Spot

Name: Spot
Year: 1990
Publisher: Virgin Mastertronic International, Inc.
Devloper: Vargin Mastertronic Ltd.
Genre: Board Game
Hours Played: 3
Beaten: Yes, without cheats

People who grew up in the late eighties/early nineties will probably remember Cool Spot, the anthropomorphic sunglasses-wearing 7up logo. He had a couple of platformer games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, but less remembered is his board game-style NES outing.

Okay, so this one surprised me.  I was always under the impression that Spot was a quickly thrown together 7up-themed Othello/Reversi game.  What I found instead was an original four-player board game with it's own unique personality.

Each turn, you can either add a piece to the board, or move a piece.  An added piece must be adjacent to an existing one, but a moved piece can hop across the board.  Enemy pieces are captured, not by cornering like in most games of this type, but simply by putting a piece adjacent to them.  That probably doesn't sound like anything special, but the resulting game is surprisingly brutal.  Being able to move a piece prevents you from getting trapped in a corner, but it also frees up that space for your opponent to move in, leaving a lot of strategy for when you should move and when you should add.

Graphics & Animation: 3 (Good)
The graphics in this game have a lot of personality.  All you're really doing is moving checker pieces around, but they get up and walk, dive towards their destination, moonwalk, and stop their feet when you're capturing pieces.  It's an impressive amount of attention to detail.

Music & Sounds: 1 (Bad)
There's only a couple of (forgettable) songs in the game, and they repeat over and over. And over.

Controls & Level Design: 2 (Average)
The good news is, the cursor glides nicely from grid space to grid space with the D-pad.  The bad news is, to play you have to click the piece you want to move, then click the space you're moving it to.  It's intuitive if you're expecting checkers, but since it looks like an Othello or Go style game, I actually thought the game wasn't working and had to look up instructions.  Fortunately, there's a demo that plays after the opening game that teaches you how to play; unfortunately, it doesn't explain the controls.

Story & Presentation: 2 (Average)
There's no story per say (it's a board game after all), but there are a couple of brief cutscenes for when you win or lose, showing a cheering or booing football stadium.

Length & Replayability: 3 (Good)
The average time of one round is pretty short, and there's no tournaments or modes to pick from.  What make the game impressive, though, is the large amount of boards you can play on.  Each board makes for a very different game, and you can easily modify them and create your own boards, adding to the replay value.  Between the multiplayer (up to four people!), the numerous board options, and ability to make your own board, there's a lot to do here before it gets old... but at the end of the day, there's only one difficulty level and only one game mode.

Total: 11 (Average)