Hoi AGA Remix

Title		Hoi AGA Remix (Available on Aminet game/jump/hoiagaremix.lha)
Game Type       Platform
Company         Team Hoi
Players         1
HD Installable  Yes
Compatibility   AGA Amigas
Submission      jfroholt@online.no (Joachim Froholt)

Review
The original Hoi was published in 1991, and earned it's creators a meagre
500 dollars. This must have been due to a crappy publisher, as the game
itself was great. The Amiga mags gave it high scores. The highest, I think
was given by The One: 90 %. In 1993, Team Hoi created an AGA Remix of the
game. For some strange (but very fortunate) reason, they released it into
the Public Domain instead of getting it commercially published. What this
means is that one of the greatest platform games of all times is available
to you for nothing more than the cost of a disk!

Before I start telling you why this game is so great, I'd like to mention
the not very important (but very cool) background story. Hoi is a green
dinosaur who seeks the greatest misery of them all: A wife. But,
unfortunately for him, the female green dinosaurs live separated from the
males. So, if Hoi is to get himself a female companion, he has to travel
through the land of madness (or something like that) to find one.

You control Hoi, the green and incredibly cute dinosaur. The point of the
game is to get him safely to the end of each level, which is not the
easiest of tasks. In the original game, you were blessed with nine lives.
In the remix, you can choose the number of lives you want. You can also
get unlimited lives if you wish, a feature which would have ruined most
other platform games. But with Hoi, this feature only ensures that you
will be playing the whole evening if you turn it on. You see, the five
different levels are incredibly large and varied. Leaving Hoi in the
middle of a level is definitely not something you want to do, as that will
waste all the time you spent to get that far. Besides, Hoi is one of those
games which changes your mood. When playing Hoi with friends (because of
the structure of the game this is great fun), people tend to become
slightly tired - and extremely cheerful. Put it like this: After
playing Hoi for a while, there is not a joke in the world poor enough not
to make you laugh.

What about the gameplay itself? Well, Hoi is a platform game at heart, but
there is a very strong emphasis on puzzle solving. Also, it's very varied,
in level three you get a jetpack and the abillity to shoot, in level four
you get to scuba dive. Hoi is not very fast paced (exept in the incredible
final level), but there can be plenty of action on screen. Generally, you
have to plan a little ahead, and then execute your plan as accurately as
possible. Accuracy is one thing which really counts in Hoi, and
fortunately the collision detection works perfectly.

One thing which annoyed me in the start was that Hoi died if he fell too
far. But after playing for a while, I found that this feature actually
enchanced the gameplay. The levels are huge (an understatement), and well
thought out. If you die, you are sent back to the last "checkpoint" you
passed over. Sometimes it can get frustrating when you keep getting sent
back to the same point, but then you're extra satisfied when you manage to
get further into the level.

As Hoi is a platformer, you'll come across a lot of switches, elevators,
moving platforms and other more or less standard platform game stuff.
There are even some platforms you can control yourself, which is terrific
fun, especially if you are in that special Hoi mood I mentioned earlier.

You'll also have to cope with a wide range of baddies (ranging from small
worms to giant ball-things and ownerless shoes), and lethal scenery like
spikes. There are also several fun sub games to make the game even more
varied.

 Graphically, the game is very good. The graphics are well drawn and quite
colorful. One drawback is that the main character has few animation
frames. Although he animates smoothly enough, there isn't any real
variation in the way he moves. Also, he looks stupid when climbing
ladders:) There are no sound effects in the game, but there are a quite
long (and rather good) music module playing in the background of each
level. The background music restarts every time you die, which means that
sometimes the music becomes another reason to stay alive for as long as
possible.

You can not consider yourself an experienced gameplayer if you haven't
completed Hoi level five : Epileptic Finale. This is probably the coolest
level ever in a platform game. It is the kind of level you show PC owners
to show them the capabillities of the Amiga. And, most importantly, it is
the kind of level you play again and again and again (which you can,
because you don't need to play through the levels in order).

In my opinion, Hoi AGA is one of the best platformers on the Amiga. If you
like platform games, Hoi is an essential game to get. Even if you're more
into strategy and adventure games (like me), this game will probably
provide you with hours of fun. In practise, you've really not got anything
to lose, as Hoi is available for free. You can probably find it on the
Internet, or get it from your favourite PD dealer.

Alphabetical list.