A Day in the Life

Sinclair Programs

Rating 54%

Colette McDermott 54%

PRICE: £6.95 GAME TYPE: Arcade Some celebrities have their lifestyle celebrated on television, some describe their daily routine in the glossy colour supplements. It seems only fair that Sir Clive should have his life examined in A Day in the Life, a Spectrum arcade game. Life as computer guru seems not to be as straight forward as you would imagine. For one thing, Clive appears to have mislaid most of himself, although his head rolls merrily on regardless. As the game progresses he loses some of his more vital characteristics, not to mention a great deal of lives. Still, what can you expect, venturing into London at a level even lower than that of a C5? The game claims to detail a day in Clive's life as he makes his way to Buck House to receive the award of Dame Commander of the British Empire. To do this successfully he must cross various screens: the bank, the station, the street etc until he stands at the foot of the throne. The puzzles are difficult, requiring split second timing and quick reactions. A Day in the Life is produced for the 48K Spectrum by Micromega, [redacted].

ZX Computing

Graphics 4/5

Addictivity 5/5

Overall 4/5

£5.95 Micromega A humorous game dedicated to "the man who put us ail into business", this has you guiding the Head of Sinclair around several screens of objects to collect and people to avoid. An unusual combination of platform and maze games and all in a 3D perspective. The graphics looks sparse in comparison to some games on the market, but after a few plays I came to appreciate the uncluttered display - simple in concept it may be, but simple to play it is not. A nice sense of humour runs throughout, and I even found the insert notes funny. The object of the game is to get Clive to Buck House to be invested as Dame Commander of the British Empire, you start in his house in bed and have to get clothes and a key to get out, avoiding the animated TV, Spectrum, cat (so far it's just like home - Ed.) and the bug in the attic. Objects bounce off each other and just as you think you've got it sussed they collide and come back unexpectedly - exit one of your five lives. Scoring is simply calculated by the time in which you complete each screen and the top score is kept and displayed. I liked it but found it frustrating as it looked so easy, probably Underwurlde experts may find it rather easy, but for most of us the difficulty is just right, making you want just ONE more go. Micromega, [redacted].

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 2/5 MISS

Roger Willis 1/5 MISS

Ross Holman 3/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY Judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one - Dave Nicholls, Roger Willis and Ross Holman - pass sentence on this month's selection of supreme Spectrum software. Guilty's the cry as our joystick jurors send another game to the guillotine. Dare you hold a different opinion during their reign of terror? WARNING! Just in case you find our scoring system too confusing, here's what it's all about. The score out of five at the end of each person's review is based on their own experience of the game. But that's pretty subjective... so they also use the HIT and MISS system to indicate its potential as a commercial success. A DAY IN THE LIFE Micromega £6.95 Dave: At last, good old Uncle Clive has finally received the recognition he deserves. Today's the day he has to toddle off to Buck House to collect his gong as a Dame Commander of the British Empire (bet he's chuffed. Ed.) On the way, he's got to cope with all the aggro of commuting, like avoiding the British Rail staff (though I always thought finding them was the tricky bit). Along the way he's also got to eat, drink and be merry. Using the keyboard or joystick you have to control Clive - or rather his head. Now we all know he's a brainy bloke, or he wouldn't have invented the Speccy, but only showing his bonce is a bit bad! It's up to you to manoeuvre his noddle around the numerous screens collecting the booty in the correct order. The rest of the graphics are OK I suppose, but the game gets a trifle tedious because of Clive's finicky ways. He just won't do what you want unless he's in exactly the right places. A slight miscalculation and you've lost a life as well as his body. A good 'cheapie' game being sold at full price!

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 8/10

Sound 8/10

Value 9/10

Playability 8/10

MACHINE: Spectrum SUPPLIER: Micromega PRICE: £6.95 Programmer Stephen Redman picked a controversial subject for his first game - Sir Clive Sinclair. You have to guide Sir Clive a important day in his life - the day he has to pick up his knighthood from Buck House! He has to brave the difficulties of getting dressed in his computerised house, the terrors of commuting, the problems of making a cash-card machine actually cough up and the perils of shopping. The game isn't just good because of its novelty value - it is playable too. Lots of puzzles to be solved and lots of fun to be had doing them! The graphics are big and bold and the little "Sir Clive" character is really neat! No, we don't yet know what the man himself thinks about the game. But watch C&VG to find out.

Your Computer

Micromega Spectrum £6.95 One of those twee games featuring you-know-who (snigger, snigger) a bloke with bald head and glasses who is (tee-hee) quite important in the (ha-ha) U.K. computer industry. Oh no, oh no it's no good I can't hold back, it's Sir Clive and the game has really primitive graphics.

Sinclair User

Overall 4/5

Gremlin 4/5

Publisher: Micromega Price: £6.95 Memory: 48K Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Sinclair Rumours that Sir Clive has been made Dame Commander of the British Empire have been confirmed by Micromega. The epic tale of the day he set out to collect his gong takes some telling, though. Gremlin can report that on the way to the palace Slugger Sinclair suffered a mishap at the barber's and was rendered completely bald. Even the stubbly little bits at the sides were hacked away... More vignettes from the tempestuous saga include the robbing of a bank, a mad dash from the 8.15 to Euston to buy the Financial Times - doubtless to check up on Polecat Tebbit's conversations with the Italian typists who bought Acorn - scenes of drunken abandon in Carlos' bistro, and petty larceny at the chemists in search of a bottle of hair restorer... The full version of Uncle's Big Day is told by Micromega in A Day in the Life, a new departure for gossip columnists in that the sordid tale is recorded on cassette, and accessed by joystick, for 27 screens of attractively clear and stylish graphics. Slugger is represented by a rotund head with that distinctive hairstyle which has made the micro magnate the Lady Di of the computer scene. He bounces with respectable speed through the crowded streets of London, up and down stairs, all the while attempting to avoid ticket collectors, rogue gobstoppers, dancing beermugs and the like. A whiff of the Manic Miner is definitely in the air... Humour and intelligence are not qualities Gremlin associates with the micro world generally, excepting of course the offices and pages of Sinclair User. Micromega certainly seems to have found a private supply of its own. 20 billion unsold waterproof C5 ponchos in grey plastic to anyone who can explain how to get past the sentries at Buck House in time to hear the wonderful full BEEP version of Land of Hope and Glory...

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Crash

Use of Computer 85%

Graphics 69%

Playability 50%

Getting Started 75%

Addictive Qualities 51%

Value For Money 52%

Overall 59%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Micromega Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £6.95 Language: Machine code We have had to wait quite a while now for a Micromega release, and A Day in the Life represents something of a departure for the company. There must be a finite limit to the developments a software house can make in games technology, given a particular machine, and Micromega have certainly gone a long way. Now with this new game there seems to be a sense of looking back, for A Day in the Life is not a super 3D advance, but actually a mixed collect-and-run game. You play a very familiar character, no less than Clive Sinclair - definitely plain Clive, because the object of the game is to keep him alive long enough to get to the palace to be knighted by the Queen. The action takes place over 13 screens of varied action. As it is a day in the life, the game starts out with Clive getting out of bed. Throughout the game you have to collect one object to make a second appear, and when that has been collected you can exit the screen. On the first it is a coat, then the door key. The screens are laid out in such a way that a circuitous route is forced upon you, while objects or people get in your way or kill you off. After a screen or two you may notice that in some respects this game does have a development in it - it is a story told in pictures. Once out of the house Clive has to visit a couple of shops before going to the station to visit the Autobank, go back to collect his forgotten umbrella, then dash onto the already leaving train. The train takes him to another station which is dangerously crowded to visit another shop to buy a copy of the Financial Times and back to the train before it leaves the station. Each screen has its own time limit, in the case of the last two it is the slowly departing train - will you make it in time? The train disembarks at a London station, not far from the Underground, but first there is the busy bar to visit, the bank and fast food joint before dashing for the Tube to the Palace. The moving objects on each screen are so arranged to move in patterns, bouncing off each other in unpredictable ways to make life harder. Quite often it takes a few moments to suss out actually how to move about the screen. Should you survive to the Palace you will be rewarded with a lowering of the royal sword and a knighthood. COMMENTS Control keys: user-definable, four directions needed Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, Cursor type Keyboard play: responsive, but finicky in movement Use of colour: good, bright colours on a generally white ground Graphics: above average Sound: continuous but jerky beep music Skill levels: 1 Lives: 5 Screens: 13

Clive leaps off a comuter train to by some essentials from the shop, but there's never a C5 around when you need one.

Personal Computer News

Overall 5/10

Clare Gurton 5/10

PRICE: £6.95 PUBLISHER: Micromega [redacted] A day in the life of... who else but the man who made British home computing what it is, Sir Clive himself. But what a let-down. We've come to expect high quality from the company that produced Death Chase, Full Throttle and Codename Mat, but now the quality's taken a nosedive. The goal is to steer the balding and bearded head of Mr Computer through some 20-odd screens to knighthood at Buck House. The inlay makes reference to Sir Clive's becoming Dame Commander, an irreverent and irrelevant throwaway line culled from Private Eye. Definitely not cricket, and not particularly funny. First task of the day is to get dressed - dodge the manic television, down the stairs, past the lethal feline and to the cupboard. With clothes donned (not that you notice because all you see is a blue head) a key appears in the attic, so it's back upstairs to collect the key before you can exit screen right. Each location has tasks which have to be completed in a certain order. For example, to catch the 8.15 you must reach the station cashpoint, then a brolly appears which must be picked up before you can board the train. All screens use a white background, and the sprites are large, colourful and smooth. There's some clever over-and-under sprite handling, and each screen is tricky to master - though not, I suspect, for a hardened games player. Moving Sir C about is difficult - there are channels to move through which require precise positioning. Micromega may want to move away from 'Black Leather' into bright and breezy games, but this is a dodo.