Pink Panther

Pink Panther from 1988, published by Gremlin Graphics, is one of the few attempts to turn the famous cartoon cat into a video game — and at the same time a textbook example of how treacherous licensed games of that era could be. The version hosted here is the Commodore 64 one, the version that took the harshest critical beating at the time.

The idea is genuinely one of a kind. The Panther takes a job with a rich householder who rises at night and sleepwalks through his home. He must not wake up, let alone fall: so you clear rugs and furniture out of his path before he stumbles over them, and use a little bell to lure him in the direction that happens to suit you. You are effectively watching two characters at once — yourself and him — and all of the game's tension comes from that divided attention.

Unfortunately, so does its frustration, and there is more of that. The sleepwalker moves at his own pace, collisions can often be prevented only with foresight you have no way of acquiring except by failing, and mistakes are punished hard. Mastery means trial and error, and the critics of the day did the maths without mercy: fourteen percent from Zzap!64 was among the harshest verdicts the magazine ever handed out, and it was not entirely unfair.

Is it worth launching today? As a game to play seriously, hardly; as a curiosity, absolutely. Nobody ever properly revisited the sleepwalker-minding concept, and it is fascinating for ten minutes to watch a bold idea collide with the limits of its execution. Licensed titles of the eighties are a chapter of their own, and this one is an eloquent exhibit — a neat lesson in how a famous name on the box does not make the game.

If you are curious, Pink Panther starts right in your browser on oldgame.cz, no installation needed.