TYPHOON THOMPSON: IN SEARCH OF THE SEA CHILD

 What a delightful, funny, simple, and playable game this is! Dan Gorlin (of
CHOPLIFTER fame) has created an arcade game with none of the usual frustrations,
but with enough challenge and variety to keep you coming back for another round
of play. (This review is based on the Amiga version.)

 The premise is original: The year is 2124, and Intergalactic Transport Flight
396 has been lost. Its last known position was near the ocean planet Aguar, in
the Omega sector. It ditched in the planet's ocean, and only a faint signal
remained, indicating that one human child survived the catastrophe. The Sea
Sprites of Aguar have fallen in love with this child, and now keep it hidden
away safely in a seemingly impenetrable observatory dome. Others who attempted a
rescue have simply disappeared. It is your turn, as Typhoon Thompson, to get in
there and bring the child out.

 The opening animation sequence is one of the funniest segments of the game: A
flying saucer is poised over the surface of Aguar; suddenly its doors open. An
official-looking person pushes you (Typhoon Thompson) unkindly towards the edge
of the exit ramp, which hangs many feet above the Jet-Sled that's waiting on the
surface of the planet. You resist with all your might; finally, you're dangled
and dropped into the sled. You look up, unamused, and shake yourself off. The
flying saucer departs, and you're on your way.

 The rest of the game is animated just as nicely. You begin each round among the
Spirit Guardians. They assign you your mission (which involves collecting
magical artifacts for them), give you some appropriate weaponry, and then send
you on your way. You travel to a group of islands that constitute the Sea Sprite
village, awakening the residents with a couple of shots from your Laser Cannon.

 Each time you hit an island, a mad Sea Sprite (and in later levels, a _few_ mad
Sea Sprites) heads for its Flyer and comes chasing after you. There are eight
different kinds of flyers in the game, and they do everything from just bumping
you around, to trapping you in sticky bubbles and smashing your Jet-Sled.
Different Flyers have different flight patterns and speeds, so you have to
practice particular kinds of maneuvers to avoid each type.

 Your Jet-Sled is like a little one-person hovercraft/kayak. It's controlled
entirely with the mouse: Presses of the right mouse button either give you a
slight turbo boost (for speed), or send you diving underwater (to escape
situations that are becoming rather troublesome); presses of the left mouse
button fire your Laser Cannon; combinations of right and left mouse buttons
handle the Scatter Bomb and Sprite Magnet at later levels. The space bar fires
the Freeze Bomb. You steer your Sled with mouse movement; it's very easy to
control.

 Once a Flyer is in pursuit of you, you may then fire at it; if you hit it, a
Sea Sprite is left treading water in a slightly stunned state. If you pass over
the Sea Sprite, you collect it and put it in your handy Sprite Bag for later
use. But if you don't get to the Sea Sprite quickly enough, it wakes up and
starts leaping like a flying fish toward its home island. You can fire at it and
stun it again if you catch it soon enough, but if you don't catch it, it picks
up another Flyer and comes back after you, twice as mad.

 This is where the game's challenge and strategy come into play. You can "wake
up" as many of the islands as you want by firing at them. Once you've hit one
island, news of your presence eventually travels around, and an increasing
number of Flyers appear. Your time is divided between firing at Flyers and
picking up stunned Sea Sprites; as the game progresses, you'll find that you
must be engaged in both activities simultaneously. Trying to collect a bunch of
stunned Sprites while Flyers chase after you becomes a wildly engrossing task;
the more Flyers you hit, the more Sprites there are to collect, and the more new
Flyers come after you. Pretty soon (especially at the higher levels), you find
yourself in a sea full of both Sprites and Flyers; some Sprites are sitting
stunned in the water, others are leaping home to get more Flyers, and new Flyers
are circling, trying to pin you.

 You accumulate various types of weapons as you go along. At first, all you have
is your Laser Cannon. Later, you get: a Scatter Bomb, which scatters all Flyers
within range of you; a Sprite Magnet, which (when released) attracts all the
stunned Sea Sprites to one place (handy when you need to collect a bunch
quickly); and finally, a Freeze Bomb, which neutralizes nearby Flyers (also
useful when you want to concentrate on Sprite collecting).

 Once you've captured all the Sea Sprites in the village, you then head to the
Mayor's Island in the middle, which looks like a big cold-capsule. When you pull
up your sled next to the island, the Mayor comes out, and you show her your bag
full of citizens. She becomes hopping mad (quite literally), and demands their
return. You unburden yourself, receiving the required magic artifact in
exchange. You then head back to the Guardians to return the artifact and be
assigned your next mission.

 It's not very hard to complete the first three levels, but the fourth is a real
challenge. Even after finishing the entire game, this thing is so much fun it's
worth playing over and over again. The different levels display various colors
and shades, and the game's "sea-surface" 3-D orientation makes you feel as if
you're rushing around a beautiful little sparkling harbor in the middle of the
night. It's quite lovely to look at.

 TYPHOON THOMPSON is also one of the very few non-violent arcade games around.
No one ever dies in the game (well, except for you, and you don't really
die...you just sort of evaporate). The object is to save life rather than
destroy it: The Sea Sprites get to go back home, you get to go back to your
Guardians, and everyone's happy at the end of each level. You have not only five
lives to begin with, but also a certain number of sea-sleds; more often than
not, you merely lose your sled, swim back to the Spirit Guardians, and obtain a
new one with which to try again. This could be very important to those looking
for suitable games for younger children; it was even a pleasant relief for me!

 The game comes on one copy-protected disk, and runs on all Amigas with 512K of
RAM. It's not hard-disk installable. If you have 1MB of RAM, you'll hear
beautiful, full-stereo sound, which gives you audible warning of the approach of
objects from off-screen. If you're using a monophonic speaker, you may specify
mono sound for slightly better high-frequency definition.

 I highly recommend TYPHOON THOMPSON. It's cute, it's fast, it's easy to get in
and out of, and best of all, it provides the sort of elemental fun we often
overlook in our endless search for the bigger and better.

 TYPHOON THOMPSON is published and distributed by Broderbund Software.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253