Ah Diddums

Crash

Producer: Imagine, 16K £5.50 Author: D H Lawson Don't be fooled by the title - this is no game for cissies! When it first appeared it had all the reviewers tied in confused knots. You are a teddy bear, shut in the toy box with the other toys for the night, but your baby's crying so you must get out and go and comfort him. The only way out is by using all the coloured building bricks and assembling them correctly, whilst avoiding all the nasty toys who want to stop you. When you escape the box you realise it is inside another, bigger box, and that one's inside another, and so on... What confused everyone at the time was the method used to assemble the bricks, and Imagine's cassette inlay is of no help, nor are the game's instructions on screen: this is the outline idea - pick up the brick and take to top of screen slightly to right of correct colour block, then drop it. The brick should slide into place as if by magic. Considering the packed screen, the graphics are excellent. Confusion of keys, but this isn't an arcade speed game. Watch out for clockwork soldiers, play people and the aggressive train - and the baby's crying - there, there, there...

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Crash

Producer: Imagine, 16K £5.50 Author: D H Lawson Don't be fooled by the title - this is no game for cissies! When it first appeared it had all the reviewers tied in confused knots. You are a teddy bear, shut in the toy box with the other toys for the night, but your baby's crying so you must get out and go and comfort him. The only way out is by using all the coloured building bricks and assembling them correctly, whilst avoiding all the nasty toys who want to stop you. When you escape the box you realise it is inside another, bigger box, and that one's inside another, and so on... What confused everyone at the time was the method used to assemble the bricks, and Imagine's cassette inlay is of no help, nor are the game's instructions on screen: this is the outline idea - pick up the brick and take to top of screen slightly to right of correct colour block, then drop it. The brick should slide into place as if by magic. Considering the packed screen, the graphics are excellent. Confusion of keys, but this isn't an arcade speed game. Watch out for clockwork soldiers, play people and the aggressive train - and the baby's crying - there, there, there...

Crash

Producer: Imagine, 16K £5.50 Author: D H Lawson Don't be fooled by the title - this is no game for cissies! When it first appeared it had all the reviewers tied in confused knots. You are a teddy bear, shut in the toy box with the other toys for the night, but your baby's crying so you must get out and go and comfort him. The only way out is by using all the coloured building bricks and assembling them correctly, whilst avoiding all the nasty toys who want to stop you. When you escape the box you realise it is inside another, bigger box, and that one's inside another, and so on... What confused everyone at the time was the method used to assemble the bricks, and Imagine's cassette inlay is of no help, nor are the game's instructions on screen: this is the outline idea - pick up the brick and take to top of screen slightly to right of correct colour block, then drop it. The brick should slide into place as if by magic. Considering the packed screen, the graphics are excellent. Confusion of keys, but this isn't an arcade speed game. Watch out for clockwork soldiers, play people and the aggressive train - and the baby's crying - there, there, there...

ZX Computing

Peter Shaw

As I make no secret of the fact that Arcadia is my favourite game, I was naturally pleased to receive Imagine's latest Spectrum offerings, Ah Diddums and Molar Maul. Both cassettes are very attractively presented in very imaginative (no pun intended) cassette covers, and both packages come with a lifetime guarantee, something which few other software houses offer. Instructions supplied with the tapes give detailed instructions on loading and playing. I loaded Ah Diddums first, mainly because the cover appealed to me, plugged in my joystick and prepared to fight off the other toys in the toybox. Ah Diddums, as you will have probably guessed, is rather an original idea, concerning a tubby teddy and his mission to comfort the baby. What Teddy must do is take some toys to Baby so she will stop crying, but it's not as simple as that - you see this game has many sub plots going on. If Teddy comforts Baby then the mother will quite sensibly put the lights out. 'What is wrong with that?' I hear you cry. The trouble is that the toys in the toy box can only play with the light on, so they will do all they can to stop Teddy comforting the baby. Sounds confusing - well, there's more! Teddy is in a set of 99 nested toyboxes, and to escape from any one of them he must pile building bricks up in a certain order. Also in the toybox (well most of them, I've yet to get out of the first) is a Jack-in-the-Box. This bouncy little fellow takes the pressure off any sticky situations you might have got yourself into. Amongst the toys you can pick up is a peashooter, which I'm still trying to work out what to do with. I tried shooting the soldier who was in the box with me, but all I ended up in doing was making it turn more vicious. Ah Diddums uses amazing high resolution graphics and sound. It even uses colour, something I dearly missed when they brought out Schizoids. Also Teddy has one amazing walk! I think this program has the edge over Arcadia, but I will not definitely give this the accolade of 'My favourite program' until I have mastered it. Moving rapidly on, I then loaded Molar Maul. The way the title page was built up was quite fantastic. I pressed a key and a large set of teeth were displayed on the screen - they then opened and the play area, the inside of someone's mouth is, if not very convincingly, displayed in full gruesome colour. The idea of the game is to fight of the dreaded 'DK's (de-cays - get it?) with your trusty toothbrush and supply of Imagico toothpaste. The game is very fast, and no matter how quickly you can brush one tooth, another is being attacked. The teeth are colour coded so you have an idea of how long they will probably survive. You have three toothbrushes per game, and you can easily lose these every four cavities you get. You are not helped by the sweets which appear on the tongue, the 'DK's rush over and their power is increased. Altogether, I think Molar Maul is the most original, addictive game for the Spectrum I have played in a very long while. Both Ah Diddums and Molar Maul are available for £5.50 from Imagine Software, [redacted].

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal Not Rated

Playability 3

Use Of Machine 4

Overall Value 4

Max Phillips 4%

NAME: Ah Diddums SYSTEM: ZX Spectrum, 16K or 48K PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Imagine Software, Liverpool [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette OTHER VERSIONS: None OUTLETS: Mail Order, Imagine Software, [redacted], dealers. GRIN AND BEAR IT Ah Diddums from Imagine Software started as a professional promotion campaign complete with the customary long wait. In the end, Imagine Software turned out not to be imaginary. Now everybody is imitating the promotion, this is one 16K Spectrum game that will have to stand up for itself. OBJECTIVES Diddums has one of the silliest and most downright complicated scenarios yet invented for a cassette insert. It's done in daddybabyteddy language, presumably to get you in the mood, rather than as a reflection on the documentation department. You're this teddy. Your baby is crying so you must comfort it, so you try to climb out of the toy box. But if you succeed, Mummy and Daddy will turn out the light and prevent the other toys from playing. So that's why you're controlling a TB being pursued by numerous toys in an effort to escape from a toy box. Defending you from soldiers, spinning tops, trains and so on is a pea shooter (of course) and a friendly Jack-in-the-box. You escape by picking up coloured boxes and stacking them in order on a ladder at the top of the screen. Once you've got the boxes right, you escape the toy box only to discover the first really ridiculous loophole in the plot. Poor old Ted. He's working from inside a set of 99 nested toyboxes. So there's level after level, toybox after toybox to get through. FIRST IMPRESSIONS The packaging fits in with the Imagine philosophy. This is how it should be done although it could do with the Fuller ad being removed. People gave this up with books and records a long time ago. Diddums recognises and uses joysticks. Fuller ones. If you've bought someone else's joysticks there's no need to despair. There's an order form for the Fuller range included. Now all Imagine has to do is rewrite the instructions so that they are as clear as the copyright notice. For starters, why can no one document which way up to load the cassette? 'Printed side upwards' it says. Fine... there are two. Imagine guarantees the cassette for life, including freebie replacements if it does not load first time. The review copy did load... after three attempts. Perhaps I should send it back. IN PLAY Diddums has no on-line instructions. Just a full-screen coloured toy box, full of flashing toys and shapes. Imagine is proud of the graphics but they're not quite right. Animation is fast enough but everything flashes and jitters. The Spectrum's two colours per character block rule means that there's a horrible mess when two objects cross. And Diddums isn't without its vanishing and mysterious objects. It's such a shame because Diddums is simply over ambitious. It would look great on a true eight-colour display. Getting started proved well nigh impossible. It took a while to figure out the controls. Almost all of the keys do something or other though you only need six to play. This is supposed to give you a choice of keys but only results in a confusion of fingers. It goes something like this. Every alternate character on the bottom row moves left or right. A,D,G,J or L on the second row move down while Q,E,T,U or O on the third row move up. In between these, W,R,Y,I or P picks up or puts down any objects the teddy is touching. S,H,F,K or ENTER is used to throw objects teddy is carrying or fire the infamous pea shooter. So I rushed Teddy round box one, picked up the blocks and stacked them as instructed. And nothing happened. Climb up ladder. No go. Charge ladder from base of screen. Bangs Teddy's head. Rearrange ladder. No help. Pick up the pea shooter and destroy everything in sight. Hint: shooting the last baddy on any screen ends in almost certain plasticine. Not nice. Six people tried and none of us could figure out what you were supposed to do. After 1.5 hours I phoned technical support at Imagine. A word of help and I was able to progress to an entertaining and original game. The blocks may look right but the lower ones can be out of order. So you stand on the ladder and keep pressing 'Pick up' around 10 times to move on to the next level. But putting a block down while you're on the ladder automatically puts it in the right place. End of problem, start of game. Diddums gets to be great fun and it's quite hard by level 5. Each level brings more toys and more temper. You have to work hard with the pea shooter. Teddy gets five lives per game but each one starts back at the beginning of the current level 1: blocks scattered, pea shooter hidden behind spinning tops, soldiers back. Oh, and that damn train waiting in the corner. VERDICT Ah Diddums is an original and fun game. It's a shame that Imagine has produced an unhelpful cassette insert and probably the first arcade game that needed hotline support to get going. Maybe I should retreat to the safety of dBase. Diddums also suffers from the limitations of the Spectrum but I'll bet it will make owners of other machines jealous (Ah Diddums!) It's survived its false start and it's going to be a hit.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

TEDDY TAKES ON THE TROOPS New from Imagine this month is cute novelty game called Ah Diddums. There is more than a touch of Mary Poppins in this game where the goodies of the toy box team up against the baddies. You control a small teddy bear armed with a pea-shooter and a supply of wellington boots which can be flung at the tin soldiers, a nasty train set, and various ugly shapes of plasticine - all of which are out to get poor Edward Bear. You have to fight off these nursery nasties before they knock the stuffing out of Teddy! Ah Diddums runs on the Sinclair Spectrum in 16 or 48K. The game is available by mail order from Imagine Software of Liverpool and at some larger branches of W. H. Smiths at £5.50.