Has anybody here played Top Banana? Fucking horrifying, hardcore game that's disguised as a pro-environmentalist kiddy platformer. It was on the Amiga and Acorn Archimedes.
So if you played the Amiga version (and I didn't) you get a much better intro. There's text that says "What it is" and then this LSD Emulator-like seizure movie plays where some robot girl says "power technology" over and over and one frame displays "GLOBAL CHAOS".
When you start the game it looks like a mess of jpegs. Some people berated the game for it, but I actually think it's a great aesthetic for the overall feeling of the game. The level is rainforest-themed and the enemies are vehicles that I assume cut down trees and sometimes there's a fat man and a really annoying cloud. The controls are actually okay, you can move left and right and jump and also stop your jump at any height. You go up the level and there are many obstacles that sometimes blend in with the background. If you're too slow, water will rise up and take health away from you. There's also this mechanic where enemies will drop hearts that change between frames, and if you collect every color you get an extra thing of health.
Now the main problem with this game isn't the graphics, but the difficulty. It's so FUCKING HARD. You have only 5 (or maybe 4? not sure) things of health and the first level is fine, but the second level will require at least an hour of memorization to pass. And trust me you'll need another 2 to 4 hours to get good enough to not take damage on level 1 and 2, and also memorize 3. And develop a strategy for the boss, which I was able to do. I usually end up with two bars of health left before reaching level 4. Oh by the way, there's 16 or so levels and you always go back to level 1 when you die.
Level 4 is where things get insane. Skip to 13:18 in the video to see, the guy has infinite lives by the way, no way any normal person can get to level 4 without giving up. So level 4 changes the scenery to a place called "Metal City" (as written in the manual), where there are anarchy symbols and enemies are now skulls, robots, and nuclear symbols. The anarchy symbols and the whole change in atmosphere make me think the guys who made it weren't actually pro-environment after all, just making fun of those kinds of people. Level 4 also has this mechanic where you go underwater, which gives you an extra life which is cool. The Amiga version just represents it as negative colors but the Acorn version actually makes it look like you're underwater. It's very hard at first to get through it without getting hurt, but I was able to do it after a couple tries.
But sadly, I was not able to go past level 4. Even after playing the game for 10 hours altogether and trying to find a way to progress, there is one part in level 4 that seems impossible to pass without intentionally taking a hit. Around 16:30 in the video if you want to look. Maybe someday I'll try to not get hit up until that part and trudge through, but I don't feel like it now.
So yeah, weird as fuck game. There are more scenery changes that you can see in the video, including the "Temple" and the "Mind-scape". And you can even see the ending, probably impossible to achieve in a legit run, where a clown man made out of balloons stares and laughs at you, and shortly after you are named Top Banana.
