Titus The Fox: To Marrakech and Back

Classic game from the golden age of French PC games. Unfair and hard as nails, but a great example of the quirky and unique artwork of the time.

I played that game a long, long time ago, on my first computer, a 8086, in its French version "The adventures of Moktar" (a character from a French humorist, "Lagaf' "). The game is the same, only the main character, and his beloved, change graphics, I think. So, this game IS hard, but there are no insta-deaths unless you hit a killing floor/ceiling. You have bonuses (the diamond-in-a-square things you can see in some screenshots) which give you hit points back, and, when you get 10 or 20 you didn't need (can't remember exactly how many - those are called EXTRA BONUSES), you convert them to an extra life. There are a lot of hidden secret passages, which you take the same way you'd use a door ("lie down" for a few seconds in front of it), so be prepare to try a lot of windows, chimneys, or whatever, because they can let you avoid whole parts of levels (there's one in level 1, if memory serves, allowing you to bounce from platform to platform in the sky, and reach the exit without having to fight) Also, you need to hit enemies to kill them, but not necessarily by "flinging" things to their heads: You may also fling things UP, and, if they come back on the enemy's head, he'll die WITHOUT the object being destroyed. And some enemies (like the big, muscular guys of the first levels, or the bees/flys of those same levels), can ALSO be picked up, either when walking (you gotta go REAL close, get down, and use action, like you would for a normal object. If you're not close enough, you won't catch the enemy; too close, and you'll be hit - yes, that's HARD to do), or after you killed it, when he's doing his death animation (jump up, and fall down offscreen). The second way is MUCH easier, but I can't recall if you have to look at the enemy's back, in that case. What is certain is that you gotta be under the enemy, and press action at the right moment. The MOST DIFFICULT level, I think, is level 9 (egyptian). Deadly jumps just before level end. Good luck !

I loved this game as a kid. We had it for our AMIGA (Commodore) computer, and it was always a gamble whether or not it would start (lovingly hand-labelled 3,5 discs. I think people my age will still get what I mean. Especially fi they had an AMIGA). But when it did, it was such a joy. I was not very good with a joystick as a kid, I would do the movements like I could actually steer the thing by moving the complete joystick (though we had one that was shaped very futuristically, like a curve. It didn't have a base to put it down, you held it completely in your hand. It was closer to modern controllers than a joystick - no sticks like on an Xbox one though, just the regular pads as on a joystick. Oh the irony. :P ). But somehow Titus was perfect for me. I rarely got past the spider in the first level of "Giana Sisters", but I got pretty far in Titus (never past the desert level though, I think). Don't get me wrong, Titus was *HARD*. Harder than Giana Sisters, if you ask me. But somehow it just felt right. It has the perfect balance of difficulty and well done controls and mechanisms. I highly recommend this to anyone. It is a piece of gold.

i loved that as a kid, the playability of the PC version, is considerable better than the original amiga version The game is a bit hard because the only way to kill enemies is to throw objects at them, and if they hit you, they can hit you again and again without time to recover, so gotta love seeing yourself being throw away to death :D but it's a fast paced game, with lot of nice scenery,, and lot of fun.... it have awesome graphics for its time, probabily the best 16 color game i ever seen for those that don't know and want to have a "weird" moment... just search for "lagaf - la zoubida" and you will see scenes of the game on the clip (the game, which originally was named "moktar" in france was based on this clip and the hero is "lagaf" himselves, but for the US release they decided to use their maskot) i made some speedrun attempts at it, if you need more inspiration for the game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zyrJ7SbHFQ :)