Darts... ever heard of that? Those pointy thingies you throw at that round thingy hanging on the wall? Yeah right - that's it. This is Darts... 501 to be precise. The rules of it are simple - the points you score are subtracted from 501 till you reach 0. However you got to reach this by hitting a "double" field. Bit of mathematics involved here. The player first reaching 0 wins (of course). Easy concept and great to be played in a pub. Well - and also on a computer. I found the game to be best playable with a joystick - it's a lot of fun then. If you want to try your luck with the keyboard go ahead. It's a lot more difficult, but still playable. The controls rely on a system I'd like to call 'system of the unsure hand troubled by gravity' - basically you give the hand holding the dart a push to one side and it always goes a little too far, which is by concept. After a while you get the hang of it though and learn to calculate those motions.

The game features something like a league in which you advance by playing against the player ranking directly above you till you lose (unfortunately the game seems to stop there so you have to win against them all in a row). The computer players are playing according to their rank - the lowest ranking player is not really hard to beat, the top ranking one... is.

Overall the beauty lies in the simplicity of this game. It's nice for a round or two - and even three, four, twenty and a hundred. Considering it's age it's a really good one and I didn't notice any problems on a newer computer (although my joystick is an artifact from the early 90s as well - don't think newer ones will cause problems though). The graphics of course aren't that great - but hey, you don't need that in a game like this. Surprisingly I found that digging this one out to have another look at (and some more screenshots of it) for this renewed review I seriously got into it again and soon was playing the dreadful 'just another round'.


««« Back to listing