Thoughts by comradesean (14 Mar 2015) – PC (DOS)
Titus Interactive’s Titus the Fox: To Marrakech and Back is an amazingly smooth and well drawn side-scroller for it’s time. The game, originally released under the name Lagaf': Les Aventures de Moktar — Vol 1: La Zoubid, followed the heroic adventure of a French Comedian named Lagaf, but due to different audiences, Lagaf being completely unknown outside of France, his character was switched to the company’s mascot for it’s international release.
The story of Titus the Fox is simple enough, as these things usually were back then. Your beloved Suzy has been kidnapped by the big bad and was taken to the other side of the Sahara and to get her back you need to traverse through the game’s 15 levels by foot, car or magic carpet to reach her all while avoiding the big bad’s henchman that range from muggers to guard dogs to angry bees.
The most interesting thing about this game besides how good it looks is that your character doesn’t have a weapon to defend himself with and I hope that you don’t try jumping on the enemies. Unlike other games of this variety, jumping on their heads will only serve to hasten your demise. In order to survive this harsh journey, you need to make use of the environment and even your enemies by picking them up and throwing them as projectiles toward other baddies. This makes the game slightly more difficult than average, but only slightly.
Saving your game is handled using a password system similiar to Megaman 2 to unlock your levels, but in order to retrieve the level’s code you need to locate the oil lamp on that level. Once you’ve got the code, you are free to jump to that level whenever you choose.
If you enjoy the occasional side-scroller then I would highly recommend that you grab a copy of this game and give it a try.
