A predecessor to Decap Attack and Magical Hat Flying Turbo Adventure, Psycho Fox is known as one of the better Master System games. It’s easy to see why. When you compare it to other games at the time, there’s a great sense of momentum to the character, and the controls are perfect, so you feel that every death is your own fault.
It took me a couple of lives to get in my stride and work out what was happening. Initially you have a single hit before you die, and you have to be pretty cautious when progressing through the levels. However, by hitting the eggs (using a comic extending arm animation) you can sometimes find a black bird companion who not only gives you a projective weapon, but also acts as a second hit point.
So far, so Mario. The two main differences are that first, when you throw your companion he lands on the floor and then returns to you, and second, all the time you’re not holding on to the bird you are reduced to a single hit again. So you have to be quite careful when you throw him.
As the bird returns to you, he continues to kill any enemies. There are some parts of the game where this is used to good effect, where a row of enemies can be killed as long as you are standing on the same level as them. Getting onto that level can be the hard bit.
Having mastered the basic mechanics, and without the need to play the whole game in one sitting (due to the wonders of emulation), I had little trouble with it. Yes, I lost the occasional life, but by playing through relatively slowly and taking the top route where possible I was able to find treasure which allowed me to play the bonus game between levels, which often gave me extra lives.
In fact, by the end of the game I had 20 lives remaining, partially due to getting 5 bonus lives a couple of times, and partially due to finding eggs with lives inside. The first time I found such an egg I ran away from the life – it appears as a flickering version of yourself, and you ave to catch it, but I didn’t realise this until one ran into me.
The levels were slightly varied, between blue and black backgrounds and the floor sprites. Some levels outside were set more in the sky, with clouds to jump on; others relied on collapsing platforms and ice floors (which caused their own problems with the momentum).
As well as collecting lives in the bonus game and in eggs, there were other items that could be collected – some sort of star, a stone staircase thing, and a green bottle marked ‘S’. Experimentation during the last set of levels showed that using the staircase thing enabled me to change character, to a hippo, monkey or tiger. The monkey had a higher jump, the hippo a lower, and the tiger the same as the fox. I saw no other difference between the characters, but recognise that the monkey may have been useful during some of the earlier stages where high jumps were required. There were some areas blocked off by boulders, and I wonder if the hippo could have broken through them.
The star seemed to be some sort of smart bomb, and the potion might have been invincibility but I never quite worked it out. The only time I tried it, the game corrupted itself into a glitchy wall (which I eventually jumped through to continue the level) so I never tried it again.
So, after a few sessions (with save states made between them) I completed the game, only learning half its secrets in round 7-2. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day to take a different route through some of the levels – especially in the later levels, there are many different routes to go and I suspect quite a few secret areas to find – but for now I’m happy to finally understand why this is considered to be such a good game.
Tim's Gaming Diary 