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Pocket Card Jockey: varied results

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In Pocket Card Jockey, you play as a jockey who controls his horse through the medium of games of solitaire – specifically, a variant of golf solitaire – while managing stamina, steering through the pack, and deciding when to use a boost on the final stretch. It is a wonderfully eclectic collection of game types, and it can feel as if nothing is going right as you run out of draw cards, collide with other horses, and miss out on the blue fire boosts on the course – or, conversely, as your horse hits 100% enthusiasm coming onto the final straight with only two horses ahead, you can feel on top of the world. It’s pretty stressful.

The individual races are part of a wider game was well, with you training up a horse (owned by a variety of odd entrepreneurs) through the racing season for two years, during the ages of 2 and 3, before moving that horse to a more stable game mode where stakes are higher but there are fewer powerups. Once that horse has lost a few races in a row, it’s retired to the farm – where you can pair it with another of the opposite sex to try and get a junior who builds on the speed and stamina the two parents were trained with. At any time you can start a new training regime for a new horse.

I realise that most of these screenshots won’t mean anything to someone who hasn’t played the game.

You can buy upgrades which last for a race, but these can be horrendously expensive. At the start of the race you have an initial game where you have to uncover the largest number of start dots as quickly as possible. At the end of the race you steer the horse up and down to avoid getting blocked in, and use up the stamina cards you have left at the right times. There’s a huge amount in the game, and yet it still feels quite simple.

Robocop: initially like a dalek

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Robocop on the CPC is a great game. Responsive, colourful, fast, full of action. It’s also pretty difficult, and relies on you memorising every enemy pattern throughout its levels.

The majority of the game is a side-scrolling platformer. Enemies include standard gun holders (walking along or appearing at windows above), chainsaw users, and flying kick specialists. The latter are pretty easy; as soon as they appear at the side of the screen, you can duck down and they will jump over you when they reach you anyway. Others need to be hit in a certain pattern at certain times to avoid taking damage; there are limited health recharge powerups, and only three lives for the whole game, so preserving health is important. On the second scrolling level (the third overall) there are bikes that you need to crouch down and shoot as soon as they appear, and even then it’s a toss up as to whether they’ll be destroyed before they hit you. I can get to the end of the third level now without losing a life, but only just.

The second mission is a shootout, where you need to hit a kidnapper without hitting the hostage he’s hiding behind. The fourth mission is a photofit game where you need to match up parts of a face. The fifth mission is another side-on platformer, but now you can walk up stairs and the screen scrolls vertically as well as horizontally. I don’t yet know about levels past this, because the enemies keep killing me as I walk up stairs.

Robots are very slow at walking up stairs.

The game is similar to the spectrum version but 34,218% more colourful.

I must admit it took me a while to even know I could walk up the stairs. In the first couple of scrolling sections, you can’t, even though the stairs look exactly the same as they do in the factory level. To walk up stairs you need to be in the correct spot and then press diagonally up, meaning that you are pretty vulnerable to enemies who aren’t standing obligingly at the top.

So it has some foibles, but it’s also a really fun game. I think I have found an exploit on the first and third level, though. The game can only cope with five sprites at a time, meaning that if you can shepherd four enemies along with you, no others will appear. Most enemies will come in from one side, shoot at you or hit you with a chainsaw, and then walk back to the side; they’ll then come back in to get you again. If instead you just walk along behind them, they’ll carry on walking away from you all the way to the end of the level. If four of the flying kick people are clustering you, you can just keep on ducking their attacks and walking along when they’re off screen.

Zuma: still struggling

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I can’t remember when I first played Zuma, but suffice to say it was in the early days of the Xbox 360. In the years since then, I have completed five of the twelve levels.

I don’t know why I find it so hard. Playing it yesterday I think I understood some of the mechanics better than I had before – the ways in which higher points can give you a quicker completion with balls stopping spawning earlier, and how to best use explosions and other power-ups. I also remembered to swap the balls I was firing sometimes, trying to set up combos. And yet I still failed at level 6-4, losing all three lives.

Kieron is unfeasibly good.

Maybe one day I’ll get to level 7. I have Zuma’s Revenge sitting mockingly on my Xbox, ready to be played when the first game is completed.

Dadish 3D (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Not part of the Dadish Collection but I felt, having completed all those, I just had to give it a go.

It’s exactly what you think it is – it’s the same game again, but in 3D. Same characters, same plot, even similar level themes, but being 3D it feels different.

I have to say, that the platforming doesn’t work as well here. As is often the case with 3D platformers, judging distance is hard and in Dadish 3D usually means die-and-retry, so it’s more frustrating than I’d like.

It’s still OK, but not as enjoyable as the 2D games.

87: Harvest Dune

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Did you miss us? Because we sure missed you -insert-heart-emoji-! But you can dry your -insert-eyes-emoji- because we’re back with Episode 87 and oh what a lovely time we had -insert-microphone-emoji- recording it for you.

You’d think after a break we’d have more game -insert-newspaper-emoji- to tell you but actually all we’ve got is An Actual Show Report From ComicCon (And the ghost of EGX), and the new Analogue 3D console. Fear not though -insert-ghost-emoji- because we did play a lot of viddyyo games and -insert-male-child-emoji- did we talk about them. These games, in fact:

  • Metal Gear Solid V: Le Pain Fantômes
  • Mario Plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle
  • The Armstart of Link: Echoes of Wisdom
  • Invincible Presents: Atom Eve
  • Castlevania Dominus Collection
  • Merge Boss
  • Rare Replay
  • Forza Horizon 2 (and 3, and 4, and 5)
  • NBA 2K21
  • Pump It Up

Plus all the usual deviations, questions and -insert-excrement-emoji- you all enjoy about our little show so much. And, for some reason, a full explanation of what the Fulton surface-to-air extraction system is because -insert-shrug-emoji-.

(Direct link here)

Intro music credits: Bloody Tears jazz cover by Eric Ladish

Don’t forget, if you want to contact us with questions or comments for or about the show, you can email podcast@ugvm.org.uk or publicly shame us https://mas.to/@ugvmpodcast on the Mastodons.