Game:

Vixen (1988)

Duration: 1:59:30

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I play three games that are connected thematically: their protagonists have the power to transform into animals! They were all also released on Commodore computers in 1988/9.

First up is Annaconda, for Commodore 64. This game may not have actually been released, and it certainly feels unfinished. There's no sound at all, and collision is completely broken. Normally you can't progress past the fourth screen, but with a cracked "no collision" mode I'm able to show the rest of the screens of the game, including the heroine's contextual snake form, in just a few minutes. Since there's no audio, I play some of Stefan Poiss's soundtrack from Parsec in the background during this segment.

Mafdet and the Book of the Dead is next, about the ancient Egyptian goddess Mafdet fighting the minions of Seth to reclaim said book. She has a human form with a woefully short sword and a wimpy kick, but by transforming into a cat (that looks like a small white lion) she goes much faster and can skip every intended fight. So it just comes down to navigating some samey rooms and caverns, which again takes only a few minutes.

Finally I spend a lot of time with Vixen, about a woman raised by foxes who can somehow turn into a fox, fighting against mutant dinosaurs on an alien world. It's a bit repetitive and the enemy spam is relentless, but the fox bonus stages are a nice breather. Starting with a brief look at the Amiga version with its more detailed graphics, I then play the smoother and more playable C64 version with an infinite lives cheat. I think the game is intended as an arcadey score chaser; at some point the levels loop without me noticing and I just keep playing until I get bored. Afterwards I show off a bit of the ZX Spectrum and DOS versions. I also try to work DOSbox for a bit to play some of an earlier favourite, Inner Worlds, before being defeated by the interface and giving up.


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