Wheelies Commodore 64 game

WHEELIES

Tarkus and Eugene, a friendly pair of Wheelies are on the move through a vertically scrolling landscape of strange structures and even stranger crea- tures. Their vocation is to rescue any fellow wheelies they come across from an eternal flat spin.
One or two players control the rolly fellows, avoiding or blasting away at any nasty they come across in the seven selectable landscapes. A gradually emptying bottle represents each Wheelie's energy, which gradually
diminishes as play progresses. Contact with a hostile or its associated projectiles stuns our heroes as well as drawing large energy from each player's store. Unless the player picks up mus- hrooms (which restore small quan- tities of energy) and red flasks (which top the bottles up), the liq- uid life-force will drain away com- pletely. Should Eugene and Tar- kus run into a monster when their bottles are empty, they become ex-Wheelies and the game ends.

More than a suggestion of SEUCK stains this cute shoot 'em up
The promise of simultaneous two-player shoot and collect 'em up action led me to believe that Wheelies would be something worth enduring a bad title screen for. Well, although the graphics and sound are nothing special, some of the level layouts do seem to have had some thought put into them, and the air of mild silliness made the first few games enjoyable. The level select is a bad idea: after several games I had been able to play to the end of every level separately, and the desire to complete the whole game diminished entirely.

This has bright and colourful graphics
with
some very appe- aling characters, a one or two-player option and graded entry levels. The only problem is that it's all too familiar: the way the graphics are drawn and behave, coupled with the derivative sound effects is far too reminiscent of a SEUCK crea- which isn't surprising, since it's been verified that huge chunks of code are exactly the same. The only dif- ference is an improvised title screen and some presentation details; the rest consists of uncredited Sensible Software material... For three quid it'd be worth saving to invest in the original.