Lots of Effort Pays Off With Just a Little Reward

A real quarter eater, U.S. Gold’s “Gold of the Aztecs” is a jump-and-shoot arcade-style game with little reward and no purpose. It’s like a Rambo movie, but without the unbelievable characters or the implausible plot.

“Gold” is just kill or be killed . . . again and again and again.

A treasure map leads Bret Conrad (our hero?) in search of Aztec gold.

He parachutes into the jungle armed with a pistol and a machete. His landing broken by a tree, Conrad is immediately attacked by a band of the locals.

Blink your eyes and poor old Conrad might die eight or nine times before you figure out how to get him out of his tree.

Once on the ground, he uses his seemingly endless supply of ammunition on a seemingly endless parade of very short, very aggressive adversaries with nasty arrows and blow guns. Jump, twist, roll, somersault, back up, shoot, slash and die.

Even with the map provided, moving Conrad on his trek is not easy.

Granted our joystick proficiency leaves much to be desired, but there is not much opportunity to master the all the moves that get Conrad through the jungle.

And if you are anywhere on the sentient side of 15, there’s not much reason to master the moves either.

One final insult: The game’s off-disk copy protection is especially annoying.

There’s an unreadable code wheel printed black on black that you have to use to decipher four codes before you can play.

After that, you might still have to return to the wheel several more times through the course of the game.

All in all, you’ll have to dig long, hard and deep for this cache of fool’s gold.

GOLD OF AZTECS Rating:*

IBM & compatibles; Atari ST, Amiga. 512K. Joystick recommended. List: $49.95.

Computer games are rated on a five-star system, from one star for poor to five for excellent.