Inside Outing

Sinclair UserSinclair User Classic

Overall 10/10

Graham Taylor 10/10

Label: The Edge Author: Michael St Aubyn Price: £8.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Graham Taylor Now there have been quite a few 3D room-based games since Knight Lore first stunned everybody. The Edge changed things a bit with Fairlight I and II which took the basic game look and added an extended range of possible options - objects to collect and the like. But even that wasn't the end of it - now we have Inside Outing possibly the most sophisticated 3D room game yet. Inside Outing is set in an authentic Hammer horror type mansion. You are a burglar, an expert in the dodgy arts. Specifically you can find things that other people have hidden. Valuable things. This time, though, you're one of the good guys. The lady of the house has actually employed you to search the house, there to hunt out twelve missing jewels hidden by the deranged previous owner of the mansion. Still with me? Anyway the jewel hider was a mad inventor (some surprise!) and the result of his bizarre experiments provide the principle obstacles in the game. Not bats and vampires in this family ruin but giant canaries and massively enlarged household pets. You may be surprised just how intimidating a canary can be... Actually the plot is pretty much your standard looky-collecty stuff but here is the awesome bit: virtually everything can be moved and virtually everything has an authentic weight and momentum. You can push and pull tables around, move pictures - perhaps to reveal something behind? You can not only push the snooker table around - you can jump up on it and push the snooker balls down the holes! This is the closest to a miniature world in a computer I've ever seen. In other games you would try something silly and it would fail. In Inside Outing you try something silly and it actually works! Sometimes the problems are not dissimilar to Knight Lore or Head Over Heels. For example in one room the way out is made inaccessible by a great pile of furniture. The objective then is to move it all out of the way, the problem being a giant mutant canary which (presumably by its deadly pecks) drains your energy pronto. Attempting to tough it out just doesn't seem to work - your energy never lasts long enough. The solution must be to find something to distract or stun the canary with. But what? The use for the mysterious lumps of cheese was easier to guess - there are these giant rats you see... Other problems are in the Fairlight mould - assorted objects just crying out for a use to be found for them or subtle combinations of objects which get you other objects which solve another problem... The nearest point of comparison with Inside Outing is Get Dexter - a superb game which was just about the only game that ever made me wish I had an Amstrad. The virtues of both games are that they are very detailed, with stylish graphics and utterly ingenious puzzles. You'll soon learn to search everywhere in this game - leave no picture unturned, no table unmoved. Without a doubt the best 3D game since Head Over Heels.

Your SinclairYour Sinclair Megagame

Graphics 9/10

Playability 9/10

Value For Money 9/10

Addictiveness 9/10

Overall 9/10

Rachael Smith 9/10

BLUE PRINT FOR BURGLARY When we offered Rachael J Smith an Outing, she said goody! But when we locked her Inside an old, dark house she was driven to The Edge of distraction! FAX BOX Game: Inside Outing Publisher: The Edge Original Program By: Michael St Aubyn Conversion By: Timedata/Pamela Roberts/Mike Smith/Hagar Price: £7.95 Reviewer: Rachael Smith Eeek - sneak thief Smiffy here, trapped and unhappy. Not that I've been banged up (in gaol, you pervy little pustule) No, I just saw all these milk bottles and newspapers piled up outside the big house on the hill you know, the one which used to be owned by the late, local, loony professor, and I couldn't resist it. I'm a member of my neighbourhood watch, see (I watch out for places where the occupants are away). So I thought I'd check the front door and gor blimey (as me old friend Mr Knuckles used to say) whatdya know - it was open. What else could a buxom burglar do? I broke an entry. And that's when strange things started to happen - like the door swinging shut and staying that way! All the windows were locked too. Seems like old man Crutcher (Rest in Pieces - what a messy explosion that was!) had crutched me good. But that wasn't the biggest surprise. Blow me down, guv, if the house wasn't empty after all. Yes, I strayed into Lady C's bedroom and what do I see but the old bat herself, flittering around and waiting for me. "At last," she cried "a member of the criminal classes There's never one around when you need one." Then she went on to explain why shed lured me into her horrible house. Seems her stiffy spouse had odd ideas about security and instead of consigning her sparklers to the local Barclays he'd hidden them around the mansion. Only problem was he'd popped his clogs before telling her where they were stowed. "So I thought who better to find them than a burglar?" her ladyship summed up. There are twelve diamonds and limited time so you'd better get cracking - as in safe-cracking." "And what if I say no?" I asked, thinking that NULFI (the National Union of Light-Fingered Individuals) wouldn't be too keen on this sort of non-profitmaking activity. "In that case I'll feed you to the budgie," she smiled. Feed me to the budgie?!! Listen, anything less savage than an alsatian don't scare me, so... Argh! The ex-Prof was into genetic Meccano and built himself a killer canary and some monstrous mice to guard his crumbling pile. The thing that really sets Inside Outing apart is that, as well as providing enough nightmares to keep mappers awake for ages, there are also fiendish problems inside the rooms. Imagine searching your bedroom for a lost pin it could be in a drawer, under a plate, behind a picture. Anywhere!

ALL BALLS The billiard room shows the attention to detail. You can actually roll the four balls around the baize - and potting them scores points, which means that it does some good. But don't ask us what! We've been too busy piling up the furniture to reach the cheese pm the shelf above the door.

BITCHIN' IN THE KITCHEN Successful thieves watch their drawers. No, not their frillys, you daft apeth, but kitchen drawers, which might contain anything from a glass of wine to a flapping bird - or maybe something of real value. Use the pull option to remove the lid then jump down into the cupboard to look around.

OVER THE TOP Who'd put a partition right across a room, especially when it's patrolled by a killer mouse? Your best bet is to jump onto the telephone table, then, if the mouse doesn't push it to the shelves, move it yourself. Try searching behind the room divider.

TIMES TABLE There's no exit from this landing - the tables fill the doorways. Like some real-life block-sliding puzzle, you have to become a removal man. To revive your strength there's a glass of wine hidden away and being some cheese too. No, not to accompany the plonk but to pacify the mouse that's running around the ground.

There's nothing more useful to a thief than a plan of the property so here are the first few rooms of the des-res, courtesy of Messrs Snatch, Pinch, and Steal, estate agents to the light-fingered! Unhappy landings. There's a bird in here and it wants to cover you in... consternation, so dodge unless you know how to stun it. Well and truly lumbered. There appears to be a door behind this pile of furniture but you'll need to neutralise Captain Canary before you can shift it! Grate detail! There's even a flickering fire in here but don't scorch yourself on it or you'll lose strength. Going up. You have to jump to ascend the stairs to the first floor. There are pictures as you go - check them out to see if they conceal a safe! There's a mouse in my kitchen! Actually there are two and they make straight for you. If only you could find some cheese but all there is here are doughnuts and wine. With two mice on patrol you won't want to dawdle so use Hold to look for suspicious panels in the master bedroom, if you want to master a short-cut. Upstairs, downstairs, in my Lady's chamber... so be careful you don't put your foot in it! This is where you deliver the diamonds. A number on her dresser shows how many are left! Mouse-trapped. There's something stuck behind these shelves - a mouse, we think, trapped by a chair. Would it be there if it didn't have something to guard? It's for yoo-hoo. Whenever a phone rings, pick it up. Seems the irritating trimphone warble is as off-putting to the guards as it is in real life. The front door - only it's shut to you. This is the hallway where you start, and there's no time to lose.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Presentation 70%

Graphics 84%

Playability 78%

Addictive Qualities 74%

Overall 82%

Dave Hawkes 76%

Nathan Jones 75%

Paul Sumner 94%

Producer: The Edge Retail Price: £8.99 Author: Michael St Aubyn Old Mr Crutcher has, to put it bluntly, snuffed it. This puts his widowed wife in difficulty, because before he passed to a better place her spouse had taken it into his head to hide her jewels from potential thieves. So, after a bit of lateral thinking, she decides to employ a thief to find them for her. As The Edge's game begins, this tea leaf is in her spacious home, about to begin his search. He can move in all directions through the house, exiting through one doorway and appearing in the doorway of the adjacent room. The thief can also climb stairs and leap onto furniture. One room is seen at a time, in 3-D and great detail. Each is furnished with such items as tables, chairs, telephones, bookcases and paintings. Each object is independent of every other, so a telephone that rests on a small table can be pushed to the floor. Other items can be picked up and dropped. The careful manipulation of these objects is important to solving the puzzles that will lead to the missing gems. There are numerous sub-problems which can earn welcome points: for instance, pocketing the snooker balls or picking up a bottle when carrying a glass add to your score. The 12 gems are hidden in a variety of places, some obvious, others in more obscure positions. There are hidden passageways to be discovered, pictures to be moved and disguised wall safes to be uncovered before all the jewellery can be found. But it's not as simple as it sounds - the products of the late Mr Crutcher's bizarre scientific experiments see to that. Some of the rooms are patrolled by savage mice and budgies that can take down a criminal's life force faster than a long stretch in the nick. When a jewel has been picked up, it must be taken the bedroom of Lady Crutcher and dropped before her. COMMENTS Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: superb - every object is individually designed to look as near to the real thing as possible Sound: simple, poor spot effects

'The closest thing to real life' or 'just walking around a house'?

A gem: Inside Outing

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Ace Rating 702/1000

Andy Smith 702/1000

THE EGDE'S LITTLE GEM Isometric three dimensional games still make an appearance every once in a while and if the game's good as this,then why not? Inside Outing is a witty isometric romp that has the player roaming through rooms that would grace many a stately home. The object is to collect 12 hidden jewels and take them to the lady of the house - who spends her time wandering aimlessly around in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Collecting the jewels is far easier to say than do however, because many are hidden and only reveal their whereabouts after the player has solved a puzzle. Colourful graphics add a lot of atmosphere to a game that bears more than a passing resemblance to Get Dexter. RELEASE BOX C64, £8.99cs, £14.95dk, Out Now Ams, £8.99cs, £14.95dk, Dec 87 Spectrum, £8.99cs, Dec 87 Predicted Interest Curve 1 min: 70/100 1 hour: 75/100 1 day: 80/100 1 week: 60/100 1 month: 30/100 1 year: 10/100