Crimble

Crash

Atmosphere 70%

Vocabulary 54%

Logic 90%

Addictive Quality 73%

Overall 59%

Derek Brewster 59%

DEREK BREWSTER'S ADVENTURE TRAIL NEW STRATEGIES It really can be fun to watch the microcomputer games world from a removed vantage point. I've touched upon this ground before but let's just have a little look at the latest manifestation of an age-old marketing dilemma. If you have a listen to your local commercial radio station (for we must take the commercial airwaves as a suitable comparison), you will notice music programs concerned with Folk, Country & Western, and perhaps Jazz, tucked away at the end of the day's schedule. Most of the music on these programs is specialist interest with only the occasional well-known tune coming up. However, when a well-known tune does come up, you think no less of it for being on a specialist program, you just accept it for being the highly pleasant material it is. No-one thinks any worse of Sting for producing a jazz-inspired album, and it certainly was commercial, as its Number 1 position in the American charts testified. Now, back to computer games, and we have another outbreak of the 'don't tell them it's an adventure we want it to sell like an arcade' syndrome. This mental angst has it that adventure games sell far less than arcade games BECAUSE they are not called arcade games, and takes no account of the facts which only relate how very poor adventures sell next to none and good adventures sell very well. It just so happens, due to the likes of the Quill, there are more opportunities for the uninitiated to produce poor adventures. The syndrome is sad because many adventure games really do sell in tremendous numbers; Heavy on the Magick is a true adventure and it has maintained a healthy chart position for months. If it continues to do well no doubt it will cease to be an adventure and slide over to join Lords of Midnight in the 'successful strategy' camp. Redhawk, from Melbourne House, was deemed too important to be classified as an adventure, and so was reviewed as a mainstream game. The game can not be counted a chart success and so the attempts to confuse games players, and to ensure no adventurer plays it, have presumably succeeded. Dark Sceptre is the latest non-adventure about to hit the streets and the latest release not to take into account the public's total disregard for such classificatory pedantics - they will buy a good game no matter what the title. Let's hope for less text and graphic products, and more adventures. GRIMBLE Producer: Microtech Retail Price: £2.20 This is another game in the 'here's another Quilled game in a cheap cover and if you're good we might tell you how much it costs - go on then, guess' category. However, in this case the authors have got an excuse - they are unquestionably mad and make no attempt to cover up what's blatantly obvious from the outset. To put it succinctly the guys at MICROTECH have lost their marbles. It is not like the other humorous games reviewed this month; there are no subtle lampoons here more a blunt bludgeoning of the senses with an inexorable onslaught of loonyisms. The madness begins with the cover which is made the wrong way leaving you struggling to open the cassette box from the right when it is to the left. The loading screen shows a mock pound note where' I promise to give the bearer on demand the sum of one's sanity' quite rightly has you wondering on what you've let yourself in for. So how does this adventure describe itself? 'Sensible, down to earth, original, unexaggerated, truthful, unerring, undeviating, precise, undistorted, honest, unbiased, fastidious, never wrong, always right, rational, well grounded adventure'. Oh, I see, a thesaurus style listing which can only be said to be in direct contradiction to the evidence, as having played some of this game. I can safely say it is the most insensible, pie in the sky, unoriginal, exaggerated, untruthful etc, etc game I have ever played. Following a very chirpy rendition of The Entertainer (stopped by pressing the BREAK key) the adventure immediately confronts you with its first absurdity, an irreverently long list of things you can see. Just check out this loony list. 'You are in the closet. You can also see: a silver candlestick (highlighted), an electrical plug, a blue coathanger. a two handed battlesword, an elephant's vest complete with holes, a tattered old scroll, a stained map, a screwdriver, a 13 amp fuse, some 7/8 spring-loaded washers, a bag of sparks, a bubble from a spirit level, a long stand, a set of 'Go Slower' stripes, a puncture repair outfit'. Now you won't be too amused to find that QUILLED games do not support the GET ALL command but not to worry, the game plays a little tune after picking up only four items - and that's your whack. There is one drawback to trying to review Crimble and that is the danger of exposing you to the sort of crazy writing which is powerful enough to turn even a speed reader into a gibbering moron. Directions are never as stated so an exit from a location with NE, E, and S exits will as often as not be something like UP! What is more, dropping objects is sometimes the only way of picking them up and there are a number of 'Wrong Commands' especially formulated to keep you amused on your trip to insanity. The text itself isn't exactly on the straight and narrow. Take two of the milder examples (in the hope of leaving you sane for the rest of the column): 'Sat in amongst the Sour Williams you gaze at a garden gnome who is fishing in someone's Perno and Black. The smell of the freshly uncut grass is a somewhat pleasant sight'. And... 'Here you aren't in the outer garden shed where plant pots sing quietly to themselves whilst eating apples that smell a funny colour . . . You can also see a HW Smiths C15 tape with a PIRATE copy of Jetpac'. There are a few contemporary and Political references in the mayhem but don't look to hard for any slant or pronounced bias, the message, if any, is lost in the twists and turns of the satire, anti-satire loony-go-round. There are a few graphics scattered about in this adventure but they are more symbolic than accurate. However, this adventure does present a colourful face to the world and in any case the game is out for only one notoriety, to be the most crazed, mixed up adventure on the market and for my money it gets the prize. Crimble is now available from MICROTECH at [redacted]. COMMENTS Difficulty: leaves you feeling like you've been trepanned Graphics: abstract but passable Presentation: fair, colourful Input facility: verb/noun

Snails with TV aerials are just one of the strange beasties encountered in GRIMBLE, a very strange adventure indeed.