Producer: Code Masters
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Owen Brunette

Private Harry Jones - Brainache to his friends - has once again left his valuable mining equipment down on a planet's surface. This time it's on the planet Nesbit, hidden somewhere in the depths of the Stella mines. Brainache decides that while he's looking for his forgotten equipment he's also going to find the fabled Anatese diamond.

In this one or two player platform- style game, Brainache makes his way along the mine's descending pathways, tunnel systems and lifts. Our joystick or keyboard-controlled adventurer moves left, right, up and down, occasionally dropping to lower levels or climbing up ravines.

Lurking amongst the outcrops and hollows of planetary rock, he finds bothersome butterflies, cosmic spiders and flying goats. Contact with one of these relieves our hero of one of his four lives. Runaway mining trucks, bounding boulders and pernicious plants also lay Brainache out for the count.

Brainache carries a blaster for protection. Points are scored for blasting insects and other creatures, the total being shown at the bottom of the screen.

To help him get further into the mine's shafts and tunnels, the muddled miner picks up tools and items he finds about the place. Brainache's oxygen supply is finite, diminishing from the moment he leaves his shuttle. Another life is lost when the air supply reaches zero, with an oxygen indicator at the bottom of the screen showing the remaining level of life support.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Up 3, Down E, Left G, Right H, Take U, Drop 8, Fire X, Climb N
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: gaudy, unnecessary and eye-straining
Graphics: a confusingly detailed backdrop with annoyingly small characters
Sound: loading screen cacophony and uninspired effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: one vertically scrolling landscape

This game's got a really apt title, as you'll have an aching brain lf you fork out any cash for it. The copious use of colour tends to obscure the action - and for some time after playing this I was seeing purple spots. CODEMASTERS have the cheek to put 'Why pay more?' on the loading screen. I think you can probably answer that one for yourself.
BEN

Brainache's graphics only look good from a distance. The characters are badly drawn, and the way in which colour is splashed about completely ruins the pleasant spiralling effect. The way your character gets trapped in certain areas is really annoying; try standing on top of a lift for instance - Harry gets stuck when you reach the top of the shaft... Aaargh!
MIKE

Codemasters
£1.99

Spacemen can be so cruel. So, Harry Jones lost his equipment in the Stellar mines. is that any reason to call him Brainache? And to send horn back alone to retrieve his equipment. They might never see him again.

This program's unlikely to induce much in the way of brainache, but eye-strain is definitely on the cards, as hapless Harry has to delve into a scrolling subterranean system that makes Hip-Hop graffiti look low key. Very brash, very Spectrum.

All have here is another attempt to disguise the platform and ladders format, and it works - the landscape looks lice rocks and tracks. But these gaudy graphics have overreached the poor little Spectrum's capabilities. The tiny sprite could do with being even more fatheaded - anything to help you see him against the raucous background!

Of course, after the glut of Jet Set Willy clones, there's been something of a famine for the last few months. Maybe you miss that happy old formula of picking up the objects and solving problems (Now what can I use this ladder for? Duh!). But I don't think Brainache'll start the platforms and ladders revival.

Even wearing sunglasses, everything tends to merge into one muddy mess, and while I'm willing to believe the game itself could be quite playable, you might not want to persist when the attributes are so clearly set against you!

Label: Codemasters
Author: The Darlings
Price: £1.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Things begin badly with the name of this one - Brainache.

It'll drive you crazeee.

Supposing I called a game Extremly Irritating. Would you buy it? Plotwise this one is firmly in the realms of whacky. That means it's jokey but never actually amuses. Here goes.

Brainache is an extremely small sprite which you must guide up and down the rocky pathways that lead deep into an alien mine. The ultimate objective is a fabled Anatese diamond, the preliminary objective is for Brainache to retrieve his missing mining equipment - four items in all.

All four must be returned to the ship, the only problem is that only one object can be carried at a time. Um, only one object except for useful things. Like the ladder. And the pickaxe. Actually there are quite a lot of things you can carry.

That's the game. Up and down the landscape making giant conceptual leaps like 'maybe the pickaxe is for use in the caves' or 'perhaps I should pick up this thermos flask and I think I should shoot these creatures that keep killing me'.

The graphics it should be said are odd. The background is a fairly detailed landscape that moves up and down in a none too slick way as you climb.

Movement is only you and the creatures and since everybody is tiny and everybody changes colour continuously whilst moving over the multi-coloured landscape it's frequently impossible to tell what on earth is going on. Pretty soon you'll be wondering why you bothered in the first place.

Spectrum 48/128K
Cassette
Code Masters

Brainache sounds as if it should be a variant on the Mastermind/Connect Four type of game, but no. The Brainache in this game is actually a person, a rotund individual, who is foolish enough to allow you to control his actions. His real name apparently is Harry Jones, a private, and the butt of his friend's humour, who call him Brainache because he is a private of very little brain, forever forgetting things or dropping them. Under your expert guiding, of course, this won't happen.

A game for the Spectrum range of computers, from Codemaster, this rather fun little game can be played using a combination of joystick and keyboard. Joystick for the simple things in life like moving around, while the keyboard is used for slightly more complicated matters like picking things up or dropping them, because this Spectrum game is most definitely in the class of arcade/adventure. At least, that's what Codemaster would probably describe it as, if pushed.

The story so far. It would appear that you have recently been exploring the Stella mines, and while there managed to drop a vast amount of equipment and promptly forgot about it, although how anyone can drop a ladder and remain unaware of the fact is beyond me. Your crew mates aboard the Rotar 1, an interplanetary mining vessel, laugh out loud about your total inability to do anything, ho ho ho they probably go, and send you back to try to recover all the stuff that you dropped. Deep down it would appear that they really love you, but I note that they don't love you enough to accompany you back to the mines and help you. You, Brainache, private Harry Jones, are on your own, pal, with no-one to help you out. And the mines, let me tell you, are rather a nasty place to be.

In play, and in particular in the design of the screens, this game reminded me a great deal of Boogaboo, which is odd because Brainache bears as much resemblance to the flea hero of that game as I do to Robert Redford, and, as even close friends will tell you, that is not much of a resemblance. You have to explore the rather large game area, avoiding all manner of nasty creepy crawly things as you do so, collecting the odd pieces of equipment which are scattered about like confetti after a wedding. Reasonably enough, some of this equipment is too heavy to be carried with other equipment, and larger things like ladders require carrying on their own, otherwise the stuff that you have already oh so carefully collected will once more become debris on the ground. Eventually you might make it and manage to escape again, but I never managed it. Not, however, through lack of trying, because this is one game that I intend to play again.

Code Masters
£1.99

Brainache's done it again. He's left all his mining equipment in the Stella mines and now he's got to back, and get it, urged on by the rest of the crew's laughter. This time he's determined to show them all how clever he really is and decides to delve deeper into the mines and search for the fabled Anastasie diamond.

Although the game features the most stunning backgrounds you are likely to see in a budget game the game itself is awful. Our hero is little more than a stick man that smudges badly into the background as do all the flying, crawling and plantlike nasties that are out to get you. Hidden in the ground are the platforms and slopes that you can walk on and plummet off as the screen jerks and shakes in its attempt to scroll. Forget Brainache, this one's just a pain.