Shufflepuck Cafe (Commodore Amiga)

Hmmm. This one might be a bit shorter than usual, too.

I had no idea what I felt like playing today, so I just delved my hand into my lucky cardboard box o' disks, and out came Shufflepuck Cafe. I remembered it right from the off... it's hard to forget a name like that. Not that I'd ever played it... I read reviews, and it never really appealed to me. I don't think it was released on the Commodore 64, anyway.


That's a motley bunch. What the hell are they doing playing air hockey in a cafe?

Having played it on the Amiga, it turns out I have actually played it before, just not in this guise. Shufflepuck Cafe is Pong. Or Air Hockey. Or 3D Air Hockey Pong. You get the idea, though... you've got a table, with a goal at either end, and a bat-thing to hit a puck with. Get the puck past your opponent's puck, and you score a point. First to fifteen wins.

And that, as you might expect, is all there is to the game. It being set in the Shufflepuck Cafe, you have a number of different opponents that you can choose to play against... and they're intergalactic opponents, so they look a bit, umm, different. And some opponents are better at the game than others... the Elvira-esque woman, for instance, has some kind of psychic powers, so she can throw the puck wherever she likes. No fair.


Haha! Unlucky, kid. This ain't Quidditch we're playing...

If you like playing Pong or Air Hockey, then you'll probably get a bit of enjoyment from Shufflepuck Cafe. To be fair, I played it for longer than I expected, but that was more out of a will to try and actually win a game. I didn't manage it, but I was using the mouse on my thigh rather than a mousemat. Not ideal, that, and it might have impaired my ability to judge the game fairly, but I doubt it. It is what it is, it's not bad at what it does, but I can't see me rushing to load it up again.