The Retro Critic

Aldo’s Adventure

I’ve certainly been scraping the barrel lately in terms of old DOS games.

With the help of one cheap “500 Games in 1“-style PC compilation, I’ve been rediscovering a lot of crappy games I’d completely forgotten about.

One of them was Aldo’s Adventure, a Donkey Kong/Mario Bros. clone with a main character who kinda looks like Mario if Cheech Marin had got the part in the Super Mario Bros. movie instead of Bob Hoskins back in the day.

Then again maybe his name’s Aldo Mario…

But I’m getting side-tracked :S

The game is pretty self-explanatory: get to the treasure chest at the top of the platform avoiding cannonballs, barrels, fire and other obstacles along the way. As the levels go on, they obviously get harder. Platforms start dissolving under your feet, cannonballs pop out at you non-stop, fire everywhere, you get the idea.

Sometimes, however, the game’s just lazy.

It has its share of weird glitches and they make later levels near-impossible to play through. One second you can step on fire, the next you can’t, one second you can jump on a dot-sized platform, the next you can’t, ladders become unreachable, it’s really inconsistent.

This is when shareware becomes painware.

(not sure what that means but it sounds cool, go with it)

I don’t really expect much from a 1987 clone made for next to nothing so I can’t really be all that harsh with it. Yes it’s somewhat frustrating to play but it’s not like better versions of the game don’t exist so if you’re playing Aldo’s Adventure, chances are you know it’s not gonna be great already and you’re just having a go out of pure curiosity. At best, this game would have been Donkey Kong so it was always going to be inferior.

Besides, some people don’t even like Donkey Kong!

It’s like that John Carpenter’s The Thing remake… The Thing, in a way.

I don’t hate it but I don’t know why it exists.

The game can be a bit slow but considering it was made as a sort of experiment by one programmer and his son, it’s a wonder it’s as colorful as it is and as relatively playable as it is. Believe it or not, I have played worse games than this: Aldo’s Adventure isn’t good, by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s pretty harmless.

There are things about this game I do kind of like, weirdly enough.

For one thing, the fact it exists and is as shameless as it is about what it’s ripping off is amusing. Also, its glitches, as irritating as they are, have a so-bad-they’re-good quality to them and those bizarre level titles, which appear on every background and stay there while you’re playing, are always fun. It’s almost worth playing the game just to see what silly title they’ve got planned next!

Check it out if you’re bored one day, it won’t redefine how you think about retro games or anything but it’ll give you a couple of REALLY dated and obscure lols, so that’s something I guess.

To hear me rant a little more about Aldo’s Adventure, head over to my channel on Youtube. Be warned, though, I tend to swear like a pirate when failing at retro games so do bear that in mind :P

Aldo or do not, there is no try.

(again, not sure what that means…)