Mad Nurse

Sinclair User

Overall 7/10

Graham Taylor 7/10

Label: Firebird Price: £1.99 Joystick: various Memory: 48K/128K Reviewer: Graham Taylor If you look at this game in a highly critical manner and take it at first glance you could almost be forgiven for thinking that it is a complete and utter load of rubbish. Mad Nurse however, is, a very whacky and entertaining little game. It reminds me somewhat of a hospitalised Skool Daze in its layout - with three levels, connected by lifts, of nursery wards, each with various cots, medicines, and electrical sockets. The scenario has you as a trainee nurse in the baby wards, and it's you job to scour the wards for naughty babies who have climbed out of their cots and causing havoc wherever that go. As you move your nurse around (they have delightful names like Brenda Bumwasher and Tracey Toetickler) you find babies about to put their fingers into plug sockets or opening medicine bottles, or intent on chucking themselves down the lift shaft. You've got to overcome any powerful urge to just let them go ahead and write themselves off and build up your score by saving the tots, and returning them to their cots. Get too many babies in one cot, and they all hop out again twice as fast! Collecting the bottles also gives you a bonus score, but you don't get much time for that. It's all in extremely bad taste which is to say it's definitely a game to look out for.

Your Sinclair

Graphics 7/10

Playability 7/10

Value For Money 6/10

Addictiveness 6/10

Overall 6/10

Rachael Smith 6/10

Firebird £1.99 Reviewer: Rachael Smith At last, a game that caters for my maternal instincts. You watch while the massed infants of the maternity ward crawl around, swallowing enough tranquilisers to keep themselves quiet for a very long time, discovering gravity with the help of the lift shaft and sticking their fingers in sockets for some juice - and I don't mean Ribena! What? Oh, sorry. Apparently you have to stop them doing all these things. Bo-ring! I'd prefer Saturday night in casualty to keeping the crawling horrors at bay. It calls lot a lot of running around between three floors if you're to dump them all in their cribs. At least you're armed with stun gas to handle persistent offenders. There's only one thing that stops this satisfyingly sick game being addictive though. There's far too little variety. The first time I played I clocked up such a high score that I feared I'd never see my last life. And when I did, whadja know? No table for the heroines who run into hundreds of thousands. Nursing is so-o-o-o unrewarding? A pity, because the graphics are gruesomely great as the little dears give up the ghost and there's a triffic sequence whenever you get a new nurse too. But even dedicated Flo Nightingales aren't likely to stick with this one for long. Pass the bedpan, Alice.

ZX ComputingZX Computing Globert

Overall Good

Firebird £1.99 Definitely a game for the dubious taste department. Set in a hospital that's severely understaffed, you play none other than Mad Nurse herself as she tries to stop kamikaze squads of babies coming to harm by swigging down medicine, sticking their fingers in light sockets or crawling to the end of the corridor and plummeting down the lift shaft. You score points by picking up babies and placing them back in their cots. Some babies immediately rebound back onto the floor like gymnasts. Each level consists of three floors of the hospital and the babies crawl from left to right towards the dreaded lift shaft. The lift connects all the floors and your major decision is spotting which floor is about to become a potential disaster area. Unlike NHS nurses you are provided with 'stun gas' which pauses the screen when things get hectic allowing you time to think out your next life saving move. The graphics are surprisingly good and if your sense of humour stretches to seeing the funny side of the game you could well enjoy this one. As a game in itself without the babies in jeopardy idea, Mad Nurse would be a little lacking in the action department but when you see those babies heading for the open lift shaft it's difficult not to press the stun gas button and save them. A budget oddity.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 4/10

Sound 5/10

Value 4/10

Playability 3/10

Paul Boughton

MACHINES: Spectrum SUPPLIER: Firebird PRICE: £1.99 VERSION TESTED: Spectrum This game should be taken into council care. It needs help. Dead babies for entertainment. Wonderful. Mad Nurse is set in a maternity hospital crawling with little bundles of joy. Trainee nurses appear to be in control of the place. These would-be Florence Nightingales delight in such names as Brenda Bumwasher. Humour isn't dead even if the babies are. The babies refuse to stay put and got to sleep. They crawl all over the place, swigging from medicine bottles, apparently electrocuting themselves and - wait for it - this is the really clever - falling down a liftshaft and going splat at the bottom. Controlling the nurse you must round up the babies before harm befalls them, put them in bed and collecting stray medicine bottles. Points are scored for babies saved. During a game you have three nurses, each of which is allowed three mishaps before getting the sack. I think this game is probably the sickest game I've ever played. Don't buy it.

Crash

Presentation 67%

Graphics 55%

Playability 37%

Addictive Qualities 21%

Value For Money 33%

Overall 31%

Ben Stone

Paul Sumner

Richard Eddy

Producer: Firebird Retail Price: £1.99 Author: Software Creations A career in the health service is much like any other, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. And as a nurse straight out of college and into your first hospital, life isn't going to be easy. All those howling babies screaming for food and water and milk and love and hugs and attention and nappy changes... it's enough to drive you round the twist! You and your fellow trainees enter the hospital just as the last batch of students leave. They weren't very good... In fact they were really awful, the baby ward is in utter chaos. The little darlings have all clambered out of their cots and are roaming around willy nilly. As you might expect, babies aren't the most responsible of creatures: they're horrible grimy pink things that make ghastly noises at the most ridiculous times at night, and they're very inquisitive. Plug sockets and mysterious boxes hold a fatal attraction for the little dears, and too much prodding and poking ends in a nasty shock for them - 240 volts to be precise. The hospital wards are split into three levels, usually with a single cot on each floor, but occasionally slightly more densely populated. A counter on the status screen shows how many babies are on the loose. Starting in the shoes of Nurse Brenda Bumwipe, you chase after each one of the little horrors, pick them up in your caring arms and deposit them in their own little cots. But who wants to be cooped up in a horrid hospital cot? Not the babies that's for sure. Out they clamber and begin wandering again. When you've finally collected up all the babies and replaced them in their cots, you can move on to the next ward. The wards rarely vary in layout, but as you proceed the baby population begins to grow, making it increasingly difficult to cope. It's just as well that you have three trainees to your credit, as there's no real job security in this hospital and too many lost babies results in early retirement for the offending nurse. If poor old Brenda gets the boot then Fiona Feedface steps in and takes over, her departure in turn makes room for the final trainee, Nina Nightnurse. COMMENTS Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right and M to stun gas Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Use of colour: very good, but colour clash present Graphics: well drawn, humorous and smooth Sound: limited Skill levels: one

A nurse's work is never done - even as one baby is saved, another is falling down the lift shat! Could this be General Hospital?