Carlos

Not Batman, it's FATMAN!

Les Adventures de Carlos was released in 1994 by Microids and isn't the best example of an Atari ST platformer. We are in control of a bearded fat man wearing a rather odd costume! This might sound strange, but our best friend appears to be a parrot who shadows and attempts to help us. There is no gun, so he must use our enormous weight to squish the baddies! You can even use some of that blubber to create a miniature earthquake when falling farther. It's hardly original when you think about it, but whatever works, right?

Aesthetically, Carlos looks and sounds good. The visuals feature stunning colours and beautiful sprites. However, the engine features no scrolling, which is odd for a game that requires 4-way scrolling to be playable. What that means is the gameplay stops while the screen is pushed along. This becomes extremely irritating, especially during a diagonal jump, which may require the screen to scroll in two separate directions.

This could have been great, but the end result looks good, but it plays terribly. In fact, I found it quite agonising because of the constant pauses as the screen scrolls in four different directions. A platformer like this demands real scrolling. The Atari ST has a wealth of decent platformers, so we don't need rubbish like this.

This is what a lazy port looks like. Stay well clear of this utterly terrible game!!

I may not recommend Carlos (lol), but masochists can give it a play using these download links floppy & hard drive.

Access Codes for the brave

Level 2=BONGO

Level 3=GALET

Level 4=PATAU

Level 5=SIRTA