Just a normal family really!

Producer: Again Again
Litres of Blood: £9.99 cass
Author: Bill Caunt, Peter Hickinson, grpahics by M Edwards

Fans of the old black and white TV series, currently being rerun on Channel 4, will know that the Munsters are a typical (post-) nuclear American family. There's Grandpa the Vampire, Herman Munster - a sort of self-made man, his wife Lily and their children. Eddie the Wolfboy and the sickeningly normal Marilyn.

The game begins with Lily aghast to find the rest of the family has vanished. The lovely Marilyn has been spirited away (groan) to a nearby Chateau. Controlling Lily, you must roam the house shooting the ghosts and ghouls to increase your spell power. When you've enough power the search is on for the rest of the family, starting with Herman.

Once Herman and Grandpa are found, control switches to them. After a short period guiding his Mark Caswell-like friend, Grandpa turns into a bat and makes tracks for vortices). While Grandpa goes to fetch the hearse (the Dragula), our lovable monster searches for wolfman Eddie, finally meeting up with Grandpa at the car. While racing along in Dragula they are attacked by zombies standing in the middle of the road, you must lift the car over them so they can get to the chateau.

I must admit to being a closet fan of the classic TV series, so I couldn't wait to play the game. But although it's a fair arcade adventure, I was disappointed by the lack of connection between its scenario and the series. There's so little humour in the game, just screen after screen of repetitive ghost-blasting. All the screens are in black and white too, but then so is the TV series! The Munsters is not a bad effort, but I'm sure more imaginative gameplay could have been devised for such a fascinating licence.

PHIL [67%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: characterful and attractive
Sound: continuous 128K theme tune

Although this appears on first sight to be little more than a collect-'em-up with ghost-bashing overtones, a few attempts reveal that a sharp mind is also needed. In some cases certain objects have to be collected to kill the more stubborn of the spooks, whilst one item has an electrifying effect if used correctly. A good rendition of The Munsters theme plays throughout the game in 128K mode, and the graphics are nicely drawn and animated. Whether you're a Munster, fan or not, I urge you to take a look.
MARK [75%]

The Munsters takes the arcade/adventure format of games like Pyjamarama and adds its own, uniquely ghoulish tone. Presentation is a little disappointing with the well-drawn graphics totally lacking colours in the main play area. The soundtrack is only average, with adequate sound effects. Gameplay is the most important thing, though, and this is where I have my strongest doubts. The puzzles aren't bad, but it's all too easy to die, making exploration slow and painful. Also, the need for spell power means a lot of the time is spent shooting enemies to get it, and one touch from a certain ghost and it's all gone. While not a bad game, the constant deaths mean only the most determined will persist with this.
NICK [71%]

Again Again
£9.99
Reviewer: Phil South

What do they mean, Again Again? Have we seen this game before? No we haven't, so what's the crack? Oh. Again Again is the sister label to Alternative Software, eh? Hmm.

The Munsters made a welcome return to the screen when Channel Four began re-showing programmes from the sick sixties. (Most of you weren't around then, I know, but you didn't miss much. In fact, The Munsters, Batman and The Monkees were some of the best bits and you've probably seen them.) But what about a computer game for the eighties? Hmm, I don't know?

Admittedly the game is a state of the art, multiload arcade adventure with nice big sprites wandering around the Munster mansion, and horrid little flying sprites, and big characters chasing you. BUT when all is said and done it is still just a pick 'em up/shoot 'em up!

In look and feel the game resembles the Rocky Horror Show (remember that?) and this is no big surprise. You wander around the mansion picking up mystery objects in the hope that you can rid the place of flying gribblies. You have 'spellpower' and you limply throw these balls of spell at the flying creatures and they explode - sometimes. Some of them are impervious to your spells, unless you hit them more than once. And your spell power, indicated by the level of juice in the bottle on screen, drops each time you get hit by one of these creatures. Pretty regular fare, I think you'll agree, nosepickers. The dippiest thing about the game is that you only have one life. Why insist on that point of realism in the plot when the rest is so improbable, hmm, mon petite chuckie eggs? No reason at all, as far as I can see.

So what's the verdict on this Munster monster multiload? I think it should have been left in the dungeon till Again Again came out with a better idea. Fans of the series will like it for the tie-in, but don't expect anything too special. Still it is a large game, so offers reasonable value.

Who needs a torch for the dark when you're wearing pink and yellow day-glo flares? 'Ever Ready' RICH PELLEY shines some light down the...

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Alternative
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

No, not Kylie and Jase, but that weird family of blue-tinted B-movie stars (well, telly stars, actually) from absolutely ages ago in what appears to be another one of those re-release thingies if I'm not very much mistaken. Basically it involves the four Munsters - five if you 'count' the dragon (chortle) rushing around their flip-screen monochrome haunted house (not haunted by themselves, but by the baddies) trying to a) find each other, b) find the car, c) drive to hell and d) rescue Marilyn, a friend captured by the old Duke (that's right - Ken Dodd). You control a different Munster per level incidentally.

Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Er, no. Well, yes, I suppose it is pretty easy, it's just that it's sooooo blinkin' tedious - it just takes so long to move from room to room 'cos you have to spend all the time shooting things to avoid losing energy. On the plus side, the graphics are clear and large, and the sound's quite good too, but that isn't really much use when the game suffers from complete boringness. Not recommended (unless you like crap games, that is).

Label: Again Again
Author: In-house
Price: £9.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Steve Mahoney

Again Again .. Don't worry, you have not found the SU pervy page. Again Again is a new spiffy software house whose first release is a game based on the dead (har har) good cast of the Munsters.

In case anybody doesn't know, the Munsters are a bunch of 'normal' people; Herman is a version of Frankenstein's monster, Lilly is the mortician like daughter of grandpa the vampire. Lastly there's Lilly's son Eddie according to the information we received is just a crazy mixed up kid (aren't we all?). Anyway, if you still want to know more, watch the flippin' programme.

Of corpse (chuckle) the idea is a good one for a computer game, but after a couple of games, I was plagued with boredom and close to smashing the computer to bits in a fit of frustration. The deadly dull (guffaw) problem is that the whole thing is just too hard to play; you only have a weak weapon and the ghosts get you sooooooo quickly that you'll probably be dying (waaahh ha ahgh haaa!) to load something else.

Graphically The Munsters is okay, the main characters that you move are big, funny and look like the people (if you can call them people) from the TV show.

Sound is only a ghost (haBARF! SHUT UP! - GT) on the 48K, but there is a sort of rendition of the theme music all the way through the game on the 128.

Considering the difficulty of The Munsters, you'll have to spend a good few hours playing it before you get anywhere (unless you are hypermegagameplayerfrom beyondtimeandspace) and I think you'll probably have to have grave (I can't laugh, I'll Barf again) determination to get anywhere. I think that A.A. probably wanted to produce a game which would test any gameplayer's skill, but The Munsters is teethgrindingly hard.

If you're one of those 'Oh I never miss an episode, it's just soo great' sort of people, you'll probably enjoy The Munsters for its tie-in value, but otherwise, guys-n-ghouls (yes I know that one was bad) it's not worth raising the money to buy it.

Again Again's monster licence.

Ghosts ghouls and things that go bump in the night are all commonplace in the Munster household, where this arcade adventure from new software house Again Again is set. Turning a cult TV series into a good computer game is a tall order for such a young company - have they pulled it off?

Almost, is the answer. In the game you start off playing the part of Lilly and have to rescue Marilyn (the only normal member of the family) from the clutches of Old Nick. This is only achievable by starting at the Munster house and wandering through the rooms collecting objects and destroying nasties that guard the exits/entrances to other locations.

You're armed - if that's the right word - with a limitless supply of spells which are best used to destroy the hordes of ghosts that come flying from the walls. Contact with the ghosts results in some of your limited energy being sapped, but destroying them earns a points bonus and a little more spell power - a bottle at the top of the screen fills up as your power increases. Some of the real baddies can't be destroyed just with spells though, so you must collect the right object first.

Again Again have captured the flavour of the TV series, but the game style is old hat and you won't be riveted to your computer for long.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Out Now
Amiga, £19 99dk, Out Now
Spec 128, £9.99cs, Out Now
Amstrad, £9.99cs, Out Now
C64/128, £9.99cs, Out Now
MSX, £9.99cs, Out Now

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 70/100
1 hour: 65/100
1 day: 80/100
1 week: 50/100
1 month: 30/100
1 year: 10/100

MACHINES: ST/Amiga/Spec/C64/Ams/MSX
SUPPLIER: Again Again
PRICE: ST/Amiga £19.99, Spec/C64/Ams/MSX £9.99 cass
VERSION TESTED: ST/Spectrum

The antics of the weirdest sitcom family this side of the Brady Bunch form the basis of this debut game for Again Again, the full-price label of Alternative Software. And what an inauspicious debut it's turned out to be. Allow me to elaborate.

Marilyn, the only member of the family who could be described as human, has been kidnapped by "Old Nick", and being the kindly family they are, the Munsters rally round to save her. Lilly Munster has to roam the Munster mansion, blasting the massed ranks of Old Nick's ghoulie army with magic fireballs. Certain nasties are stronger than others, and to deal with them Lilly has to destroy lower-ranking ghosts to build up her spell power, providing her with more potent fireballs to fling. Hidden throughout the play area are mystery objects which allegedly help take care of the ghosts, but none of the items I picked up seemed to improve Lilly's chances.

The real pain in the bot (with both versions tested) is that you can spend ages just blasting ghosts to build up your spell power (which is a pretty boring task), then unexpectedly run into an indestructible ghost and lose all of your energy in microseconds. And because you only get one life, that's the end of the game! Consequently, you don't get the chance to do any serious exploring or puzzle solving so there's no feeling of progress, only bags of frustration.

The graphics on both versions are average, but the detail on the backgrounds does tend to confuse the action in the foreground. At least they successfully recreate the look of the series, which counts for something.

The use of sound in both versions is pretty limited, adding norra lot to the atmosphere at all. The programmers of the ST version have provided it with some mediocre spot effects and a rendition of the TV theme tune which is quite jolly first time round, but becomes plain annoying after it's been repeated for the umpteenth time.

As you've probably guessed, I wasn't all that keen on The Munsters. The standard of programming almost reaches average, but there seems to have been very little thought put into the game design. I would baulk at spending ten quid on the Spectrum version, but would faint at shelling out twenty of my favourite coins for an ST version which is little better. Not a game I would recommend, even to Munsters fans.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.99
Atari ST Diskette: £19.99

DON'T KNOW THEM FROM ADAMS

This spooky licence, released on Alternative's new full-price label, was reported in TGM011, and was met with some interest. The black and white American television comedy series has been a success for almost 20 years, and in Britain has been shown regularly on Channel 4. It concerns a bizarre monstrous family and their adventures amid an ordinary American town.

Head of the household is the clumsy lumbering Herman, a Frankenstein's monster of many parts. His wife is the streak-haired vampirish Lily, daughter of the similarly blood-sucking scientist known as Grandpa. Herman and Lily's off spring is little Eddie, while their niece, Marilyn, is the only ordinary person of the bunch. The family also have a pet, Spot - a huge fire-breathing dragon that lives under the stairs.

Their lives are disrupted by denizens of the underworld. Marilyn is captured by the evil, malicious 'Old Nick' (a way we often describe our reviews editor) - the distraught family naturally plan to rescue her. Their troubles do not end there however, as zombies, ghouls and ghosts invade their mansion and put all but Lily to endless sleep.

You guide Lily through the many rooms of the mansion and out into the grounds, searching for magical items to save the family. Enemies dispatched b spells cast increase your spellpower, but contact with them reduces not only this but your energy level. High levels of spellpower enable you to kill strong enemies who guard useful objects.

EDDIE THE KID

Objects are manipulated to bring Herman to life, who you then control to free Grandpa and Eddie. Meeting up with Grandpa at the hearse dragster, Herman automatically drives the vehicle to the Chateau where Marilyn is held - where you then guide the dragon and his fiery breath.

Once at the Chateau, the last evil creatures are fought back until Marilyn is rescued and the family reunited.

The games designers obviously spent little time looking at the TV series before opting for a walking (and later, flying) shoot-'em-up with minor arcade adventure elements - little in the game, other than its title and music, reminds you of the fun characters. Slim sprites bear only slight resemblance to their screen originals and humour is non-existent, so no atmosphere is generated. The simple gameplay may appeal to some, so if possible, try before you buy.