Classic Arcadia 2

Your Sinclair

Overall 40%

Jonathan Nash 40%

Alternative £3.99 cassette [redacted] Reviewer: Jonathan Nash If you're nearly dead, you'll probably know these games in their original incarnations. Ah, happy days. (Sniff. ) And now Alternative have brought the games back in Speccy incarnations. What a marvellous idea. Or is it? (Clue: no.) GREBIT Grebit (surely it should be Ribbit?) involves jumping your frog across a busy road, then over a lazy river via logs and obliging turtles into one of five hidey-holes. Apart from the tragic lapse in the plot (a frog that can't swim?), Grebit is pretty faithful to the original. Except for the time limit, which robs the game of its urgency. And the fast lane of the road, which robs the game of any surprise. Erm, and the diving turtles. which etc etc. In fact, Grebit is rubbish. The only thing of note is that the traffic has been stolen from Spy Hunter. Spook, eh? 15% MISSILE Or Aftermath, as the program itself claims. With your devastating nuclear, erm, cursor, you have to protect a cluster of six cities from a sneak missile attack. Well, so much for the plot. Sadly, Aftermath limits itself to just two types of enemy missile, thus losing the relentless pressure of the arcade game, which kept piling on new stuff as quick as you like. As a result, Aftermath is fun to start with but falls apart very quickly. A bit like my ambitious Lego TARDIS, as I recall. 48% CRAZY ER'BERT Trapped on a pyramid of blocks, you have to change them all to a certain colour by jumping on top of them. But watch out for the bouncing balls and snakes and things! (He could've been a blurb wnter, him Ed) Such is Er'Bert. which is nothing to do with the famous stick insect of a similar name. First impressions are good: everything moves smoothly and the frenetic gameplay is a lot of fun. Later on you have to jump on the blocks more than once, and on about Level Five a swine of a baddy pops up who insists on repainting all the blocks he touches. In short, a smart conversion that keeps your interest by adding different hazards the further you get. However! When that novelty value wears off, I think you'll be returning to Rebelstar. 62% Right. Grebit is crap. Missile/Aftermath starts well but collapses in ruins, and Er'Bert is a good conversion of an odd game that has little lasting appeal. Overall, the comp's not really worth it unless you're into tripping down memory lane.

Sort of reminiscent of the 70's disco scene, eh? (A-ha! Ed) Oops.

That, my friends, is not a frog. Hamster maybe, but not a frog.

There's hardly enough space for even a single gag (Damnation.)