Tuesday 25 October 2011

Sega Mega Drive: Toki (JuJu)

Year: 1991
Genre: Platformer
Players: 2 (alternating)
Our Rating: 8/10


Mini Review

It’s that classic plot of girl gets stolen by an evil wizard and the wizard then turns our hero in to an ape. Our chimp hero must then rescue the girl. No, really, that’s the whole plot. There’s a very helpful opening animation that covers the back story in around 15 seconds. The game style is very much classic platformer. You will be assaulted by a range of enemies at each level including some wonderfully comical boss fights to end off the round.

Your main attack is your ape spit which is upgradeable via various power ups. The levels are nicely varied including levers to push and pull, gaps to jump and even a nice runaway rail car level. The first time I saw this game was way back in 1991 in the café of my local roller rink. Back in the day it was 20p per credit so it was only fair to give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed then and I’m certainly not disappointed now. I was amazed though at the many changes that were made in the Sega Mega Drive version, something just wasn’t quite the same. Toki was ported to an impressive range of consoles including NES, Turbo Graphix, Amiga and many others. All of which though lost something in the translation. However, being an eternal geek that must relive the old times I was able to make a bargain ebay purchase of the arcade JAMMA board. Pure magic, it has to be said. I would still highly recommend the 16-bit home versions of Toki. It’s a platformer that has remained challenging, brightly colored and most of all fun.




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