Klax
You can’t write a review of a puzzle game without mentioning Tetris, that ultimately simple yet incredible addictive puzzle game. Klax was Atari’s attempt at taking the crown from tetris as the ultimate puzzle game and it does put up a good effort but not enough to blow it away.
Klax is a variation on the old four in a row game in which you must get four colors in one row to win.
In klax you have to form rows, or klaxs, of at least three blocks of varying colors on a five by five grid. These rows can be vertically, horizontally or diagonally constructed by colored tiles that fall from the top of a platform. When they reach the bottom of the platform you have to catch them with your paddle and then drop them in the correct position. Your paddle can hold up to five tiles so you don’t have to drop them in the order you catch them. You can also throw tiles back onto the platform but you have to be carefull because it’s easy to get tiles you can’t catch like this.
If you are able to form a row of more then three then they will count as multiple klax for instance when you get a four-tile klax it will count as two klax instead. This is an easy way of increasing your total number of klax without adding many tiles.
The game consists of levels requiring you to do a specific job which is usually to get a set number of klax. Sometimes only certain types of klax like diagonal ones count, this will be noted before the level begins. Other times it’s a matter of getting a number of tiles or to survive a certain amount of time. It’s game over if you drop too many tiles or when the grid is completly filled up.
The biggest klax you can do is a cross which fills up the entire grid and counts as six klaxs but it requires some planning and a bit of luck to get. On some levels you will get a level warp when you get a cross so it can be worthwhile to go for it. Luckily on some levels you can also get a flashing tile which counts as any color to make things a bit easier.
Klax can be a very addictive game and because of the nature of the game does not require a lot in terms of hardware. There is not too much difference between the versions and most of the extras on more powerfull machines are things that add no extra gameplay like speech and colorfull backgrounds.
All in all this is a great puzzle game.
Overal rating: 8/10
This game was released for many different systems here are some notes:
| Amiga | Released in 1990. Game has been tested but not completed with winUAE v0.9.91. Contains speech and nice backgrounds. |
| Atari 2600 | Released in 1990. Game has been tested but not completed with Stella 1.4.1. |
| C64 | Released in 1990. Game has been tested but not completed with CCS64 V2.0 win. |
| DOS | Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed on a DOS and Win2K PC. Graphics support CGA/EGA/VGA and look very much alike, you can use CTRL-C to exit the game. |
| Megadrive/ Genesis |
Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed with WGens 2.11. |
| NES | Released in 1990. Game has been tested but not completed with FCE ultra 0.98.12. |
| PC-Engine/ Turbo Grafx |
Released in 1990. Game has been tested but not completed with Magic Engine 0.98. |
| ZX Spectrum | Released in 1990. Game has been tested but not completed with emuZwin 2.5. When played on a ZX128 you actually get speech! Not bad for this machine. |
| Others | These versions were not available. Arcade released in ?. Atari Lynx released in 1990. Atari ST released in 1990. |
| Date added | Nov-28-2004 11:51 |
| Name | Klax |
| Developer | Atari |
| Publisher | Atari |
| First released | 1990 |
| Genre | Puzzle |
