Lazy Jones

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 4/10

Bill Scolding 4/10

LAZY JONES Terminal Software Memory: 48K Price: £6.95 Joystick: Kempston The rationale behind Lazy Jones has you as the laziest hotel cleaner in the business, avoiding managers and lethal cleaning carts by nipping in and out of the 18 bedrooms. But you can forget about all that, because the real rationale of this game is merely to string together as many feeble versions of ancient arcade games as the Spectrum memory will tolerate. Behind most of those bedroom doors lurks a screen and joystick, and the next thing you know is that you're playing one of the many arcade games which you hoped never to clap eyes on again. There are shoot-em-up games, platform games, centipede games - you name it, Lazy Jones has to play it. After a while you are preferring death from the hotel manager to another bout of 'Res Q' or '99 Red Balloons'. The graphics are adequate and, to be fair, the game has a certain novelty going for it, albeit short-lived. What really frightens is that in the not-too-distant future, Terminal Software might be encouraged to launch Lazy Jones II in which one of the many computer games played in those hotel rooms is Lazy Jones I in its entirety. This series could run and run. Aarghh!

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Crash

Use of Computer 55%

Graphics 79%

Playability 76%

Getting Started 72%

Addictive Qualities 51%

Value For Money 45%

Overall 63%

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Producer: Terminal Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £6.95 Language: Machine code Author: Simon Cobb Lazy Jones is a character who works in an hotel but who shirks his duties in favour of entering the eighteen different rooms to play the video games contained therein. Of the eighteen rooms, most contain games but some are broom cupboards and the like where Jones can hide from the work trolley or the ghosts of former managers who banish him from life on contact. The rooms are arranged as six on each of three floors, three either side of the central lift. Lazy can jump over obstacles and by pressing fire when in front of the lift doors enter them to change floors, selecting up or down at will. Pressing fire in front of a room door takes him into the room. The scene cuts to the room interior with a large TV set bearing the legend GET READY. An animated Lazy is seen to walk across to the set and stand by the ready joystick. A game then appears on the TV set which is controlled by the main game controls. The video games are all variations on the theme of popular arcades, a Space Invaders, a 'Chuckie Egg' variant, a Defender type, a Frogger type, a Breakout type and many others. Lazy is only allowed to go into a room once until all have been visited. Subsequent visits will reveal that the game has progressed a level of difficulty. Each game has a falling time limit and a score line. COMMENTS Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right, M to fire Joystick: Kempston Keyboard play: responsive Use of colour: good and varied Graphics: good, smooth and well animated Sound: not a lot Skill levels: progressive difficulty Lives: selectable between 1 and 9 Screens: 19

One of the video games in LAZY JONES.

The hotel corridors with the promise of a game behind most doors, and work outside.

Sinclair Programs

Rating 15%

June Mortimer 15%

PRICE: £6.95 GAME TYPE: Arcade Where do old arcade games go to die? The answer is that they retire to Lazy Jones where they shrivel away to nothing and lose any charm that they ever possessed. Lazy Jones is the eponymous hero of this game, and he finds himself in a three storey building full of doors, with lethal characters running up and down each floor, and slow-moving lifts connecting the storeys. The corridors, though, are an incidental part of the game. Behind the doors, always providing that you do not accidentally visit the broom cupboard or the toilet, are miniature versions of all the old favourite arcade games. Space invaders, Frogger and Breakout can all be played on a miniature screen, against the clock, with no high score option, very limited sound and graphics and no replay option. If these games were not dying before, Lazy Jones kills them quickly and efficiently. By the time the third room is reached you will be keeping your finger on the fire button while you stare out of the window. Given the nature of the program, it seems scarcely surprising that it is manufactured by a firm called Terminal Software, [redacted].