Got a question, a rant, or just feel like seeing your letter in print? Send all questions & letters to jared@vgf.com.

Q: I just thought you'd like to know that I read your review of "Titus the Fox" for GameBoyColour dated 12/13/00, and found it interesting. I'm not a game-boy game player, having never owned one, but I did own an Amstrad CPC back in the eighties and early nineties. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the brand, I don't think it's that well known these days. It was a Colour Personal Computer (the "colour" bit shows how old the thing was!) with 128k of RAM and a 3-inch floppy disk drive (no, that's not a typing error).

Don't worry, I'm coming to the point.

Anyway, I was remembering all my favourite old games on the computer, and so I searched the internet with the words "Titus the Fox". Yes, that's right, one of my favourite old games. I can't remember exactly when the original game was released, but it either very late eighties or , more likely, early to mid-nineties, and was one of the best (and last) games to be produced for computers of that ilk. The game came on one disk and with a large poster featuring Titus and Foxy on a magic carpet and all Titus' many foes that he meets throughout the game. The game also had a subtitle in those days "The Road to Marrakech" (apologies if that is spelled incorrectly).

As far as I can remember, the level design was distinctly more varied and sensible, with nothing happening invisibly, and diverse and interesting routes through the levels. (It was one of the first games I had played to actually offer choices of route!)

There was a definite French feel to the game - all the best Amstrad games came from France - to the extent that although all levels had names (such as "On the Road to Marrakech"), they were referred to as etage (i.e. "loading etage 1", which is French for floor, or in this case, level.

There was also no side-kick Zorro. (I always think side-kicks are a bad sign!) There were flaws, such as a tendency for the game to slow down when there were many enemies on-screen at once, but many more good things, and I'm pretty sure it got a 90%+ mark from Amstrad Action, one of the leading gaming mags of the day. Anyway, hope this was of interest to you. The more I write the more I remember, so I'd better stop. 

Yours, David

A: Thanks for the letter David!  It's always cool to see one of our reviews (of a relatively bad game no less) touch someone in the way this one seems to have.

I am vaguely familiar with the old Amstrad CPC, but have never actually seen or played that game before.  From your description of the game though, it sounds like the Game Boy Color version was definitely based on that older version, but something got butchered in the port.  The funny thing is that I even mentioned in the review that they had never created a game based on the fox before and wondered why their mascot was a fox - shows how much I know!

At least I understand some of their weird (like the stage names) design decisions now!

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Q: [Regarding Hercules: The Legendary Journeys on N64] i cant get over the path to the third switch been trying for a month but i cant get over it could you please help a desperate father of a 4 year old

A: It's been a long time since I've played Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, but your problem is probably related to the fact that each character has specific abilities.  Try using another one of the main characters and see if that makes things easier.

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Q: I AM WONDERING IF YOU CAN TELL ME WHERE I CAN PURCHASE THIS GAME.. I HAVE LOOKED EVERYWHERE AND CAN'T FIND IT.

A: Telling us the name of the game is kinda important if you want us to help you find it...