Baby Blues (Commodore 64)

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Baby Blues was made in 1990 by Software Creations for the Commodore 64. It was released by Virgin Mastertronic bundled together with the Magnum Light Phaser and other games. In the game's story the player is a mercenary and is hired to protect the baby of a regular customer for an afternoon. Multiple birds and a spider try to steal milk from the baby, which is in constant demand thereof. Coincidentally a balloon race takes place at the scene. The mercenary shoots the balloons to entertain the baby.

In the game the content of the feeding bottle represents the health bar of the baby. Health is lost if birds or the spider reach the baby, or if the baby is shot by the player. Health can be replenished by shooting a feeding bottle located on a train which is crossing the screen from time to time. Sometimes a snake comes by. It doesn't hurt the baby, but shooting it yields extra points. A required amount of balloons has to be shot in order to proceed to the next level. The player uses a semi automatic weapon with infinite capacity but limited stock of ammunition. Running out of bullets or milk will end the game.

To assist the positioning of the gun, just the very dark portions of the screen turn white upon shooting. Therefore for a light gun game Baby blues is rather gentle to the eyes. Sadly the calibration routine doesn't work for me. The aim is way off and I was unable to improve it no matter what I tried. Finally I ended up shooting from the hip.

In my opinion the difficulty increases at a good pace until level 5 which keeps the game interesting at the beginning. The difficulty spikes at level 5 were just very little bullets are available. Here the player has to shoot multiple balloons at once and wait for the balloons to fly over the spider before shooting them, in order to save ammunition. After that 5th level suddenly a huge opulence of ammunition is available in every subsequent level. Usually I lose interest after level 5, as the game gets very easy afterwards.

Personally I like the game. The story is very silly but it makes for a decent game. Sadly the final score is not displayed upon conclusion, which reduces the long play value for me. Also the game is very short if it is considered that there is very little sense in keep on playing after level 5. The music is cheerful and well made. The graphics are quite advanced for an 8 bit micro computer game and show lots of animation. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Software Creations did light gun games before Tin Star, which I reviewed in episode 9.