Perils of Bear George

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 9/10

Sound 5/10

Value 5/10

Playability 6/10

MACHINE: Spectrum SUPPLIER: Cheetahsoft PRICE: £6.95 If you down to the woods today, you'd better gobble up a lot of apples. That's my advice if you decide to purchase Cheetahsoft's latest game - the Perils of Bear George. The idea of the game is to stock up on food and then get George safely back his cave where he can hibernate. Getting to the cave is no easy task as George has to dodge the poisonous apples, loony skiers and bear-eating spiders. If you get to George's cave, he will fall into a deep sleep and the months will start to pass, represented by pages peeling off a calendar - month after month. If you caught enough falling apples on screen one, George will survive the winter and wake up again in spring back in the woods where the cycle begins again. I have to say that it is not that difficult to get George through the winter. After a bit of practice at apple catching, you should be able to catch enough food to see our hero through until the spring each and every time. Perils of Bear George is one of the cutest games I have played for a long time. The animation is excellent and each screen has a nice jingle to accompany the action. The children's song Teddy Bears Picnic accompanies screen one plus on screen three the music of in the Hall of the Mountain King. Perils of Bear George is a great game to buy for your little sister or brother but its four screens are not really challenging enough for the seasoned Spectrum gamer.

Personal Computer Games

Graphics 7/10

Sound 6/10

Originality 7/10

Lasting Interest 3/10

Overall 4/10

Martyn Smith 4/10

Peter Walker

Richard Boniface

Robert Patrick

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K CONTROL: Curs, Kemp, Sinc, Cheetah, R.A.T. FROM: Cheetahsoft, £6.95 When I first heard the name of this game I did a double-take. I thought it was maybe going to be a game about the troubles of a pop star but it turns out to be far more run-of-the-mill. You take the title role as a cute-looking red bear. It is autumn and you find yourself in a garishly-coloured forest. Apples are falling steadily from the trees and you must catch them to fatten George up, ready for hibernation. It takes some degree of skill to do this as a squirrel is forever bombarding the poor bear with apples that stun him and reduce his energy level. While this is going on a jaunty version of 'Teddy Bear's Picnic' plays. After a while (there is no actual time display) you move on to a superb drawing of some mountain slopes. Here George must avoid the occasional skier on the path to his caves. The setting for the third screen is a cave in which spiders are bouncing from floor to ceiling - a nasty hazard. In the fourth you finally arrive at Home Sweet Home where George settles down to sleep. The calendar months tick by in a display in the right-hand corner and the energy he has collected is used up. If at any time the energy meter falls to zero George loses one of his three lives. After a long sleep it's back to the woods and the sequence starts again. Except in the second screen, where two diagonal directions are added, it is only possible to move George left and right. The fire button is used to accelerate. In general the graphics are good and colour used well. Considering the poor sound facilities on the Spectrum, the tunes are quite impressive. But the game requires very little effort to complete and does not increase in difficulty. I don't think many players will be able to bear George for long...

Your Spectrum

David Lester 2/5 HIT

Roger Willis 1/5 MISS

Ron Smith 3/5 HIT

JOYSTICK JURY Success in the charts doesn't always mean it's the best game around. Check out the thoughts of our jury this month - Ron Smith, Roger Willis and David Lester - and you'll see what we mean... THE PERILS OF BEAR GEORGE Cheetahsoft £6.95 David: Believe it or not, the idea behind this game is to eat as many apples as possible, so that you can build up enough fat to last out the Winter in hibernation. For those of you, like me, expecting a game based on Boy George, you're going to be disappointed! The first (of three) screens shows the bear in an orchard, waiting with mouth agape for some apples to fall from the trees. It's not that difficult - the only thing that can hurt you is a magenta-coloured apple falling on your head and knocking you out for a few seconds. Then, after three types of apple have been consumed, you automatically move to the ski-piste (?) and have to manoeuvre Bear George to his cave while avoiding the skiers. Once at the mouth of the cave, the scene changes again and it's now your task to walk along the bottom of the cave without touching the spiders who've attached themselves to the ceiling to block your path. When you reach your bed, there's a couple of scconds rest for Winter (yawn) and it's back to the beginning again. Although the animation and graphics are superb, and the sound well above average too, there's little addictivcncss to this at all - I found it far too easy. Nevertheless, this could be commercial success.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Personal Computer News

Overall 6/10

David Lester 6/10

PRICE: £6.95 PUBLISHER: Cheetahsoft, [redacted] The Perils of Bear George is one of three games which Cheetahsoft is releasing with its new 'joystick', the RAT. In it you play the part of Bear George, and your object is to have a successful hibernation each Winter. You achieve this in stages, in a number of separate screens. The first screen is set in a forest (well, there are three trees). You have to try and eat as many apples as you can which fall from the trees. As soon as you realise how to go about this, the screen becomes tedious - you can't really fail. The worst thing that can happen to you is for a squirrel to drop something nasty onto your head, which knocks you out for a few seconds. The graphics at this stage are quite nice. But they're not as detailed as the picture on the cassette inlay card and advert, which looks like a screenshot. A nice touch to the game is that you can see yourself get fatter as you eat more apples. The second screen, which you automatically reach after a fixed time, has simpler graphics. Here, the object is to cross a ski-piste, avoiding the skiers. This is no great challenge since the skiers are few and far between. On the third screen you're inside your cave, and you have to walk to the end without hitting any of the spiders bounding up and down. As with the last two screens, this is more a formality than a challenge, once you know when to move (which might take you five seconds to work out). Well, that's basically it - as you end up with a picture of a sleeping bear, who on waking, returns to the woods again. On the whole, the graphics are above average, the first time you see them, and each screen has its own tune. But as a game, this program is hopeless; its lasting appeal is about the same as a ZX81 sound synthesiser program.