Tony Crowther‘s 1985 release through Quicksilva, Gryphon, is a much misunderstood game. Most people don’t even get past the first stage, because they don’t know what’s going on…

What you’re basically doing is: carrying parts of a bridge from the left side of the screen to the right, so you can cross the water. If you try to cross the water when the bridge is incomplete: you die!

Most players will just fly around, shooting things, and not realising that they have to pick up a piece of the bridge from the very left hand side of screen (you can see the pieces stacked-up); they then try to cross the water and die. Don’t make this mistake! You can tell when Gryphon is carrying a piece of the bridge because you can see it in his mouth – that weird yellow thing (it looks like a gold bar, but I dunno what it is).

Dropping a piece of the bridge off at the far right of the screen, then returning for another piece will advance the level. The enemy sprites change every level. Touching any of them will result in instant death.

When you finally build the bridge and can cross the water, you get to play a weird shoot ’em up mini game where you can score extra points by shooting the Gryphon and speeding it up. Then onto the next stage where the background changes but the mission stays the same: ie. carry the bridge pieces over to the other side and avoid getting hit by enemies.

Gryphon is a good-looking game on the Commodore 64. The animation of the main sprite is particularly impressive. As a game: Gryphon is limited, but still fun to play – if you can be bothered to learn what to do. Most can’t.

More: Gryphon on Moby Games