St. Crippens

Your Spectrum

Dougie Bern 2/10

Rick Robson 6/10

Ross Holman 2/10

JOYSTICK JURY Are you ready for a software siege? It's time for our trusty panel of joystick jurors to line up all the latest and greatest games and put them through their paces! Let Ross Holman, Rick Robson and Dougie Bern lead you to the hottest arcade action around! ST CRIPPENS Creative Sparks £2.50 Rick: Creative Sparks has come up with a cheap and nasty for the sick at heart.. But then I like 'em cheap and nasty. More horrific than Young Doctors, St. Crippens makes St. Elsewhere look like a Swiss Spa. You have to try and escape the worst hospital in the world before getting limbs lopped off by nurses, porters and genetic mutants. The game is wildly inaccurate. For a start you can tell the difference between the genetic mutants and the nurses. To escape you must find bribes of ciggies and beer to swop for clothes to slip by the security guards. A concept so gruesome as to be brilliant, its tackiness is exceeded only by that of the graphics that have a certain minimalist charm, ie there's not much of them. The collision detection is so bad that the nurses presumably kill you with airborne germs as I kept getting zapped miles before actual contact. A couple of hours of this and you'll want to put the programmers in casualty, if you're not already in the mental ward. I gave this to me Dad - he reckoned it was a cut above the rest. If you're into squeamish fun then look no further.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Sinclair User

Overall 3/5

Colette McDermott 3/5

Publisher: Creative Sparks Price: £2.50 Memory: 48K Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair Hospitals have never been popular places and with its boast, 'Worst hospital in the world,' St Crippens won't change that. Patients never recover and often disappear for ever. Guiding your patient around you explore the rooms searching for clothes - essential to your escape. Hospital staff will pursue you. There are bedpans lying about the ward floors, mutants in the Genetic Engineering Department and mould on the kitchen floor. All must be avoided. Detailed graphics are limited and barely adequate. There are patients strung up in beds wearing body plasters or playing darts in the games room; the matrons have buns in their hair. It is difficult to pick out your patient amongst the swarm after him, as all characters tend to look alike. Controlling the patient is tiresome. He refuses to react immediately and often gets caught. It is sold at the cheaper end of the market, but it could do with a shot in the arm or a medical examination before realease.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Your Computer

Overall 3/5

Spectrum Sparkles Adventure £2.50 Value for money from Creative Sparks again. Their low price good-quality software range now includes a game which night be interpreted as a searing indictment of the effect of government cuts in hospitals. so bad are things at St Crippens that you would rather escape from the hospital than risk treatment. Pursued by nurses, matrons, porters and even creatures from the genetic engineering lab, you must find your clothes so you can slip past the security guards. Contact with the staff and patients gradually debilitates you to the point where you end up on crutches. Then you die. Simple but well-executed graphics, and dashed tricky to play using the cursor keys.

Crash

Use of Computer 45%

Graphics 55%

Playability 70%

Getting Started 75%

Addictive Qualities 67%

Value For Money 80%

Overall 72%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Creative Sparks Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £1.99 Language: Machine code Author: D Bowler If you have ever been in hospital then this game could rekindle some of your worst memories. It seems that you have suffered some sort of slight accident and have woken up in a hospital, assessed your injuries and your accommodation and decided that the former doesn't merit the latter. In short, you want to go home. St. Crippens must be the nastiest hospital on Earth. The inlay card claims that all the patients are 'literally dying to get out'. The first problem that you will have to cope with is the fact that while you are still wearing your hospital pyjamas, you haven't a hope of slipping past the security guards. Your most important task is to try and find some toys, and the only sure way of doing this is to trade with the other patients. Moving round the hospital would simply be a matter of weaving in and out of the fixtures and fittings, beds, tables, boilers and piles of washing. Except that all of the hospital staff are not only under orders to restrain any wandering patients, but they are induced so to do by a bounty for each one they catch. Each room or ward contains the furniture that you would normally expect to find in a hospital, and is occupied by at least two members of staff. The moment you walk in through a door they will start to home in on you, thinking of their bounty. Try to evade them by dodging back and forth in between the rows of beds. At all times be careful not to be trapped. If a staff member gets you then expect a very severe ticking off, so severe in fact, that every encounter with a staff member will add to your injuries. Initially, you are only ten per cent injured but after being caught five times your injuries will have increased to thirty five percent at which stage your character will have very visible limp. By the time you reach sixty percent injuries you will be limping about on crutches which limits your speed somewhat. Beware of the other dangers, bed pans left on floors, patients playing darts and even the results of genetic experiments. On your travels you should come across a patient who may be willing to trade clothing in exchange for other items that need to collect from other wards. Fully clothed, you can begin the long and dangerous trek to safety. Good health. COMMENTS Control keys: cursor keys Joystick: Sinclair 2, Cursor and Kempston Keyboard play: poor choice Use of colour: restricted Graphics: simple Sound: fair Skill levels: one Lives: 18 Screens: lots

Just dying to get out? ST CRIPPEN's is to the average hospital, as a caption writer's office is to a penthouse suite. Dodge the bedpans ... and mind the nasty nurses in the corridors and wards of the horror hospital.