Players Premier
£2.99

It's a tough life in the ghost extermination business. It isn't all driving at high speeds through the city and crying 'Who ya gonna call?' you know! You take on the role of an exterminator in Spooked, but on this mission the ghosts are out to get their own back.

It all starts when you get a weird phone call: the bloke on the other end asks you to go to 225 Pine Road (sounds harmless enough). When you get there you find that it's smack in the middle of a site of many killings (gasp!), but not wanting to be called a chicken you go in anyway. It's a trick: the ghosts phoned you up and are now ready to exterminate you!

The game idea is to collect bugs, like beetles and figs, to swap for various spells. Use these spells to kill ghosts and get out of the house. If you run out of time a hangman board builds up, and once you have collected the right spells you have to play a game against the spooky old man.

Spooked is unbelievable fun. The programmers have done a great job with silky smooth animation, plenty of colour and sound, and excellent ghosts and backgrounds. They've even thought of the inexperienced player and included a scaredness rating which makes the game easier the more scared you get!

One moan is the viciousness of the skeletons and ghosts: it can get very annoying when they repeatedly knock you over. The hangmen game may seem simple, but here's betting you've never played it like this before! Buy Spooked today.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Never a man to miss out on a spicy low-pricey, Jonathan Davies sifts through this month's batch of good, bad and downright ugly budget games.

Players Premier
£2.99
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

The time - midnight (probably). The place - 225 Pine Street, a deserted house in an undesirable part of town. The plot - broadly similar to that of Ghostbusters. Essentially your task is to rid the house of its supernatural inhabitants by creating 'letter spells' and using them to play Hangman against someone or other. The spells are made by dropping insects, collected from around the house's 384 rooms, into cauldrons and hoping for the best. Opposition is provided by ghosts and skeletons who follow you around and bump you off-course in a rather irritating manner.

Suprise, surprise, another variation on that classic cheapie theme - the arcade adventure. Loads of screens (although most of them are rather vacuous), slick, cutsie graphics and an alarming tendency to keep one riveted for hours. Great.

Label: Players Premiere
Author: Tom Prosser
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: ?

Ghostbusters look out! Here comes Spooked! Released on Players Premier this budget game has you hunting for spooks in a wacky, spell flinging adventure romp, that proves that low budget can be high quality.

You are in the ghost extermination business but things have been pretty slack recently. No major monsters, no soup-bowls of slimers, not even the faintest plop of protoplasm has disturbed you - not working actually getting to be a bit of a bore, which just goes to show the desperation of the situation! But, what's this? Saved by the bell. Alexander Graham Bell to be exact, and one phone call later armed to the teeth you head for a strange castle.

Play begins with you having no weapons at all. So much for preparation. It's spells you must use to defeat your elusive phantoms and these are no unearthly given powers. You must collect ingredients for each spell whilst avoiding trouble like you avoid extra homework.

To collect your first offensive spell you need two small worms (Yeeeeck!), that you must catch by walking over them (Spllatttt!). By pressing enter at any time the current contents of your pockets are displayed and once you have enough slimey ingredients to exchange for a spell then find a cauldron - a purple one would be good.

Movement is by joystick or keyboard and control is left, right, up to (ump and fire will unleash whichever spell you currently possess. First off though you will have to try to avoid any skeletons by leaping over their heads (Oooo you re so brave), and any ghosts, who will go away if you keep still! Leap onto a cauldron and a menu will appear if you've enough items to make your magic and you then select which spell you want by pressing the appropriate number.

There are various spells available and include a homing fireball (very nice guv.) lightening, changling and letter spells, all of which become available as you explore the castle and find new tantalising and tasty ingredients, maggots, beetles and bees are amongst them. Pukey or what? All the baddies are spooks except one - he's a spooky old man who lives beyond the stone portals, the entrance fee being... yep, well guessed, even more ingredients but which ones? Ah well, you'll just have to find out won't you. Once through the portal a spooky old duffer will challenge you to a game of hangman using his vocabulary of 128 words.

Each life lasts for around four minutes unless you get zapped by any of the spooks and your current status is displayed by the grains of sand slipping to the bottom of the hourglass. You can top up your time remaining if you can find an hourglass and stand on it.

Lastly, there is scarreness rating which adjusts depending on how well you are playing. If you're playing well, then things begin to get very creepy, but if you've just started, the game stays fairly frightening until you get better.

Overall, this is a pretty good game with clean yet colourful graphics that have no clashing, or flicker and a testament to how good games can look on the Spectrum when the programmer hasn't had to convert it from another format. Full marks should go to Tom Prosser and I look forward to seeing his next game. For £2 99 it's completely wicked so don't wait too long - go get it now!

Players Premier
Spectrum £1.99

Ghostbusting is the name of the game in Spooked, which has you controlling a small bug-eyed person on a romp through a multi-screen platform-packed mansion. Dodge the skulls and spooks, then grab any frogs or bugs which are crawling around and chuck them into a cauldron to cook up spells for every occasion.

It's a neat combination of platforming and blasting, with a bit of Hangman thrown in. The action is fast, colourful and fun, and the graphics are really rather cute. There's even a scardeymeter which indicates how the difficulty level increases when you're doing well. Definitely the best new budget release we've seen on the Spectrum this month.