Lollypop (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
93Lollypop is a slick platformer, developed by (Swedish?) team Brain Bug, and published by Rainbow Arts and Softgold in 1995. This is a late comer to the party, but it features some nice levels and colours, and this was on stock OCS game - not even AGA! Although it needed 1MB.
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Production Notes:
Captured: 24 Oct 2022
Narrated: 25 May 2023
Completed: 23 Oct 2023 (V3)
Lollypop came up in the Superleague competition Oct 15th and ran to 12th of November 2022. This was my best run, recorded live on the 24th of October. This was actually the very first game I recorded for this series. All the other games were recorded after this, except for Robocop 2, Shadow Fighter and Fightin Spirit; which were all recorded several years ago.
The game was very buggy unless you play using the original IPFs due to the copy protection. During the compo, a coder on EAB managed to put together a better WHDLoad slave, which worked on an A1200 setup, and rarely crashed. So it was the first time players got to play this since back in the day, and now virtually without the protection bugs.
During recording, I really couldn't be bothered to waste my last lives waiting for the platforms and failing to get the chest, so I wandered around the castle. This flaw in the game was annoying, when I realised I could no longer go back in the levels. I used a cheat to access the later levels, and recorded those on the same date.
Danscore:
By 1995, a game had to be impressive to make any kind of splash. Most developers were looking at CDs, and making their games AGA compatible for the CD32. Or they spent a fortune on rendered graphics and playability suffered. Lollypop looks like an AGA game, but it uses some clever Extra Half Bright tricks to look like a console quality title. Scrolling is smoother than it looks in this video, as I was using an old version of WinUAE back then. Playability is good once the player figures out what they need to do, but pressing space for a smart bomb seems a hidden and underused feature. Level 2 is perhaps the most boring, and this can be off-putting for those looking for action or eye candy. Luckily the rest of the game has you covered. Music is memorable and arcadey. Level design is mostly linear. Although most of the time, the text from the items disappears before you can read it, and sometimes these give vital clues. The bonus game also should have been an option on the game, rather than a hidden secret for those lucky enough to beat the game, and also read the text. This game has Superfrog graphics quality, with Turrican responsiveness, and arcade music. But there is something which stops this from getting a perfect score. There are only a few levels compared to Superfrog or Turrican, and there is something lacking on the replay side of things, compared to those games. The ADFs are still all broken, and even the WHD version can crash, and progress doesn't seem to be as rewarding like those games. I'd give this 8 out of 10. I had more fun with Woody's World (Danscore: 7.5), for example, even though it does not look anywhere near as good. This game get's high marks for graphics and music and Lollypop is a good try, but eye candy and quite short levels are one thing, while lacking serious hookability is another.