Park Patrol (C64 VICE 50Hz no commentary)

This is a quick play-through of the beautifully polished Activision game "Park Patrol", released in the US in 1984. I played one game as the boy ranger, one as the girl ranger, then let it play one demo game. It was only three years later it finally got a budget release in PAL markets under the Silverbird label. Which is a shame, because it's another well crafted Activision release.

In this game you play a park ranger, roaming around the park grounds, keeping the place tidy. You have to dodge snakes in the water, and turtles on the land. Collect twelve pieces of rubbish advance to the next round, where more things are progressively added to distract you from your goal — ants, swimmers, swamps, etc. (The game has a full options menu, where you can toggle between boy/girl ranger, and control the numbers of all of the other creatures. So you can even have an entirely ant-free game if you wish.)

To add some urgency to it all, you also have an energy level that's continually depleting. You can visit your hut to collect some food and replenish your energy, or you may have to go after the ants, which will sometimes try to make off with some of the food from your hut.

There is also a plant that grows a little each time you make contact with it, and if you go flying out of the raft and land on a log, there is a log-rolling sub-game. I'll leave it up to the viewer to work out what happens if you complete each of those.

C64 Wiki page on Park Patrol:

Lemon 64 link to Park Patrol: (7.7 out of 10 at the time of writing)

Wikipedia page on Park Patrol: