Producer: Mastertronic
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Andrew Collett

Following a visit to the supermarket, Andrew Collett wrote to Jimmy Saville asking if he could Fix it for him to turn his game idea into a full-blown computer game. Jim got in touch with Mastertronic and this is the end result.

Life isn't easy for the dogsbody on work experience at Collett Hypermarket. The manager gives him a constant stream of tasks to complete: stacking shelves, running errands, rescuing lost babies and getting rid of dirty dogs. Winding his way through the maze of shelves and supermarket alleyways, pushing his unwieldy trolleyfull of stock, he has to avoid irate shoppers, complete his task and return to the back room within the given time limit.

Bonus points are scored for completing an errand quickly but bumping into other shoppers and trolleys gives the store a bad reputation; too many complaints and the manager throws him out.

The week begins on a calm and peaceful Monday and gets busier and busier, culminating in a feverish rush on Saturday afternoon. Should he survive all this, the dogsbody gradually works his way up the promotion ladder to manager and an act of final, sweet revenge: giving his former employer the boot.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: very realistically drawn, but the jerky animation prevents flowing gameplay
Sound: decent title tune with a few feeble effects
Options: definable keys

Jim may have Fixed it for Andrew but Mastertronic haven't Fixed it for his game. In principle the idea is a good one. The long suffering store dogsbody has a wide variety of different tasks to complete; runaway children, irate shoppers and unwanted dogs provide plenty of scope for humour. Unfortunately Mastertronic haven't made a very good job of a promising scenario. The graphics, though boldly drawn, tend to melt into one another and the gameplay itself lacks any sense of compulsion. So much time has been allocated to each job that only the laziest, slowest stackers would be unable to complete it.
KATI

Super Trolley is a great idea for a game and has been excellently Fixed by Mastertronic. You can have great fun stacking shelves, chasing babies and catching stray dogs. It's also humorously frustrating: the shoppers are all old hags that have swapped their broomsticks for shopping trolleys and insist on charging into you when you're carrying a carton of eggs! Unfortunately, that's all there is to it. If there were a few more interesting tasks to do, Super Trolley would have been a great game, but like the task it emulates, it just gets boring too soon.
NICK

MACHINES: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Mastertronic
PRICE: £1.99

A bit of an oddity this. If I've got the story right, this game is the result of a letter to Jim'll Fix it. Apparently some little lad wanted to see his game design turned into real code, and silver-haired good fairy Jimmy Savile roped in the amiable Mastertronic guys to do the business. The result, as you'd expect, is pretty naff.

Supertrolley, it transpires, is a game of strategy and memory. You start off as a supermarket dogsbody, and your aim is to win promotion by completing tasks in the alloted time. Your first task, for instance, is to stock up bread, and you have 47 game minutes to do it.

Before setting off you must stick price labels on a pile of packets, which takes a couple of game minutes; then it's on to the game proper, as your miserable-looking flunky pushes a trolley full of bread around the supermarket in search of the right counter.

Despite the fact that the playing area seems to be only something like 8x8 screens, it's probably a good idea to make a map of the shop, since most of the 3-D perspective scenes have at least three exits. Displays below the screen show the objects you are carrying, the food type on the counter ahead of you, the day, week, time and score.

The graphics are cleverly designed to avoid colour clashes, though there's not much variation since they're alwys shown in white. I especially liked the shuffling assistant, the pinch-faces till girls and the crabby old ladies pushing the trolleys into your foot.

Unfortunately, there isn't much excitement in the process of searching for the right shelves, dumping the goods and making your way back to the tills for another trolley and another assignment. You have to avoid bumping into customers and objects, otherwise you'll get the sack. Knocking piles of tins all over the floor is a particularly bad move.

Overall, then, Supertrolley is a nice-looking game with just not enough gameplay involved. I'm sure Jim could have fixed something better if he'd made the effort.