Preliminary: Cmonnnn please don't disappoint. Sure, reviews say it's insanely hard and most people don't make it past the first screen--but they praise the music (which is by Rob Hubbard, whose music I've loved in other games). And music makes a huge difference for me with games. I'm just hoping the difficulty and likely clunky mechanics wont frustrate me from fully engaging with it.

Look: 7/10 Not phenomenal or anything but I like how the title is presented like this, and the colors had an "adult-oriented" vibe to them ha hard to explain, but it all fit together well.

Sound: 8/10 Hypey, epic, catchy. Great. Hubbard's top notch.

Play: 6/10 Wow this really is insanely hard, largely due to crappy collision masks with platforms, enemies, everything. But I was oddly hooked. Probly because I always get hooked with early platformers >.< Plus, this music... as good as I had hoped for sure. It was annoying to try to figure out what platforms can be jumped on vs not, and to control your jumps (tho at least you could kinda go in a direction). Still, here I was pushing through and through.

Feel: 7/10 Some cool sorta-secrets or something where I got carried off by an enemy thing to the next stage from screen 1. And when I reached the big banana at last, it was a nice feeling to get to the next screen. I will continue this tomorrow for sure! Time for movie tho. Day 2: I've always been a huge fan of prehistory and early human evolution+migrations, I don't know why. It seems it's rooted in Tolkien's universe because when I was young, I'd hang out at the library and read the Encyclopedia of Middle Earth--but I really was just shuffling through it, trying to find some info on what's farther to the east--what's farther to the south, etc. The scarcely-talked-about areas, which happen to correspond irl to areas like Central Asia, North Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, etc. that I felt (back in 2000-2004 etc) I couldn't find much info on. I remember when the Wikipedia pages for these areas, like Prehistoric Siberia for instance, started appearing and as a pre-teen I got so excited. Anyway, point being, I later read a lot of books about early humans and the proposed migrations and pre-Neolithic/early-Neolithic sites such as Before the Dawn, so it's nice to see a game--especially as early as 1985 considering it seems info about this was scarcely discussed (beyond the Encino Man vibe ha)--quite literally about a topic I've been fascinated with most of my life. I guess I like knowledge shrouded in impossible-to-know-for-now mystery. The final level, the race from 10000BC to 2000AD, was a cute concept with the objects showing the Neolithic age and on, which was nice that they separated out levels and concepts (tho not so scientifically or brilliantly, but still...) of pre-Neolithic phases instead of focusing only on the usual talked about eras--Stone Age to Bronze Age etc. Mind you, you're literally running from Death as you race through the eras into the future (well, the future for 1985), which is quite symbolic considering the changes in human perspective and religion and philosophy in the Neolithic age. You could certainly say we've been running from Death all these millennia, after many more millennia of proto-modern-human behaviors.

Attachment: 6/10 Anyyyyyway, obviously the concept appeals to me. And they did a pretty good job implementing it. However, in the end this is simply another action game with a bunch of different styles, including some I will always love and can't help but push through (platformer) but also styles I tend to avoid (Frogger-esque roll-across-the-water-and-dodge-enemies). Technically the individual game styles are quite mediocre in terms of collision masks, controls, and mechanics, but the concept and amazing Sound are what got me to push through (more and more I'm noticing that's what can save a frustratingly hard or clunky game from being a simple 2 star then move on--if the Look, Sound, or concept drive me to push through). Indeed, the game is incredibly frustrating and clunky. That 2nd stage... the controls and mechanics of the moving platforms... so damn irritating and frankly not fun. Yet here I am pushing through with a savestate at the start of the level to just keep retrying and retrying and retrying. So then I finally make it the log rolling screen... What an unbelievably bad idea for the mechanic there: the idea is to rapidly go up and down on the joystick, the reality is just an insanely clunky Frogger. I tried again and again, but no, not worth it. Despite the amazing concept and Sound, I will not be returning to this ever. No amount of sound, look, or feel can overcome awful programming and gameplay ideas (and that frustrating gameplay brought the Feel down from the 8 it should have been, even if it had simple gameplay mechanics or genre styles I don't care for like true Frogger or shoot em up... but no, they went outright irritating with it ha)