Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 2/5 MISS

Roger Willis 2/5 MISS

Ross Holman 2/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY Our three-ring circus of Roger Willis, Ross Holman and Dave Nicholls is back in town. Watch 'em put all the latest arcade games through the hoops - and have a laugh at the clowning around. What's the score? Well, the marks out of five at the end of each review is a shorthand way of summing up what each reviewer thought of the game. But will it be a commercial success? For that you'll have to check out the HIT and MISS system. Simple, eh? CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY Hill MacGibbon £9.95 Ross: Well, the box looks nice... and inside there's a great book, Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Oh yes, there's also a cassette with five games on it, but the less said about that the better! Based on various episodes in the book, the four games on side one of the tape load as one and can be accessed in any order from a menu. However, you're going to have to beat all four games on side one to get the code you'll need to start playing the game on side two. The first game features Augustus Gloop being squirted around the maze of tubes of the sweet-making machine - your task is to guide him safely to the flask. Game two has Violet Beauregarde directing deadly blueberries at you from gaps in the wall of the juicing room. In the third game. Veruca Salt has to fend off squirrels with poisonous nuts and lastly, game four depicts Mike Teavee in a levels games collecting chocolate bars whilst avoiding killer TV cameras. The game on the other side is a sort of Jet Set Willy clone, but it's not good enough to make up for the games on side one. Overall, I'd say the package was overpriced, with the best item being the book.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

ZX Computing

Graphics 3/5

Addictiveness 3/5

Overall 4/5

Hill MacGibbon £9.95 An interesting package based on Roald Dahl's popular book of the same name. The tape has a different program on each side, side one being a program which consists of four arcade games and on side two is what they describe as "a multi-screen arcade adventure". When side one has loaded you have the choice of playing any of the four games in practice mode, ie. you play them as normal but your scores do not go towards getting the code needed to play the game on side two. This is quite a good idea as it means that you can practice each section until you are ready to attempt all four sections in sequence to try for the elusive code. These games are reasonable and provide good though not very sophisticated entertainment. They are quit difficult to master and a joystick does help a lot. Side two provides a longer, 43 roomed platform type game. This can played without the code from side A but the six keys which you have to find to complete the game will not be there. However you do get infinite lives and a chance to explore the room before undertaking the final task. I found that I enjoyed playing these games but lacked the inspiration to go for the ultimate solution. Not bad if you consider it to be a pack of cut price games.

Crash

Use of Computer 58%

Graphics 61%

Playability 58%

Getting Started 63%

Addictive Qualities 52%

Value For Money 50%

Overall 63%

Unknown

Unknown

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Producer: Hill MacGibbon Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £9.95 Language: Basic and machine code Author: Soft Option Ltd The five games included in this package are loosely based on Roald Dahl's best selling children's book of the same name. The literate among you may well remember the story that went something along these lines... The owner of the local chocolate factory was getting near his time and wanted to find a successor to take over the factory. He sent out five little coupons inside 5 bars of chocolate and then told the world. Well, everybody we bananas and started buying lots of chocolate, everybody except Charlie because his family could only afford one bar. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Charlie got his voucher and went with four others on what they thought was just going to be a day trip. The five games each relate to the five voucher winners, Charlie, Augustus, Violet, Veruca and Mike. All of you will know that all of the others perished (for a while) due to a combination of nosiness, greed and gluttony. Charlie, being a kind-hearted sort, has taken on the challenge of rescuing his foolish companions. The game on side 'A' is divided up into four parts. Each one is a single screen arcade game relating to the events surrounding the demise of Charlie's four companions. Augustus Gloop is trapped inside a network of pipes and you must guide him to the bottle by closing off sections of the pipe. Violet Beauregarde is having a bad time with a load of blueberries. The berries are raining down from above and you must deflect them into the juicing machine. Only when the vat is full will she be safe. Veruca Salt has upset the squirrels and they are after her blood. The only way she can avoid being caught is to poison them all by placing poison nuts in their path. Careful though, the poison only has a very short life. Meanwhile Mike Teavee, the nerd, is trying to pinch all of the Wonka bars off each of the five platforms in the warehouse. Not in itself difficult, except that the cameras are after him firing their lethal shrinking ray. Being able to hop on the inter-platform lifts may not be enough to save this wally… The fifth game, which is loaded from the 'B' side, is the final part of the story. If you are successful in the first four games you will be given a code which allows you to play the main game for real, otherwise you'll be stuck with the practice mode. Charlie's objective is to collect the six gold keys which will allow him into the glass lift. To do this he must work his way through 43 screens avoiding being squashed by platforms, sweets, marshmallows and the like. And they all lived happily ever after.... COMMENTS Control keys: 6/7 left/right, 8/9 up/down, 0 to fire Joystick: Kempston Keyboard play: poor response Use of colour: pretty tatty Graphics: dated and slow Sound: nice tunes Skill levels: one, with practice mode for the fifth game Lives: between three and twelve Screens: total of 47

A Squiggly Wiggly screen from CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Who on earth does the plumbing in the Wonka Bar factory?

Killer Cameras chase the naughty person, in a screen from CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. It's your job, as the nice Charlie, to rescue the miscreant.

Sinclair User

Overall 3/5

Clare Edgeley 3/5

Publisher Hill MacGibbon Price: £9.95 Memory: 48K Joystick: Kempston Have a sticky time in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, based on the renowned children's book by Roald Dahl. There are five games - four arcade and an arcade adventure. The first four must be completed to gain entry to the final program. In the first game Augustus Gloop has been sucked into a mass of tubes in the sweet machine. You must run left and right across the screen changing the direction of the tubes so that Augustus will flow into a flask. A pretty game but boring and frustrating to play. The second game takes you to the juicing room where Violet Beauregarde is being squashed by blueberries. Veruca Salt has enraged the squirrels in another room and dropping poisoned nuts is the only way to prevent her being thrown down a rubbish shute. In the last of the four, Mike Teavee is being chased by cameramen out to shrink him with rays of light. He must jump from level to level, picking up Wonka chocolate bars. The final program is really a 43 room Jet Set Willy game and difficult to get into, even in the practice mode. You have to guide Charlie around the factory and collect six golden keys so that he can enter the Great Glass Lift. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory palls after a very short time. However, as the package comprises five games and the book it must represent reasonable value for money.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Your Computer

Overall 3/5

Paul Bond 3/5

Spectrum Hill MacGibbon Arcade Adventure £9.95 Just imagine that! A whole day inside an enormous chocolate factory! And not just any old enormous chocolate factory! No, it's Wonka's Factory, where they make marshmallows that taste of violets, and chewing gum that never loses its flavour. This is the prize that Charlie Bucket wins when he finds a golden ticket in a Wonka's chocolate bar. And this is the plot of Roald Dahl's scrumptious book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now those lovely people at Hill MacGibbon have turned it into a yummy computer game. The primary game is split into four sections based on the plight of individuals who fall foul of the Chocolate Factory in the best moralistic way. Augustus Gloop whose face is like a monstrous ball of dough with two tiny currant eyes peeping out, becomes a purple blob in one of the sweet machines. Depicted in a maze of pipelines on the Spectrum screen, you must move Charlie backwards and forwards at the base of the screen, twisting pipes until Augustus is safely decanted into a flask. Otherwise he emerges from an open pipe as a sticky cloud. The next section has Violet Beauregarde menaced by bouncing blueberries. Basically a breakout-style format you use keys 6, 7, 8 and 9 to move Violet around and get her shield to fend off the ferocious fruit. The idea is to bounce berries into a juicer, or else. The fourth section confronts television addict Mike Teavee with TV cameras. Their deadly rays can only be counteracted by eating Wonka bars. In the third section Veruca Salt has enraged the squirrels in the nut room. They want to chuck her out with all the other rubbish. She tries to leave poison nuts in their path, but these fade away quickly. A nice touch is that you can practice each section without having to play the whole game, but if you rescue Charlie's companions in the primary game, then you will be given the code you need to help Charlie find the six gold keys in the chocolate factory. And this leads you to a whole new game on the flip-side of the cassette. This would seem to be a game in the style of Manic Miner, with 43 challenging rooms to explore, in order that Charlie can enter the Great Glass Lift.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Sinclair Programs

Rating 53%

Colette McDermott 53%

PRICE: £9.95 Charlie and the chocolate factory is a singular book, which looks bound to convert to an original computer game. Hill MacGibbon have done such a conversion in five parts. Four games chart the fates of those obnoxious characters Augustus Gloop, Violet Beaurearde, Veruca Salt and Mike Teavee while the fifth and longest game takes you through the chocolate factory. The first four games are simple arcade-style puzzles. Mike Teavee, for example, involves a platforms and ladders style game while Veruca Salt tries out a game reminiscent of Breakout. Augustus Gloop has the most original game, in which you must twist the pipes of a fantastic machine in order to steer Augustus to safety. The arcade games, although difficult, hold no long term appeal, and fall to catch the anarchic humour of the book. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory comes complete with the original book by Roald Dahl. Produced for the 48K Spectrum by Hill MacGibbon, [redacted].