Wizball - C64

The word classic must surely feature in any sentence containing the word Wizball. An amazing puzzle shoot-em-up that pits you as a wizard trapped inside a ball. All the colour has been sapped from the land by your arch-nemesis Zark, and it is up to you to restore it. The only help you receive is from your trusty cat, also trapped inside a ball, which can be controlled by player 2.

You set about collecting drops of colour from around the large levels. The colours come in the form of bouncing bubble which must be shot to form droplets that fall from the sky. Holding down the fire button (in solo play) and controlling Catalite (your cat) performs the collecting. You start off bouncing and must learn to control the spin of your ball in order to efficiently bounce around the surface, collecting colours, shooting baddies and avoiding objects of doom. You must fill three cauldrons of colour in each level before you can progress.

Your first power-up, a veritable godsend, is to change direction between bounces, followed by the ability to hover. You feel like the coolest hovering dude around in your souped-up ball, but the difficulty of the game soon catches up. The other power-ups mainly consist of enhanced speed and firepower.

Wizball really comes into its own in two-player mode. I still cannot think of a game that is so rewarding to play co-operatively. There is a perfect balance of shared game play and responsibility between the two characters, which has still to be matched. more