Producer: Rainbow Arts
Retail Price: £8.99 cassette, £12.99 disk
Author: Source Software Ltd

Sleeping safely in her bed one night, petite Giana from Milano has a strange, macabre dream. In her nightmare, she enters a weird land, full of strange aliens and terrible traps.

Her only chance of escaping the dreamland is to explore its 32 levels in search of a magic diamond. The adventure takes place above or below ground and contains many platforms and obstacles. Giana has a time limit of 100 seconds in which to complete each horizontally-scrolling landscape; failure to do so results in the loss of one of three lives.

While jumping and running over the platforms, Giana must avoid lethal contact with the many aliens which look suspiciously like a host of cute and cuddly creatures. They include the squirming worms (cute?), scuttling lobsters and giant bees. These can be squashed by jumping on them from above, or shot using dream-bubbles or an all-destroying smart bomb.

Magic crystals can be obtained by head-butting or hitting blocks with a star on them; when 100 have been collected, Giana is rewarded with an extra life. Extra weapons and features can also be gained from blocks to make progress easier. These include three types of dream-bubble: lightning bolts, rebounding double lightning bolts and strawberries which home in on the aliens. Extra features include magic bombs, a clock which sends aliens to sleep for a while, a lollipop (yielding an extra life) and a water drop to protect Giana against fire.

Traps in the landscape include lethal spikes, fire pits and pools of water. There are also holes, of which some are deadly, while others lead to secret crystal-filled rooms - only trial and error determines which are which.

A status strip above the main play area displays the number of crystals collected, lives remaining and time left. If Giana completes a level within the time limit, she earns a bonus: the number of seconds left multiplied by ten.

Only if poor little Giana manages to escape through the 32 levels carrying the magical diamond, can she return to her normal, peaceful world in old Milano. If two players wish to take part, they take turns to play; the second player controls Giana's sister Maria.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Joystick: monochromatic, cartoon-like characters distinguished by plenty of detail
Graphics: catchy tunes and spot effects
Sound: two-player option
Options: two-player option

The Great Giana Sisters lacks the colour of the Commodore 64 version, but makes up for it with nicely shaded, well-drawn characters. The horizontal scrolling is smooth, although a trifle slow at times. Little Giana is ever so cutely animated as she runs and jumps through the various levels, head-butting the blocks and squashing the animals. When she collect the magic wheel, she even gets an electric shock which makes her hair stand on end! There is some great sound on the 128K with a catchy tune and atmospheric sound effects. Playability ranks highly, especially with the many extra weapons and features to help make progress easier. It's this variety which makes Giana's adventure so addictive. Giana Sisters is a neat variation on the classic Super Mario Bros theme and should be popular with all arcade fans. Go out and buy it.
PHIL [91%]

As Giana and Maria from Milano head-butt their way through their fairy-tale adventure, they encounter an incredible series of weird and wonderful creatures. Though monochromatic, the lobsters, turtles and scuttling spiders are detailed and create an infectiously light-hearted cartoon atmosphere. Each level boasts a bewildering array of walls, caverns, chasms, towers, crevasses and canyons, punctured by a seemingly endless series of hidden treasure and rooms. There's always something new to discover even if you've been playing the game for days and days. The controls are smooth and the animation of Giana, particularly when her cute-little-girl haircut turns into a full-blown punk afro affair, is practically perfect. Comparisons with Super Mario Bros are inevitable. Obviously The Great Giana Sisters can't emulate the superior graphics and sound of the arcade machine but, in terms of gameplay (which is the most important thing after all), those Super Mario Bros have certainly met their match.
KATI [91%]

The Great Giana Sisters is another one of those 'bang your head on the brick' games. You know the type - like Super Mario Bros. The graphics are cute and cuddly with the little sisters excellently animated, but perhaps just a mite too slow. The monsters and other sprites are also well drawn and to kill them you have to manoeuvre your sister so that she drops down and squashes the aliens flat. As for the colour: well, the monochrome looks like it's been produced randomly and it comes up with some rather garish combinations (magenta paper and cyan ink!) but this doesn't spoil the action. Each level holds more surprises and the graphics get better all the time. Despite the drawback in terms of speed, the game is immensely playable; I couldn't put the joystick down for ages. An essential purchase for all Spectrum arcade gamesters.
NICK [93%]

Rainbow Arts
£8.99 cass/£11.99 disk
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

There are loads of great things in the world, aren't there. Let's see if we can think of some. Eeeerm, there's Great Britain - what a glorious nation (ahem). There's Great Expectations, the book by that marvellous author Sven Hassell (Eh? - Ed). There's Great Ormond Street Hospital, a building full of doctors nurses and ill children that 'celebs' often visit. There's the Great Train Robbers (Gord bless their cotton socks). There's, erm, erm - blimey, I've run out. Hey, what's that falling from the ceiling? (Sound of Speccy +3 disk landing on head). Ouch - hmmm I'll just stick it in the computer (whir, whirr, whirr, whirr). Great balls of fire, great heavens above, it's The Great Giana Sisters - worra coincidence! I may as well do a review then, eh Spec-chums?

Giana Sisters is bound to be compared with Super Mario Brothers at some point, so I'll get it over and done with now. Great Giana Sisters is a bit like Super Mario Brothers. There, done it - and some of you may find that recommendation enough to go out and buy this game, so goodbye, and have fun. For the rest of you I'll describe it all in greater detail.

Format: a right to left scrolling, side-on viewed, monochromatic platformish collect and avoid 'em-up (Gasp). In fact, visually, it's rather akin to Wonder Boy - quite a bit in fact.

You play Giana (in two player mode your friend plays her sister Maria, and you play alternately) who, while sleeping one night, slips into her dream and finds herself in a strange land, full of nightmarish creatures. (Freddy Krueger might even be in there somewhere). Her only chance of escape is to search for a magic diamond which should send her dreamland packing and return her to reality.

The monochromatic playing area scrolls toward Giana (who is generally in the centre) and obstacles and nasties confront her. There are platforms made up of blocks which can be jumped onto and which occasionally (if a block has a star on it) yield an extra skill or weapon. To get anything in this game requires an icon to be head-butted (so stand under a block and jump up). The first reward you get is a sort of 'punky' hair-do, which enables you to destroy bricks by nutting them - very useful if you've taken a silly route and the way up is blocked by a platform (saves you having to back-track). Then you get a little bomb which can be thrown at the nasties (without this, they have to be jumped on or simply avoided). Then you get a bomb which automatically homes in on your enemies, and so on. A lot of the blocks contain Magic crystals, 100 of which, when collected give an extra life. The dilemma you're faced with is whether to 'waste' time collecting these, because each level has to be completed within a time limit - 100 seconds, to be precise. Failure to complete a level in time loses you one of your three lives.

The landscapes have all sorts of traps to be negotiated, including spikes, fire pits, holes and water-pools. Some 'traps' aren't actually traps at all, and can help you considerably. It's all a question of trial and error (quite a lot, there are apparently 32 levels - I found level 3 hard enough to get to).

Great Giana Sisters is a pure gem of a game where addctiveness is concerned. The graphics aren't exactly the best I've ever seen, but they're perfectly passable (given the brillo gameplay). The only real whinge I've got is the speed of the scroll and response from the keyboard - it's not exactly slick and crisp. Having said that, however, you do get used to it fairly quickly and the game is so enjoyable in itself that it doesn't matter that much in the long run. It's a great game.

Hey, I've just thought of another thing that's Great... ME! (haw haw haw). Boing.

Label: Go!
Author: Rainbow Arts
Price: £8.99 cass, £11.99 disc
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Cutesy sisters Giana and Maria fall asleep one night, and find themselves in a mysterious world (Oo-ee-oo) full of rampaging eyeballs, psychotic bees and hyperactive tortoises. Using every trick they can muster, they have to run, left to right, across 32 scrolling landscapes, in search of the big diamond (Snurk - JD. Why are you snurking? That's not pervy - TH) which will return them to normal land, effectively waking them up.

All the screens consist of large, well drawn platforms, comprised of big blocks. Some blocks contain a little flashing star, and if knocked out, these can give you either of 2 things. A special icon thingy (see box) or a diamond. Collect 100 diamonds, and you get an extra life. Diamonds can also be found by headbanging (mettaaalllll) the unmarked bricks. The thing is. you can only headbang when you are a punk (see box again).

The various nasties that roam the screens are there simply to kill you, and they do so by touch. You have 3 options. Jump and avoid, jump and squash or shoot.

The graphics have been very well done. Large and cute, the animation is wonderful, and the feel is very cartoony.

Unfortunately, they don't move as well as they look. The scrolling is incredibly slow, and although the nasties move around quite quickly, Giana herself moves like a snail on a warm gluey road.

The sound is standard fare, polished but nothing astonishing. The colour schemes are, at times, completely nauseating.

Giana Sisters, unfortunately, is one of the most unplayable games I've ever seen. The joystick response easily matches the speed of the screen, and is twice as bad.

I'm sorry, but no matter how much I try to like it. I can't. Though the idea is original, and it is a new style of game for the Speccy, it's just not very good. I can't even see it appealing to fans of Mario Brothers itself.