Sega LCD games from McDonald's - revisited and supersized!
This post comes equipped with 10000% the daily recommended allowance of useless information to get you started playing Sega/Arches LCD games like a pro!
Value Game #6:
I found the monkey-catch-bananas (AiAi Banana Catch) game at my local Thrift. It's, hmm, well, I'm not sure if it has replay value or not. It is a very attractive little game, though, with a glittery backshell.
Oh yeah, here's an eBay auction for them. See?
Gameplay Facts:
There's more to this game than meets the eye. There's a counter of sorts in the top right corner and up to three monkey heads show up in it (nothing gory though!) at a time. The playfield has a couple columns of bananas (three per row - left, center, and right sides) and the bottom row has larger bananas, almost as if you're viewing it from an angle. Probably just for emphasis though ;) You have three different places your monkey can be in to catch those bananas, and two buttons to move him left or right.
Let about (not 100% sure) 10 bananas pass you and the game ends; the all the bananas will flash angrily a couple of times. I guess I'd be concerned if ghostly, blackened bananas flickered above my head a number of times, too. Catch however many bananas and you get a monkey face in the top right corner and the bananas fall a bit faster. After catching however many bananas are required to give the little runt a bellyache a sidesplitting bellyache, all the screen elements will flash to the accompaniment of a tone, and the screen flashes entirely too many times. Back to the blank screen when it's done; press a key to begin. You should never lose; while it's hard to catch ALL the bananas that come by, it's not hard to avoid missing more than five or so.
So that's all there is to it, right?
Almost!
Hopeless wishes:
I would've liked to see a switch to let you play "DODGE" the bananas, that would probably be challenging at higher stages. Sort of like minigames in Disney games - Pumbaa dodges fruit and kitchen sinks in their Jungle Games on SNES, or Abu dodging pots in Aladdin for the Genesis. Three bananas shouldn't ever come down at once so it shouldn't be hard to make a modified version of the game, right? That isn't a feature of the unit, though (as far as I know), so the least they could've done is leave some nice button codes in there for us..?
Come back for some of our $#@! cookies:
The unit CAN put more than one monkey onscreen at a time. I started messing around with depressing the buttons before I flipped the switch at the back of the game. Usually holding down one will put the monkey onscreen and then he'll just move over in a direction and stay there; keep holding the button and hit the other and the monkey in that direction will light up just a little (very hard to see as it's a very brief flicker). Doesn't let you catch bananas though. After trying the right button, then the left, I tried both buttons. The game started out with one monkey in the middle, and then I tried letting go of the right button and pressing it again - suddenly a monkey appeared to the right! I got two monkeys!
What's more, they moved as a unit! I would only have to press the button once to dodge from one side of the screen to another to catch the trickiest combination of bananas (two at the edges of the screen with a gap). This only worked for me once (admittedly I played with it for maybe 15-20 minutes total), and it usually puts three monkeys in there. Not a lot of gameplay in that option as the clones catch everything that comes by, no matter what. The game seemed much longer the last time I had three monkeys onscreen - more bananas were caught before the game sped up, or the game was running more slowly (looked as fast as usual to me, though). In any case you can only look at the game when that's happening. Not fun.
Is there a redeeming feature of this long post about a 29 cent McDonald's toy? Yes, there is a moral to the story:
When somebody remarks "more fun than a barrel full of monkeys," remind them that the monkeys catch all the bananas.
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Originally Posted by Ed Oscuro
