Genre: Action
Developer: Robert Tokar
Publisher: Personal Games Company
For a very brief time in the fall of 1984 you could’ve received a very special birthday gift. If you lived in New Jersey and your parents were reading the right newspaper you could’ve ended up with a personalized video game. As a birthday present it was actually pretty neat. The title screen played Happy Birthday and even showed your name. Imagine having your own name in a video game! I’d get a kick out of that even in 2020. The downside is that being a kid in 1984 you’d probably have no idea that if you held on to the thing for the next 35 years you’d end up with one of the rarest and most valuable collectibles in all of gaming. Grandma’s gift then could almost buy you a car now. So is the game strong enough to get past the novelty?
(I like that it's a little guy instead of just a square)
As a novelty birthday present it’s just about perfect, but as a game it’s a bit of a wash. The game itself is a simple Kaboom clone. You have candles falling down the screen and you have to blow them out before they get to the bottom of the screen. If you miss too many candles, represented by pounds of air, your game is over. Every candle is worth one point and you get ten extra pounds of air for every 100 candles you blow out. As far as I can tell the difficulty doesn’t change that much. It seems that there were more candles on the screen after a while but that might have actually made things a little easier. With more targets it’s easier to hit something. Unfortunately that’s all I have to say about the game.
I love the story behind this game, but sadly it is dull to play. The candles move too slow and there are too few variations for the game to be much fun to play. It needs something besides one point candles. Even making the candles ten points would be an improvement. Nobody likes getting just one point. That’s like finding a penny on the ground. It doesn’t feel bad, but it doesn’t add much to your day either. So I am sorry Birthday Mania but you’re going all the way to the bottom. You’re actually more boring that Looney Tunes Racing. I feel bad about this one, so hopefully I can find a really bad game to put even lower on the list. I know there are some out there.
1. Galaga
2. Pac-Mania
3. Mickey’s Racing Adventure
4. Metro-Cross
5. Gaplus
6. Dragon Spirit
7. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)
8. Red Sea Crossing
9. Baraduke
10. Gamma-Attack
11. The Legend of “Valkyrie”
12. Galaxian
13. Gyruss (2600)
14. Looney Tunes Racing
15. Birthday Mania
Next time: The king of rare Atari games
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