Producer: Virgin Games
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Sentient Software Ltd

Are you a complete bastard? You can try your worst in this adaptation of Adrian Edmondson's Virgin book. With all the decorum of a herd of psychopathic wildebeest, you manage to gate-crash a fwightfully yuppie party and proceed to wreak havoc.

A split screen shows two views of every room you enter; either can be rotated to show a further aspect.

This offers you the great opportunity of thoroughly searching other people's furniture. Behind the closed doors of cupboards, units and wardrobes lurk everyday items that in the right hands - your hands - can cause aggravation, irritation and mutilation to any unfortunate in the vicinity. Any two objects can be carried at once and examined at will, but how you can use them depends on how drunk you are.

Your body is one great factory of noxious gases, fuelled by what you eat and measured by a Fartometer; these fumes, delivered with all the grace you can muster, clear rooms of guests - fast. (Take care near naked flames, though.) You are also linked to a Smellometer registering a general level of BO which, for a true bastard, should be high.

Drink is readily available: extra-strong lager intoxicates you quickly, as shown on the Drunkometer, but if you drink too much the display begins to spin wildly.

Check your water levels on the Weeometer and go go go while you can. Leave things too long and an unthoughtful Nigel or Samantha might have occupied the loo. But you could go elsewhere, couldn't you?

Limitless supplies of coffee can sober you up: so can medicine. Other liquids should be avoided if you want to stay alive!

The yuppie guests provide the ideal opportunity for you to engage in highly undesirable conversations. Push them hard against obstructions and they'll find it hard to resist your charms, offering information and providing the opportunity for a bit more mayhem.

Each of the unpleasant actions you commit earns you Bastard points, but other things are considered very girlie, and must be avoided if you want to keep that total high. If your unpleasant activities force the yuppie guests into leaving, letters making up the phrase 'COMPLETE-BASTARD' light up. The game is finished when all of these letters are illuminated, by which time you'll have the place to yourself.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: good monochromatic playing area with decoaratie surrounds
Sound: girlie opening tune, and spot FX

Coming from the people who did Tai-Pan, one of the most serious games this year, this is a shock and it should have been much more appealing. There are a few nice features, like Bastavision, but though they're neat they don't add much to the gameplay. How To Be A Complete Bastard is along the lines of Jack The Nipper, with tots of added nausea and bad taste - it's fun to play for a bit, but I doubt you'll come back to it.BEN [65%]Such a lot of this depends on your opinion of Ade Admondson's humour. If, like me, you quite enjoy it, then the game should appeal, but there's a lot in it that could easily offend. And if CRL's Dracula, not a particularly nasty game, carried a 15 certificate then surely this should be subject to certification too. Still, the graphics are quite good, the text is usually quite funny, and though the jokes stop being funny after 10,000,000 goes the game remains reasonably playable.MIKE [69%]

Adrian Edmondson's book is brilliant, and so is this game. The graphics are well-defined and the colour is good, though limited. The way you can rotate both the top and the bottom screens is very confusing, but essential.NICK [87%]

£1.99
Ricochet

Adrian Edmondson has gate-crashed a yuppie party. His admirable aim is to be as obnoxious as possible! By searching the house, useful items can be found. Lager makes our hero as sober as a newt, while curry builds up methane levels in his body! Four gauges must also be topped up during the game: the weeeometer, drunkometer, fartometer, and smellometer. Items such as itching powder, laxatives, and sneezing powder can be collected and used against the guests! But some of these activities require Ade to be totally juiced, while for others he must be stone cold sober (a rare event!).

Whether or not you enjoy this game entirely depends on whether you like Adrian Edmondson's type of humour. Personally I enjoy some of his wit, but the game struck me as a bit childish. And graphically the game is no great shaker; a bunch of stick-men wander aimlessly around simplistic backgrounds. How To Be A Complete Bastard may appeal to some fans, but I'd rather watch an episode of The Young Ones.

Then: 73% Now: 57%

Virgin Games
£7.95

Hello, girlies! I bet you can't tell who I'm meant to be. I'm wearing a wellington boot on my head, I've just drunk 14 pints of 1080° lager, and I've just piddled in your hat. Give up? Hah! Knew you would! Hooargh! Oh dear, I seem to have lost me coleslaw into the front of your trousers. Pardon me. Uuuurrrppp! Yes, it's Ade The Bastard, and he's back in his own game, based on the megabrilliant book, How To Be A Complete Bastard.

Incidentally, the book has sold millions, which means now Ade's a slightly less than alternative comedian, being almost as rich as Tarby, Max-a-long-a-Byegraves, and Brucie all rolled into one.

In the game, you play the part of Ade, wandering around a yuppie house party, making yourself as unpopular as humanly possible in the shortest time. Berilliant! Make a mess, throw up, smash things, put sneezing powder up girlies noses, you know the sort of thing, eh readers? But don't open the umbrella you'll find in the umbrella stand, 'cos as everybody knows that's VERY BAD LUCK! And it'd be just your bad luck to be turned into a gas cooker if you do it! Hah hah!

The graphics are pretty good, with an original 4-way view of the room, where you see two views at a time, and can select which of the four views occupy which of the two windows. (Huh? Ed) Which is handy if you can't see which way you're going, as you can turn one of the views to search for a door. One funny thing is if you gulp down a large alcoholic drinkie, the bottom of the two windows spins round very fast as if you were sozzled.

Hmm. It's such a laugh to be really disgusting, innit? And really so utterly predictable after all these years, eh? But I'm sure that if you like the 'Ade The Utter Bastard 'sense of 'humour' you'll really enjoy this wacky and very alternative game. Honestly. No, really you will... Look, buy it, you scum, or I'll eat your HAMSTER! (Chomp!)

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Yes it's Marcus Berkmann again, rootling around in the lucky dip for all the latest cheapoid games. And what did he pull out? A bunch of bargains no less!

Ricochet
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

'How To Be A Rich Bastard', more like. Do you know how many copies of that book Ade sold? Enough to buy him a residency on the golf course with Tarby and co, I'd say, but never mind. This Virgin game, originally reviewed in YS in November 87, is based fair and square on Ade Edmondson's vomit-stained bestseller, and it certainly captures the flavour - in a bucket. You play Ade, wandering around a yuppie house party trying to make yourself as unpopular as you possibly can in the shortest possible time.

The screen's split into two floors, with the now standard, left-right-in-out layout, a la People From Sirius and many others. Lots of funny ideas, but the actual gameplay is no more than humdrum, mainly because not a lot seems to be happening and what does happen is rather slow. For fans only.

X-RATED

Dare you look at some of the horrors currently on sale?

Label: Virgin
Author: Sentient Software
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

This review will contain the following words which may be considered offensive: wee, fart and bastard. If you think you may be offended by these words please do not read on.

How to be a Complete Bastard, the book, was not a very likely subject for a computer license, and yet now we have the game. Still Virgin got it cheap. It owns the rights.

How to be a Complete Bastard may be the only title here that actually merits an X-rated tag (or at least so some will think) it is also the only such game ever to have been issued by a major software house.

Curiously How to... looks quite a lot like the Young Ones game. A split screen shows you; Sir Adrian, and the room you are currently in on the top half and you; Sir Adrian, and the room you are currently in on the bottom half. Um.. er this may sound a bit confusing but in one screen it's you as seen from one perspective and in the other it displays the room from other angles. The bottom view also spins round and round if you get drunk.

Playing the game is like this. Move Sir Adrian - a medium sized sprite - around the room of a largish house in which the party appears to be in full swing. You can wander about searching everything including microwaves, sofas, garden tables, coats, desks and less savoury objects for items which look as though, one way or another, they could be used to give offence and thus improve your Bastard rating. Here is one, comparatively tasteful, example - search the coats for a pen, get the pen and accost a partygoer and... that's right - jab him with the pen. Fun huh? Just as doing nasty things earns you points doing nice (girlie) things wipes them out. Putting the Bam Bee video on, for example, is a mistake.

Most of the time, the art of the game is figuring out a dastardly use for the unlikely objects you find. Would you know the extremely unpleasant use of which clingfilm can be put?

Crass, tasteless, juvenile. I quite liked it really. Sensitive parents won't.

Label: Ricochet
Author: Virgin
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Based on the book of the same name, HTBACB has to qualify as the most tasteless game of all time (apart from, possibly, Turd Attack). Unfortunately, it didn't prove either too playable or too funny, so , it's better suited to a budget format than to full price.

Having gate-crashed a yuppie party, Ade's aim is to be as bastardly as possible in order to become a Complete Bastard. The split-level display shows two rooms in the house at once, and Ade roams through them searching for bastardly objects and performing bastardly acts. Your Drunkometer helps you assess your state of inebriation - some tasks can only be completed when you're pissed. There's also a Fartometer which builds up as you eat curries, and a Smellometer which records your bodily odour.

Joystick or keyboard control allows you to search for items, and a menu display at the top of the screen reveals further options. All in the worst possible taste, but hardly worth more than a few schoolboy giggles.

Virgin's illegitimate arcade romp.

Sexy Ade Edmondson (as he likes to call himself) plays lead sprite in this Spectrum version of the game based on his book of the same name. With tips from the great man himself your mission is to invade a Yuppie party and ensure your place in the Bastard Hall of Fame by ruining the party and upsetting the guests so much that they all leave.

With each yuppie that leaves the party, a letter from the words 'COMPLETE BASTARD' displayed across the bottom of the screen lights up permanently. If you only mildly upset a yuppie then the letter only lights up for a while. The object is to get your new-found status up in lights and achieve complete bastardom.

Lots of things can upset a yuppie. Ice cubes in a lady's underwear, for a start - that will upset her for a while, but not enough to make her leave a party - whereas making custard pies and splattering her dress with them would have her out the door in no time and so permanently light one of the letters. The men aren't all that keen on having perfume sprayed on them either, which might give you the idea that this game is ever so slightly sexist. You'd probably be right.

In addition to lighting up the letters you've also got to score as many bastard points as possible by doing generally obnoxious things like farting in front of people or drinking washing-up liquid. Four meters displayed around the screen measure such things as your drunkenness - which increases as you drink more of the "Monster Get Pissed Fast lager'- and a 'weeometer' which also increases as you drink various liquids found around the house.

As you wander around, the horizontally-split screen gives you two separate views of the same location and both these views can be rotated independently, enabling you to see everything in any location. This is very confusing to start with but, after a little perseverance, it becomes a lot easier to handle and eventually adds to the game.

Controlling your character is done via a menu that appears in the bottom window whenever you press the fire button. Different options become available depending upon your location within the house or the room.

The graphics are nicely detailed and the animation is smooth, though its a shame you never get to watch any of the bastardly deeds that you've commanded your character to do - merely a text description of what the consequences of your actions were. Sound is limited to a jolly title tune and the odd effect (farty noises etc.)

Being a complete bastard is a lot of fun and requires quite a bit of puzzling. The idea's original (although the game format isn't) and the gameplay improves with familiarity. All in all a far superior product to the Young Ones game that was released some while ago.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Spectrum, £7.95cs, Reviewed
Amstrad, £8.95cs, Reviewed
C64/128, £9.95cs, Imminent

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 55/100
1 hour: 65/100
1 day: 70/100
1 week: 68/100
1 month: 30/100
1 year: 20/100

MACHINES: Spectrum/CBM 64/Amstrad
SUPPLIER: Virgin
PRICE: £7.95 (Spectrum)/£9.95 (CBM)/£8.95 (Amstrad)
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum/CBM 64/Amstrad

It wasn't long ago that Virgin's Richard Branson undertook a Government crusade to clean up Britain's litter. A noble cause. So, I ask myself, how come he allows this piece of rubbish onto the streets?

This game, writes Paul, made me so angry. I found it crude, vile trash designed to cash in on Ade Edmondson's book of the same name. It's even worse than The Young Ones from Orpheus - and that's saying something. Come to think of it, that featured good old Ade as well. I wonder how he feels about putting his name to a couple of the worst games in existence?

Okay, I'm getting too angry. So let's go over to Lee for his views.

Hi, it's Lee here. Enough of the outbursts. This is what I think:

Have you ever fancied being a complete and utter illegitimate person? (I've been asked by Tim not to use that certain word very often). Have you ever wanted to gatecrash a yuppie party, and throw up over someone? Well, I can't say that it has ever occurred to me, but apparently the gang at Virgin, and in particular, Ade, think you have, which is why they've released this game.

It's basically a cross between The Young Ones from Orpheus, and Spy Vs Spy from Beyond. The overall object of the game, is to be as vulgar and as nasty as possible, and light up the phrase COMPLETE BASTARD, (sorry Tim, I didn't mean to use it!).

At the bottom of the screen are four meters. The Weee and Drunkometers speak for themselves, as does the Fart and the Smellometers, but these can be revealed by pressing the F key, and letting out a pretty whiffy poo!

At first, the game is quite difficult to get the hang of, due to the slightly strange screen layout that lets you view the same room from two different angles, hence the new display feature, "Bastavision".

As I've said, it's slightly confusing at first, but once you get used to it, it works exceptionally well.

Graphics, although monochromatic, are very detailed and fit well into the overall structure of the game.

I enjoyed it, and although it's fairly simple it's definitely one for your software wanted list.

Watch out! Paul's coming back to sum up.

Paul: I don't understand Lee liking this but that's his decision. In my view HTBACB is crude, tasteless and, even worse, unfunny.