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Odell Down Under - Fun (Below) The Sun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

"Odell Down Under" is a PC Game for Windows and Mac, originally released in 1994. In an age where the greatest video game technology was made up of three and a half 256 color pixels, Odell was revolutionary, and even at today's standards could take a bite out of the competition.

It's a pretty basic game -- you have four operatives to choose from; Challenge, Tournament, Create a Fish and Practice. In Challenge, you are given four random sequences of fish (real species) and you must earn 5,000pts to go on to the next fish. In Tournament, you start from the very bottom (Silver Sprat) and work your way up every five thousand points (Through one try, I got 450k, and I still had a ways to go!) until you reach the Great White Shark and become the "REEF RULER". In Create a Fish, you create a fish (obviously) based on agility, speed, endurance, etc. And in Practice, you choose any fish you'd like and just swim around, playing the game itself without worrying about points etc.

Now, onto the game. No matter what option you choose, you're going to end up as some sort of fish. Your goal? Well, there's no bosses to beat. No "fruits" to gather for points. You swim around, find out what type of foods your fish eats (and which are poisonous to him), and evade predators. Sounds simple, really, but it's remarkably fun.

The artwork fantastic for it's age (and even now). Pixelated, yes, but very detailed. Your fish hides behind beautifully shadowed plants and coral rocks, and in the background stands a sunken ship. There are roughly eight "squares", and one squares takes up your window, so you move on the edge of the screen to visit other parts of the reef. Perhaps one of the best parts of Odell is the smooth, carribean music that plays in the background -- steel drums, flutes, keyboards, etc. It's very easy to believe you're actually one of the fish in the game. I've included (since I've been playing Odell since I was 6) some of the best fish to play:

Lyretail Coral Trout - my absolute favourite. Eats most smaller fish, even the poisonous ones. It's hard to be bored with the Lyretail, because he's very much king of the smaller fish, but still has quite a few predators you'll have a fun time evading!

Great White Shark - He eats everything. And when I say everything, I MEAN everything, even his own kind! The bad part is that he has no enemies in the game, which gets old after a while with nothing to be scared about, but when you play him in Practice without eating other Great Whites, the GWs multiply and in every screen there are about three! I'm sure the programmers made it this way so you had to "fight for your own territory", so to speak.

Overall, I LOVE Odell Down Under, and kids will love it, too. It's educational, with facts about every kind of fish in the entire game. It teaches how the food chain works, how te reef system works, how fish get their food, etc. I certainly loved it, and it's been 8 years and I STILL do! By the way, there's no blood and guts when one fish eats another -- wavy text that spells out, "Arrghhh" fades where the fish used to be.

If there's one game you want to buy for your kids, yourself, or a ocean-loving friend this christmas, Odell Down Under is IT a thousand times and more.

I only have the demo!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I only have the demo,but my sister and I spend hours playing it!We had bought a different MECC game ,and we decided to play the demos it came with. This demo was so fun that we downloaded it on to our computer. Now we can play it whenever we want! We would have bought the real game ,but it was to expensive! You really should get this program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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