Blinky 2: The Return of Blinky

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Blinky 2: The Return of Blinky
Blinky2Title.gif

Release type: Freeware
Release date: December 7, 1994
Levels: 18
Author: Jeremy LaMar
Website: Otto Germain's Comic Wasteland Related games: Blinky, Blinky 3, Blinky 4

The original Blinky, Jeremy LaMar’s first Game-Maker project, is now lost to time and computer failure along with half a dozen other games. Its essence lives on, though, in Blinky 2. This first sequel, which LaMar classes as a near-remake, is heavily inspired by Link to the Past, with its exploration-based design and pseudo-3D cliffs.

Blinky, the pink dinosaur, sets out to save Funky Forest from the evil Schnookwad. He does this primarily by wandering through forests, caverns, and factories, tossing doughnuts at enemies, and bribing his cat (also named Doughnut) to clear a path.

LaMar got the basics down just fine – admirably, even. The presentation is clear and appealing, reminiscent of a late-era Sega 8-bit game. Controls are simple and very responsive. The actual design, from level to level, flows smoothly with few moments of outright confusion. Where the game excels, though, is in the flourishes – the conveyor belts, the amorphous spore clouds that the player can whittle away, but only so far.

Game-Maker’s biggest limitation and greatest potential is in its monsters, and here LaMar uses them about as well as PPP Team at their best. Feeding the cat a doughnut briefly focuses its attack pattern. Aside from the spore clouds, there are complex multi-segmented threats like Zelda-esque snakes and Mario-style firebars. Every four levels the player faces an enormous boss, often with long multi-segmented limbs and complex attack patterns.

Playing with height in Blinky 2

As with Badman 2, even the ending credits are something special, with a monster roll against a miniature scene of victory.

Blinky 2 is earnest, well-judged, and well-implemented. It is works well not just as a Game-Maker game or as a shareware game, but as a children’s game – amongst the hardest of games to get right. It does make sense that if any Game-Maker game were to develop a cult following, it would be this one.

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Blinky Blinky 2 Blinky 3
Blinky series

Story

The evil Shnookwad has taken over Funky Forest... again! Unfortunately for Blinky, Shnookwad has found the legendary Pit of Creepy Things That Aren't Very Nice. With his new army of monsters he took over Funky Forest with ease.

Meanwhile, Blinky is at the local doughnut shop (as usual) when he hears the bad news.

Blinky2.gif

Can Blinky stop Shnookwad again with only his Box of Everlasting Doughnuts and his faithful cat Doughnut? Will he survive this suicide mission through 16 levels of hideous creatures? And will I ever stop asking these stupid questions??

Instructions

Inside and outside the Doughnut Shop
  • Use the arrow keys to move blinky around the screen
  • To shoot doughnuts, press the space bar
  • Blinky starts with 100 hitpoints, and loses some whenever he gets hurt (attacked by a monster, falling onto spikes, etc.) when his hitpoints reach zero, he's dead!
  • boxes of doughnuts will give you 5 hitpoints. Don't miss any of these!
  • Blinky starts with 4 lives. When he croaks, he'll lose one of them. When Blinky runs out of lives, the game's over.
  • eat a mystic magic doughnut to gain one life. There aren't too many of these!
  • Your cat, Doughnut, can kill monsters for you, but he can't do a thing against the bosses!
  • There are 16 levels, and every fourth level there's a boss. They aren't easy to defeat, unless you know how...

Levels

  1. Doughnut Shop
  2. Rocky Cliff
  3. Doughnut Factory
  4. Boss #1: Cyberstupid
  5. Fungus Falls
  6. The Swamp
  7. Wizard's Castle
  8. Boss #2: Lizardwizard
  9. Grassy Plain
  10. Bomb Factory
  11. Snake Pit
  12. Boss #3: Snake Patrol
  13. The Gateway
  14. Outer Fortress
  15. Inner Fortress
  16. Boss #4: Shnookwad

Tips

It's not just water that falls in Blinky 2.
  • If you feed Doughnut, He may help you.
  • When fighting Cyberstupid, try to find a safe spot to stand in.
  • When fighting Lizardwizard, try to use his own power against him.
  • When fighting the Snake Patrol, aim for the slower heads.
  • After defeating Shnookwad, watch out for things coming out of the Pit.
  • When fighting an evil linky clone, try to back it against a wall so it can't dodge your shots.
  • the small red monsters will eat anything that touches them, so try to keep them in one place by feeding them doughnuts and let the other monsters run into them and get eaten too.
  • Collecting doughnuts is the key to winning.
  • If you are being attacked by a monster, repeadedly hit an arrow key to escape.
  • Don't hang around bombs too long, the fireballs they create are both fast and indestructible.
  • Don't hang around places where monsters come out, or soon you'll be surrounded by hideous creatures.
  • When falling from a high place, repeadedly shoot downwards to take out any monsters waiting at the bottom
  • Save often, especially after completing a level.

Monsters

Fighting Cyberstupid in Blinky 2
  • Bushwacker
  • Twiggy
  • Grow-nut
  • Roll-nut
  • Droid
  • Mooshyblibble
  • Discisis
  • Bomb
  • Hot-head
  • Goober-grabber
  • Blinky-clone
  • Shmoe-nut
  • Mini-mage
  • Blobbish
  • Shnook-bot

Credits

Moving without moving in Blinky 2

This game was made by 

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About the name

Blinky 2 often circulates under the name The Return of Blinky. The reason is unclear, as the latter title seems to appear nowhere in the game or its surrounding materials. When asked for the name's origin, the game's author offers the following response:

I'm not sure, honestly! I swear I've heard it called that before, maybe it was listed as such in that AOL directory back in the day. I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out.
I suppose Return of Blinky is a fairly unofficial title, since it doesn't actually appear in the game.
I like Blinky 2: The Return of Blinky
The redundancy is funny, especially since there isn't even a Blinky 1 anymore. Works for me!

Availability

Available for many years on the AOL Kids game board.

Archive History

Blinky 2 was added to the Archive on December 5, 2010. It was located through a discussion thread on DOSGames.com.

On December 24, 2009 a new user named gamine responded to an ongoing call for Blinky 2, which many DOS Games users remembered from its distribution on AOL Kids, and which for years seemed to have vanished. The user claimed to have recovered the game from an old floppy, and asked the best place to upload a copy.

The final response to the thread was on January 2, 2010, with the issue of the game's distribution unresolved. On December 4 of that year, an additional post bumped the thread to ask about the game's availability, leading to a private message containing a link to the file for download.

Reviews

I enjoyed giving a try to the first 3 levels of Blinky. Levels are huge and the monsters bring in interesting variety through camouflage and pattern diversity. The large amount of hitpoints compensate for such long level playing time, although one can clearly imagine that, monsters being frequently respawn at nests, those hitpoints will become precious in the long term. If anything, I'd say that the game could benefit of some sort of level map or other kind of in-game hint of the road to follow. The bridge of lv. 1, for instance, isn't introduced anywhere. Zelda maps ensure that you would encounter a broken bridge or identify something as being a "boulder in the shortest path" to hint you that you should try to reach a specific point, but that the road to reach it has to be discovered.

- Pype/PPP Team

Links

Fan works

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