Producer: E.S.P.
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £
Language: Machine code
Author:

In the beginning, Adam and Eve weren't as good as they should have been, and as a result of their indiscretions, humanity wasn't as good either. In despair, God decided to get rid of everything and start over. Only Noah was nice, so God told him to build an ark and fill it with pairs of animals so they should be saved.

In this biblical epic you play the erstwhile Noah, not much loved by his fellow humans because of his tales of gloom and doom, and you must travel through the 256 screens collecting the 31 pairs of animals that live in the badlands and beyond the Great Wall in various unsavoury places.

The basic colouring of this game is yellow, with large graphics of animals in blue. Various obstacles confront Noah in his search like shrubs, trees, fences and the Great Wall itself, to which he must find the Great Gate key. Puddles are also a problem, and with a prescience of what is to come, Noah is frightened of puddles! Hitting a forbidden object causes the screen to flash with the ominous warning, Whoops Apocalypse. Too much of this sort of thing will kill you off and condemn you to a very tong re-intro.

Getting an animal to follow you is not very easy, some of them don't want to go, and there is the added problem that you cannot leave a screen unless you have first eaten the parcel of purple food. Some animals, snails especially, seem to cause an apocalypse, so what with avoiding them, dragging an unwilling animal, and trying to get at the food that the animal is obligingly blocking you off from it can become quite hard.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z/X left/right, O/K up/down, M for map
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek, Sinclair
Keyboard play: not very responsive
Use of colour: not over colourful
Graphics: animals nicely drawn, Noah poor, movement by block
Sound: not much
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 1 with allowance of apocalypses
Screens: 256
Special features:

Noah has rather large graphics which move a little on the slow side. The task of collecting the animals is no quick thing - in fact just trying to get one back is a task in itself. The animals are depicted well, each (from what I saw) looking like a proper elephant, snake, sheep etc. Because my Kempston had reversed itself between left and right with this game, I was slow to make progress. Overall this is a good game which will take quite a time to get into and complete.

At first I wondered what a game called Noah could be based upon. I was soon to find out what this monster of a game was - it drove me up the wall. The burden of having to collect food before you can move off each screen was frustrating, and while nothing seemed to go on as the game progressed, I became bored. I tried to persuade an animal to come with me to the ark, but it said, 'Not tonight - I've got a headache!' I found Noah impossible to make any progress with whatsoever. To sum up this game it must be called the most unaddictive, highly frustrating, boring, non-progressive, slow game ever invented - it takes about as long to make its point as the Bible.

One thing you can say about Noah is that it is different. It's also rather large with 256 screens full of unwilling animals. Fortunately, in an attempt to prevent magazines doing maps of it, one is provided, although it only gives a vague indication, and irritatingly pops up every time you bump into something. The graphics are quite good of the animals but Noah himself looks a little on the simple side. Ifs an odd mixture, and I don't think I really enjoyed it too much irritation enjoyed to be really good.

Ross: Deciding the fate of the whole animal Kingdom is no easy task... but as Noah, that's your lot! You've just three days to collect all 31 pairs of animals and return them to the Ark. And there are 256 screens to explore, so hunting down all the animals is a fairly daunting task!

Noah is played by a large five-by-three graphic; the cursor movement makes everything look a bit jerky, but it's perfectly adequate for a game of this type. On each screen are a number of fixed graphics (such as grass, water, fences or huts) all of which you have to manoeuvre around; the impending flood has understandably made Noah rather nervous of water! There's also a lump of food which must be eaten before you can move on to the next screen. Watch out for the lamp and key, as you'll need these to explore the caves and the area behind the Great Wall. And if you get lost, you can access a map of the whole playing area with your position marked on it.

The game features some very nice large graphics of animals, but overall I found the whole thing just a bit too repetitive and slow. 2/5 MISS

Dave: I wish software houses would test their programs properly; in this one, the Kempston routine is back to front so that to go left you push right and vice versa. Not bad for keyboard players though ... 2/5 MISS

Roger: It's so slow that even the most devout games disciples will be praying for a miracle to speed things up! 1/5 MISS