Producer: The Power House
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Ayyaz Mahmood

The Tomb of Syrinx is an ancient and deadly place which no man has ever attempted to explore... until now that is.

With the chance to finally show your true bravery you find yourself alone in the horrid mausoleum, armed only with your laser gun. There is only once chance of escape from this foul place, the five keys of the Tomb must be found and collected. Perhaps an easy task, if it was not for the strange Immune Guardians.

On entry to the Tomb, these Guardians give a few moments of grace before attacking. Resembling a collection of sour-faced suns, rotating crosses and gangrenous hands, they bounce off walls to attack with increasing ferocity. Contact results in a loss of life. To avoid them you are able to move the left and right, or up and down, through the maze of corridors and rooms.

The laser gun is used to destroy Guardians, but some are resilient, and several shots have to strike home before these meet their maker. Points are awarded for each kill, the score being displayed at the bottom right.

But Immune Guardians are not the only enemy encountered. Snakes, scorpions wait to bite or sting, and bandaged mummies kill. Five lives are available to you, the number remaining being shown at the bottom right corner of the screen.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z/X left/right, P/L up/down, zero to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Cursor
Use of colour: poor
Graphics: small and simple
Sound: limited spot FX
Skill levels: one
Screens: scrolling play area

There were loads of games around like this about four years ago, so it beats me why THE POWER HOUSE have released one now. Especially as this leaves a lot to be desired, the three character scroll and evil maze and deadly inanimate objects make the game infuriatingly unplayable. The graphics are well below average, with small characters and an undetailed playing area. Even with the free audio track this doesn't really offer good value for money.
BEN

THE POWER HOUSE haven't made a good impression so far, and Tomb Of Syrinx does nothing to change this. The characters are badly drawn and the animation is basic and jerky. There's no tune, and the little sound that's there is easily ignored. I had no fun at all playing this as it seemed to be a very ordinary idea which was badly programmed. Even at the budget price it should be quickly ignored.
PAUL

The Power House
£1.99

If it wasn't for the fact that The Power House is the new budget label from CRL, I would swear on my aardvark's life that this was an old game that had been hanging around for years. It has the same style of graphics as the old 16K games, and the screen scrolls jerkily, two spaces at a time, so that you have no idea what's ahead and you die - very quickly.

The idea is to collect five keys. If you don't get killed, mangled or mutilated in the process, you're lucky. The nasties you meet are nigh-on invincible, needing hit after hit to be disposed of, and they cunningly appear out of nowhere, usually exactly where you're standing. At one point I stepped on one (well, I think I stepped on one, if I didn't...), lost all my lives in one fell swoop and the game crashed, leaving me with an empty screen. Yep, folks, Bernie the Bug strikes again!

A free audio recording has been added to the game, for some strange reason. As far as I could tell, this sounded like two cats - one being throttled and the other being forcibly fed through a mangle. Not a pretty sound, and unnecessary as far as the games concerned.

Come on CRL! With Mastertronic, Firebird and Codemasters producing some high quality budget games, this doesn't have a chance. Any more like this and they'll be sealing your tomb!

Label: Power House
Price: £1.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Andy Moss

This game has been written by a chap called Ayyaz Mehmood, who penned Hercules, a game that I thought was quite fun to play.

Tomb of Syrinx is along similar lines, and chronicles your efforts to find five keys from within its mysterious walls, whilst avoiding a motley collection of monsters that seem to just appear precisely when you don't want them to.

It's a tried and tested maze-scrolling game, with some very clean graphics that are not only colourful, but distinctly atmospheric. He's also built in some pretty tasty sound FX for the laser gun, almost the same sound and power as the cannon Defender.

All games have flaws, and I suppose if one was to criticise Tomb of Syrinx, it would be the lack of real excitement in the gameplay. There isn't really a lot to do except zap a few nasties and wander around the place looking for those wonderful keys.

What the monsters do though, is to spin and weave around in a very smooth fashion, and there seems to be a wide choice of the little beasties to home in on.

Label: Power House
Author: Ayyaz Mehmood
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer:

This game has been written by a chap called Ayyaz Mehmood, who penned Hercules, a game that I thought was quite fun.

Tomb of Syrinx is along similar lines, and chronicles your efforts to find five keys from within its mysterious walls, whilst avoiding a motley collection of monsters that seem to just appear precisely when you don't want them to.

It's a tried and tested maze-scrolling game, with some very clean graphics that are not only colourful, but distinctly atmospheric.

Powerhouse
£1.99

Tomb of Syrinx is a sub Jet Willy game in which you are trapped in the aforementioned tomb and have to find the five keys of Syrinx in order to escape. You've got a laser to kill the Guardians (a load of blocky little sprites) with, and you move around the maze simply by moving up/down, left/right, without even the blessing of a jump button to liven things up.

The graphics are state-of-the-art circa 1983, and the maze scrolls jerkily as you move from one room to another. There's a bit of 'House' music included on the tape, and the game crashed thirty seconds into my second game so I had to reload and start all over again.