Game

Alright, this is much more my speed than the previous two Apple games. This is Pooyan, a very classic arcade game by Konami from the early 80s. We’ve actually got quite a few arcade ports on the Apple II. Name a game from that era, they prolly tried to make a port of it. Keyword being try.

Most arcade ports to the Apple II do NOT work, in my opinion. The hardware is just so limited that movement and control is stilted, awkward, and stiff. For fast paced action games, it feels AWFUL. I’m talkin’ things like Dig Dug, Mario Bros, Pac-Man, even arcade inspired games that require fast twitch movement, absolutely horrendous. But Pooyah is prolly the best of these I’ve played.

Game

In Pooyan, you play as a mama pig trying to protect her kids from a straight up horde of hungry wolves. They come equipped with balloons, and are trying to get down to the bottom, or up to the top of a tree, depending on the round. You move up and down on an elevator, and are trying to shoot them down with a bow and arrow. Occasionally you can grab some meat, which allows your shots to kill instantly and pierce. You need to hit the wolve’s balloons, and not them, so it takes some tricky precise aiming, though you get plenty of chances, cause they need like 4 or more wolves to get through to win, and you can usually spam a bit.

The thing that makes Pooyan on Apple II better than its contemporaries is that you’re really only controlling up and down. It gets stuck and awkward sometimes, but it’s SO much better than anything else I’ve tried to play. And again, you can spam a lot, which helps. To get FAR and survive, you need to be precise, but you can get by with a little luck and spam.

In the arcades, Pooyan is a tricky but great forgotten gem. Here, it’s just a pretty okay port. I’d certainly NOT recommend this version, but it’s doing its best, and I respect it for that.