This is a two game compilation containing the games "Repton" (I refer to it as "Repton 1") and "Repton 2" which are also available separately. Nowadays, you may find it convenient to just grab the +3 disk version of this compilation although there is also a tape version available.
The Repton games were one of the flagship franchises on the BBC/Electron computers back in the eighties. Several sequels and additional level packs were released on those platforms as were the associated level designers and even a scripting language called "reptol". Overall, sales were very high on the BBC/Electron platforms.
Out of all of these games, only Repton 1 and Repton 2 made it belatedly to the speccy at the end of the decade. This is somewhat unfortunate as arguably some of the later sequels are better games, containing more features and a wider variety of in-game graphics. The overall success of the Repton series on the BBC platforms never did translate too well to other 8-bit platforms.
The Repton games appear superficially similar to Boulderdash, but are quite different in practice. The emphasis is more on puzzle solving than on arcade action, although some arcade element still exists.
Simply put, the objective is to collect all diamonds from a level, moving obstacles such as boulders and earth out of the way as needed. As in Boulderdash, falling boulders kill the player character, which happens to be the eponymous anthropomorphic lizard. Also, the order and route taken in solving the levels is crucial since it is very easy to block off access to later parts of the level, often forcing the player to restart from the beginning.
The speccy implementation is very good with four-way scrolling of the multicoloured playfield without any colour clash, perhaps due to scrolling 8 pixels at a time. Here, this method works fine since scrolling is not continuous, but rather driven by player movements.
Sprites are pleasantly rendered and are all 32x32 pixels in size. Good use of two-tone magenta/red shading is used on boulders for example.
Both games feature music on the intro screens and in-game sound effects. Either can be switched on or off.
Repton 1:- This game consists of a series of twelve levels and a scrollable map of the current level is available via the 'M' key.
Each level has a password and also time limit which is rather generous at least on the earlier levels. You can return back to the intro screen at any time during play to pause and see how much time remains. It is merely enough to collect all diamonds on each level in order to complete it. Although, some diamonds are trapped inside locked safes which must be released by collecting the key item.
Repton 2:- This entire game is effectively one huge level albeit split into different coloured sections accessible via teleport squares. Also, wall-hugging spirits are added which must be carefully guided back to their respective cages, freeing further diamonds. Care must be taken as they kill the player on contact. There's also an "uncovered" section at the very top of the level where lethal meteors rapidly rain down from the sky. Not only must all diamonds and "puzzle pieces" be collected, but also all earth must be cleared by the player and all "monsters" killed too. In total there are well over 6,000 items for the player to collect or clear! All in all, Repton 2 is an exceedingly tough challenge and early BBC versions were impossible to complete due to a bug which meant the player was left one diamond short at the end. This soul-destroying mistake was fixed in later BBC versions and so I'm presuming that it is fixed in this much later speccy version too.
Repton 2 was so difficult and unwieldly to tackle for most players that later sequels (not available on the speccy) reverted back to the clearly more popular level-based/password format of Repton 1.
In summary though we have one excellent game (Repton 1) and one good but overly-difficult game (Repton 2), both of which have a technically superb implementation on the speccy.
The C64 was blessed with Repton 1 and Repton 3 though, all in all a far better combination. If this was also the case on the speccy, I would have awarded 5 here, but the inclusion of Repton 2 instead of Repton 3 makes this compilation one point short of excellent, yet still very good.
On a final note, the speccy was uniquely blessed with a public domain Repton clone called "Riptoff", which is still now considered to be perhaps even better than the orginial Repton game itself!
