A leading contender for the game with the silliest name of all-time, Kokotoni Wilf is an early platform action game with you in the role of the titular Mr. Wilf.

The back story is about a magician, called Ulrich, who is trying to reassemble a broken Dragon Amulet in order to keep some dangerous dragons in check. But Ulrich realises that he is too old to go out adventuring himself to collect the pieces, so he sends his assistant out to get them instead, and that assistant is you – Mr. Kokotoni Wilf.

To help ‘Toni’ (as his friends sometimes call him), Ulrich creates a pair of wings on his back, and these help him fly around. Which in turn makes it easier for him to reach these broken pieces of amulet. “Easier” being a euphemism for “near, but not quite, impossible”.

What Ulrich doesn’t tell you is that your journey to collect these amulet pieces is going to take you on an adventure through time and space, which is why later stages of the game appear to be set in ‘present day’ London (a very shonky 8-bit version of London, it has to be said), and also far further into the future (into a future with dodgy 8-bit graphic representations of overhead monorails and space ports).

The original ZX Spectrum version of Kokotoni Wilf is not a bad game, although – looking at it now – it hasn’t aged particularly well. Compared to, say, the atrocious Commodore 64 and Amstrad versions of this game, it still plays reasonably well and can deliver some fun.

In all versions of Kokotoni Wilf it is a matter of getting used to the rather dodgy and archaic control system. Flying Wilf around is more luck than judgement at times, and even if you think you’ve got a handle on it, you can easily bite the dust very quickly, lose all your lives, and end up back at the beginning again.

More: Kokotoni Wilf on Wikipedia