Toi Acid Game (1989) 128k AY music version Walkthrough + Review, ZX Spectrum

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Toi and his girlfriend Zoi were on a discotheque, having a good time and dancing all night long, when a madman suddenly kidnapped Zoi. The madman is none other than the famous Doctor Acid, whom has always been denied any prizes despite his great (albeit somewhat maleficent) discoveries;
Now, indignant and full of anger, Dr. Acid is devoted to perform terrible experiments by abducting creatures and then transform them into smileys with different personalities.

The destiny that is reserved to Zoi is to be transformed into the bride of a newly-created SMILEY-FRANKESTEIN, which constantly is telling his master he wants a partner. At this moment, Dr. Acid is heading for his lair, the "Acid House", with Zoi. Zoi is leaving a trail by dropping smiley badges she has pulled of Dr. Acid’s coat, so that Toi can pick them up and find the path that leads to Dr. Acid's horrible mansion.

The evil doctor has placed enemies and traps to make Toi fail in his pursuit, but Toi can defend himself by collecting smileys (small semi-spheres charged with highly corrosive acid, with which he can fill a deposit and throw it at the enemies and then be able to destroy them. But these smileys are allies of Doctor Acid and will try to stop Toi by creating deadly acid pools. On the bottom of the screen you can see your Acid-meter, but be aware of the Acid-thief – a smiley wearing a cap and a mask, because if he touches you he will steal your acid.

Toi has to make his way through four different scenarios to rescue his beloved: The disco, the beach, the galleon and the Acid House. You have to collect a certain amount of badges on every stage, you can see how many by pressing the pause button. When you have collected them all you will hear a constant beeping noise and you will be able to leave the stage through the exit. You have to collect the badges in a certain order, because there is always only one badge to collect, so you have to find the first badge, and when collecting this the second badge will appear etc etc.

On some of the stages you will need to find keys to gain access to the badges, and in all of the stages you can pick up something like drinks, ice lollys, bottles, and laboratory flasks and these objects will make you either strong or weak for some time. On the disco stage a trouble maker is sometimes blocking your way, and to get past him you will have to leave the screen and come back 1-5 times, then he will be gone.

The game is nicely done with highly detailed colorful backgrounds and interactive stuff and a lot of sprites on the screen most of the time. The four stages is huge, so they are split up into four separate games. When you complete stage 1 you will get the password for stage 2 and so on.

This game has three main problems:
1 - It is a Spanish game, not that there is anything wrong with that, but for people outside Spain there is very little information available in English about this game, and all the text in the game is in Spanish, but this review has made up for that.
2 - The levels are huge and if you don’t know the level design and where the smiley badges is placed you will do a lot of unnecessary wandering around. This problem can be solved with a map: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-maps/t/ToiAcidGame.jpg
3 – The biggest problem: The game is from 1989, and the original version had no AY sound...!! It just feels really weird to play a game where you are in a disco with interactive people dancing in the background and disco lights flashing and there is no music. On the beach you are walking past a lot of (HOT!) girls that have radios by their side …and no music. This also is a big lack for the other stages, the game is lacking atmosphere because of this. There must have been put a lot of work into making this nice looking game, and creating some soundtracks should be the easiest part, but of course creating nothing is easier. MSX and Amstrad CPC also got ports …and also without soundtracks. But the problem is solved with this version from ZX Pro / Megafire Software that has added a cool soundtrack for every stage.

Besides this the game plays well with ok scrolling and controls, and no slowdown no matter how many sprites there are on the screen, but even if you have the map there is still a lot of wandering around on the same places to find the badges.

The game was published by Iber Software in 1989.

Rating:
Original 48k: 74%
Unofficial 128k: 84%

If you do not have a Spectrum with Beta Disk / TR-dos this version can also run on ZX Spectrum Next and emulators. The game can run on a standard ZX Spectrum 128k with tape recorder if someone changes the loading routine to tape format.

48k tape: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games/t/ToiAcidGame.tap.zip
128k Beta Disk / TR-dos: https://vtrd.in/gamez/t/TOIACID.ZIP

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