Producer: Creative Sparks
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £1.99
Language: Machine code
Author: D Bowler

If you have ever been in hospital then this game could rekindle some of your worst memories. It seems that you have suffered some sort of slight accident and have woken up in a hospital, assessed your injuries and your accommodation and decided that the former doesn't merit the latter. In short, you want to go home.

St. Crippens must be the nastiest hospital on Earth. The inlay card claims that all the patients are 'literally dying to get out'. The first problem that you will have to cope with is the fact that while you are still wearing your hospital pyjamas, you haven't a hope of slipping past the security guards. Your most important task is to try and find some toys, and the only sure way of doing this is to trade with the other patients. Moving round the hospital would simply be a matter of weaving in and out of the fixtures and fittings, beds, tables, boilers and piles of washing. Except that all of the hospital staff are not only under orders to restrain any wandering patients, but they are induced so to do by a bounty for each one they catch.

Each room or ward contains the furniture that you would normally expect to find in a hospital, and is occupied by at least two members of staff. The moment you walk in through a door they will start to home in on you, thinking of their bounty. Try to evade them by dodging back and forth in between the rows of beds. At all times be careful not to be trapped. If a staff member gets you then expect a very severe ticking off, so severe in fact, that every encounter with a staff member will add to your injuries.

Initially, you are only ten per cent injured but after being caught five times your injuries will have increased to thirty five percent at which stage your character will have very visible limp. By the time you reach sixty percent injuries you will be limping about on crutches which limits your speed somewhat. Beware of the other dangers, bed pans left on floors, patients playing darts and even the results of genetic experiments. On your travels you should come across a patient who may be willing to trade clothing in exchange for other items that need to collect from other wards. Fully clothed, you can begin the long and dangerous trek to safety. Good health.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursor keys
Joystick: Sinclair 2, Cursor and Kempston
Keyboard play: poor choice
Use of colour: restricted
Graphics: simple
Sound: fair
Skill levels: one
Lives: 18
Screens: lots

Nothing about this game particularly stands out as being good but there's something about it that appeals to my sick sense of humour. I love the way your man's health deteriorates as he touches nurses and the like. The way the other patients behave is also very amusing - for instance if you walk in front of the television in the geriatric ward, those watching will leap up and beat you in. The graphics in this game are not very detailed so it is quite a job to work out which one of the figures walking around the ward is yours. A nice little game that errs on the side of monotony after a while.

This maze-ish sort of game left me with mixed feelings. Yes, there were certainly elements that I enjoyed, but also many things I disliked. St Crippens is, as far as this sort of game goes, nothing special But some parts, like the escapee struggling as his health deteriorates, are good fun. The graphics are pretty poor and the characters very small. Movement of the figures is again nothing special but in their own way they are quite neat.

This is a very difficult game to come to terms with. I hugely enjoyed the wit and humour of it all, which must certainly be its strongest point. The graphics are not very smart but they do work very well, and to be fair I think that the authors have done very well making the character do the things he does given his size. Falling over the bed pan is very well animated as well as the obvious deterioration in his health. For the money I think this is a good game if only because you're bound to have quite a few laughs over it.

Rick: Creative Sparks has come up with a cheap and nasty for the sick at heart.. But then I like 'em cheap and nasty.

More horrific than Young Doctors, St. Crippens makes St. Elsewhere look like a Swiss Spa. You have to try and escape the worst hospital in the world before getting limbs lopped off by nurses, porters and genetic mutants. The game is wildly inaccurate. For a start you can tell the difference between the genetic mutants and the nurses. To escape you must find bribes of ciggies and beer to swop for clothes to slip by the security guards.

A concept so gruesome as to be brilliant, its tackiness is exceeded only by that of the graphics that have a certain minimalist charm, ie there's not much of them. The collision detection is so bad that the nurses presumably kill you with airborne germs as I kept getting zapped miles before actual contact. A couple of hours of this and you'll want to put the programmers in casualty, if you're not already in the mental ward. I gave this to me Dad - he reckoned it was a cut above the rest. If you're into squeamish fun then look no further. 6/10

Ross: Original idea, unoriginal graphics, but more than a pain to play. The collision detection is awful and means that you get struck down all too frequently. I never did like hospitals. 2/10

Dougie: Nice idea... shame about the game! I definitely wouldn't want to stay at this hospital, what with all those mutants and 'orrible nurses hanging around. Just keep taking the tablets and you may never have to go near this game. 2/10

Publisher: Creative Sparks
Price: £2.50
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair

Hospitals have never been popular places and with its boast, 'Worst hospital in the world,' St Crippens won't change that. Patients never recover and often disappear for ever.

Guiding your patient around you explore the rooms searching for clothes - essential to your escape. Hospital staff will pursue you. There are bedpans lying about the ward floors, mutants in the Genetic Engineering Department and mould on the kitchen floor. All must be avoided.

Detailed graphics are limited and barely adequate. There are patients strung up in beds wearing body plasters or playing darts in the games room; the matrons have buns in their hair. It is difficult to pick out your patient amongst the swarm after him, as all characters tend to look alike.

Controlling the patient is tiresome. He refuses to react immediately and often gets caught.

It is sold at the cheaper end of the market, but it could do with a shot in the arm or a medical examination before realease.

Spectrum
Sparkles
Adventure
£2.50

Value for money from Creative Sparks again. Their low price good-quality software range now includes a game which night be interpreted as a searing indictment of the effect of government cuts in hospitals. so bad are things at St Crippens that you would rather escape from the hospital than risk treatment. Pursued by nurses, matrons, porters and even creatures from the genetic engineering lab, you must find your clothes so you can slip past the security guards.

Contact with the staff and patients gradually debilitates you to the point where you end up on crutches. Then you die. Simple but well-executed graphics, and dashed tricky to play using the cursor keys.