More Fun Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Tropix 2: Quest For The Golden Banana just might be the best deal I have ever seen. There are plenty of products on the market that offer multiple games in one package, but Tropix 2 offers a total of nine different games, a feat that I have yet to see anyone else accomplish. That's a lot of fun to be had.

The story is simple. A monkey and a crab, who I presume to be friends, discover a map to treasure. They instantly devise a plan to reach it before any pirates get their slimy hands on it, and that's where they need your help.

There are three games unlocked at the start: Cascade, Coco Bowl, and Stone Stacker. By playing these games you can earn sand dollars, which you can spend upgrading your various island homes. By spending these you also unlock special items which advance the story. The first special item you need is a raft so that you can sail to the other islands and play the other games. You unlock the raft parts by going hog wild at the store and decking out your island.

The Games

Cascade is a standard match-3 activity. You match fruit across a jagged grid, which will then fall to the ground and feed the lizard at the bottom of the screen. As she eats, she walks, and when she reaches the flag at the other side of the screen you win the stage.

Coco Bowl, one of my favorites, is exactly what its name would suggest: bowling with a coconut. To bowl, move your mouse back and forth to select a starting position, click to set, and then move your mouse forward to roll. You can move your mouse side to side as the coconut rolls to guide it back and forth. The later levels will introduce various obstacles, such as Easter Island heads that will blow your ball to the side.

Stone Stacker involves you stacking oddly shaped stones on the shells of turtles. You beat the level by stacking all of the stones but your score is based on how high you can stack them. You simply match them up by the tops and bottoms. If you can't find a suitable match, simply click another turtle to start a new stack.

Keep in mind that is only a third of the games you can play here. One of the later games, Pirates, involves you defending your tiny raft against hordes of pirate ships with a pretty awesome cannon. While the activities do lack depth, considering there are so many of them, there is more than enough variety here to keep you busy longer than most games out there.

The Verdict

I can't find any fault in Tropix 2. I do like some games more than others, but there aren't any that I dislike. Tropix 2: Quest For the Golden Banana is surely going to have something for everybody and you can't say that about many products. With its eye-pleasing graphics and nine different ways to enjoy yourself, I give this one a solid recommendation.