Producer: Pulsonic
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £2.99
Language: BASIC
Author: Makinson & Sulson

This is a 'Bozy Boa cum Snake' game, where you are the snake in a garden. The object is to wander round, eating the fruit in the garden but avoiding the rocks. With each screen cleared you get longer. Hitting a rock, the edge of the garden or reversing direction on yourself, or hitting your own tail means a loss of life.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors
Joystick: Protek, AGF
Keyboard play: reasonably responsive
Use of colour: very poor
Graphics: very poor
Sound: poor, just a few beeps
Skill levels: you get longer with each completed screen
Lives: 5

This is a very out-of-date game now, and most of the existing versions are much better done. The graphics are extremely simple, the fruit being white crosses, the rocks are dark blobs and the snake is a series of blue circles with dots in them and a drawn head. Including the green background, this means only four colours have been used. The BASIC makes everything quite slow.

A snake, eating and getting longer game. Not an unreasonable version but the graphics are not exactly what I would call stunning. Cursor keys for control are poor too. This is a not very inspiring version of a game that is practically an antique now.

The game idea (very old now) is quite playable, and I have played versions which, because of their graphics, have been very addictive. This one has no graphics to speak of, and so despite the low price is hardly worth it, unless it's to introduce a very young player to the computer.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48k
SUPPLIER: Pulsonic
PRICE: £2.95

It's no use producing cheap software if the game isn't worth the price of the blank cassette. But that's what Pulsonic has done with this program for the Spectrum.

It's a very simple game, written entirely in Spectrum Basic. Mainly for this reason, its very slow. There's not much movement and hardly any sound effects.

You play the part of a worm and you have to crawl round the garden eating food but avoiding the rocks. As you eat more food, so you grow longer. If you hit a rock, then you lose one of your five lives. You also lose a life if you run either into your own body or hit the side of the screen. The food is made up of white crosses on screen, while the rocks are black blobs.

The only movement on screen is the worm itself, which is very slow because of the limitations of Spectrum Basic. Each time you eat some food, the machine beeps. You also get a different beep when you have no more lives left.

Apart from the game being far too slow, response from the keyboard is too sluggish as well. You have to keep your finger on the key for some time before it registers. This makes it rather hard to dodge awkward rocks.

There's one good feature about a game written in Basic, though. You can change it. The first thing I did was to alter the keys which you use to control the worm. I still can't get used to using the four cursor keys and, while I was about it, I gave myself some more lives too.

Once you have cleared a sheet and eaten all the food in the garden. you are rewarded with... another sheet! And so this goes on. Whether you'll be able to stand playing this long enough to use up all your five lives, I don't know. I found it hard at times.

This game is badly written and too slow. It may be cheap, but it's still worth nowhere near £2.95.

If you have £3 to spare, buy a few blank cartridges and try some of the programs from C&VG.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys
FROM: Pulsonic, £2.99

Guide the worm around the garden eating crosses and avoiding black dots, the garden wall, and your own tail. Pulsonic apparently needed 48K for this program but it could have fitted into less than 16. Poor graphics, awful control keys - this is one of the cheapest games for the Spectrum and it shows.