Please login to submit a screenshot

As the title suggests, the lioncloth clad Neanderthal, Chuck Rock, has been passed over for the sequel to the popular Amiga platformer in favour of his much cuter son. Chuck Junior's his name and clubbing's his game and we don't mean the get down and boogie variety either. Junior's got to rescue his pa from the filthy Brick Jagger and to do this needs to swing his way through the jungle to the bad lad's lair.

The caveman kid starts each game with a full baby bottle of energy and when it's empty he loses a life. Simple stuff, but thankfully, if you lose one of those precious lives, you can just continue where you left off and not have to go back to the beginning. Junior may look as cute as apple pie, but you'll notice that he comes complete with a rather hefty club. As you'd imagine, he can give out a fair old bashing with the weapon, but it also serves to protect the tot too. By pulling down on the pad you can balance the baby on top of the club, thus avoiding certain monsters that cant touch him at this loftier height. In fact, there are a whole host of controls that are not at first obvious to those of us who prefer to use game manuals to rest cups of tea on, rather than read them. Junior can swing the club high to attack low flying dinos, he can leap on the back of some monsters who'll carry him safely forward and he can even jump on ropes and vines and swing like a veritable Tarzan across the screen.

The graphics are pretty dreamy, with six different scenes comprising of scores of varying zones. Junior can interact with some backgrounds by bashing them with the club and move rocks across the screen. This enables the youngster to move boulders over spikes and get over obstacles unharmed. There are quite a few surprises in store for the adventurer, with nice graphical touches including cavemen dressed up in dinosaur suits that disrobe as they get hit and huge walking dinosaurs that take up most of the screen.

What with all the different club antics, including a feature that allows Junior to set the club on fire to illuminate parts of a map, there's enough variety to make this quite an attractive romp. The sluggish Amiga cartoon intro has been speeded up to make one of the finest intros ever - the CD32 version finally does justice to the brilliant animation. Chuck Rock 2 is now a well recommended purchase.
Steve Keen

84%