My brother played this game a lot when I was very young but I never played it very long myself. The gameplay was too difficult for me then, so I quitted the game soon after I started it and I played another game.
As I said, the gameplay is a bit difficult. You have to learn playing the game before you will enjoy it. The jumping on the trash cans and after that jumping into the open windows is really hard if you play this game in pure Windows (I tried it with XP).
But give it a try in DOSbox (see the Utilities page) and the game will be more fun to play. If you jump for the first time into an open windows it will be a surprise in what kind of room you will come in. There are rooms with birds you have to catch, rooms with brooms walking on the floor who will smash you out if you don't take care and many other kind of rooms that will surprise you.
The graphics are bad. Maybe they were good a long time ago, but in comparison with other dosgames the graphics are just bad. There are only three different colors in this game, black, white and pink. Awfull to see, but if you played this game for a long time ago it will be nice playing it again, trust me.
Conlcusion: not a good game at all. The gameplay is bad and the graphics are even worse.
Reviewer: Dos-Games-Online The Alley Cat is a fun game with a really old school vibe. Those who grew up in the eighties will definitely get a kick out of the game because it will surely remind them of the time when video games were simple yet extremely fun.
The game was created by Bill Williams and was first released in 1983 for the Atari-8 bit. The following year, the game was released for the PC. The PC version was released by IBM.
Because the game was released in the eighties, it is a given that the graphics is pretty outdated. The colors are few and the graphics arent flashy or too detailed. But this only adds to the nostalgia of the game.
The game accelerates in speed as the levels are repeated. So the game becomes tougher to beat as you go along the game. The game really requires quick reflexes. The sounds are better than the graphics because they really get you excited over the game.
At the start of the game, you need to control the cat as he goes through the alley. On the screen there is an alley along a tall building. The windows in the building would open up and random things will be thrown out of the windows. You must be careful so that the items wont hit you. You must also avoid the dogs that would sometimes find their way to the alley. If you get in contact with the dog, a fight will ensue and you will surely lose a life.
To avoid the things that are being thrown your war, you must jump on trash cans, climb the fence, and sometimes walk on the clothesline. You can also enter open windows.
When you get inside each of the room, you will need to complete different challenges. In one of the rooms, your goal is to catch the bird that is inside the birdcage on top of the table. In another room, you must catch the mice that appears randomly from the holes of a big cheese. In yet another room you must catch all the fish that are inside the aquarium. Another room will have the cat collecting plants from the top of a bookshelf. There are additional obstacles in the challenges that add fun to the game. In the aquarium challenge for example, the aquarium has electric eels inside which the cat must avoid. In the bookshelf part of the game, the cat must also avoid the large spider that will try to prevent it from collecting all the fern plants.
I would say this game is fun enough to be played over and over again.
