Cavemania

Your Sinclair

Overall 70%

Jon Pillar 70%

BARGAIN BASEMENT It's damp and it's dark But it's always quite merry When you're locked down the cellar With PILLAR & PELLEY! CAVEMANIA Atlantis £2.99 Reviewer: Jon Pillar Remember those Game & Watch electronic cards that everyone thought were the bee's knees a few years back? They always had some simple task to perform, like closing manholes or collecting pancakes, and they repeated it infinitely, as it got harder and harder. Well, now you can relive those days with Cavemania! As Ug the Caveman you have to scarper across the 3 flip-screens of your island home to a Pterodactyl's nest, steal some eggs and bring them back for your dinner, on the way leaping the roaring river, dodging the erupting volcano, bashing the land-based dinosaurs with your club and chucking rocks at the flying ones before they swoop down and dump you in the drink. Make it back with 3 eggs (you can only carry one at a time, and don't break it!) and you can proceed to the next island, with more water, more lava etc, etc. It may be wrapped up in small cute graphics and given the typical Shaw Brothers' polish, but very quickly it's z-time. Harmless, pointless fun - the kind of game you'd play on a Sunday afternoon, when you can't face that English essay and your brain's running on auto.

Ah, back at last! It may not be Ideal Home Exhibition material but at least it's cozy!

Crash

Overall 45%

Nick Roberts 45%

Atlantis £2.99 It's a boring life being a cave man. No telly, no video and not even a Spectrum! Blee! All you can do is eat, but Brontosaurus steaks can be very tough. Ug, the hero of the story, has set his heart on the Pterodactyl eggs he can see high up in the mountains. Help him collect three eggs from each of the islands, avoiding the treacherous river, erupting volcanoes and hungry dinosaurs. Cavemania was programmed by the same team as Superkid in Space and Cerius, the Shaw Brothers. Caveman's graphics are similar to the Shaws' other games, with small but well coloured sprites and jolly backgrounds. The graphics may be nice but Cavemania hasn't got much in the playability stakes. Ug walks around each island as is if he's got a motor engine attached to his legs and his jumps make him look like he's flying. It's terribly hard to calculate where he's going to land, and he usually ends up in the river. The volcanoes dotted around each island erupt every few seconds and contact with some of the lava decreases your energy. I tried avoiding the sprays but soon got fed up and charged through them instead! With a bit more work on the gameplay Cavemania could been really entertaining, as it stands it's simply annoying.

See? The graphics are really quite neat, pity Cavemania's gameplay doesn't live up to them!