Reviews

A recent share from the programmer of this game showed how British Telecom snapped up the game from bedroom coders for Fiebird's Silver range with an advance of £2000, a decent sum in late 1984.

What the Telecom giant was plundering amateur coders attics for was surely the elusive financial magic of Booty, a massive sales success on the fledgling Silver budget label in 1984. A look at the letter (search WOS Forum for Bombscare to find it) and the resulting release shows BT's fair disregard for its consumer in the chase for a quick buck – which given the original publisher called themselves Dollarsoft seems appropriate.

The game is a hotch potch of platforming ideas inspired by Chuckie Egg and the arcade cabinet Bombjack and adds the finicky pixel perfect ropes already well established in the Spectrum canon via the infuriating ilk of Hunchback and Jungle Fever. The resultant game lacks any of the fuidity of its inspiration whilst adding to the infuriations present in the rope problem.

'Issues' include terrible stodgy key response leading to bad and mistimed jumps, bad collision detection that sees you fall right through some platforms whilst bouncing off others and a slow porridgy feel to the whole presentation. An over taught timer, unnecessary energy bar and a long delay after losing a life add to the terrible experience of playing this game. FX are the bare minimum.

Dollarsoft gain bravery/lazy points for not obeying some of BT's bullet pointed edicts including the ones that so obviously try to help sidestep the distasteful 'nuclear bomb terror in major cities' scenario and a welcome screen in the Firebird release still depicts a decapitated Statue of Liberty as a mushroom cloud rises above the New York skyline (Twin Towers intact, sorry conspiracy guys).

I had to cheat a bit to get anything from this game, speeding up the emulator first (x2) and then nullifying the bomb countdown with a Poke. I got past the Taj Mahal bomb threat, and then the Eiffel Tower (alongside mad Dollar shaped platform) and moved onto some industrial cityscape. That was far more than enough, though there are passwords to fast track to the later screens also in the Tipshop online.

This game was moderately well received in Crash when it was released, a sign that sympathy for the £2.50 pricetag combined with the giant publisher and matching giant advertising budget to help the reviewer err on the side of generosity.

What they didn't say was that you would rather have bought 1 good full price game than four, or even 20 as terrible as this.

Following an intersting letter share from the author, I wanted to like this game, but sadly its awful. 1.4/5

This is dreadful. The jumping is just terrible, the level layout is a nightmare, everything is just so wrong and so bad. This game is also and probably best known as Short's Fuse since the original Bombscare was MIA for years, but playing this will leave you with a short fuse.