Zany Adventure

Micro Adventurer

Tony Bridge

ZANY OR BORED? MICRO: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £1.99 FORMAT: Cassette SUPPLIER: Timothy Betts/Steve Parry, [redacted] The object of this budget-priced graphic adventure is to "find the eight spider's legs of time to become the ultimate cool and froody being!". Oh, is that all? Zany Adventure starts with a nice simple title screen, followed by an example of the play screen. This consists of four windows. The lower half of the screen contains room descriptions (sometimes two screensful) and object descriptions, as well as a window for your input. The top half of the screen is divided into two further windows, the left one showing a little stick man (you), and the objects at the location, and the right-hand window showing the number of spider's legs collected, the directions available to you, as well as a boredom factor. This seems to be incremented or decremented according to your performance stand around cogitating too long, and the boredom rating shoots up to nine or 10, and your 'head' is placed in a guillotine and chopped off, thus ending the whole proceedings pretty sharpish! Having decided to move, your little stickman moves across the screen, a door opens, and you move to the next location. Text input is terribly slow, and accompanied by a little BEEP at each keystroke. The standard commands are accepted, as well as GIVE THINGY EYEBALL and so on. Though the adventure is rather slow, the location descriptions are very funny and the whole proceedings are conducted with a nice sense of humour. The price makes it worth looking at, and you'll get a good few laughs, but don't expect a rip-roaring arcade game, or another Lords of Midnight.