Paperboy

What more can I say about the classic Atari arcade game? It broke out on to the world of the C64 in 1986. For those who don’t know, you play the role of a newly employed paperboy and your task is to deliver newspapers along a street, on your bicycle. You start off on a Monday and work your way through the week. Along the way you will encounter various obstacles (e.g. dogs, rolling tyres, remote control cars, tricyclists, road diggers, oversized cats, etc.). You only deliver to certain houses along the street.

Mess it up and you lose a customer! There’s a limited amount of newspapers which you can carry, fortunately you can get fresh supplies in the game, but often in hard to reach places though! At the end of the street there is an training course, but it is more of an obstacle course really. Negotiate that and you will get to the next level and there are three difficulty levels to get through (Easy Street, Middle Road and Hard Way). The game is fairly well, if not entirely accurate conversion (there are slight additions). The sound is especially good, it is just a shame that the graphics didn’t take better advantage of the C64’s abilities. As for the gameplay, that is very much intact in this version, the fun playability of the arcade version comes through here. Now, where’s my copy of “The Sun”?