Big Nose's American Adventure

Sinclair User

Graphics 71%

Sound 67%

Playability 80%

Lastability 83%

Overall 82%

Alan Dykes 82%

Garth Sumpter

Label: Codemasters Memory: 48K/128K Price: £3.99 Tape Reviewer: Big Al Dykes Does anyone remember the TV series 'Time Tunnel'? What a show! The incredible story of two all-American boys traversing the corridors of time wearing designer 1970's clothing with wide lapels and tons of screen make up. Oh the drama, the excitement, the pace... believe it or not I used to love this sort of old rot. New York is a dangerous place, especially for lovely furry prehistoric animals which have mysteriously been transported to the great metropolis and imprisoned without so much as a 'by your leave'. The only person capable of saving them has also traversed the corridors of time to see if he can help. His name is Big Nose; he has a disturbing lack of '70's designer clothing and if you get in the way he might just chuck a great big prehistoric rock at you (Quick, quick it could become a collector's item). As a cute platform adventure Big Nose scores highly indeed, the main sprite is fun if a little difficult to control and his enemies which include policemen, bouncing bombs, builders and wavy feather dusters of doom come on fast and furiously. To free his friends from their cages Big Nose needs to collect keys which are scattered around the landscape. He can also pick up a variety of other icons some of which are helpful, others less so. Watch out for ones like the glue can and the beer glass, they could leave you in a sticky situation! Big Nose's American Adventure is not to be sneezed at. The graphics are not at all snotty, they're big and cartoon like and although sprite detection as your character jumps between platforms can be a bit runny, the game has lots of playability and is a good old wheeze at the price.

Do not pick up that bottle of lager, strange things will happen!

Hurrah, one of the little animals has been saved, well, maybe not so little!

It's the top of the building and there are those darn platforms again. If I fall again I'm giving up!!

Keep away from the glue at the bottom of that stairs!

The lion is the first animal you will get to. It doesn't get easier!

Well, that ladder looks very handy, it sure beats having to jump between dodgy green and red platforms.

Will Big Nose smoke the pipe of peace with the Indians or will he just chuck rocks at 'em?

Your Sinclair

Life Expectancy 82%

Instant Appeal 77%

Graphics 78%

Addictiveness 77%

Overall 80%

James Leach 80%

CodeMasters £3.99 cass Reviewer: James Leach Oh dear. CodeMasters have gone funny again. Not content with fiddling around with slugs and eggs, they've gone and got themselves involved in time tunnels. You'd think they'd know better, wouldn't you? The time tunnel they've just started mucking around with has apparently whisked a caveman called Big Nose from pre-historic times to Manhattan in the twentieth century. As well as the Cro-Magnon dude, there are also loads of ancient style animals trapped in the present day. Big Nose has got to travel along loads of platforms to rescue them and. along the way, there's fires, policemen and bombs to avoid. It all sounds slightly implausible, especially if you're old enough to remember those Jackanory stories about Little Nose and Big Nose (two cavemen incidentally), told by a Scottish guy with a massive sweater and an equally massive beard. Anyway, as you rush around the platforms, you having to keep jabbing away at the fire button cos the place is crawling with things that keep trying to destroy you. To get maximum fire you've got to keep flicking the fire button as quickly as possible, you can't just hold down the button. This gets a tad tricky when you're close to the edge of a screen and you've got to move onto a new screen which might just be covered with nasties All this jumping, running and blasting will take it outof you, so you've got to collect burgers and milk-shakes whenever you can. They give you energy, as do the beer mugs you occasionally bump into. But be careful because drinking the beer reverses your left and right keys. I suppose it's meant to represent getting drunk. You can still play on, but you'll need to think about what you're doing. Nice touch. Codies! Unlike many platform games, you can't fall to your death cos you just land on whatever happens to be below you, and walk off. You can also steer while you're in the air, so that makes things much easier. Sound and graphics in B Nose are pretty much what you'd expect from a good Codies' game. You know the kind of thing - nice big sprites and diddeley-doo musak. So there's no reason to complain. (Well there is, actually. You could complain about the colour of the cassette or the hole in the ozone layer or the inadequate parking facilities in Uttoxeter. But we know how to deal with people like you, farty.) So you're in the market for a platform game starring someone who should have been dead thousands of years ago, rush along to your chemist and order a copy of Big Nose on the NHS.

Big Nose waits for a grilled burger. The burger gives him energy, but the flames will roast his little bot if he gets too close.

Some of the jumps demand split second timing. Others demand £100,000 in used notes and a helicopter to Brazil.

FIVE THINGS WITH BIG NOSES Barry Manilow. Concorde. Frank Bough. Pinocchio. The Hoover dam.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Presentation 75%

Graphics 80%

Sound 76%

Playability 74%

Addictivity 79%

Overall 78%

Lucy Hickman 80%

Nick Roberts 76%

Wadda ya mean, I've got a big nose?! (Wotta whoppa! - Ed.) I think it's quite prim and proper and only a little bit red from the icy winds. Oh, it's a game! Silly me, Nick Roberts, the resident CRASH Rudolf, investigates the person on the end of the conk. Code Masters £3.99 It was a lovely day in prehistoric Ludlow. People were bustling about their day-to-day business and the one-way system was causing havoc, as usual. Big Nose the caveman decided to take the sabre-toothed tiger for a walk so he put on his best pair of skins and set off. Little did he know he might never see his cave again. Just as he got to the corner of his mud track there was a flash of bright light and SHAZAM!, he was being whisked through time. These time tunnels are strange things. They appear from nowhere, suck in a couple of bods, mess about with the space-time matrix then trundle off again - the bleeders! POO! SMELLY! The next thing Big Nose knew he was in a strange new world, surrounded by horrible smells, nasty people and strange machines. Could this be the toilet down the local pub? Nope, it's present day America. How will Big Nose survive and what's he been brought here for? It soon becomes clear. Armed with a handful of rocks, Big Nose has to free his animal chums, who've been sucked through time with him. They're locked up in cages and the natives in this new world do their best to stop B Nose Esq rescuing them. LORD OF THE JUNGLE? Big Nose is the follow up to Taman Goes Ape and gameplay is very similar. The big difference is that the scrolling play area is now much bigger. All the backgrounds and sprites have an abundance of colour and there's no horrible clash to contend with. You need a very steady hand to survive on the slim ledges dotted around each level. One false move and Big Nose plummets to the ground and back to the beginning - very annoying. Big Nose's American Adventure is an excellent budget game but it's a little lacking in the lastability stakes. It's extremely annoying when you get to the second animal and can't cope with the hundreds of nasties thrown at you. (That's probably 'cos Nick's crap - Ed) If you're looking for a cheap, fun game with attractive cartoon graphics, you've found it. But don't expect to be playing this to long sessions because if you do you just might end up in the loony bin (so what's new?! - Ed)! NICK 76%

Anyone for a coconut milk shake?

Ouch! Barbecued Big Nose.

Who's that with the conk the size of a jumbo jet?

THE BIG NOSE BRIGADE 1. Barry Manilow: Singer-songwriter extraordinaire. 2. Wozza Lapworth: Prod Ed and part-time pot holer. 3. Barbara Streisand: Actress/singer (sort of). 4. Mr Nosey: Small green blob, star of kids TV. 5. Pinocchio: Wooden puppet with no strings. 6. Steve Martin: Comedy actor and star of Roxanne. 7. Mark Caswell: No, that's his spare he keeps in the drawer with his Jaffa cakes! 8. Dumbo: Elephant start of a Walt Disney cartoon. 9. Noseybonk: Spooky pratt out of that classic program, Jigsaw. 10. Mr Punch: Policeman murderer and child basher.