Oscar

2026-05-17

When we bought Amiga 1200 in 1993, it came with two games in the box, and one of them was "Oscar," and I spend many hours with him.

"Oscar" had many ports: there was one for PC and also SNES version, but the Amiga's was the most definite experience. PC had ulterior graphics, and SNES had content cut out (only 4 worlds instead of 7, and Oscar doesn't change his outfit to match the movie).

Thus, I'm glad I managed to make CD32's version working. To my surprise, this version has one more world: Commodore 64, which kind of breaks out of the movie theme.

Backstory

The game was meant to be released within Trolls IP, but this didn't pan out for some reason, and the creators swapped a Troll into this animal that I never bothered to name when I was a kid. I think I thought it was a hamster or a chipmunk, but it's neither. Looks like its own thing.

There is no plot that I am aware of, and the intro simply has the titular Oscar driving a red Ferrari (or a Lambo) to a cinema building. He enters, and the games starts. There is a lobby where we can choose a theatre playing a movie in one of seven topics: there is a vampire movie, a western, a dinosaur movie, a war movie, a space movie, a fairy-tale (I think, but I would have to check), and something like a game show. Then, as mentioned, CD32 has the Commodore 64 world.

Gameplay

In each level, we need to collect a number of Oscars, which I guess are meant to be the Academy Awards, but they don't look like it; instead, they are small heads. Upon being picked up, they say, "Thanks, everybody," and it has been imprinted in my head forever, I suppose.

The means of disposing mooks are: jumping on their head, usually three times, and we can also find a yo-yo with which we can bash them until they're gone. The yo-yo has another use, too: as a grappling hook, to hook into a ceiling and swing and jump somewhere not accessible otherwise.

There are additional, timed bonuses: there is a shield allowing us to run through the monsters, as if they were not there; there is invisibility potion, which is useless, because monsters don't follow us anywhere anyway, but we cannot see Oscar, and it's easy to run into a monster; there is also a clock that stops all the monsters, so they don't move. While each of those bonuses is on, they cancel the yo-yo; it becomes useful once the bonus wears out. But not always, so pick up your item carefully.

We can also collect letters forming the word BONUS, after which we're granted to a level bonus, but I am not sure I ever managed to do that, so I cannot tell you how it looks like. Be careful, though, because sometimes there is a letter G, which takes the place of N, and the word BOGUS will not give you the award.

Picking up things is unnecessarily tricky: there are coins, and when you pick up a coin, something jumps out of it, and you have to catch it. If you miss it, it's gone. This actually applies only to items you need to pick up, while a lot of them do nothing, and points are collected when running through the coin itself. However, you never know in advance what will be in a coin, so you cannot just dash through the level -- you have to stop all the time. I don't know why someone thought it was a good design.

One more thing that could have been done better are the backgrounds, which, colour-wise, are very close to the foreground, thus making it sometimes hard to see what's what. Especially on new levels, it's possible to run into a monster, when we don't know how it looks like (e.g., flies in the Wild West levels, which look like a swarm of black pixels). I don't remember that thing from the childhood, so maybe it was optimised for a CRT display and is lost on LCDs. I think I read that SNES version had backgrounds darker.

2026-05-31

The sci-fi world

I had 30 minutes, so I decided to start playing world by world. And in the order of the theatres, which makes the sci-fi world first. Oscar is dressed in a tight purple catsuit (oh, the 90s) and has blonde hair. One of the monsters is definitely an alien, but in sneakers and with eyes and a red nose; I guess it was enough to fend lawyers off. There are also Trolls glued to walls in Gigeresque areas.

Progression

"Oscar" has infinite continues, after which you're not only maintaining the number of points but also the progress, as in, it doesn't even reset you to the beginning of the level. Unless there is a rather larger finite number of continues that will smash me in the face, it means you can play the game until you finish it. The lives system was already on its way out back in 1993, anyway. Paired up with the state-save functionality, it's very comfortable.

Speaking of which, I can't imagine how the game was meant to be finished on Amiga. There is no save functionality and no passwords either, so once you start it, you have to finish it in one go. There are 8 world in the CD32 version plus bonus levels, and the first world took me around 30 minutes, which means at least 4 hours of playing. Though, back then it was not unusual to leave the computer running. My friend would leave his Atari 65XE for 4-5 days, after which he would ruled out that the charger is too hot and turned it off for 1-2 days, to start anew with another game. But load times were criminal with tapes.

A bonus level

I also managed to find all BONUS letters in the sci-fi world and was eligible for a bonus level. At first, I thought it's the first time, but when I saw the level, I realised that I must have done that in the 1990s, too. The bonus level has yet another costume (like a baseball player, I think). There are no enemies, but there is a raising water level, and you cannot stay under water for too long. If you drown before getting to the exit, that's it. But you can repeat the level until you nail it.

Controls

Controls are tricky because you jump with UP on the D-pad. Unusual choice as of today, but because I managed to harness the power of the D-pad recently, I was able to perform even some trickier manoeuvres. The choice does surprise me, though, because all the four buttons (A, B, X, Y; though, they were colour-coded on CD32) do the same thing: throw the yo-yo, if you have it.