Livingstone, I Presume?

Livingstone, I Presume? is an action-adventure from British publisher Mastertronic, one of the cheap budget productions of the mid-eighties that, despite its low price, gained decent popularity on the Atari 800. The player sets out as a traveler into the African jungle in a role whose name references the famous historical line by Henry Morton Stanley, and must fight their way through an environment full of animals, native traps, and natural obstacles to reach the goal of the expedition, without losing all their lives, which the game hands out just carefully enough to keep it manageable.

The gameplay combines platform jumping with gradually learning the route, where the player has to react to unexpected hazards and manage limited resources such as energy or equipment needed to overcome individual sections. The graphics on the Atari 8-bit are simple but functional, in keeping with the limited budget that Mastertronic's budget titles usually had at their disposal, and the game relies more on the number of attempts and gradually memorizing the environment than on visual spectacle or an elaborate story.

Livingstone, I Presume? belongs among the more modest, yet very widespread games of the era in Britain, which thanks to their low price brought the Atari 8-bit into the hands of players who otherwise wouldn't have bought pricier titles. Today it's more of a curiosity from the early days of a budget publisher, but for collectors and fans of period British production it remains an interesting glimpse into what the mass software offering of the mid-eighties looked like, at a time when price often mattered more than craftsmanship. It was precisely such titles that helped the Atari 8-bit keep a broad player base in Britain even as market attention was already shifting to newer machines. Livingstone, I Presume? thus today mainly serves as evidence of how cheap yet playable software shaped the everyday experience of the eight-bit computer owners of the time.

Why play it: For collectors and fans of period British production, Livingstone, I Presume? is an interesting glimpse into a mid-eighties budget publisher, though today's player will likely find it mostly a curiosity.