When I had a Commodore 64 there were some brilliant games around. ‘The Last Ninja’, ‘International Karate’ and ‘Bounder’ were a few of my favourites but the one that I spent most of my time on was ‘Wizball’.

There were a lot of games back then that used some really original ideas and ‘Wizball’ was a very good example of this. You took on the role of a wizard (in the form of a smiling green sphere) and the object of the game was to add colour to the landscape. To do this you needed to collect droplets of certain shades (with a feline helper) and mix them together in your cauldron. Each time you managed to do this the grey back-drop would become a little more attractive.

You could play it on your own or with a friend. This was also a fairly new idea; there were no other co-operative games around except for ‘Gauntlet’. If you played alone then you would have to control both the wizard and the cat; when a friend played with you they would take control of the moggy.

And that was just the fundamentals of the game. ‘Wizball’ also featured strange aliens to zap, bizarre bonus levels to negotiate and ‘filth raids’ to avoid. Its sound effects were really impressive for the time and it had some truly great music to boot.

‘Wizball’ was a very unusual game and it was brilliant fun to play. I have often wondered if some games producer will ever get around to doing a remake of it. The concept of the game was very simple but with the technology of today it could result in a very popular game indeed.

Quick thing, I have just looked at the design for this hr software webpage and I feel I should say in my web trained opinion it is incredably eye-catching. I was having quite a strenuous time actually finding any facts and figures however, which made me wonder what is more critical, eye-appeal or usability? Why is it that some sites aren’t actually able to do both?