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Title Neighbours
Game Type Driving
Company Impulze, 1992
Players 1
HD Installable With WHDLoad Patch
Compatibility Use WHDLoad install
Submission Adrian Simpson Profiled Reviewer

Review
When it comes to movie and television licencing, this idea for a licence
is down there with possible Amiga versions of Jerry Springer, Battlefield:
Earth and The Avengers. Neighbours was an awful soap opera from Australia,
which was eagerly lapped up by the great unwashed masses in the UK. I'm
sure that Grundy, the company that made this entertainment abomination,
couldn't believe their luck when it became popular.

Here's an Amiga version, then. It's actually a racing game and doesn't
really have anything to do with the TV show at all. It is set in Australia
and supposedly features some of the cast members (Charlene, Henry, Mike,
Mat and Bronwyn - whoever they may be), but I don't know what
characteristics they can import into a racing game from a TV programme.
Therefore, the game could have been called anything without much problem.
This is true with many film and TV licences on the Amiga.

Forgetting the horrific nature of the licence for a moment, what is left
is a simplistic racing game. You can select from none to four computer
players to compete against. Other options, such as the presence of
kangaroos and cars can be selected. Yes, kangaroos. The game creators took
the easy option of identifying Australia by obvious symbols, rather than
some subtle and clever graphics. It's the same as identifying England with
a bowler hat and cups of tea, France with croissants and garlic and the US
with cowboy hats and burgers.

However, the fact that the game is a racer is a plus point. Impulze and
Zeppelin didn't program a platform game for this licence, which is the
norm for this sort of thing. An adventure game may have been more
appropriate, which is the route that an unofficial public domain
Neighbours game took, with digitised graphics. So, at least the game isn't
as derivative as it might have been.

The joystick spins your character clockwise and anticlockwise, as you race
round the street track. If you hit something (kangaroo, car, person, other
racer, remote control car, hole in the ground) you lose energy. When the
'Neighbours' logo is emptied of whiteness the game ends.

It's not amazing. It's not awful either. It's just mediocre. Much better
than the TV show then.