Spin Doctor is a game in which you have a bar that constantly spins around a dot and you can attach/detach from dot to dot to navigate through the puzzle and collect bonuses.
Spin Doctor isn't merely an arcade game; it is part strategy game and part kinetic sculpture as well. In it, you are a wand rotating endlessly around a dot in a land of dots. You can hop from one dot to another, bounce off dots, and switch directions, but you can never stop. Meanwhile, you have to negotiate a variety of obstacles to arrive at the goal — a particularly shiny dot that takes you to the next level. The obstacles include walls, killer spikes, enemy wands, and puddles of acid that chase you around the screen.
The strategy comes in deciding when to move and when to use available resources, including door switches, fuses attached to bombs, and so-called hyperdots that transport you to different parts of the screen. For example, you can use a bomb to blow up a door switch; this holds the corresponding door open so you can pass through it at your leisure. But you might also have to blow up a bonus dot that would have boosted your score. Much to its credit, Spin Doctor doesn’t require you to carry out any specific action. You can pass through a level simply by moving adroitly and cautiously, or you can take advantage of every resource around you. No single decision means certain success or failure.
To keep things interesting. Spin Doctor includes 106 playing environments and 4 levels of difficulty. The first 10 or so environments walk you through the elements you’ll encounter, in effect, teaching you how to play the game. In fact, most folks will be able to set about playing without reading the slim manual. Witli the possible exception of the strange keyboard controls. Spin Doctor is totally straightforward.
The first level of difficulty lets you play very slowly with no time limit. At this level, the game feels more like solitaire than an arcade game. Each higher level increases the speed at which the wands rotate and limits the time you can spend in an environment. The time limits are usually appropriate, but every once in a while they seem either too long or too short. On rare occasions, I could meet the time limit only by recklessly ignoring every obstacle and hoping for the best as I hurled my wand toward the goal. At other times, I could easily reach the goal with more than half the time remaining.
If you’re looking for a challenge, however, Spin Doctor delivers. Some environments look absolutely impossible at first glance and require a few minutes of study before you can even approach them. Better still, the game takes frequent twists, forcing you to question the lessons you learn along the way; just as you master weaving between enemy wands, for example, the enemies slow down, completely upsetting the rhythm you’ve developed. In the tradition of the best Macintosh games. Spin Doctor tests your wits and your reflexes alike.
McClelland, Deke. (June 1994). Spin Doctor. Macworld. (pg. 90).
Callisto Corporation
Games
out of 10 (3 votes)
1014 / 
2014-04-14 / 
2022-02-08 / 
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Spin_Doctor.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
