Superior
Gil Johnson-Smith
£7.95/£12.95

According to Superior, on the BBC Micro Repton Mania is even more popular than Elite! In fact, the original Repton has been followed by six sequels together with Repton mugs, pens and cuddly toys! Even allowing for the weird nature of BBC owners it's obvious that the brightly dressed lizard is a bit special.

The introduction of Repton onto the Spectrum is via the bundling of Repton 1 and Repton 2 on a single tape or disk. Repton 1 is by far the easiest to start with, it's made up of 12 caverns and when you complete one you get the password for the next. To complete a cavern you have to run about collecting all the diamonds before the time limit runs out. To start off with there's just the diamonds, the earth stuff you move through, monsters and boulders (which crush Repton if they fall on him).

While swift responses are vital to avoid the monsters, the heart of the game is solving the puzzles, eg how do I get the diamond without that boulder sealing off my exit? On the first cavern, puzzles can be solved instinctively, but later on a little thinking is necessary when safes (which need keys to be opened) and eggs (if they fall monsters appear) are added. On eight of the caverns a map will appear when fire is pressed, on the final four it won't.

Repton 1 duplicates much of the addictive gameplay of Boulderdash, but lacks some of that game's inventiveness and graphic charm. Whereas in Bouldedash the diamonds have a greed-inspiring sheen, here they're unattractive and blocky. Even cruder is the large lizard itself, which has only about three frames of animation moving sideways. Sound is limited to a blip when you collect something and a simple tune on the front end. By way of compensation scrolling is fast and perfectly smooth. But if the generally disappointing presentation makes getting started difficult, once you've begun playing, stopping is extremely hard. The combination of time limits, tough puzzles and fast monsters makes for a really compelling game.

Repton2 suffers from the same presentational problems as the original, but additional features such as transporters, meteors and skulls add variety, livening things up. The main difference though, is in gameplay - instead of there being 12 caverns there's just one immense puzzle, consisting of 16 levels linked by transporters. To complete it you have to collect 4744 earth sections, 42 jigsaw pieces, 1634 diamonds, kill all 18 monsters (by dropping boulders on them) and lots more besides, all without making a single mistake!

At first Repton Mania looks drastically over-priced, but once you begin to play the game it becomes apparent you get more than enough gameplay for your money. Unlike most blast-'em-ups this could easily keep you playing for months on end, so if you really do prize playability over graphics look out for the lizard.

STUART [79%]

I must admit that I was truly shocked when the first two Repton games sauntered into the CRASH office. I played them on the BBC ages ago but couldn't get very far on either (probably because the teachers at school kept kicking me off the computer!). But having now played them for longer I must admit that Repton is quite good fun. The graphics are basically abysmal and sound isn't much better with an ancient tune stuck on the front end and minimal effects throughout the game. But the gameplay is addictive and the frustration of dying at a critical moment or dislodging a vital piece of rock will keep you playing for ages. Both games could definitely have been better presented and the graphics and sound leave much to be desired. But as they stand, they should provide enjoyment for quite some time.
NICK [71%]

Superior Software
£7.95 cass/£12.95 disk
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Now let's get this straight from the start: Repton is Boulderdash writ large. In fact 'writ' is probably the operative word, because the two are in places so similar that I'm amazed the lawyers haven't been on the phone.

That said, Repton is a cracking good game - or rather format, because there are two games here, Repton 1 and Repton 2 (imaginative titles, huh?). 'Large' is no less appropriate than 'writ', 'cos both games expand the old Boulderdash formula to bumper size. I mean, take a butchers: Repton's sprite is a sixth the height of the screen.

The name may be familiar, for indeed the two games were, in an earlier guise, two of the most successful games ever on the BBC Micro. No, stop laughing. A good game is a good game, whichever machine it's on, and both Speccy conversions look and play a treat.

Repton 1 is unreconstructed Boulderdash - diamonds, boulders, nasties, the lot. You guide your little chap around the maze, collecting diamonds and trying to avoid being splattered by the boulders that lie around. Much of this is straightforward puzzlework - how to blag the sparklers without being crushed - but when eggs start cropping up, you have to be even more careful. Crack the eggs - and a lot of the time you don't have much choice - and out floats a nasty which sees you not as a jolly playmate, more as breakfast. Irritating-looking safes block the way too, and seem impossible to crack, but find the key (always hidden somewhere nasty) and the sales all open to reveal diamonds. There's a time limit for each screen, and for the first eight screens you also get a map you can toggle to which shows you the detailed layout of your level.

All very well, but for an even more sophisticated bit of fun, all you have to do is turn over the tape and load in Repton 2. This, originally the sequel in BBC land (or had you guessed?), bears the same relation to Repton 1 as Jet Set Willy did to Manic Miner. Suddenly the action is opened up to one multi-level puzzle, thanks to 64 transporters that lie around the place. The idea here is to collect 42 jigsaw puzzle pieces, which when picked up immediately reappear in a section of the first screen, eventually to spell out some sort of message. Meanwhile, though, you still have to pick up all the diamonds (1,634 of them, for heaven's sake), make sure you step over all 4,744 earth sections, use all the transporters and kill all 18 monsters. Not easy. Extremely hard, in fact.

The whole thing is about as complicated as I imagine a game like this could become, but it's devilishly addictive - one of the most compulsive games I've played in months. You're always visiting new screens, getting killed in exciting new ways and being presented with ever more devilish puzzles to solve. As well as all the hazards in Repton 1, there are spirits, which always follow to the left until they reach a cage, and must be avoided at all costs. There are meteor showers, which make things tricky in six of the 16 levels. And there are skulls, which may not move or fall on you but don't exactly like being disturbed either. It's up to you which locations you visit in which order, but you soon discover that unless you do one thing earlier on, your way may be irrevocably blocked a few minutes later.

If you manage to get through all this - and anyone who really gets into the game can look forward to weeks (if not months) of challenging play - you're eventually allowed to reach the last half dozen puzzle pieces (the surrounding skulls conveniently disappear), and the game is over. Needless to say, after two or three days' solid playing, I'm about 1% closer to that seemingly unreachable target.

The whole shebang is, in the end, one of the most addictive arcade adventures for ages - not wildly original (which is why it just misses a megagame), but a superb variation on a classic theme. Use Repton 1 to get you used to the controls and the gameplay, then leap straight in at the deep end and load up Repton 2. Arcade adventure fans (all eleven of us) are not well cared for by software companies these days (Aaaah! - Everybody else), but this is manna from heaven, or at least Leeds, where Superior Software is based. That's not to underestimate Reppy 1 - a perfectly adequate Boulderdash clone - but Reppy 2 is the business.

Poke, anyone?

Label: Superior/Alligata
Author: Gil Johnson-Smith
Price: £7.95/£14.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Repton and its sequels were among the most popular games ever released for the BBC B micro. If that isn't enough to put you off the Spectrum version, it certainly should be; the Beeb's reputation for unimaginative, graphically primitive and badly designed games is second to none. Tremble with horror, then, as you read these lines from the blurb for Repton Mania; "The gameplay and screens are similar to the BBC version." AAARGHHH! Too right they are, matey!

Just to make things worse, Repton is a variant of what must be the most over-rated game in the history of the Universe, Boulderdash. If moving around the screen picking up diamonds and trying to avoid rocks falling on your head is your idea of a good time, I suggest you submit to an immediate brain-scan.

Repton Mania consists of the two games Repton and Repton 2. The two games have a lot in common; the central frog-like character Repton, the flat top-down graphics, the dreadful blocky designs, the awful Woodentops-style animation, horrid ragtime music, and the primitive sound effects. In each game the aim is to move Repton around a cavern, digging through the earth, picking up diamonds and avoiding hazards, aiming to complete each screen within a time limit, upon which you are given a code-word for the next level. There's a map display which is accessed by pressing ENTER/M.

Hazards including falling boulders which squash you if you dig out the earth beneath them; eggs which hatch out into Repton-seeking dragons; flying sparks and the like.

In the second game, the imaginatively-titled Repton 2, the main differences are the additional hazards; deadly skulls, meteors, monsters and spirits. The aim here is to collect all the earth (honestly), all the diamonds, all 42 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and to kill all 18 monsters. To do this you must use all 64 transporters, which transfer you via a Spectrum Basic-style whirly screen effect into hidden sections of the labyrinth.

In Repton 2 there is no time limit to any of the sections, but some diamonds are hidden in safes which can only be opened by finding keys.

It would be nice to be able to find something nice to say about Repton Mania, but when even budget games now routinely feature excellent graphics, sophisticated sound and complex gameply, it's hard to see any virtue in this outmoded antique at £7.95. There may well be some people out there who love the Bouiderdash format so much that they're willing to overlook the failings of what is in effect a two-year-old 32K BBC B game, but if they are, they have my sympathy.