by David W. Harper
A four pocketed arcade/adventure by the author of Riddler's Den, in which you leap from room to room in the shape of a toad looking for a princess to have tadpoles with, and feeling like the charming prince you know you really are (in your dreams). Lots of items to be picked up and used in the right place and in the right way, a fastidious insect trying to drain your energy and appearing in every single screen, other quaint and lethal characters blocking various entrances or trying to steal from you: there's a lot of things to keep you occupied for a while, I even checked the animated walkthrough in the RZX Archive YT channel, and it's 37 minutes long. Only, I've no intentions to face the game again. It's frustrating and annoying. The worst feature is surely the triple exits idea: sometimes to access another room you have to choose one of three exits, two/thirds of which randomly hides lethal scorpions who will exterminate all your five lives. Not particularly enjoyable. You can, anyway, understand what's the safe exit by examining the environment: there's always a detail of the background, like che conformation of a rock, that enables you to identify the harmless passage.
Besides that, I don't think the collision detection is very good, and you often have to struggle to find the right position allowing you to perform a simple task like picking an object. The graphics are ok, although the animation is rather jerky and not very rich of frames. Every creatures seems to be pulsating as if affected by fits, spasms, retchings or some syndrome. The sound is a tendentially abominable amount of buzzes.
Although in 1986 it's got decent reviews in the mags, unluckily Toadrunner is nothing to write pond about.
2/5
