Producer: Bulldog
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Peter Gough

Sewer-cleaning is not a job for the faint-hearted. You never know what you might find down there... well, in fact you do find rather a lot and that's the problem. LINDA is an android who can help you: LINDA has more killing power than Domestos, bleach and all other cleaning fluids put together.

She is a fearless companion but a bit of a brainless mechanism, and she needs to have her circuitry guided through the sewer network where she takes out dangerous 'germs'.

Eight grenades lie in the depths of this place, waiting for her cold metallic touch. When one of these explosive devices is collected, LINDA must take it to the lair of the green slime. And when she's got all eight, she can destroy the slime monster that lives there.

But LINDA is sure to meet a motley crew of aliens on her perambulation through the sewers. These can range from'purple pythons to crabs and insects, each brief encounter with an alien leaves LINDA a little drained, and if her power level drops to zero that's the end of her.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: very colourful and varied
Sound: crunchy
Options: definable keys

Scumball is a cute little game, with well-drawn graphics and smooth animation, but it lacks that extra boost that holds your attention. The little aliens all look menacing enough but when you walk into one it seems to have no effect on you at all.

Many Mastertronic games seem to look alike these days: for instance, Universal Hero, Dynatron Mission and this one. Perhaps Mastertronic has developed an automatic arcade-game-generator and just keeps changing the graphics...

But despite all these quibbles, Scumball isn't that bad.
NICK [72%]

This is an excellent little arcade adventure. It has a neat scenario, it's full of cute humour, and it's beautifully presented: the grainy fade-in of the different options screens accompanied by an appropriately crunchy sound is excellent! It's very much in the Starquake mould, with a small main character affected by gravity exploring a large, flick-screen alien landscape: so mapping is very much in order.

The animation on the sprites is fabulous, and the backdrops are extremely colourful and detailed: a lot of imagination has gone into creating them.

The playability is good and fast, too - and it's very easy to control the main sprite. Scumball could prove tedious once you've completed the task, but till then, you've got plenty of lives, there are plenty of locations to explore and enough objects to collect to ensure its lastability. Even at a full price it would be a very good game; at this price it's a steal.
GORDON [90%]

Bulldog
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Oi! Hairbag! Dogbreath! Toenail clippings! Belly Button fluff! KAPOW! Sorry Phil. (Sensitive fellows, these Tipmeisters). Right, where were we? Ah yes, Scumball, which sounds more like a medical complaint than a computer game too.

Programmed by Software Creations, this is another of those arcade adventures we used to see so many of, that are high on graphical whizziness and low on actual game. You control the inevitable droid, this time called LINDA (Laser Incorporated Nasties Disposal Android), which has to zap the slimy nasties in the sewer, pick up eight grenades and then blow up the mega-nasty, known as the Green Slime. There's a fair amount of running about avoiding things, and there's loads of scenery to admire, but it all gets a bit boring after a while, to whit about 20 minutes, although I manfully carried on playing for rather longer, just to see whether something would actually happen.

'Not bad for £1.99', some would say, but in my book, a boring game's a boring game. It's been exceptionally programmed - fast, attractive and easy to control - but this time that ain't enough.