Game 3: Cat & Mouse (1986)

The second screen.

United States
Released 1986
Genre: Arcade
Developer: Unknown
Date Started: 21 June 2025
Date Ended: 21 June 2025
Total Hours: 0.5
Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (4/5)
Final Rating: 9

Cat & Mouse is a very simple arcade game, released in 1986 by an unknown developer. You play a mouse that has to collect cheese while avoiding a cat that chases you around the screen. The gameplay takes place on a single screen with a top-down view (using a somewhat confusing perspective, as the mouse is shown from above while the cat is shown in a front view). You can move in all four directions, while the cat moves in a more erratic pattern, trying to catch you. There is a mouse trap that you have to avoid, but if you’re lucky, that cat is dumb enough to get caught in it, making it disappear and leaving you free to collect all the cheese. All in all, this feels a lot like a stripped-down Pac-Man clone. It’s running in a windows in the AmigaOS Workbench, which makes it at least a bit more interesting compared to gamee on other platforms of that era. Unfortunately, the game’s joystick control feels horribly unresponsive and feels like the game is checking for input only every few frames, which makes it very hard to control the mouse.

Programming:
It’s functional, but not particularly elegant, coded in BASIC and therefore slow. 3/10

Controls:
The controls are unresponsive and feel very laggy, making it difficult to control the mouse. 1/10

Vibe:
Pretty much non-existent. 1/10

Graphics:
The graphics are very simple, a basic blueprint of a house with a few basic objects and the cat and mouse characters. If you get caught or the cat runs into a mouse trap, there’s a short animation. I noticed a few graphical glitches as well. 2/10

Story:
None. 0/10

Audio:
A few beeps and boops, only one step away from being annoying. When you get caught, there’s a slightly discomforting chord-like sound. 1/10

Fun:
There’s at least some potential for fun here, but the laggy controls ruin it for me. 1/10

Final Rating: 9

Overall:
Apart from being a simple arcade game, there's not much else to say about this.