Producer: Automata
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.00
Language: Machine code
Author: Andrew Stagg

In a further attempt to undermine the integrity, purity and clean livingness of the noble arcade tradition, Automata, the well-known TV pundits on computerology, have released Pi-Eyed. This game is destined to go straight to the top of the Moral Majority Chart of unfavoured programs! It stars none other than the Piman, but a Piman to whom success has had a deteriorating effect. He's hit the bottle and now staggers bleary-eyed from pub to pub in search of liquid oblivion.

The scene is the street, and Piman is trotting along. If he gets hit by a car he loses points. You can take him into one of the many pubs lining the street, but he can't leave until he has drunk all the pints on the bar. This involves diving in between the chatting regulars without disturbing them (loses points), slipping up on crisp packets and things (loses points) or slipping on slops (more gone).

And of course there is also the by now obligatory treat of a bonus hit single on the reverse of the tape. Pi-Eyed, described as a heart-rending message, written by Lurch, the office parrot.

COMMENTS

Control keys: 6/7 up/down
Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: fairly responsive, but difficult to control
Colour: well used
Graphics: small, but neatly drawn, although there isn't much actual animation
Sound: continuous and average
Skill levels: how many pints can you take?
Lives: never heard of them

This is a sort of 'Frogger' both out on the street and in the pubs, dodging the cars and drinkers. It manages to be fun, and the things people say in some of the buildings is often funny or insulting or both. I found the Piman a bit difficult to control when inside a pub, as he tends to jiggle when drunk. Also, at one bar there was a figure with a dog in the way, and after all efforts, the final pint remained unobtainable on the bar. I would have to be honest and say that this wasn't one of my favourite games.

The graphics are very entertaining and colourful, and the game amusing to play for a short while. It certainly couldn't be called addictive though. I would guess it's the sort of game that appeals to Pimaniacs as light relief between trying to win 6,000 or a trip to Hollywood.

Automata's Pi-man is on the great slippery slope and sees life through a drunken haze. The player's job is to help him negotiate his way across a busy main road and into the nearest pub.

John: This is definitely one of the most amusing new games, in concept at least, to come on to the market. Sometimes the action seemed a little too fast, especially as the Pi-man became even more inebriated. 8/10

Mark: Colour was used well throughout, but not spectacularly: the pub scenes were the best in terms of graphical excellence. But the game opens a little slowly, with the keys not responding too well to the player's directions. 7/10

Tony: Ten out of ten for novelty value, but as is so often the case, the novelty soon wears off. There's also an amusing little song on the reverse of the tape. 8/10

Producer:Automata, 48K
£6.00 (2)
Author: Andrew Stagg

The famous Piman, success gone to his head, has hit the bottle and rambles drunkenly down the street, weaving in and out of the traffic, entering various buildings and making a nuisance of himself. If you get him into one of the many pubs he must drink every pint on the bar without slipping up on slops and crisp packets or nudging the other drinkers. The game manages to be amusing for a short while, but Piman is diffcult to control and some pints seem impossible to reach (you can't leave a pub until they're all drunk). Simple control keys, joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek. May appeal to some Pimaniacs but not generally. CRASH overall ratIng 57% (mostly for the humour). Reverse side of tape contains hit single by Lurch the office parrot!

PIMAN WANDERS FROM THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW

Memory: 48K
Price: £6.00
Joystick: Kempston

How are the mighty fallen! The self-righteous Pi-man has returned from Hollywood where he clearly picked up some terrible habits from chain-smoking Groucho and has now become a skid row problem drinker The new Automata release, Pi-Eyed, for 48K Spectrum, is an arcade-style descent into the unsavoury depths of Pi-Land pubs.

Using the cursor keys or a Kempston joystick, you must steer the tipsy Pi-Man along the road, avoiding irate motorists, and get him into various noisy and messy hostelries like The Merry Corpse or The Gay Dog. You may also enter some of the other buildings on the Pi-Land main street, where you will receive encouraging or abusive messages.

Once inside a pub the Pi-Man must drink all the pints of beer on the bar before he can weave his unsteady way out to find another watering hole. You do not increase your score in this game - you start with a high score which is reduced progressively the more you drink. Points are also deducted if you annoy motorists, tread on packets of Rhino crisps or even more unpleasant substances, or disturb other pub patrons.

When the Pi-Man finally reaches rock bottom zero, his beer intake for the game is displayed; if the hangover is not too bad you can then totter back and start all over again. It is always opening time in Pi-Land.

Pi-Eyed continues the Automata tradition of bizarre, inventive games design and combines the usual garish graphics with a loopy setting and maddening music. The loading logo of two awful bloodshot eves is disturbing. The game is reasonably entertaining though the format is a repetitive after a time.

DRUNK IN CHARGE OF A PIMAN!

Well, it hits us all eventually, doesn't it. One day you're a star. The next you're a drunken wreck. Or so Eugene tells me. Stardom has hit the PiMan hard in this game and, in his acute desperation, he's taken to the bottle.

Your job is not to cure him of his ill ways, as you may think, but actually to help our patient to drink as much beer as he can before running out of points.

Before I actually played the game, I listened to the "awful" single record on the other side of the tap. I thought that it might be quite funny, but it wasn't. Just awful. Lurch, the office parrot, has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, the game itself is set in a "frogger" type street. The poor drunken PiMan staggers down the street avoiding the oncoming cars. There are lines of shops, pubs and the like along the street and the PiMan can enter any of them. The first thing that then happens is a message appears on the screen. None is really funny, just silly.

if our hero enters a pub, then he can start drinking beer. He must empty all the glasses on the table before he can leave.

The pub scene is drawn on screen very well. The view is one looking down from... you guessed it...above. The whole establishment is visible. There's a pool table, cost log fire in the corner, the bar itself and even people doing naughty things in a basin! Each pub is different, and they're all very good.

Once the beer's all gone, the PiMan can leave the pub and stagger on to another.

The game is silly in the extreme, but just in case you're worried about corrupting delicate young minds I can assure you that it's all good clean fun and perfectly acceptable.

The bottom of the cassette inlay card says to watch out for the PiMan's continuing adventures. I wonder what'll come next. "Just breathe into this bag please sir" perhaps? Or something even more drastic?

AS PI'D AS A NEWT

MAKER: Automata
MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £6.00

Any program with a message that reads "You naughty Pi-Man! I'm going to have to take away ten points" is obviously in trouble, but this is even more solidly feeble than that legend suggests.

Automata's unloveable Pi-Man stumbles down a high street full of traffic and into as many pubs as you can direct him, where he has to manoeuvre between pool players, crisp packets and other drinkers in order to slurp down all the pints on the bar (actually they disappear with a ping). Then he totters from the saloon back on the street and does it all again. And again. This is a pub crawl without end.

You start off with 1000 points and these are removed - penalties for barging into other soaks, stepping in bar slops etc until you're down to zero, when you're told how many jars Pi-Man has managed to consume.

It's well animated in a modest sort of way but the precept of the game is (according to taste) either pernicious or merely coy. It certainly isn't much fun to play and is rather unresponsive on the keyboard.

VIDEO NASTY

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
JOYSTICK: Optional
CATEGORY: Sick
SUPPLIER: Automata
PRICE: £6.00

If you're a juvenile delinquent who doesn't mind paying a fiver for a few feeble jokes about vomit and getting drunk this is the perfect program for you.

Before you load it up you can have the thrill of playing the 'musical' number on the reverse side of the tape complete with lavatorial lyric.

Then run the game and get Pi-Man to lurch from bar to bar, bouncing off the furniture and drinking all the pints in view.

The action is constantly interrupted by the laborious printing on screen of such things as Pi-Man's biological functions which every mindless yob will no doubt find hilarious.

Let's hope so, because the game itself is pathetic. Once he's been through the 'jokes', even the worst yob will hardly bother loading it twice.

To take just one example. Part of the game has Pi-Man running along a road trying to avoid traffic. The graphics here are abysmal and it's virtually impossible to control the character, so he's constantly being hit by cars.

This would be wonderful if it meant the end of the game. But instead you get the same message printed on the screen letter by letter, time after time 'You naughty Pi-Man. I'm going to have to take away ten points.' After a while this becomes so tedious it's unreal.

Automata claim to have a cult following for their trashy games. I can't believe this. Even delinquents must realize they can get better entertainment by perusing the wall of their local public toilet.

Problems as to how players should be made to suffer for the misdeeds of their on-screen persona, whether they should watch deaths in graphic detail or miss them completely, are resolved in the new Automata game for the 48K Spectrum, Pi-Eyed. The hero, the Pi-man, wanders from pub to pub, drinking beer and avoiding obstacles. Wandering into other buildings for safety results in the telling of very bad jokes, a fate far worse for the player than any graphics representation could be.