Producer: Crysys
Retail Price: £7.95 cassette, £9.95 disk
Author: Mark Rivers

First it was a novel. Then Frenchman Gaston Leroux's tale The Phantom Of The Opera became a classic silent film with Lon Chaney as the disfigured villain skulking in the shadows of Paris's great opera house. More films and an Andrew Lloyd Webber West End musical followed - and now Software Publishing Associates is launching its label Crysys with the arcade adventure Erik: Phantom Of The Opera. (The company's best-known for its recently-launched budget label Pirate).

Erik, once a pretty boy, has been horribly disfigured by a terrible fire. Using this as an excuse he seeks revenge on those he believes are responsible and becomes the eponymous Erik, Phantom Of The Opera.

He abducts Christine, the leading lady of the opera, and hides her in a labyrinth of tunnels and stairways beneath the opera house. But raunchy Raoul, the singer's paramour, is hot on the trail and sets out to track her down.

Erik has set loose some rather nasty things to get Raoul. Skulls bounce down on him, spirits float towards him, and opera masks scamper down stairs. By well-timed leaping, ducking and running, Raoul can avoid them. But it's far better to blast the bothersome things to bits, earning points and preserving energy for the next night's show.

Skulls and spirits might be frightening enough, but Raoul also has to contend with locked doors and find six keys before he can even get within singing distance of his loved one.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: monochrome blocks, despite the inlays claims
Sound: spot effects

Controlling Raoul is very awkward; you can't jump and shoot at the same time, which makes the nasties virtually indestructible, and their flight pattern makes it even more difficult to open fire on them. So Erik: Phantom Of The Opera is a very aggravating game. It just seems impossible to get through it.
BYM [73%]

The primitive graphics of Erik: Phantom of The Opera are quite off-putting, and the sound is sporadic and annoying. Playing the game isn't easy, though with practice controlling Raoul becomes second nature, and there's not much to draw the player into the action. It soon becomes boring.
ROBIN [48%]

There's no Michael Crawford or Sarah Brightman from the stage musical to cheer this up a bit, just a few bad sprites on a monotonous background. Raoul is represented as a sort of stick man with long legs and a finger that seems to shoot bullets! And the inlay claims the game to be a 'multi-colour, multi-directional scrolling arcade game', but the colour is in massive monochrome blocks and I certainly wouldn't waste my money on this in an arcade.
NICK [40%]

Crysys
£7.95
Reviewer: Richard Blaine

Personally, I always thought Erik was a Viking: but then, I suppose there's no reason why he shouldn't be a singing Viking...

Enough foolishness and on with the plot, Erik The Phantom Of The Opera revolves around your attempts to rescue your beloved girlfriend (yup, another sexist arcade game folks) Christine (and I thought Christine was a car?), from the clutches of the eponymous Erik.

Christine, you see, is the latest star of the Paris Opera - Erik is a musical genius driven mad by a terrible accident which scarred his face so badly that he has to wear a mask, meaning he's really loopy and all that. Oh, and you're Raoul, Christine's boyfriend.

Erik is holding Christine prisoner in a cavern beneath the Opera - a very luxurious cavern, though, as he has plundered the props department to furnish it as a des res, complete with enormous organ (oo-er). You have to make your way through the traps which he has left behind, collecting the keys to the doors which you have to get through to get to the cavern.

"Aha!" The serried ranks of YS readers exclaim "this is based on the West End musical wot Andrew Loaded Webber writ. "It's a licensing deal, guv!" Well, in a word, no. It's actually based on the original novel by some French bloke (Garcon something or other) written last century the same source which provided the idea for half a dozen movies and the Lloyd Webber flummery. Crysys Software, the publishers, can do this because the original book, and thus the plot, was written by someone who has been dead for more than 50 years. This means that the copyright on his works has expired and everything is in the public domain. So no writs, write... er right?

Now let's plunge (oo-er!) into the program. It's a graphic adventure, if you like - others might be more honest and call it an arcade game - and, if you felt like being really basic about the whole thing, you could label it a platform and ladders game.

You control Raoul, who, for some reason, looks more like a skeletal butler than a heroic intrepid 19th century Indiana Jones. With his bowler firmly wedged on his spritish head he has to wander through the splendour of the Opera House, climbing stairs and ladders and searching all over for the missing keys. But, while he's doing so, these nasty gribbly monsters are trying best to sap away at his life force. If he loses all of it, then he drops dead, and Christine is doomed to keep an practising her scales until she too perishes.

There are a number of different types of monster: some just act and look like bowling balls, while others are bouncing skulls and bombs, and there's something that looks like an animated fizz You can, if you're lucky and plucky enough, shoot them with your trusty revolver, but if they touch you, then down goes your energy level.

Unfortunately, the whole thing doesn't work quite as well as it should have done. The graphics are a bit disappointing especially in the backgrounds (although there are some very good touches, like the way Raoul holds on to his hat when he jumps). And, while the game play is fairly interesting at first, it can get a bit repetitive after a while - it's the old shall-I-duck or shall-I-jump business again.

Still, if you're a platform and ladders fan, then you'll probably quite enjoy this one, although it's not the most taxing of its genre. If you're not, and you prefer more problem solving in your arcade adventures, then don't bother.

Label: Crysys
Author: Mark Rivers
Price: £7.95 (£9.95 disc)
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Fans, or should one say fan, of Andrew Lloyd-Hamster would no doubt be delighted to think that his mightily successful musical Phantom of the Opera had been turned into a computer game.

Well come down out of the flies my friends, because Erik - Phantom of the Opera from Chrys has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the musical. Instead it's a fairly standard platform effort.

Well yes all right, so it is based on the same story by a Frenchman with a name that sounds as if you have a helicopter jammed down your throat, but apart from that, there's no similarity at all.

Erik (I didn't know he was called Erik) is holding the beautiful singer Christine hostage in the theatre, and it's very much up to you, Raoul boyfriend of Christine, to go and rescue the dame.

No easy task. Being horribly deformed and all that, Erik's gone completely loopy, and is most intent on hanging on to Christine. So as Raoul creeps around the theatre in the dead of night, he comes across the most appalling obstacles. The Phantom throws bombs, skulls, top hats (top hats?), crystal chandeliers, grinning masks and suchlike at Raoul.

The only way to escape is to shoot them, or jump over them. And here we have a very major (we're talking big) problem. It's impossible, because of the nature of the controls, to walk and run at the same time. You only end up jumping. So you just have to stay still and shoot. No walking along taking out the top hats at the same time.

Big probs huh? Well it's worse than that, because these ghoulies and top hats come screaming at you thick and fast, and you're just bound to get nobbled pretty quickly.

What we have here is a scrolling arcade sort of a game. Although Erik is obviously very large, there is very little variety in the gameplay.

It's all highly complicated and not really very rewarding.

It's not hugely impressive to look at either, although there are some nice touches here and there. As your hero moves about, he holds on to his hat as he leaps, and starts to rub his throbbing head as he walks into a dead end. But he's a rather spindly sprite and the backgrounds of the theatre itself are remarkable only for their mediocrity.

Sorry Erik.