Yogi Bear

Crash

Overall 48%

Phil King 48%

OLDIES UNLIMITED! What? Spent all your Christmas money already? Well, never fear, the golden oldie himself, PHIL KING, takes you on a tour of the latest budget-price rereleases... Yogi Bear Producer: Alternate Price: £1.99 Original Rating: 62% Jellystone park's famous ursine resident, so smart he probably even knows what 'ursine' means, starred in his own Pirhana computer game in December 1987. Yogi's sidekick Boo Boo has been kidnapped and Yogi must find him before it'stime to hibernate. Jellystone Park is a dangerous place, with all manner of obstacles for Yogi to jump over or duck under, but there's plenty of snacks to grab too. If Yogi manages to reach the stepping stones to Boo Boo's prison, he must take the correct route to rescue his pint-sized friend. Although the characters in the game look great, the 'cardboard cut-out' 3-D is confusing, with dodgy collision detection making it almost unplayable. For Yogi fans only.

Your Sinclair

Graphics 6/10

Playability 9/10

Value For Money 6/10

Addictiveness 8/10

Overall 8/10

Tony Worrall 8/10

Piranha £9.95 Reviewer: Tony Worrall It's more than a poor reviewer can bear. That little teddy of a bear young Boo-Boo has been forcibly abducted and is even now struggling with the bars of his cage way over on the other side of Jellystone Park. But hey hey hey! his good of pal Yogi is on his way to rescue his bosom buddy, and that s no mistake. It's time for all good bears to take a good long kip and hibernate for the season. Yogi and Boo-Boo are no exceptions to this rule. Yogi has but a short time to find and release his short friend before the winter blues set in. But if you go down to the woods today you're sure of a whopping great surprise. Not only has Yogi got to contend with natural hazards such as black holes and running rivers, but the woods are alive with all kinds of animal life. Yogi being the greedy bear he is, needs to stock up regularly on campers pick a-nick baskets, plus the odd fish nabbed from an anglers rod. Fail to keep Yogi topped up and his energy levels reach rocky bottom, and the game's over. While Yogi is on the look out for food, you need to be on the look out for campers or Ranger Smith. One touch of 'em is fatal. Yogi Bear is a flip-screen arcade adventure with large sprites and a cute but silly plot. Yogi begins on screen 200 and has to find his way, by travelling as far right as he can go, to screen number 3 to rescue Boo-Boo. Several screens can be happily by-passed by the clever use of the cave system. The problem is toffee apples have to be collected along the way, six in all, to be converted by Boo-Boo into a code. This code, a series of shaped stepping stones, needs to be used on the screen next to the end to enable Yogi to collect the key to Boo Boo's cage without alerting the bear-napper himself. This is all easier said than done of course! In fact Yogi is not the smart bear he thinks he is. He tends to fall into every trap available along the way. Well, in my control anyway! This makes the game very frustrating. It's not so much the gameplay, because the basic idea works well enough. It is the maddening quirks of the programming that make it so infuriating, and so playable at the same time. The collision detector is a bit of a joke, but this can also work to your advantage at times. You may be pixels away from the edge of that pit and you fall in, but at other times you can bound straight through it quite safely. The naffo joystick response can lead to a drain on Yogi's bear necessities, and get you into more hot water as you attempt a pixel perfect leap across a stream. Bad news. I started the game in a bad mood (bear with a sore head?) but after about 20 games I began to see the fun part of it. It is addictive in an odd sort of way. True, there is no music or high score table like the Commie version, and it makes no technical or graphical quantum leaps - but I like it, so there! if you think you are smarter than the average game player then try Yogi and see if it fits.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Sinclair User

Overall 7/10

Tamara Howard 7/10

Label: Piranha Author: Dalali Price: £9.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tamara Howard Oh, please, this is a conspiracy isn't it? Soppy, gooey, cute and cuddly games. Yeeekk! Yogi may be smarter than the average bear, but has some dumb friends. Side-kick BooBoo is a complete klutz and has got himself bearnapped. The game starts on January 1st. You have exactly one year, starting from now, to rescue Blubber-wubba or whatever he's called, before you have to go back into hibernation. Yogi Bear is rather bizarre. It basically consists of ramble around Jellystone Park, dodging campers, rangers, hopping frogs, geezers, swarms of bees, birds and snakes. Bizarrity comes in various guises. Because Yogi is such a nice, cuddly, sweet, generally nauseating sort of bear, he's not meant to be seen killing anything. So whereas your average, Kamikazee sort of bear would blast all the annoying critters to Kingdom Come with a rather large flamethrower or small nuclear grenade, Yogi's defence is to turn into a bush. No, I've not gone completely mad, the damned bear really does turn himself into a bush. Hold down fire joystick up and bob's your bush. What an idea for a game. Quite liked it really. Yogi Bear looks just like his cartoon counterpart. The emphasis is heavily on the cute and nice, rather than the blood and guts. I dunno about Yogi being smarter than the average bear, I thought your average bear could swim, and Yoggers most surely can't. In fact, he can't fight, jump or run hundred metres either. He's pretty useless all round really. But, if you can take tacky, the graphics are good and quite funny. Jellystone is nicely depicted and the frogs are great. You should enjoy it.

Crash

Presentation 55%

Graphics 63%

Playability 51%

Addictive Qualities 51%

Overall 62%

Bym Welthy 67%

Nick Roberts 62%

Paul Sumner 58%

Producer: Piranha Retail Price: £9.95 Author: Dalali 'Are you smarter than the average bear?' asks the publicity. Well, there are bears and there are bears. This time we're dealing with the necktie-and-hat-wearing variety who live in Jellystone Park and are known as Yogi to their friends. But Jellystone Park is not the safest place to live: furry little Boo Boo bear has been kidnapped, and Yogi has to rescue him before the bearlet starts wanting to hibernate. And what with hunters, moose (shurely Hunter's Moon? - Man Ed), vultures, hopping mad frogs, geysers and that mean old Ranger Smith, it's going to be an anxious time. Yogi can jump over obstacles, or duck or dive his way around them, but touching an obstacle can delay even an above-average bear or send him back to square one. Yogi can travel more safely by going through caves - if he finds a cave entrance in the first place. There are picnic hampers left conveniently lying around, and if Yogi starts shrinking on the screen you know he's getting very hungry. (He's certainly no subtler than the average bear). Toffee apples also he on the ground, and when you pick one up, an icon box becomes coloured. Each of these icon boxes represents a stepping stone to Boo Boo's prison, and when Yogi has found all of the toffee apples and reach the real stepping stones (don't stop reading, this is the dramatic bit) he has to take the right route over the stones, or risk being captured himself. And no-one wants to read in their morning paper about another botched hostage rescue attempt. Piranha had some problems making a game of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon. For a start, the licence-holders insisted that the computer characters look exactly like the cartoon stars - not as easy as it sound, when every detail must be double-checked! Yogi's proprietors were also anxious that his image as a fun-loving huggable bear shouldn't be damaged by the violence and truly nasty nasties of everyday Spectrum fare. (That's why it's technically your lives and not Yogi's that are lost). So bear in mind that the game is aimed at a young, impressionable audience (as is Basil The Great Mouse Detective). Looking ahead, there's a yogi Bear competition in the CRASH Christmas Special - a chance to win lots of sweet food from Harrods (toffee apples not included, for technical reasons) plus copies of the game. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: sparse landscape with adequate character reproduction Sound: simple spot effects

Bear-faced greed.