Reviews

Simple, silly and stupidly addictive italian game, in which you have to colour all the squares dodging jumping objects.

The main character was inspired by a demented puppet, from a famous italian tv show of the eighties.

At school I used to have a column in my blue French Vocab book for Spectrum High Scores. Some games were simple and the only replay interest was to see if you could do better next time.
Had I had Pippo, it would have been in there. A straightforward game, you play the fat rabbit Pippo and paint the squares (as in Q Bert but on a single lavel). Bad guys move around on there but unlike Q Bert they cannot be predicted. It creates a different sort of strategy. I won't go on, its a simple cute game with great FX and nice tunes and it was strangely ahead of its time as Pippo works best as a coffee break game.
In the 80s waiting for Pippo to load would have taken about as long as I like to play it for. In emulation I can keep a snapshot on my desktop and be up and bouncing in seconds. And if I save afterwards I don't even need the French Vocab book anymore.

1986 Mastertronic
by G.Zanetti and Paolo Malnati

A simple but quite addictive game, with great graphics, great tunes and nice special effects.
Clearly inspired by Q*Bert, the arcade game ('Pogo' on the Speccy).
It provided me lots of fun back in the days.
Highly recommended.

Aaah, Pippo - a memorable game with a memorable name. One of the few games I played to death on real hardware back in the early '90s.

Take Q-Bert, remove the isometric graphics and flatten it down to a strictly 2-dimensional rectangular play area - and you more or less have Pippo.
(OK well it does retain some vestigial pseudo-3D "edges" to the play area - but that's about it!)

In any case, the concept doesn't sound great does it? But somehow, it really works well and Pippo is a remarkably addictive game. Possibly because it is flawlessly implemented. With vibrant, smooth graphics, jolly musical interludes and fluid game-play - it's just an immediately accessible game which anyone can pick up and play.

And then of course is the unholy "scream" sound effect, triggered when Pippo falls off the play area. It still haunts me to this day!

One of Mastertronic's better budget offerings, highly recommended.

Fantastically fun game. One of the best games I've ever played. Excellent stuff.

Simply irresistible !!

Could this game be the perfect budget release?

Pippo is a fun action puzzle game that I first played at a friends house at the tender age of 7, so basically around about the time it was released. I can thank that friend for several future purchases, and gaming experiences, even if the last time I did speak to him was 1996 when he delivered a pizza to my best mates house when we were drunk.... Thanks mate you're a diamond HAHAHA!

Pippo is one of those odd games that comes along, well there's no strict timeline or anything like that but it just exudes quality! I'd say by 1986's standards for £1.99 this game is ace! The game is quite a simple idea, when you start the game you're presented with a screen which is a grid, you're given a colour to turn each square of the grid, and that's it. You have to make Pippo hop around the grid changing the squares to the given colour. There are holes in the floor though, be very careful not to push against them, you fall down a hole you're greeted to one of the most horrible gut wrenching screams ever to spew forth from an 8-Bit system!

The graphics are cute, and represent everything they're supposed to...Well within reason. It's pretty obvious what the brilliant and creative enemies are supposed to be, but when it comes to old Pippo it a bit hit and miss. Not saying the Sprite is bad it's not it's absolutely great, but it still looks like a mutant fusion of a rabbit and a Space Hopper, that may or may not eat it's own children for the sake of an extra life HAHAHA! Poor Tenerino!

Presentation also is excellent with a fully animated title screen, and optional instructions, which are also animated. When the game finishes loading the loading screen plays music and alternates colours, followed by a demo scene style animated screen before you get to the afformentioned title screen.

The sound for a 48k Speccy is brilliant there's music on the title screen playing throughout, and although quite simple during play the sound is...and I won't say limited because it changes, mainly you'll hear the sounds of Pippo hopping from square to square, and the sounds of him changing the squares colour, but once the enemies show up the sound takes a weird twist, it speeds up, and the whole time the enemies are moving around depending on which ones they are....Well the only thing I can think of to describe the sound is military style drums. That's what it reminds me of anyway.

I have fond memories of this game from childhood, and I'm still occasionally creating fond memories whilst reinforcing the old ones. I suppose the simple way of saying that is I still like to play Pippo, it's brilliant!

This is one of those Budget titles that was worth every single penny of it's £1.99 asking price. After playing this at my friends house this was the next game I got, after bugging my mother for the £1.99 to buy it. By 1984, or 1985's standards I have no doubt this game could've been sold for a mid-range price. I'd probably have been happy to pay £4.91 for this in 1986...See weird price.

Brilliant game back then! Still brilliant now!...and I actually mean brilliant! Not Codemasters Brilliant! I mean actually brilliant!...