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David Wilson has a deep-rooted fear about going to the butchers. So he visibly flinched when we asked him to review Core Design’s Car-Vup which, incidentally, has nothing to do with meat.
David: ‘Variety is the spice of life’ could well be the motto of Derby based programming/publishing house Core Design – because here is its third game, Car-Vup, and it is radically different to both its predecessors. If nothing else, this serves to prove what jolly capable chaps they are. Car-Vup is a cutesy platform game in the nature of massively popular arcade games like Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, et al. The hero is Arnie, the cutest of cute characters bearing a remarkable resemblance to Benny the Cab from the Roger Rabbit movie.

Cartoon World has been overrun by the minions of the dastardly Captain Grim (he is a bast of the first order) and Arnie’s task is to restore happiness and defeat evil in the five levels that make up Cartoon World. He does this rather inexplicably by replacing rivets in building site girders, placing ribs in spine bones, etc. whilst avoiding the lurking nasties. Arnie mainly moves around left/right and performs big or small jumps. He cannot stop, because his brakes won’t work (obviously the Cartoon World MOT test is significantly more lenient than our own).

Anyway, tenuous scenario apart, Car-Vup is a platform game with smooth, fast animation and lovely, little graphical touches – bad guys like the traffic cones with little legs really cracked me up. Arnie can also get bonus power-ups giving invincibility, extra weapons etcetera. Er, that is it in a nutshell.

At the end of the day though, Car-Vup is aimed at the younger market and is definitely more of a console game – these facts are testified to in my (rather chauvinist) opinion by the fact that all the girls in the office absolutely rave about it. Hem hem. Car-Vup is a massively addictive, cutesy, multi-level, platform game, and if this is the sort of game you like, then you will just love erm... Car-Vup.