, to tell the truth.

Challenge: 8/10- Sooner or later, you're going to run out of lives. In addition, you start with only 3 lives, and don't get any continues. However, the game itself is really not all that difficult--I recall being able to beat it at the tender age of 5 years old.

Replay Value: 6/10- As the game doesn't have any secrets or the like, it has to rely strictly on the gameplay to keep you coming back for more. Sadly, it succeeds only to a limited extent. Once you beat the game once, the game is simply too derivative of Donkey Kong to attract you back for more plays. However, the first time through is quite fun, and it can be interesting to read some of the banners on the plane that flies through the between-level screen. It's also a fun game for the younger crowd.

Overall: 7/10- While the game isn't the most original thing on the planet--truthfully, it plays like almost every game from its era--it's bigger in scope than most games of its types, taking up 11 full screens. It's also a game suitable for young children, as it's really not difficult on the first playthrough (That controller might be killer though!). In short, if you have an Intellivision, this is most definitely a worthy addition to your game collection.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/03/01, Updated 10/03/01