** Maggie review / 685 words **

Godboy Release v2.1 - Bombjack

** BOMBREV.GIF here **

Another classic game is released for the God-boy and this time 
it's Bombjack. A game which has seen light on many formats 
including the humble spectrum and the Atari ST, yet with all this 
popularity, I had never played it, so without knowing what to 
expect I loaded this latest release. A new intro with wave lines 
draws a new Godboy logo stating the release number of the package 
and with a quick fade, we are thrown into the menu. The intro and 
menu are now the standard for each game. No new features on the 
menu but there are a few different trainer options including "fly 
through platforms" aka Bubble Bobble mode, proving very handy.

Once we've selected all selectable bits, we can start the game, 
again no standard joystick control is available, just keys or 
Jaguar controller pad. This is good to see that the standard 
joystick has been dropped, so many games use this out-dated 
method, even some STe only games don't support the pad, which is 
silly, once you have used a Jagpad there is no reason to use the 
old method! The bombjack title screen appears and some mellow 
music accompanies it, selecting start or pause on the Jagpad 
begins the game. The colours of this release are not as bright as 
the Bubble Bobble release but they suit the game.

The game is a very simple one, collect the bombs before the bad 
guys get you, and although simple provides addictive gameplay. If 
you collect the bombs in a certain order then the player is 
awarded bonus points. The bombs don't fizzle as in previous other 
format versions so it's hard to tell which bombs are the next to 
collect.

The bad guys morph between different shapes and on early levels 
are not very clever, so it's easy to advance far into the game. 
The graphics are small but well detailed and the player can see 
the whole level unlike in Bubble bobble! The player can fly by 
pressing A on the pad and can get higher by holding up also (or 
smoking illegals!). Also by pressing A, the player can stop flight 
and by repeatedly pressing the A key, it is possible to hover.

This game is nice and simple and very relaxing to play until you 
get killed then it gets stressful! surprisingly the Reservoir Gods 
(RG) crew had not used any of the same samples used in Bobble 
Bubble in this release. yet the same care and attention has been 
shown over the selection of samples used. The music is also done 
by musician MSG, another MOD played at 50KHz which is pleasant 
with a "chip" feel to it. Talking to MSG on Internet Relay Chat 
(IRC) he said that is was one of his early MODs, and shows his 
obvious chip music roots. There are separate music parts for the 
start, in-game and game over sections of the game.

Those of you who managed to download release v2.0 from the RG 
website, will quickly see that the game has been speeded up, so it 
is well worth getting v2.1, the game feels twice as quick! There 
isn't a lot more I can say about this, so onto the verdict!
 Uppers

Another God-Boy game to add to our collection.
Another addictive game, with nice graphics, well selected sound 
effects and good music.
It's also FREE!
 Downers
Music gets a bit annoying but only after a while. Only 60 levels 
:)
  Verdict
60% Gameplay
60% Music
85% SFx

Not as revolutionary as the first release but still a welcome 
addition to our hard drives.

Just because the Reservoir Gods have lots of Gameboy games doesn't 
mean that they are not going to spend the time on them. It shows, 
they has taken time, care and effort in this the second release, 
we can only hope to see more. The God-Boy is possibly the most 
ground breaking thing we've seen on the Falcon, not only ground 
breaking but fun too. Keep up the good work guys!

** Italics on **
FuNBoY 2 / CrAcArT
** Italics off **