Catwalk

Crash

Use of Computer 71%

Graphics 70%

Playability 64%

Getting Started 70%

Addictive Qualities 45%

Value For Money 56%

Overall 63%

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Producer: Power Soft Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £5.95 Language: Machine code Author: P. Barsby Catwalk makes a nice change from the usual run of violent computer games, because here you play a night-prowling cat, whose harmless interests include pouncing on - and eating small mice and birds - well it's nature anyway! Suitably, you have nine lives and nine screens of varied action to get through, munching on fur and feathers all the way. There is a very good demo which shows you all the screens, taking you from home, through a building site, the graveyard, to eventually end up in a missile silo, of all places. In each of these different locations there are either birds or mice or both to be eaten, and all the screen must be cleared before progressing to the next. There are also hazards like night prowlers, witches, ghosts, moggy bashers and the like. On the fourth screen the pace changes as the fauna vanish, but in the factory there is a large pile of cat food tins to be reached. Each screen has its own graphics to identify it, and in some respects, each screen makes for a different game. COMMENTS Control keys: user definable, but seem a little unreliable in selection Joystick: Kempston, but others through UDK Keyboard play: fairly responsive Use of colour: fair to average Graphics: variable, generally quite good and detailed Sound: good tunes, some spot effects Skill levels: 1 Lives: 9 Screens: 9 Special features:

The alley cat prowls onto screen 2 after some feathered friends in CATWALK.

Personal Computer News

Overall 8/10

Bryan Skinner 8/10

PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Power Software [redacted] Spectrum games are getting better by leaps and bounds. This one makes the Spectrum look like a Commodore 64, its graphics are so good If I say that you start the game with nine lives you'd probably guess that there's a cat about and you'd be dead right. Your task is to take Snooky out for his nightly prowl, gobbling mice and birds, coking out for tins of cat-food, and steering clear of dogs and humans. Control is configurable, left and right, up and down, and not jump but pounce, of course. The first scene is the garden. Here two brutish black mastiffs patrol from left to right and mice scuttle about. Contact with the mice is what Snooky's after, but the dogs are best left alone. You also have to dodge a veritable hail of domestic debris that flies out of the windows of the red-brick houses at the back of the picture. Take out all the mice and it's on to the building site and a different diet. Here we're into a lift and platform scenario. The construction work is shown as a system of girders, and some cleverly animated brown birds flap and strut about. Watch out for the workmen. They climb rapidly from one level to the next and take strolls about each level. At the centre is the hoist, and Snooky has to leap onto this to get at the tasty morsels in the upper reaches of the building. Don't fall too far or it's curtains for you. The graphics are fairly simple, but incredibly well done - very clear, good choice of colours and very well animated indeed. The only criticism I have is that when Snooky pops his clogs and floats to that great feline rest-home in the sky, much of him seems to get left behind - still I guess it's his spirit ascending, complete with catty halo. Still, it's not a bad game for the money.

Your Computer

Overall 3/5

ZX Spectrum £5.95 Eat-'em-up Snocky the voracious cat has to be guided around the screen, munching mice, dodging dogs and ducking brickbats. That's only the first screen and there are eight more including one whom Snooky has to break into an Air Force base akin to Greenham Common. Nothing startlingly original but a promising start from this new company.