Reviews

I first played this game late summer in 1984 , it was the end of the school holidays and my mate had bought it because the superb magazine Crash had decided it worthy of a Crash Smash.

It was unlike anything else we had ever played , it seemed daunting at first we didn’t check the inlay and we ran around like headless chickens trying to get the various tasks complete.

You play the part of a robot – with a limited amount of charge , your task is to maintain and steer a ship across the sea , delivering the cargo which is stored in various rooms. Sounds simple , but the trouble is that the ship is a leaky old wreck with water springing up all over the place , it starts on the lower decks and if not kept in check by you , soon floods the top deck and eventually sinks the ship. To avoid this you are armed with various implements to aid you , first and most importantly you have a small supply of metal plates which can patch up the leaks , you also have a pump handle , attach it to the pump and drain the water off the boat , you can only carry one item at a time , so you must use your time wisely.

The water has another effect – it drains your battery , so from time to time you need to scoot across to the recharge chamber and power up to keep topped up. The ship is set across 11 flip screens and the problem arises when you have to multi task , the ships leaking in a few rooms , its going off course , your charge is low , your searching for metal plates etc , its fun but frantic , if you get it right and get the ship across to the other side of the sea , the leaky old vessel will need repairing and this comes off the price of the stock , then the remainder is added onto your score.

The graphics are very colourful , detailed , well animated and it’s a really fun game , it will get you panicking as your ship just about manages to stay afloat , it’s a decent challenge as well , I loved it back in the 80’s and playing it today was just as much fun , I recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit different to play.

You're a robot, you're on a ship, the ship tends to develop lots of holes at the bottom, filling up not-so-slowly of water. So you must wander among the "rooms", closed with waterproof doors, that you must remember to close, and pick up handles to turn the pump and spit the water ouf of the ship, patches, to fix the holes and there are other features that now I don't remember and I don't want to get into. So the concept seems very original [or were there something like it somewhere?], it's anciently cute, playble and very hard at the same time, at least, to me. So it's decisely good, but it didn't grab me. So, no more than 3/5 for now.

1984 Silversoft Ltd (UK)
by Mind's Eye team

You play a C-Droid robot who's job is to keep an old ship functioning. Every time a leak appears in the hull their you go applying patches and pumping out the water. From level two further you also have to steer the ship's course and deliver the cargo in order to pay for the necessary repairs.
You also need to keep recharging the robots own batteries and fix other malfunctions that keep coming up in the ensuing levels.

There is a point where the action is so frenzy you wouldn't believe me if I told you. I remember one of my best friends saying that this was one of most original game he'd come across, and although I was much more into shoot-em-ups and racing games, I couldn't but agree with him. Nevertheless, I rarely played it. Until a few years later, when I became obsessed with it.

Very original frantic multi-task action game, ahead of it's time and still fresh.