Tilt

Programmed by Steve Walters
Software house Codemasters

Reviewed by Benn Hayes (Nutt'67)

Tilt (Codemasters, 1989) - god knows who wrote it. What? An odd choice, for sure, but this incredibly simple game probably kept my attention for longer than all the arcade-licenced-MON-sountracked-multiload-games put together in those dim and distant days of the early 1990s, when I should have been writing games, not playing them.

The basic (and it was) idea was to roll a ball around a maze, getting it into the hole at the end. That's it? A Tricky Bit The maze was shown in 3D, and tilted (see?) from side to side, up and down and corner to corner depending on how you fondled your joystick - pushing the joystick to the right would lift the right hand side of the maze, thus rolling the ball left. Understand? So the way you wanted the ball to go, you pushed the 'stick in the opposite direction. A Good Bit The maze was displayed and animated by clever use of character graphics, and the 3D tilting movement was seriously smooth and realistic.

The ball would roll under some sort of mathematical force, so it was very realistic too, and very controlable when you got the hang of the game - none of this 1+1+1, 1+2+1, 1+2+2 jerky movement rubbish you'd get in the average arcade game. [bit of a programmers dig there!]

Another Tricky Bit Well, it wasn't that easy. Of course, you couldn't touch the sides of the maze with the ball, and on later levels you'd get various obstacles in the way, like gates that only stayed open for 2 seconds after you'd rolled over a certain switch. Once you'd got through the 6 or so mazes, the ball got bigger, rolled faster... anything to frustrate, in fact.

What about the visuals and sonics? Well, functional. The game didn't look very exciting, although the animation was top notch, and the sounds were sparse (the ball made a good rolley-rolley noise, though). No, this games strength was gameplay, and had a massive one-more-go factor. I'd often find myself muttering that immortal phrase at 5am... no wonder I turned out a bit odd.

So, you liked it then? Yes. If you never played it, get it from somewhere, and wonder how such a simple concept makes such an involving computer game. Of course, you might hate it. Your loss, in that case!

Score : 5 out of 5 Popular Computing Weekly Televisions.