12 replies to this topic

[UnconformistSheep]

Greetings,

Nestle published in 1993 (?) this promotional game featuring Quicky, the Nesquik bunny. I thought it was a very nice platform game for the PC. Obviously many didn't share my opinion because despite being freeware, it never become very popular.

If you guys want to check it out to see if it's Abandonia material:
http://www.alunos.dc...rash/quicky.zip

Cheers,
Ricardo

PS: originally submitted to abandonia.com; they requested I re-submit it here:
http://www.abandonia...ad.php?p=377390

[Frodo]

Hey there.  Welcome to Reloaded.  Hope you enjoy yourself here.     

Thanks for posting about the Nesquik game.  

Would you like to review it for us, and take some screenshote?  

[UnconformistSheep]

English is not my mother language, but sure enough, will cook up something when I have some time. You're then free to edit, alter, or blend it as you see fit.

[UnconformistSheep]

Alright: what do you think of this:

Quote

Published in 1994, Quicky, the Nesquik bunny, makes its digital debut in this platform game for the PC. The small pace and ease of the game makes it most indicated for a young audience.

Nestle takes you through a journey around the world in order to recover Nesquik recipes stolen by a scientist whose motif is never made apparent. The game is partitioned in 5 sectors, each consisting of 2 levels and a boss encounter. While each level features only 2 kinds of bad guys, it does not get monotonous because at the end of each sector they are retired in favor of new ones with different mechanics.

Playability is classic side-scroll platforming. The objective is to get through the level while avoiding to touch any of the bad guys by means of ducking or jumping. You may also shoot them dead by first picking some of the cereal supply available through the level. On boss encounters, the cereal ammo is unlimited. To direct Quicky, use the arrow and space keys to move and jump, and Alt to shoot.

The game was originally shipped to customers after buying a bunch of Nesquik products, but was freely redistributable afterwards. The lack of popular development is thus surprising.

Related:
- Cool Spot
- McDonald Land

Not sure about the year, 1994... That could change from country to country as well. For the shots, it's not easy to take them from a running game, here's some from the manual scanned, if you feel the quality is good enough as thumbnails for the website:



Put the full manual (Portuguese) here:
http://www.alunos.dc...5/trash/quicky/

I noticed you like to place closeup character pictures in the reviews. Here's a couple cut from the manual:

[Frodo]

Hey there.  

Thanks for review.  I'm afraid we can't use shots from the manual though.  

If you are having trouble taking screenshots, maybe this thread would help
I can recomend a programme called Irfanview.  It's ideal for taking screenshots.  

[UnconformistSheep]

Alright, so here's some shots from DosBox. Sorry for the delay; been on holidays. Played only up to the 2nd stage. Used the no scale option; we may want to double the size... Pick some shots from the following:

[Frodo]

Thanks for those thumbnails.  It would be a great help if you could send me the original, full size shots via PM.  Could I also ask that you add up to 3 positive and up to 3 negative points about the game, as well as your reting out of 5.  

Thanks.  

[UnconformistSheep]

Dude, 320x200 truly is its native resolution. This is an old DOS game; were you expecting 3D shaders as well?
Of course, your system should scale it to fit your monitor, so we probably want to use 640x400 shots, since nobody is going to play it in tiny 320x200. Here are the scaled versions of those selected shots without any interpolation applied (those running DOS games from DosBox may want to setup an interpolation algorithm to make it look nicer):
http://www.alunos.dc.../quicky/double/

I was avoiding to give it any score at all. First, because I'm partial since the game brings me memories. Second, because it seems unfair to score it against modern games. But on second thought, it does compete pretty well against modern games. The form isn't so good for sure (3 points on graphics/sound), but the substance is pretty good for those that like platform games and especially for younger kids (4 points, in my account, for gameplay). Not sure how to sum this up, I would give it 4; but probably 3.5 is more fair, if such score is technically possible to attribute.
So, here's my scoring:

Quote

Score:

Graphics: 3 out of 5
Sound: 3 out of 5
While Quicky is starting to grow white hair, it does not hurt the eye, and is still fairly competitive against the modern game.

Gameplay: 4 out of 5
While the game is not very complex, it works well for the intended audience, and the complexity does grow in enemy moves, availability of moving platforms, and exploratory space, level to level.

Result: 3,5 ?

[Frodo]

Are these your own screenshots, or did you get them from here?  

[UnconformistSheep]

Frodo, on Sep 27 2009, 10:41 AM, said:

Are these your own screenshots, or did you get them from here?  

I've taken the screenshots and uploaded them to that server, which is from my university student account. I usually upload stuff there instead of mailing people huge files, which is often problematic.

Look at the URL:
www.alunos.dcc.fc.up.pt

it is the shorthand for:
www . alunos . Departamento Ciência de Computadores . Faculdade de Ciências . Universidade do Porto . Portugal

which in English means:
www . students . Computer Science Department . Science College . Porto University . Portugal

"~c0607045" was my student ID (the "~" means "home directory" in Unix). "trash" is a folder I use for such miscellaneous uploads. Most people would call it "misc", but I am a nonconformist by nature.

For sure, I wouldn't have gone through the trouble of writing something about it and playing it through to extract the screenshots, if I knew they were already available in the Internet. And obviously I am not doing this for personal promotions, so I have no reasons to falsely attribute someone else's screen-shooting to myself.
While doing some research for the game, in order to try to find some details on the game, I've googled for it, but I was unable to find any mention of this game over the web.

This is the Quicky compacted into a zip:
http://www.alunos.dc...rash/quicky.zip

Something I forgot mentioning is that the files in the floppy disk are of course under 1.44Mb. The reason why that zip file is 2.3Mb was because I've already run the installer so that people could now simply double-click the resulting executable. I think there are therefor some redundant data like the installer self-compressed executable that could be removed. It didn't seem worth it to save a few Kb, but let me know if you want me to try to strip it.

This is the Quicky screenshots I took while playing the game under DosBox as you requested it. By default, DosBox doubles the resolution of games, which is why you might have found it strange the game was only 320x200. But most DOS games have indeed such small resolutions. 640x400 was mainly adopted only when games started to migrate to Windows, and for the more recent DOS games.
http://www.alunos.dc...45/trash/quicky

These are some of those screenshots with a scaling algorithm applied. The algorithm I used is a simple interpolation one (each pixel is copied S, E and SE in order to double the image area). This is the very same algorithm that DosBox uses by default, so the screenshots I would get if I had ran DosBox without disabling scaling, would look exactly the same.
http://www.alunos.dc...h/quicky/double

By the way, if you have some muscle in Abandonia parent website, I think it would be nicer to get the game uploaded there, since it seems those visitors compound more of people looking for age old DOS titles (I, for one, follow that website for that reason). I understand you guys decided to split up the website in commercial and freeware lines, but in a way, Quicky was a commercial game considering that you had to buy a considerable amount of Nesquik products to then "buy it" with Nesquik coupons (albeit it was freely redistributable afterwards).

[UnconformistSheep]

Noticed the game has now been added to the database:
http://www.reloaded....uik-Quicky/473/

Cool!

[Frodo]

Glad you are happy with it, Unconformist