Producer: Americana
Retail Price: £2.99
Author: Michael Smith

Our hero's parents are obviously rather scatterbrained people as they've christened their son Thingy. In fact this absent-mindedness runs in the family because Thingy refers to everyday objects around him as doodahs and thingummybobs. is it any wonder that a lad so dim has managed to loose his precious Spectrum?

Thingy has to scamper round trying to get £60 together so that he can buy a new one before his parents find out that it's missing. (Budget game, budget Spectrum!) The Thingy household is chaotic and Thingy can find a bit of the money which he so desperately needs just by hunting through his brother's bedroom and other rooms in the building.

However, some of the money belongs to the Doodahs and they are understandably reluctant to part with it just so Thingy can buy himself a new computer. They manifest themselves in various hideous forms and set out to terrorise Thingy wherever he goes. There are different sorts of Doodahs. The most deadly are the vicious Whatsisnames. Others reside under the splendid titles of Thingummybobs, Whatchamacaltits and the fiendish So-and-sos. These perishing little objects never give up trying to protect their cash. Contact with the nasties costs Thingy one of his ten lives.

At the side of the main screen a panel shows Thingy's progress in the game. At the top is a box showing how much money he has managed to collect and below the cashometer a pink box reveals Thingy's lives.

Will Thingy be able to replace his Spectrum in time? Or will he suffer the tortures of withdrawal symptoms first? Only you can answer this.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q up, A down, O left, P right. X pause, C un-pause, Z tune on, CAPS SHIFT tune off
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour bright and cheerful
Graphics: simplistic
Sound: awful tune
Skill levels: one
Screens: over 200

What a strange name for a typical budget game! The graphics are very small and contain very little animation. Colour is used lavishly but clashes aren't too much of a problem as the characters are all fitted in their own little space. I don't think the game is very playable as it lacks constant speed of travel - the screen locks up when there's a lot on it - and you're limited to four directions. This is definitely the worst game that AMERICANA have brought out so far. It is totally unoriginal and, at three pounds, overpriced.

The loading screen is fantastic: in over two years of games colourful, pretty and interesting screen, and the way it loads up even knocks Fighting Warrior into a cocked hat. Unfortunately, the game itself fails short, playing in a similar way to JSW and the like. The graphics are of an average standard for this type of game: the characters are all nicely animated, but are small and badly detailed. The sound is not good - there are a few well placed spot effects and a dire tune which you can turn off if it annoys you. Thingy and the Doodahs is not an unplayable game and it represents quite good value for just three pounds but it didn't really appeal to me. It is unoriginal and rather out of date.

Ah, poor Thingy has broken his Spectrum; what a wally as it says on the inlay! Honestly, if this is the sort of game he plays on it, then I'd leave it broken, and buy another computer, because this is the sort of low quality cheapy game that gives us Spectrum owners a bad name among the other computer users of this world. The loading screen is very good, in the way that the picture draws from the bottom corner up. The graphics, though are very primitive, and the game itself is unplayable to a very great degree. Though low in price, as far as I'm concerned, Thingy can keep his Doodahs, because I don't want them, that's for sure.

Americana
£2.99

Thingy and the Doodahs? Yeah, it's one of them cheapie wotsits based on whatyamacallit-type game. Usual sort of blobby things legging it round a vast number of rooms. You've got to trog round avoiding them and collecting the lobbies scattered about. And all with only one more life than the average cat.

But wait a mo... this one's triff! You'll need every trick in the book because programmer Mike Smith (no relation?) has used every one in his.

Talk about split-pixel positioning - you often need to nudge right up into the attribute space of a killer baddie before you can make a dash past it. And some of the rooms require you to move at incredible speed as well as with super precision.

But the mix of easy-peasey, fiendishly difficult and downright impossible is really well balanced to get you started quickly and then keep you glued to your set for days. There's 64 so-and-sos to collect, of which you need 60. But they're scattered through over 200 rooms, including an extensive forest maze. So rest assured this ain't no ten-minute wonder.

As the title might suggest-the plots a teensy bit weak and the vaguely plausible rooms rapidly degenerate into sub-Jet Set Willy humour and complete weirdities. There's even a little moralising: a "Drugs' room full of 'Say No'signs, that leads, among others, through 'Driving Drunk to 'Killer Fags'.

This last one's a toughie - the fag packets littered around are lethal (unlike the background graphics in other rooms) and the only exit throws you back into the path of a hypodermic in 'Drugs', where you'll soon get the point!

Okay graphics, okay sound okay with a joystick (better with a rubber keyboard) and about as original as sliced bread but utterly addictive. Incredible fun and a steal at £2.99. Well worth a thingimajig... dooberies this juicy don't grow on trees you know.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: US Gold/Americana
PRICE: £2.99

Thingy and the Doodahs is one of the best of the bunch of new Americana budget releases for the Spectrum from US Gold. The game is a pretty basic dash-about-the-maze-collectingobjects-and avoiding-nasties game. You've seen it all before - but the game is at least playable.

Thingy is a wally - not one of THE Wally's you understand - just a bit of a berk who has broken his Spectrum. He sets out to collect the £60 he needs to buy a new one, chased by all sorts of refugees from Jet Set Willy's mansion.

Thingy will keep your interest for a couple of hours - but I reckon that it's about £l too expensive even so. The graphics are very basic and so is the sound. Save your money for a better budget game.

Americana
£2.99

The standard of budget software seems to be varying quite a lot these days. On one hand there's a small number of games that make full price titles look overpriced, but at the same time there are still a lot of budget games that really ought never to have seen the light of day.

Then, on the other hand, there are games like Thingy and the Doodahs which are neither incredibly good nor incredibly bad and which make a poor reviewer's life hell because you can't rave over them or indulge yourself by giving them a good drubbing. So what do you say about them?

Well, the plot of the game goes like this; Thingy (a little sprite type person with an idiotic grin) has gone and broken his Spectrum and has to replace it with a new one before his parents find out. The only way for him to do this is to go of in search of the money to buy a replacement (just £60 apparently - do Americana know more abut Amstrad's plans for the Speccy than they're letting on?), and this will take him on a journey around some 200 locations, including rooms in his house and the neighbouring countryside.

As usual though, there are monsters out to get him. In this case it's a bunch of creatures known as Doodahs, which come in various types. There are Whatsisnames, Thingummybobs, Whachamacallits and So-and-So, and they're all equally deadly.

Thingy is a good old fashioned maze game with £1 coins as the objects that you've got to collect. It's not badly done, but it does look fairly dated - most of the passageways and monsters are small character sized blocks, making use of the UDG facility, so the game looks reminiscent of others that you could have bought three years ago. It's not fast and furious, but dodging around the Doodahs and the passages of the maze is quite complex in places and the author has clearly put a bit of thought into the layout of all the rooms.

I can't really recommend Thingy and the Doodahs one way or the other. It's not such a bad game that you'll regret every penny you part with to buy it, but neither is it the sort of game that is ever likely to be remembered two months after you bought it. The word that describes it best is 'average'.