Pimania

Sinclair User

The first move towards graphic adventures takes you on a journey through the mysterious Pi-Land in which objects have to be collected in the correct order so that the Gate of Pi and the Golden Sundial can be found. The game combines puzzles with the slapstick comedy of the Pi-man who pops up from time to time and does incredible things with a saxophone. It is also one of the first games in which is hidden the secret to a prize, the Golden Sundial. The combination of innovative software and a challenging competition has made the product a legend. Position 18/50

Crash

Producer: Automata, 48K £10.00 There's not much to be said about Pimania, the game that launched over night the insignificant Pi Man to fame and fortune. The game is wacky, daft, weird and infuriating by turns and to date the famous prize worth £6,000 (plus index linking) has not been won. Although it runs on standard adventure game lines it takes lateral thinking into the realms of higher (or perhaps camp) art. Slow responses but that hardly matters, Pimania is a disease which overcomes most things!

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Crash

Producer: Automata, 48K £10.00 There's not much to be said about Pimania, the game that launched over night the insignificant Pi Man to fame and fortune. The game is wacky, daft, weird and infuriating by turns and to date the famous prize worth £6,000 (plus index linking) has not been won. Although it runs on standard adventure game lines it takes lateral thinking into the realms of higher (or perhaps camp) art. Slow responses but that hardly matters, Pimania is a disease which overcomes most things!

Crash

Producer: Automata, 48K £10.00 There's not much to be said about Pimania, the game that launched over night the insignificant Pi Man to fame and fortune. The game is wacky, daft, weird and infuriating by turns and to date the famous prize worth £6,000 (plus index linking) has not been won. Although it runs on standard adventure game lines it takes lateral thinking into the realms of higher (or perhaps camp) art. Slow responses but that hardly matters, Pimania is a disease which overcomes most things!

Personal Computer Games

Steve Mann

MACHINE: Spectrum (other versions available for Dragon, ZX81 and BBC) SUPPLIER: Automata Software PRICE: £10 I'm not too sure that Christian Penfold and Mel Croucher should be allowed to walk the streets. Both of them are obviously warped... What we have here is a world where saxophones turn into hang-gliders, where red herrings swim across the bottom of the screen blowing bubbles of derision, and where snatches of music confuse, hinder and occasionally help you. Along the way you'll be greeted by a blatant appeal for cash - they promise to send you a T-shirt, but what makes you think you can trust them? Throughout your adventures you'll be involved with the Pi-Man who will give you presents of useful things like blackboards, then next minute rob you blind. It's a same that encourages all that is noble in the human spirit - namely naked, ravening greed. The prize is a specially designed £6,000 gold and diamond sundial. Whoever wins it will certainly deserve it, but will undoubtedly be a gibbering lunatic by then. Seeing as there's so much at stake, I'm not going to tell you too much - why should I help you get rich? Suffice it to say that it's an adventure. But the objects are not your run-of-the-mill swords, magic rings and potions - you pick up TV dinners, cans of worms, handfuls of valium... The object is to get through the Gate of Pi, which will reward you with a place name and date. Turn up at the appointed time and an Automata person will hand over the goodies. There are potential clues in everything, probably even in the horrendous 'disco single' on the other side of the program tape. The Pi-Man does a mean hokey-cokey. The animation makes nonsense of the fact that the Spectrum is a slow computer. And the cassette case should carry a government health warning: this game can damage your brain. It would appear that Automata staff are not expecting an early winner - if no one shows up on the first date set they promise to return at the same time on the same day of every year until the prize is won.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Getting Started 6/10

Value 10/10

Playability 10/10

Keith Campbell

Pimania really IS different! It is a complete entertainments package! It all starts with a flashing picture of the Golden Sundial of Pi, a prize worth £6,000 offered to the first person to solve the puzzle. The player is accompanied by the Pi Man, who starts off by laughing himself silly, and proceeds to offer extremely disconcerting comments. The game offers a series of puzzles and clues, interspersed with funnies Like a little man who for no reason walks boldly on to the screen and dances the Hokey Kokey to music, a dog that walks up to a tree and barks at it, and a commercial break offering Pimania tee-shirts in grotesque colours and sizes which are all out of stock! So when the player gets thoroughly frustrated over a problem, the chances are that a good laugh is just around the corner. The computer program is complemented by a catchy audio number or the reverse side of the tape, "Pimania" by Clair Sinclive and the Pimen. Show business, pork pies, and a deaf-aid among other things feature in this. I suspect that there are clues hidden in every part of the whole package, and that it will take a very long time to solve. One thing is certain - it will never bore anyone with a sense of humour! Pimania is available from Automate of Portsmouth and runs on the 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX81. It costs £10 for the Spectrum and £8 for the ZX81.

CHILDHOOD FANTASY Adventure is what all small boys - and most bigger ones - long for. Remember all those childhood books that took you into a world at excitement and fantasy? Didn't you, like me, wish you were one of the Famous Five? Adventure gaming will take you one step nearer to your dreams. In the comfort at your own home. Originally written tor large mainframe computers, these games have now been brought to the masses via the micro. Adventures are being published in ever increasing numbers for every popular machine. An Adventure game makes you the would-be here. You move about from one location to another, examine things, pick up and manipulate objects, and solve puzzles. But all the time danger lurks and hidden enemies may strike at anytime. Your goal may be anything from collecting priceless treasures to saving the world from disaster. You become part of the story, the computer working to calculate what your actions will achieve within the plot devised by the author. Don't expect fancy graphics in an Adventure - although there are graphic Adventures. Expect words. Your imagination will provide the pictures - just like it does when you read a good book. And like a good book, you will find it just as difficult to put down. When buying an Adventure first discover if the scenario and degree of complexity suit your tastes. Games reviews will help here. Find out if the speed of the game is right for you as there is a great deal of variation. From my experience a minimum of 16K of memory is required for a decent adventure and from there on up the bigger the better. A "save game" feature is useful as it enables you to return to a game where you left it at a later stage without having to leave the machine running all night. If your computer has sound and colour these will enhance game. But for the purist a good plot is enough. Keith Campbell

GAMES GLOSSARY If you can tell a Pacman from a Defender and a Galaxian from a Space Invader you probably know your way around computer games. But if some of the game terms we have used in this supplement, or in the issue itself, are new to you, then this page should supply the answers. In it we take some of the best known types of computer game and describe how they are played and what features these games normally incorporate. So, if we claim that Penetrator is a "Scramble-type game" and that leaves you just as much in the dark about what to expect, then below there is a full description of Scramble to put you in the picture. ASTEROIDS The Asteroids came into the arcades courtesy of Atari. It features a small dart-shaped craft controlled by the player which can rotate left or right and thrust or fire in the direction it is facing. There is one further control, the panic button (hyperspace) which lets you travel to another part of the screen chosen by the computer. The enemy is mainly made up of large asteroids which sweep across the screen in large deadly groups of rock. When blown up these break into smaller fragments worth extra points. There is extra danger supplied by two UFOs. The first larger creature you'll meet fairly early on. It tends to spray shots in all directions and often crashes into an asteroid. The smaller variety is far more deadly in its own shooting and also more difficult to hit. Each cleared screen means you start again with extra asteroids. DEFENDER You can't expect to keep a finger on every control button in Defender or you'd end up in knots. The action, which takes place above an alien landscape, involves some seven control buttons and takes patience to gain proper mastery of your lone craft. That patience can be rewarded though, as Defender is challenging from the word "Go". The Defender craft can go: up, down, thrust forward, reverse direction, fire, smart bomb and hyperspace. Ten humanoids wander on the landscape and these may fall prey to raiding alien creatures known as Landers. Landers pick up the humanoids and take them to the top of the screen. If they succeed in getting there the Landers turn into fearsome mutants hellbent on your destruction. In all there are six alien opponents. On top of Landers and Mutants, these are: Pods are quite harmless but contain the small and persistent Swarmers; Bombers seed space with white bombs and Baiters only appear if you take too long clearing a screen of the rest of the aliens. If all 10 humanoids are captured, the planet explodes and all remaining alien life attacks your craft at once. Defender games usually feature a small radar screen which shows what is going on at all parts of the planet surface. FROGGER Frogger has spawned a whole host of computer games with a similar theme. This game features a frog hero who must jump across a road and make his way across a river torrent to five frog-holes in the bank. The busy road usually features live streams of traffic travelling in both directions at varying speeds, between which the player must hop his frog without wrapping it around any fenders. Once across the road, the river can be crossed by leaping onto floating logs and onto the back of swimming turtles, until our frog can enter a vacant spot in the far bank. Turtles have a habit of diving though so don't let a frog dally too long on one. Being carried off the edge of the screen (by log or turtle) also results in a note in the funeral column of Amphibians' Weekly. When all five frog-holes have been filled, the game becomes more difficult with extra traffic being added to the road, snakes traversing the bank between road and river and alligators appearing instead of logs in the river. A timer running down on each frog also adds to the difficulties. The arcade original also featured a small lady frog who could be "picked up" on the logs and offered a lift home for a bonus. Other bonuses can be scored by entering a frog-hole in which a tasty fly meal has come to rest. DONKEY KONG Donkey Kong is the strange name for a climbing and jumping game which features a starlet-grabbing monster gorilla. Often referred to as Crazy Kong or Crazy Climber in the computer circles, it has only just found its way onto the home screen. The game features a gorilla holding a girl captive at the top of the screen and an intrepid hero (Mario the carpenter), who starts at the bottom of the screen. Between the two is a connecting network of platforms and ladders up which Mario must run to achieve his rescue. Kong hurls barrels down the screen and Mario makes use of his "jump" button to leap over them. He can also grab a hammer and smash the barrels as they approach him. Once at the top of the screen a new complex is built with Mario, again starting from the bottom with a view to rescue. This time the screen features a series of conveyor belts and deadly fires which travel around on the ladders and belts. GALAXIANS The Galaxians were the sons of Space Invaders. Instead of proceeding down the screen at a leisurely pace, they wavered at the top of the screen before swooping down in batches of two or three (or more often on a solo mission) firing bombs. The player has the usual left, right and fire controls on his laser base and must take care not to get trapped in a corner. He scores double points for a galaxian hit in mid-swoop and there are bonus points for taking out the red fleet commanders, who usually descend flanked by their generals, dispersing bombs at such a rate that the first instinct is to flee for cover. That is the essence of Galaxians but with each destroyed platoon, new waves appear at screen top and their attacks become more frequent, more accurate and, all too often, more deadly! PACMAN The ghostly world of Pacman is made up of a dot-filled maze, a hungry dot-eater and four pursuing spectres. Pacman variations can be found under a whole range of titles from Vic-men to Gobbleman, Snapper to Super Glooper and many others. Most dot-eating games are related to it. The main character is the dot-eater, which travels around the maze, eating every dot he touches. His objective is to clear the screen of dots. He is hampered in this by the four chasing ghosts whose touch is lethal. The Pacman's main defence against the ghosts, who usually number four, are energiser dots. These pulse in the four corners of the maze and, upon being eaten, reverse the roles for a short while. This means that Pacman can turn the tables on the ghosts and eat them for bonus points. He is allowed only a few seconds of dominance before the usual hunter and hunted rules come back into operation. It is also usual for fruits to appear on the screen occasionally and these too can be consumed by Pacman for bonus points. When Pacman has cleared the screen, it refills with dots and the game restarts except that this time the ghosts are a little livelier and a new fruit, worth extra points, appears at this level. SCRAMBLE Scramble should have a big one-way sign on its cabinet. The screen rolls from right to left, taking the player's craft along it into ever-increasing danger. Scramble variations often contain the word "Mission" or "Attack" but there are some weird and wonderful titles about. The player controls a craft heading right across the screen over hilly terrain His craft can never turn around and opt out of its mission but he does have some control over his destiny. His controls are up and down, fast and slow and he can both bomb and fire at his enemies. The Scrambler is not usually equipped with enough fuel to complete his task, but it is normal to obtain more fuel by bombing fuel tanks on the ground and so (mysteriously) replenish his own stocks. The enemies come in all shapes and sizes. Most common are missiles which fire up from the ground as your craft passes overhead and alien invader creatures which frequently inhabit caves and fly at the player's craft. The original Scramble game sent the player through a series of different terrains with new challenges in each section. And most computer Scrambles attempt to duplicate this with a number of different stages. Scramble requires a cool head which can find the right control in a crisis, but it makes an ideal computer game as success naturally leads to new and more difficult stages. INVADERS Space Invaders started the whole computer game craze back in 1977 and most gamers know the format backwards. Still, just a brief resume... The invaders come in waves above the ground and move in rows across the screen one step at a time, firing missiles earthwards. When one row of the aliens reach an edge of the screen, the whole platoon jump down a line and return back the way they came. When they achieve their slow progression to the bottom of the screen, the game ends. The player controls a laser base which moves left to right and fires directly up from its position. His aim is to blow up the entire fleet before it reaches the bottom of the screen. Flying saucers move across the top of the screen in both directions and can be hit for a mystery bonus score. In the arcade original, top saucer scores of 300 were achieved by firing 22 shots before shooting at the first saucer, then firing 14 shots in between each subsequent saucer. Some computer versions have copied this technique.

ZX Computing

Phil Garratt

I thought Pimania was the reason I'm two stone overweight until I received Automata's new adventure program for the 48K Spectrum. Advertised as 'The Adventure Game that's for Real', there is more than just satisfaction awaiting the person who cracks this puzzle. If you interpret the clues correctly you can work out the time, date and place where someone will be waiting to hand over the 'Golden Sundial of Pi'. The Sundial is £6,000 worth of gold, diamond, lapis lazuli and obsidian, crafted by the award-winning designer, Barbara Tipple. The prize is on show at Southsea, and will also be displayed at computer fairs and exhibitions (accompanied by Securicor, I hope, in case anyone thinks of a less subtle method of winning it!). The program starts in a none-too-friendly way with dire threats against anyone attempting to pirate Pimania. Then you have to work out the 'key' which unlocks the First Gate of Pi, and you get to meet the Pi Man for the first time. This all-singing, all-dancing little creature appears from time to time in the adventure, and may help or hinder your progress. BAKED BEANS The adventure itself is not a particularly large one, around 20-30 locations, with only short descriptions. The locations are logically connected, and you move between them by entering a number, which may or may not have been suggested in the description. Objects are randomly scattered around, and a pretty odd bunch of objects they are - a cross between the 'Generation Game' conveyor belt and the adverts that come after. A cuddly toy, hula hoop, pork pie, baked beans and quite a few others are to be found, although I didn't have time to do anything very useful with them afterwards! The program's vocabulary is described as 'absolutely vast', but if you exclude the objects and words which have no useful effect, the actual vocabulary is pretty small. The processing of words entered is reasonably quick, but if the phrase is not understood or a number is entered which is not a valid exit, the command is rejected and the location re-displayed on the screen. This makes the game rather slow to play. Automata are (in)famous for their ZX81 'cans of worms' programs, and despite the attempt to go more up-market with Pimania, some of the program is distinctly seedy. Rancid sewage pipes flow into clogged canals, watch out for the scab-infested odorous pit and you can guess what the sound effects are when you collect the baked beans! If frustration causes you to use language more suitable for the 'can of worms', you will be harshly punished by the Pi Man. ALL SINGING, ALL DANCING Where the program does score is in the large number of tunes and the clever use of moving user-defined graphics. The tunes range from the 'Hokey Cokey' complete with dancing Pi Man, to a gratingly not-quite right rendering of 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' when you collect the Valium! I didn't have sufficient time to work out how the objects relate to each other or to the locations, so I haven't any idea what the solution is or what form it might take. But with so many objects, tunes, locations and graphics, some or all of which may provide clues to the treasure, there's certainly many hours of detective work to put in. 'Pimania' is £10 and is available from Automata Ltd., [redacted].

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 7/10

PIMANIA IS GOING FOR GOLD Pimania is a fascinating adventure game which has the added compulsion of a prize offered by the manufacturer to the first person who reaches the end of it. The idea is to pass through a series of Pi-gates which exist in different places in space and time and eventually to find the place in space and time where the Golden Sundial, the prize, has been hidden. To start the game the players must push the proper key on the keyboard. When first confronted with the task, the problems facing the adventurer seem impassable but the answers are so easy. In fact, it takes a child's mind to determine some of the clues. The graphics are excellent and the Pi-man, a little cartoon character who can help or hinder the player, is an amusing and brilliant creation. Some people may not buy the game because they think that when the competition is over the game will no longer be fun. That is not true, as it has many twists and turns before the final answer is found. Locating most of them will take months. It is the best adventure game we have reviewed for the 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81. It is available from Automata Cartography-Ltd, [redacted], and costs £10.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Your Computer

Simon Beesley

SPECTRUM SOFTWARE Simon Beesley brave attacks by trolls, bombardment by meteoroids, alien invasions and even English literature to bring you up to date with Spectrum software. The quality of Spectrum software has improved since our last survey but originality remains in short supply. Most of the programs looked at are games programs and the bulk of these are modelled on the arcade classics, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Defender and Asteroids. Perhaps this is because the games-buying public is only interested in games that fall into a recognisable category. Some of the programs are written entirely in Basic. This need not count against them unless the program displays moving graphics. The Spectrum's keyboard is not very suitable for fast-moving games although Quicksilva and Softek offer a joystick option on some games. Sinclair has released a large range of programs written for them by ICL and Psion. By and large the ICL programs compare badly with those from Psion and have a rather amateurish look to them. Each of the tapes in the ICL games series, Games 1 to 4, contains four short Basic programs with titles such as Galactic Invasion, Skittles and Train Race. These are the sort of programs a reader might like to key in from a listing in a magazine. They are fairly simple and afford a limited entertainment for a short period. In view of their variety each package represents reasonable value although they are perhaps more suitable for young people. ICL has also produced five titles in a Fun to Learn series covering Music, History, English Literature, Geography and Inventions. They present a variety of quizzes on their respective subjects. Players can compete against each other in a race in which correct answers send them further along the track. It is difficult to know who these programs are aimed at. One soon runs through the stock of questions and the same names appear in different types of question. Some of the information presented is too obscure or eccentric to make the programs suitable for schools. In the English Literature quiz, for example, Ian Fleming rubs shoulders with Shakespeare and little-known seventeenth century playwrights. Psion's collection of programs is far more satisfactory. Hungry Horace is loosely related to Pac-Man but has a number of original features. Horace has to eat the flowers in a park while avoiding the park guards. Sinclair gives a fair description of Horace as a subtle and amusing cartoon-style game. Psion's 48K chess program was written in conjunction with Microgen. It plays a remarkably strong game even at the lower levels. As an averagely competent player I found it quite hard to beat at level two, although its play seemed to come adrift under pressure. The program's response time is quick and the pieces are quite easily distinguished. Space Raiders and Planetoids are Psion's versions of the arcade games Invaders and Asteroids. Anyone who still has an appetite for these games will find the Psion products more than adequate. With Vu-Calc, Psion has scaled down a Visi Calc-type program to the dimensions of the home micro. These programs, which are commonly used on business micros, are usually described as providing a financial spreadsheet. They enable the user to lay out financial data in rows and columns and enter formulae to run calculations on parts or all of the table. Vu-Calc supplies a range of commands for entering data, text or formulae and performing calculations. Basic programs which have been compiled by Softek's compiler, Super C, run - typically - 10 times faster. The compiler sits at the top of memory above RAMtop and is unaffected by a New command. It leaves room for a Basic program of up to 8K and a further 10K for data. The present version cannot cope with decimals, arrays or string variables. These limitations need not be too constricting. Strings, at least, can be stored in the data areas as ASCII codes and accessed through Peeks. At £14.95 this is good value; particularly since it enables people to write commercially respectable programs without having to master machine code. However Softek insists that anyone planning to sell programs created with the compiler should negotiate for the rights. Softek claims that trace elements have been included to detect code written with Super C. The arcade game Asteroids crops up on almost every micro. Softek's version Meteoroids is one of the fastest for the Spectrum with good colour and sound. Softime supplies the Spectrum with a digital clock and alarm at the top of the screen which remains there while other programs are loaded and running. The last program in Softek's list is Zolan Adventure, a standard text adventure game which has the merit of fitting into 16K. Quicksilva gave Time Gate considerable advance publicity claiming it would make as great an impact on the computer games' world as had Atari's Star Raiders. As it turns out the game closely resembles Star Raiders. Given that the Atari is a rather more sophisticated computer it is not surprising that the Spectrum version of the game does not match the original. Time Gate presents a view from the cockpit of a spaceship. An instrument panel below contains a long-range scanner and a variety of other indicators giving information on the ship's position and damage incurred. Your mission is to clear 18 galactic sectors of enemy craft. The business of locating and firing on enemy ships is not as interesting as attending to all the other procedures. The controls are not as responsive as on the Atari. Nonetheless this is an elaborate game with excellent graphics - certainly one of the best so far for the Spectrum. In an impressive piece of synthesised speech Quicksilva's chess program announces itself at the beginning with 'this is the Chess Player'. Rather startlingly the packaging relates how the Chess Player, an Evil Being, has called for a challenger from Earth. The planet's survival hangs on your game - and you thought you were just going to have a quiet game of chess. In the event the program plays quite a strong game with the option of six levels of play. The board is clearly displayed and the pieces are well designed. Psion's chess program, however, is probably the better player. Meteor Storm, another version of Asteroids, also announces itself but rather indistinctly. There is not much to choose between this and Planetoids or Meteoroids. The major problem for software companies writing an Asteroids-type game must be in finding an alternative title. Spectres from Bug-Bvte gives a novel twist to the Pac-Man concept. Eddie the electrician has to rewire a haunted house. Instead of eating or picking up objects in his path he lays down light bulbs. Reaching one of the four power generators enables him to illuminate the house and drive off ghosts. The game has a highly individual flavour. The characters which glide around at a fairly leisurely pace, are engagingly different from the standard Pac-Man figures. This is one of the more original games yet to appear for the Spectrum. Gulpman from Campbell Systems is also based on Pac-Man but refreshingly breaks away from the standard format. It offers a choice of 15 different mazes and allows the speed of play to be set. At the highest levels your little man dashes around the maze at quite a pace. By contrast Jega's Specman, written in Basic, is dismally slow. Sometimes the ghosts seem to be stricken with paralysis and unwilling to take up the chase. Escape from New Generation Software is a variation on the maze theme which involves escaping from dinosaurs. The dinosaurs - brontosauri, pterodactyls and such like - pursue the player's character with considerable animation through the maze which is shown in bird's-eye view. Silversoft's games Orbiter and Ground Attack are probably the best Spectrum versions of the arcade games Defender and Scramble. Ground Attack requires the player to fly a plane through a series of caverns and avoid or destroy missile attacks from the ground. Scramble from Work Force is similar but marginally slower. Likewise Avenger - Abacus' version of Defender - is competent but not quite as accomplished as Silversoft's. MYSTERY MEETING A gold sundial worth £6,000 is the prize for the first person to solve all the clues in the adventure game Pimania. As in Kit Williams' book Masquerade, deciphering all the clues will lead the winner to a meeting at a specific time and place with representatives from the authors of the game, Automata Ltd. The other side of the program tape contains a disco single. Automata say that the clues are scattered in the music, the program and the graphics. Although we did not proceed very far with the quest the music and opening graphics seemed to bear out Automata's claim that the world of the Pi Man is totally bizarre. Melbourne House has based The Hobbit, on the novel by Tolkien. It helps to have read the book in finding your way about. The Hobbit is claimed to be an advance on other adventure games because it introduces other characters from the book who react to the player in the role of Bilbo with an independent life of their own. It also allows you - in a limited fashion to enter sentences rather than single words as commands. In practice these extra features do not amount to much and give the program greater scope for the sort of inconsistencies adventure programs are prone to. Thorin, for example, repeatedly enters the scene and tells you to hurry up. This is irritating because you were unaware that he had left and he seems to be totally devoid of constructive ideas. It is not a good idea, however, to kill him off since he sometimes proves too strong for your attack. Furthermore the manual suggests that you should stay on good terms with the other members of your party if you are to succeed in your quest. Many of the locations in the adventure are illustrated by some excellent graphics. We only managed to complete 7.5 percent of the game during which the text was accompanied by six different pictures. The graphics coupled with a more varied plot than usual make The Hobbit superior to any other adventure games available for the Spectrum. Both the assemblers tested, from ACS and PI software, require Z-80 mnemonics to be entered in Rem statements and both allow addresses to be replaced by labels. The ACS assembler, Ultraviolet, costs twice as much at £7.50 but offers several extra features. It allows multiple statement lines and provides five pseudo-instructions such as DEFS, which inserts a string of ASCII characters at the current assembly position. ACS also supplies a disassembler, infrared. Like the assembler this has two different versions for 16K or 48K machines. The program is easy to use and docs all you might expect from it. Company: SN Program Name: Games 1-4 Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: SN Program Name: Hungry Horace Memory Required: 16K Price: £5.95 Company: SN Program Name: Fun to Learn Memory Required: 16K Price: £6.95 Company: SN Program Name: Chess Memory Required: 48K Price: £7.95 Company: SN Program Name: Vu-Calc Memory Required: 48K Price: £8.95 Company: SN Program Name: Space Raiders Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: SN Program Name: Planetoids Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: QS Program Name: The Chess Player Memory Required: 48K Price: £6.95 Company: QS Program Name: Time Gate Memory Required: 48K Price: £6.95 Company: QS Program Name: Meteor Storm Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: SF Program Name: Super C Memory Required: 48K Price: £14.95 Company: SF Program Name: Meteoroids Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: SF Program Name: Softime Memory Required: 16K Price: £3.95 Company: SF Program Name: Zolan Adventure Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: SS Program Name: Orbiter Memory Required: 16K Price: £5.95 Company: SS Program Name: Ground Attack Memory Required: 16K Price: £5.95 Company: MH Program Name: The Hobbit Memory Required: 48K Price: £14.95 Company: AU Program Name: Pimania Memory Required: 48K Price: £10 Company: WF Program Name: Scramble Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: AB Program Name: Avenger Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: CS Program Name: Gulpman Memory Required: 16K Price: £5.95 Company: JS Program Name: Specman Memory Required: 16K Price: £5.95 Company: AC Program Name: Ultraviolet Memory Required: 16K Price: £7.50 Company: AC Program Name: Infrared Memory Required: 16K Price: £6.75 Company: PI Program Name: Assembler Memory Required: 16K Price: £3.75 Company: NG Program Name: Escape Memory Required: 16K Price: £4.95 Company: BB Program Name: Spectres Memory Required: 16K Price: £8

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Terry Pratt

A specially commissioned £6,000 prize provides the best evidence that computer gaming has come of age. The Golden Sundial of Pi is the prize destined to grace the mantlepiece of the first person to solve an elaborate computer adventure, Pimania. Terry Pratt tried his hand at Pimania - and from his report his mantlepiece is likely to remain bare. Pimania is an aptly named computer adventure game. It sends players around in circles and quite probably turns them manic. But with a specially commissioned gold and diamond sculpture - valued at £6,000 on offer as a prize, it is well worth the risk of trying to discover its secrets. The adventure comes in cassette form for the 48K Sinclair Spectrum - although there are plans to put it into other computers in the new year - - and is the brainchild of Porstmouth-based software house, Automata Cartography. The idea follows the formula of the successful Kit Williams' book, Masquerade, which challenged readers to use clues in the book's illustrations, to discover the whereabouts of a jewelled hare which the author had buried at a secret location. Automata's prize is the Golden Sundial of Pi and although it is still in the designer's studio, we will bring you a photograph of it in our next issue. The sundial will not be hidden away but would-be solvers will have to sift through the numerous clues in Pimania to discover the "time and place" where it is metaphorically hidden. The first person to get in touch with Automata and give the correct solution, wins the Golden Sundial. But the company's managing director, Mel Croucher is confident that it will be several months before anybody cracks it. He told us: "You go through a series of Gates of Pi and the last one reveals exactly what we want by way of a solution. We are not encouraging people to start digging things up but hope they will meet us at the correct time and place." Purchasers of the £10.00 cassette face their first puzzle almost as soon as the game has loaded - how to get started? The computer screen explains that one key will activate the game but then it's up to the player to press the right combination on the keyboard. I ended up going through the keys systematically before the obvious struck me. But after that hints and clues are liberally scattered in an Adventure enthusiast's dream of frustrating mazes, unlikely treasures and abrupt dead-ends. Every time you stop and start again the treasures will be redistributed around the maze - but you can save the game during a successful run. There is also an entertaining array of responses to the sort of desperate drivel which adventure games usually reduce me to, the: "Help! I can't take any more! Let me out!", variety. The sense of humour is strong throughout and belongs to programmer Christian Penfold. He is also responsible for some ingenious graphics routines and sound effects which chart the player's progress through the Pimania realm. Acting as the guide is a cartoon character called the Piman. I couldn't work out whether he was a friend or foe. He has a good line in merry quips, a penchant for collecting some bizarre items and the ability to double up as a very able chorus girl. The program is written mostly in Basic and there are no elaborate precautions to prevent people listing it. But Mel Croucher is convinced that there are no short-cuts to the solution in doing this. He says: "If people want to work out the puzzle by wading through masses of code, they are welcome to try." Part of the charm of Masquerade was Williams' insistence that the clues were just as accessible to a child's mind as an adult's. Croucher claims that this holds true for Pimania and another important criteria is that even after the competition has been solved, the owner still has a playable and well-presented game for his money. Automata launches the game in mid-October and will be displaying the Golden Sundial at computer exhibitions. Despite my own failure to discover the solution, I am keen that Computer and Video Games should share in the glory of winning the Sundial. To this end we will be referring readers' Pimania letters to Automata and hopefully printing any tips or helpful hints in our Mailbag section. So please write in if you think you can pass on something useful and perhaps the combined might of the C&VG readership can resolve the puzzle of Pimania. The only tips I can offer are: - Look for clues even in the instructions. - Take a pencil and paper around the maze with you and map it out. - Dismiss nothing in the program - even the music should be noted down - it could be significant. Good luck and watch out for red herrings!