Rumbo

Rumbo is a flick-screen platformer developed in STOS by Pete Halloran and isn't too dissimilar to Rick Dangerous with more than its fair share of <cough> similarities. The story is simple, our girl has been kidnapped by something hideous so it's time we dressed like Rambo and tool-up to begin our valiant rescue mission.

After watching a short, but superb, intro of our girl being kidnapped the game begins inside the underground in caves - a place that only Rick Dangerous himself would normally enjoy exploring. Within here are many rooms with a variety of tricks and traps - but many predictable ones like spikes to leap over. Also, there are some cruel ones like strange creature who appears out of thin air without any warning. I hate him!

The first end of level boss is a giant bat but don't fret too much because it just moves up and down. It's lame and probably should have been left out, if I'm honest. But Rumbo has come prepared for all these monsters and bosses and is loaded with more than enough ammunition, which is something I love about the game.

When level two begins it's pretty much more of the same, but with different graphics! However, there appears to be a bug that prevented me from completing the final(?) room: hitting a switch did nothing that I could see. Thus I found myself stuck with no way to venture on which is a huge shame because I was really enjoying Rumbo until that moment. I'm now wondering if I've missed something stupidly obvious in the previous rooms?

Graphics are quite average joe but do their job even if entering a new room draws at ST Basic speeds. Sound effects are made up of a few fuzzy samples but they're good and I especially liked those howel of death. Also, Rumbo's tippy-tappy walk reminded this old gamer of Chuckie Egg 2 (ZX Spectrum version). I know I'm being daft, but I loved it and it also broke the near-silence due to the lacking in-game music. Which is a shame?

Overall, I have really enjoyed Rumbo which I've found to be balanced and fun to play. Sadly, there's that bug on level two but maybe it was me? I tried it twice and each time I got stuck... Ignoring that, Rumbo offers platform fans to be an avenging squirrel in a Ricky D world. This is cool so grab your bandana and download the floppy disk!