Tintin on the Moon

1989 – a time when nobody knew what a USB dongle was, and Hergé's Tintin had been an icon of Franco-Belgian comics for four decades. Infogrames was regularly fishing in the licensing waters back then, and this quiff-haired boy seemed like a sure bet to them.

Tintin on the Moon draws loosely from the two-part comic album Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon, which Hergé drew in the early fifties – that's right, even before Sputnik, and it didn't hurt the authenticity one bit. The goal is simple: get Tintin to the Moon and back alive. A villain sabotages the rocket, and you need to survive both the journey and your stay on the surface.

Gameplay-wise, it's a platformer with action sequences – jumping, dodging obstacles, the occasional fight. The keyboard controls are exactly as clunky as you remember other Infogrames games from that era being. Tintin responds with a slight delay, which was probably standard in 1989, but today it makes your teeth hurt. The graphics, on the other hand, faithfully copy Hergé's distinctive clean style – bold outlines, flat colors – and for a DOS game from that year, it looked decent enough. The Sound Blaster music does its job and then you quickly forget about it.

What keeps the game afloat, even in hindsight, is precisely that loyalty to the source material. Infogrames made an effort to match the atmosphere of the album – static cutscenes, recognizable characters, the right settings. If you grew up with Tintin in hand, you'll get that specific "yeah, that's it" feeling in the first few minutes. Then you'll get your first unfair death and the feeling gets a bit diluted. The game is short, the difficulty in places unnecessarily frustrating, and it's more like thirty minutes of content than an afternoon's worth.

Play Tintin on the Moon today if you have sentimental feelings for the character, or you're curious how licensed games worked at the end of the eighties – quick, not always well-thought-out products that sold on the brand name rather than substance. Fire it up in your browser via DOSBox online without any hassle, and twenty minutes later you'll have the full picture. Don't expect anything more and you won't be disappointed.