Producer: NTD Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £3.00
Language: Machine code

Froot Loop's a pretty simple game to describe. You are a small black face on the outside of a series of variously shaped rooms with single entrances to them. Inside the rooms there are green apples which you must go round eating. In some rooms there are pale blue squares which kill you off if you should run into one. Now and then the apples go rotten and picking one up will also kill you off. However, when this unseasonable occurrence takes place, dark blue bananas appear in some rooms, and eating one of these will unaccountably restore the rotten apples to wholesomeness once more.

To make life more difficult, there are guards patrolling the outside of the rooms. Should one get too close you can hit the panic button which will freeze the guards for a moment. On some screens, the apples are entombed within rooms lacking doors. You are also provided with a blaster to shoot out the walls. Both blaster and panic button eat heavily into your time limit, and all the apples must be eaten before this is up in order to progress to the next, more difficult screen.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right, BREAK = blaster, 1 = panic
Joystick: unstated
Keyboard play: better than with joystick, as keys well laid out and responsive
Use of colour: average
Graphics: block, small fast moving
Sound: average
Skill levels: 6
Lives: 5
Screens: 10
Originality: well there's not much else like it, but collecting items and dodging guards isn't all that original

I couldn't see any point in playing this game whatsoever. What's so fantastic about eating apples and bananas, whizzing round the block at super speed? The graphics are small and insignificant, moved by the block, although quite detailed and fast moving. The brick walls are quite well drawn, but the guards look more like jugs! The keyboard layout is good, being very responsive - perhaps over-responsive. But it's a poor-quality game with an unknown joystick option.

There is a sort of manic quality to Froot Loop which might appeal to some, but it didn't to me. The scrolling up of the screens at the end when you have cleared one is nicely done. But as to the game itself, I wouldn't recommend it, as there is so little to it. Yes, on the higher skill levels it is fast, but insanely fast, pointlessly fast. When will software houses wake up to the fact that sheer speed in a game isn't what makes them difficult.

For about half an hour I think Froot Loop might appeal as a somewhat mindless pursuit, but it's appeal is bound to be limited because there isn't much to do, and in the end too many lives get lost not through lack of skill but because the man is too hard to control well - at least he is with a joystick (programmable, because the joystick option stated on the inlay doesn't actually say what protocol it's for). Amusing for a while, but the primitive looking graphics and the lack of anything worth while to do makes it unaddictive.

Memory: 48K
Price: £3.00

Froot Loop is a very standard arcade game in which you have to eat apples and, occasionally, blue bananas, while avoiding the guards and making your way round the screens. They are divided into progressively smaller units.

The game is designed to be used either with keyboard control or with a Kempston joystick, which works satisfactorily. There is a range of skill levels, of which the advertising material reports that number six is "impossible".

This is scarcely an exageration. It is, however, almost equally difficult to determine from the instructions how to blast your way through impenetrable walls.

There is a time limit to the game and it becomes progressively more difficult, especially if you make mistakes and lose lives when the guard increases speed.

The graphics, though smooth, are essentially boring and the concept is far from original. It is doubtful if it would enthral even the most enthusiastic arcade player for long.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys, Kemp
FROM: NTD Software, £

Scrumping is hazardous at the best of times but when you have to contend with deadly rotten apples and mauve guardians it could put you off fruit for life.

You just have to collect the little green apples on each of the ten screens. There are five skill levels and the higher ones are practically impossible.

If the apples turn rotten you have to get a blue banana to change them back. It's enough to give you heartburn!