Producer: Magic Bytes
Retail Price: £8.99
Author: Volker Marohn, Olaf Marohn and Holger Ahrens

Clever and Smart are two German cartoon characters now on the Spectrum screen - a pair of private eyes, complementing one another with their multifarious talents. Clever is master of disguise and can slip into something a little more unrecognisable to complete his investigations. Smart, his ever-present chum, is the intellectual of the two.

In this licence released by Magic Bytes, one of Ariolasoft's many new labels, Dr Bacterius has been kidnapped, and the two have been hired to find him.

You start off in the streets of a town. There Clever and Smart can move among the buildings, investigating and entering those they find of interest. There are numerous flats, restaurants, shops, the kindergarten, a prison, and phone boxes which can pass on useful messages.

Clever and Smart get paid in advance, so they have money to purchase useful things and eat out in restaurants (hunger is an ever-present problem). The money won't last long, but they can live on the edge of the law, enter a flat and steal a chequebook, forging the owner's signature to draw more cash.

But there are hazards on the street, such as killer cars and the occasional bomb.

Roaming around the town may produce valuable clues, but going underground may be even more worthwhile. Enter the sewer system, locate the telephone cables, and Clever and Smart can start listening to telephone conversations. Like any other sewer, this one has rats, and contact with rats makes the two heroes hungry (if not logical). They can deter rats by wearing rat suits, but if the cat comes they've got real problems.

Locating a kidnap victim is hard enough at the best of times, and what with hunger, stolen chequebooks, sewers, and remembering the names of all Ariolasoft's labels (whatever happened to Viz Design?), Clever and Smart have a lot to contend with.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: large, colourful and simplistic graphics
Sound: no music but effective spot FX

Clever & Smart is one of the weirdest games I've had the misfortune to play recently. It's difficult to get into, because the documentation is so bad, and once you do work out what's going on it's boring. The nice title is about all that Clever & Smart has got going for it - and that's a shame because the idea is fairly sound, albeit not original.
BEN [27%]

Clever & Smart is weird - it takes a while to work out what's going on and I'm not sure the effort is worth it. The graphics are colourful but on the whole very simplistic, and the animation of the two characters is unrealistic, though the sound is effective. Clever & Smart isn't too hard, but it's boring.
ROBIN [44%]

If you're a maze-minded maniac this is for you. Clever & Smart is totally maze-oriented, so it isn't Bym-compatible, and the hyperactive characters don't add any the enjoyment. I would find grovelling around in real sewers much more exciting than trying to take bearings on the blank walls in this game.
BYM [65%]

Magic Bytes
£8.99
Reviewer: Tony Worrall

I consider myself a bit useful when it comes to solving the average arcade adventure, but I'm afraid to say Clever And Smart completely flummoxed me. It's not so much that the game is hard, it's just very complicated. The instructions, which border on the non-existent, are about as clear as mud.

Getting down to the important stuff, I can tell you that the game is based on a popular German cartoon detective duo. Hitherto unknown in this country, Clever And Smart are continuously involved in wacky slapstick adventures, the kind in which the baddies always use those stereotype round black bombs with fizzing fuses.

Their first computer incarnation revolves around a frantic (and in my case pretty futile) search for a missing mad doctor. He's hidden somewhere in the flip-screen playing area, and the dynamic duo have to use every means at their disposal to track him down.

Clever can disguise himself as anything, and he needs some pretty convincing disguises to get into some of the buildings. Once inside a building he can buy, or take any of the objects found there. This is where one of the major problems of the game comes to light - how to get that extra dosh for expensive items?

Luckily there are several sub-games within Clever And Smart which allow you to up your stake. These mini-games include snail racing, coin tossing, and a very cute, but pointless rodent hopping-over-bottles section! Interesting, but silly!

A phantom bomber needs to be stopped, and a sewer maze has to be negotiated, but don't ask me how! This is as far as I can get in the game.

Clever And Smart is set firmly in Wally Week land (seen from overhead). Though it us inventive, it falls rather flat without proper instructions. The graphics are 'blocky' but passable and the pop-up menus work well. Some of the humour doesn't translate from its native German, although the overall effect is quite comical.

As I said before, the main problem is that it's very difficult. I quickly became bored when I realised I couldn't get any further - a big blow to the addictiveness score! There's a good game hidden in there somewhere, but you have to dig deep. If you like tricky arcade adventures, this could be for you, but you may find it harder than expected. Clever And Smart is just too smart for its own good.