Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Automan earns its first few minutes on sheer novelty. You are not simply marching through a platform game toward an exit: you are searching locations for objects and evidence, avoiding hazards, and working toward the chance to drive onward. That investigative framing gives each screen a purpose, and the split between on-foot exploration and driving keeps the game from settling into one rhythm for too long.

The flick-screen layout is where its old-school character becomes either engaging or aggravating. Some areas require you to leave a screen and circle back from another direction to reach a different section. Once you understand that the map is meant to be approached sideways rather than conquered in a straight line, it starts to click. Before then, you may spend a while wondering whether you missed an item or simply took the wrong route.

Hazards add pressure to the search, while the information bar usefully keeps your location, score, and collected objects and evidence in view. Progress is tied to gathering what you need before driving to the next location, so this is a game for methodical players rather than anyone who wants to sprint through levels. Treat each area like a compact puzzle space, pay attention to where paths lead, and the design is easier to appreciate.

Graphics

The game leans into its source material’s computer-generated angle with a Tron-like Automan and his glowing cursor, which can create cars and helicopters. On-foot sections use flicking screens and a persistent bottom information bar, while the driving portions switch to a first-person 3D maze view. It is a strikingly varied set of viewpoints for a Commodore 64 game, even if the screen-to-screen exploration can make orientation tougher.

Story

This is a clean, suitably pulpy television tie-in premise: Automan’s program has been used by an underworld crime organisation to create an evil clone. The clone is not merely an excuse for a final confrontation; finding him means following a trail of evidence through the locations you explore.

That objective fits the game better than a generic rescue mission would. Collecting objects and evidence has a direct connection to the central pursuit, so the scavenging is at least grounded in the idea that you are playing super-sleuth rather than grabbing pickups for their own sake.

Do not expect the plot to carry you through moment to moment. Automan tells its tale through the chase and the task of tracking the clone down, leaving the actual drama to your imagination. For a licensed action game from 1985, the premise is distinctive enough to give the otherwise abstract searching some welcome direction.

Overall Experience

Automan is an uneven but interesting artifact of the era: part platform exploration, part evidence hunt, part driving maze, all built around a TV concept that was already unusually game-friendly. The changing formats are its biggest strength. When you have gathered what you need and move from cautious searching into a new driving section, the game feels more adventurous than its individual parts suggest.

Its friction is equally fundamental. The required detours between flick screens can turn discovery into trial and error, and the many lethal objects make aimless wandering costly. You need to be willing to slow down, remember routes, and accept that the game will not always make its next step obvious.

Give Automan a chance if you like Commodore 64 games that ask you to explore deliberately and make sense of compact, hostile spaces. Its license and genre mash-up give it real flavor, but the payoff is mainly the satisfaction of decoding its layout—not fast action or an especially welcoming adventure.

Retro Replay Score

5.2/10