Mastertronic Plus
£2.99

Fancy some bouncy, bouncy fun in an inflated style with Psycho Hopper? Thought you might. You've landed yourself in the world of dreams, along with a bubble of deadly poison and lots of nasty things that want to pop it! And where is this poison? Between your legs of course: you bounce about the place on it.

Budget software houses seem to be running a bit short of names for their games, don't they? I mean, take Hopper Copper and Psycho Soldier, add a bit of magic and here is one I prepared earlier - Psycho Hopper.

The game's graphics are not too exciting. Their are some quite nice sprites bouncing and plodding around but not much in the way of backgrounds to brighten things up.

Perhaps this was to avoid the colours clashing? The aliens and other adversaries you encounter are quite varied: one minute you can be bashing bats and the next destroying dwarves - and all are out to pop your bubble - so shoot or avoid them. To make things extra hard the poison eats away at the bubble making it burst after a certain time, so fast bouncing is essential.

Sound effects in the game all sound like something rather rude (no offending language in this mag!). Getting further into the game doesn't change much either: the nasties just get much more vicious.

Psycho Hopper is a fun game with some cute graphics, but I doubt if anyone will be playing it for very long.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Another delve into the recesses of Speccy softstuff with Dr Marcus "stand very still and try not to scream" Berkmann.

Mastertronic
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

This, though, is not one of Mastertronic's finest hours - a slow, awkward and rather dreary game based on the notion of a Spacehopper. Remember Spacehoppers? They were pretty fab back in the '70s - huge wobbly things, on which one would jump merrily around the room, holding onto the two wibbly bits at the top. Actually that sounds rather disgusting, but never mind, because Psycho Hopper fails utterly to evoke the great and glorious joys of spacehopping. As you bounce around on your hopper, you must control both height and lateral speed to try and jump up on platforms and grab crystals, avoiding the inevitable nasties on your way. Graphics are, well, basic (if not actually in Basic) and the whole game drags along until you reach Level Two and find that it's no more interesting than Level One. You know the sort of game that chugs along incredibly slowly until you find a 'go faster' pill and it all becomes a little more interesting. Sorry, this ain't one of them. Snore city, I'm afraid.

And you thought you'd seen it all, eh? Armed with a huge space hopper filled with deadly gas and a blunderbuss, you must bounce around the World of Dreams collecting flashing gems. Sounds simple? And it IS! Well, it would be if the World of Dreams hadn't been built out of steps.

The main challenge of Psycho Hopper is simply working your way around the infuriatingly constructed world. Since it takes about four consecutive bounces to reach maximum hop height, and you can't bounce on the spot, you spend most of your allotted time trying to get over relatively simple obstacles. It only takes a couple of steps and a low ceiling to completely halt your progress.

These problems are compounded by the swarms of other creatures who home in on you and don't have any problems getting through the toughest of obstacles.

Thankfully, you are endowed with an unlimited supply of bullets and you can turn and fire in mid air.

Psycho Hopper isn't a bad looking game. It's colourful, with minimal attribute problems and a good turn of speed, even through cluttered screens.

Each stage has its own selection of weird (dreamlike, even) enemies. By far the most deadly are the swarms of bats which flap about and drift doggedly toward you. If you find yourself surrounded by incoming squeakers, you've got to carefully prioritise between bouncing on the spot, clearing the way ahead (thus running the risk of running out of time) or try to press ahead, gaining time but incurring horrific hit points.

The further you manage to fight your way into the game, the more inaccessible the gems become. Even after constant play, I could only achieve a workmanlike standard of control, bouncing around largely out of control, stuck in awkward angles of steps having my energy drained by horrible dwarves tumbling through the roof.

You'll need more patience than me to get the most from Psycho Hopper.

Mastertronic
Spectrum, C64 £2.99

Remember those big orange boucny hoppers? Of course you do, sproinging and bounding around the streets, trying to squash the cat - they were great. Now here's a game about a man who spends his life plonked on top of his Bounce Bubble (tm), collecting treasure and duffing up the bad guys as he travels through a series of caves,. If any of the baddies collide with you, they damage your hopper, and too many hits spells doom -or at least, a hole in your hopper.

Psycho Hopper makes a pleasant change after seeing so much re-released software at this price. There's nothing of any great note in there, except the urge to play on after you've copped it, and in my eyes that's really the most important factor of any game, cheap or otherwise.