Auto-Upturn (1991)

A bad games blog couldn't exist without reviewing at least one Sachen game. Am I the only one who likes to torture himself with these games? I hope so. Anyways, "Auto-Upturn" is a variation of the classic "Fifteen puzzle" (Wikipedia article), however in this case you wonder around the puzzle with your character (which changes with every level), picking the pieces of the picture and putting them in their correct place. Sounds easy, huh? Maybe, but it's made by Sachen, remember? So what could be a extremely boring puzzle game becomes a really bad and pseudo-pornographic puzzle game with really annoying music. So, what are we waiting for? Let's go.


By pressing start you get a cute cut-scene leading to level 1:

I never trusted dogs with sun burns. As you can guess, you control a cat on this level. I must admit he looks really cute. Unfortunately that's the only cute thing on this level: the dogs are a bunch of pricks who come out from nowhere and the sound effects will drive you crazy. So here's level one:

You get a completely scrambled picture of two cats watching the sunset and you must re-arrange the blocks to form the picture. By pressing Start you can see the correct picture all the times you want. However, starting from level 2 every time you press Start the picture will have its colors degraded more and more up to a point where it's almost useless, so you better have good memory.

Aren't they cute? The enemies change with every level too, of course. In level 1 you face the aforementioned beach loving dogs and bones who come up from nowhere and can spin pretty quickly. Every time they touch you not only you lose energy (you can get touched a few times, like 5 or 6, before losing a life) but you also get this annoying beeping which tells you you're having a brief moment of invincibility. The music restarts every time you come back from the pause, so I would advice you to turn down the volume. Now let's go to level 2:

It seems Christmas is early this year! :-D The next level is localized in New York, which as you know is infamous for having red-skinned punks and cactus vandals at every corner. This level picture is a postal of Santa in NY.

God, those guys are really ugly! No bicycle for you this year, red punk. This pic is somewhat harder to solve, but as I told you is important to have good memory. otherwise the picture will be rendered useless if you watch it too many times, like this:

Ugh. In the following levels, the degradation of the picture will hide important details.


We're done with level 2, thankfully. Let the bizarre pictures and the off-key music continue.

A drunken shark and a sailor being attacked. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

It's a boat picture this time. Again, pick a piece with the A button, avoid the octopus and the drunken shark and put it on the right place. I must admit the sailor looks cute too. Also, it seems these Sachen guys had a sense of humor. Too bad they didn't were as applied when composing music.


We're done with this. Level 4, please.

Okay, this is getting bizarre. What is attacking the panda? A radish with sun glasses? And what's that thing at the left? A dinosaur?... Meh, anyways, here's level 4:

On the Chinese Wall, waiting for the coins to fall... As you can guess we're in China now, and it seems they've been cropping transgenic vegetables, since the radish became alive and went on a sunglasses shopping spree and panda harassing madness. Form the picture of the Chinese Wall and you're done. Unfortunately it's not as easy as it sounds, those radish can spin pretty quickly.

Thanks God I'm done with the Chinese Wall. Unfortunately there are more puzzles to come, when will this nightmare end?!
I won't even bother coming up with a comment on this!

This level is extremely difficult, not only because the picture has too many details, but also because the blocks go white when you step on them, making impossible to see what block you're grabbing until you actually have it in your hands. This time we have a dragon.

Solving this thing was extremely difficult, to the point I actually ran out of time and I lost the game. Fortunately I saved the game before that, God bless save states. The game lets you continue from the level you lost, but you have to start the picture over, and I'm not doing that.


A green-haired Dracula being harassed by a green onion. Yeah, whatever. I just want to finish this damn game!

Suddenly this game got interesting. Well, not really, but the first time I played this game I was surprised to see nudity on it, considering how innocent it starts with cute cats and cute sailors. What I don't get is how Dracula has any relation to a half naked woman. Maybe she's waiting to be bitten by him? I censored the picture a little, but you're not missing much. Believe me.

Dracula looks cute too, even if his color palette is odd to say the least. Anyways, having finished with level 6 we go to what THANKS GOD is the last level of this game:

Here we have caught on tape the moment in which the famous mambo musician, Pedro Jiménez, was physically attacked with a triangle by a Martian man.

I actually think this might be the most beautiful picture in the whole game. It's like an artistic nude.


Seriously, what are those things? Are they aliens or are they supposed to be lizard tourists?


Thanks God, I made it!! I can't believe I actually went through all of it... And the worst of all is that your only reward for winning the game is this screen with a really off-key music in the background. After a few seconds, the games resets automatically and you can take it of your console and toss it to the garbage. Or sell it, it's probable that these things are rare and might actually worth some money. In any case, I'm done with this :-) If you want to see any game reviewed, just say so in the comments and I'll see if I can get it done for you. See you.