Joe the Whizz Kid

Joe the Whizz Kid

Developer	Stavros Fasoulas
Publisher	ALA Software
Designer	Stavros Fasoulas
Composer
Released	1985
Platform	Commodore 64
Genre	Adventure, Miscellaneous
Gamemode	Single-player
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Today we are looking at a really obscure game on the Commodore 64 and that game my friends is Joe the Whizz Kid. One interesting thing about the game is that while the official title of the game is Joe The Whizz Kid. Many people simply refer to the game as Whiz Kid. This is because the game in most regions that it was "released" only has Whiz Kid written on the box. The game was released in 1985, but there are conflicting reports as to how available the game was when it was released. Some people even state that they think copies sold were just bootlegs and that there was no official release. This of course is just pure speculation. But many people do say that the only way to get this game back in the 80's was thanks to a pirate copy of it.

Design

The guy behind this game is a Mr Stavros Fasoulas. If his name sounds familiar to you guys that is because he was the mastermind of the hit Commodore 64 game Sanxion. Delta and Mindroll are another couple of games that he had a hand in developing as well.

As far as the presentation of Joe The Whizz Kid goes it's a pretty nice looking game. The backgrounds do not have a great deal of detail on them, but that really is not a bad thing. Joe The Whizz Kid himself is very well animated and the various levels do have a pretty good amount of detail on them. Still while this is far from an ugly game it's not one that you would use to boast to ZX Spectrum owners over the graphical power of the Commodore 64.

Plot

Now the story of the game... I have no freaking idea what Stavros Fasoulas was going for here. The best I can tell is that you playing the role of Joe The Whizz kid you are stuck in some kind of shop. There really is pretty much zero story going on here so I would not worry about that. This store has a few different sections for you to walk through like a food section and a hardware section.

Gameplay

Now if you were to ask a gamer who has played this game what their thoughts of it are then you will most probably be greeted with one of two answers. Number one is that the game flat out sucks. And number two is a little more kind where people will tell you the game is really hard.

So you fire up the game and after dodging some tins that are trying to eat you, you will come to a door and wonder what the heck you have to do. Do you need to find the key? Maybe climb over the top of the door? Nope Joe The Whizz Kid needs to use his handgun to blow away the lock on the door. Then to make things even more confusing the door then does not open you need to find all the pieces of the lock and put them back before the alarm goes off. Now the area you have to do this is really small, but Joe just walks so slow it's really a chore to do.

It's a bit harsh to be too critical of Joe The Whizz Kid as many people do say that the game was never intended to be released, but if this is a game you have never experienced then I would not recommend trying to track down a copy.