Producer: DK'Tronics
Memory Required: 16K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code
Author: E. Hickman

DK'Tronics have generally tended in the past to write good introductions as to the objectives of their games, but the recent releases have suffered with little or no explanation. Hard Cheese is a case in point, where a game starts without aims being made clear and where the scenario is obviously too complicated to sort out easily. The danger with this is that players can run out of patience before tapping the game's potential.

Apple Jam is another example. In this case there are no explanations at all. It is, in concept, a very simple game, and the broad intentions of the author are immediately clear, or rapidly sorted out, but as at least one reviewer found, points of the game still baffle.

Basically, the screen has a lift at the left, a sauna box at the right, a jam dispenser in the middle, overhead, and above that, a conveyor belt which produces apples. In a lower portion is a rat tunnel. The screen also shows the game score and the hi-score, three purple pills and the words RAT BAIT! A little man is made to run back and forth. He opens his mouth when correctly positioned under the dropping point of either jam or apples. Each time he gulps down another mouthful, he grows a bit fatter. To work off the excess weight he must enter the sauna for a few seconds and when he comes out he's all slim and wonderful. If he fails to go to the sauna each mouthful after a certain point, it loses him one of the purple pills. When all three have gone he dies.

Below in the rat run, the rats are running. Should the man miss any apples or jam, they fall through and the rats eat the food. Once this has happened they tend to come up a floor and eat the man. He can escape by getting into the lift, but that means missing more food. Should you do really well against these miserable odds, there's a giant hornet to watch out for.

COMMENTS

Control keys: 5 & 8 left & right
Joystick: Protek, AGF
Keyboard play: responsive
Colour: fair
Graphics: reasonable
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1
Lives: endless, but three pills

A non-violent game for the younger games-player, that's my impression. There's a fair use of colour and the character block graphics are smooth and fair in quality. It's a nice touch when an ambulance comes up to collect the dead hero after being rat-bitten, but I think they cheated by having it back-up - it could have driven forwards and turned around.

This game made me feel quite dense - it looks simple, it is simple, but I couldn't work out what was going on at all. I never found out what the RAT BAIT! was for, if anything, and someone had to tell me what the pills were for. I had figured out what the sauna did, and became obsessed with my hero's figure. Consequently my opinions are somewhat coloured. On the whole, a rather poor game.

The odds have been stacked up too high to make this into an addictive game. Once the rats emerge you never have a chance to catch more food, or sweat it off, and it all becomes pointless. It is, anyway, very repetitive.

An original arcade game in which you have to eat as much jam and apples as you can without getting into trouble with wandering rats and bees.

Peter: Most of the displays are pretty impressive and colourful, but that's not to say they couldn't have been improved upon. Overall, pretty good.

Stewart: Particularly impressive are the man and rats, who grow in size the more apple and jam they eat. For a 16K program, this package contains an amusingly different theme and has some great features. For instance, lift journeys can be quite fun, especially if you judge its descent so that you squash a rat!

Stephen: Play starts off very slowly, and gradually increases as progress is made. I would have liked it a bit better if the initial speed of the game had been set a little faster. That said, the game makes good use of colour and sound, and is certainly original.

Producer: DK Tronics, 16K
£5.59 (2)
Author: E Hickman

There's a lift to the left, a sauna to the right, an overhead jam dispenser and conveyor belt carrying apples in the middle. The idea is to centre your man to catch dripping jam and falling apples, leaping between each to prevent any falling into the rat run below. With every mouthful your man gets fatter and must eventually be taken to the sauna to sweat off his fat. The more food that falls through to the rats, the more adventurous they become, until they come up and try eating your man. Getting into the lift saves him, but it all becomes thoroughly silly and repetitive. Joystick: Protek, AGF, general rating: poor - 47%.

MACHINE: Spectrum 16/48K
JOYSTICK: No
CATEGORY: Arcade
SUPPLIER: DK'Tronics
PRICE: £5.95

This one is guaranteed to make you sick. Apples are falling off the end of a conveyor belt and jam is dripping from the nozzle of a machine. It's your disgusting duty to stand under each piece of apparatus in turn so that as much food as possible falls into your mouth.

With each gulp you grow visibly fatter until - the sick part - you have a fit. This costs you a pill, and since you have only three you need to keep slimming down by running into a sauna.

But, oh dear, this means that the sticky yuk you should be scoffing is falling to the ground and being slurped by little rats. Which get bigger the more they consume. And when they're very big they run on to your level to attack you.

Your only escape is to tear into a lift which shoots up and down automatically. If you time it right, you come down on top of a rat and crush it (causing a red stain which gets a bit bigger each time - revolting touch!).

One final hazard is a nasty-looking hornet with a fatal sting.

Apple film is clever in that the game's considerable variety is achieved with the use of just two keys: left and right.

This means you can enjoy playing it immediately - but it should still offer prolonged entertainment.