Producer: Ocean/Special FX
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Jim Bagley and Chas Davies

You've been swallowed up by a ten million ton space being with an equally large appetite. This mega-monstrosity also has its greedy eye on Earth, so you have no choice but to try and escape by shutting down the body's major organs - otherwise your home planet is about to end life as an undignified midday snack.

The treacherous quest takes place over four levels, inside a vast four-way scrolling complex of interconnecting tubes. Each of the four major organs (kidneys, lungs, heart and brain) must be destroyed in turn. As they are each encased in a tough membrane, an appropriately powerful weapon needs to be assembled first, and its three parts are found around different sectors of each level.

Antibodies attack from all sides shooting pellets. Contact depletes energy, and once it reaches zero one of four lives is lost. A variety of weapons are collected by moving over weapon holds hidden in the tissue walls.

Other bonus icons include spare helmets, for extra protection and increased fire-power. Keys enable you to open the Super Weapon door hidden inside each of the major organ rooms.

A map of the current quadrant can be called up via the keyboard. A status display indicates score, gives a large-scale grid map of the playfield, show energy and lives remaining.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: detailed characters and backgrounds, with little colour and limited animation
Sound: above average title tune
Options: tune or spot effects during game

Gutz is all very well if you're one of those rambler types that enjoys walking thousands of miles through picturesque terrain, but when it comes to an addictive and compelling computer game, Special FX's latest sadly misses the mark. There's no addictive goal to aim for and no tough characters to overcome - just constant trogging around getting very, very bored. Hardly the frantic on of Firefly, more like a walk in the country.
PAUL [60%]

What a name! What a game! Gutz spoils Special FX's reputation in my mind at least. The graphics are all simply drawn and with monochromatic colour over the top of that, it's just a recipe for disaster. There are some options to make the game a bit more bearable like the option to select either sound effects or a great rapping tune, but other than that Gutz is a very basic game. There is no real objective behind it, just shoot all the little spiders, drainpipes and pot plants that flicker and jump around the screen. I wouldn't bother with Gutz if I was you, just because it has Special FX on the cover, it doesn't mean at it's a special game!
NICK [57%]

Hurtling around arterial passages of an intergalactic mega-being sounds pretty disgusting. However, if blood and gore is what you're after, Gutz is unlikely to match up to your wildest, most repulsive dreams. The network of complex tissue ducts turns out to be a very ordinary maze with borders that look as much like a privet hedge as a wall of cells. The insectoid antibodies pose an equally pathetic-looking threat. Having said that, Gutz has competent, if unexceptional graphics. The presentation is slick and the scrolling It's just that the quest isn't particularly captivating. You spend ages wandering around in an aimless sort of fashion waiting for the fun to start. Gutz isn't a disaster - it's just not as nauseating or exciting as it claims to be.
KATI [69%]

Special FX
£7.95
Reviewer: Sean Kelly

'A giant mega-being is approaching earth. It's as big as the moon! Arms as big as Africa! A mouth as big as Malaysia! Teeth as big as, er, Tunbridge Wells. And it's going to eat the earth. WAAAH! it makes me feel like doing something really stupid like volunteering to jump into a rocket, whiz up to it, jump inside its stomach and disable all the major body functions like the kidney, hear, lungs and brain. What? No, no, I didn't mean it! Stop... Where are you taking me. What's that?... Waah! A rocket. Nooo...

Yup, there you were, having a bit of a josh with your mates when they actually started to take you seriously. So now you're stuck in the innards of a mega-being, squibbly bits everywhere, to say nothing of all those nasty anti-bodies, uncle bodies and second cousin twice removed bodies floating round trying to kill you. All you have to do is duff up this intergalactic Billy Bunter to prevent it eating the earth. Fortunately, by applying your superior intellect, dazzling ingenuity, and especially by reading the inlay card, you have a pretty good idea about how to go about it.

One vital organ of this mammoth nastie, lies on each of four levels, each level being made up of four sections interconnected by long tubes. Yuk! The organ lies in a specially protected womb, which can only be entered by finding all the pieces of the special 'get-into-the-vital-organ-room' weapon. Fortunately, there are a number of things to do and find which will help you achieve this aim.

On each of the four sections of a level, there are weapons holds in the walls which give you progressively meaner anti-body bullets. These initially kill only a few of the anti-bods, but eventually make mincemonster of everything in sight. Grabbing the crystals which lie few and far between, will give repeat fire for three minutes, and the spare helmets will protect you against bullets, gas and some anti-bods for two and a half minutes. Last, but not least, there's the map capsule to be grabbed early on, which will show your position, and if there are any of the above mentioned goodies in the same area. Careful how you go with this one, though, 'cos if you use it for more than three minutes, cor blimey matey and blow me down peeps if it don't go and pack up on you.

The scenario of Gutz has got to be one of the best I've read for ages, and perhaps owes a teensy weensy bit to Innerspace methinks? What it boils down to however, is a pseudo 3-D maze games, where you charge around killing all and sundry, grabbing everything which lies in your path, and generally having great fun. The main figure and all the wibbly wobbly anti-bodies are well animated, and the scrolling is excellent. Each section of a level has different design, and the part of the game played in the interconnecting tubes is also well done and fun to play. The only drawback is the monochrome walls. A bit of colour wouldn't have gone amiss.

Gutz has the vital 'one more go' element, and its speed add to the addictiveness. Stand still for more than a second, and you'll get sprayed in a hail of bullets.

The package is also very well presented, and the pause mode will blow your socks off. I don't remember ever seeing my Speccy do that before! This game should keep mapping types happy for ages, and proves there's life on the old maze game yet.

Label: Special FX
Author: Special FX
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Next time you've overdone it on the Chinese takeaway front, and you're up half the night with your stomach gurgling, "No more monosodium glutamate perleeaase!", just take time to spare a thought for the poor alien in Gutz. I dunno, he's just swallowed a teensy weensy spaceman, and all of a sudden he's being attacked left right and centre by a guy with a popgun. If that's not enough to give him rumble-tum then I don't know what is.

Gutz is the latest release from Special FX, and it's that sort of a game which requires you to play the part of a small swallowed space man and shut down the major organs of aforementioned alien. S'peasy, isn't it?

You begin in the kidneys (well, it could be the heart, or the brain or the lungs, one piece of offal looks much like another to me) exploring a maze of corpuscles and capillaries. Jigging about in the goo are various other noxious nasties, spidery-wormy-creepy things which spit amino acids and all sorts of other noxious substances at you. And you can't do a thing about it. What you need boy, is a weapon. (Fnar - JD).

Lurking in one of the walls is what looks to be a bit of corruption, this is in fact your ammo. Go up to it, twizzle your joystick around a little bit, and whammo, you've got a dirty great gun. Now go waste the nasties.

Once you've got the weapon, you can concentrate on finding the three components of a mega weapon, which is the only thing capable of shutting down the organ. Pick up three boxes per organ, and Bob's your whatsit. Protective womb of organ annihilated. ('Scuse me, I think I'm going to be sick - JD).

Along the way there are also bonus helmets to collect, which offer two and a half minutes protection against poisonous gases and bullets. Get some crystals too, they'll give you extra boosty fire power so you can mash loads more aliens. And keep a close eye out for the key, that'll get you into the room which houses the mega weapon needed to bump off the organ in question. You'll also find a map (particularly useful if you're a boy scout and into things like that).

So am I chucking up about Gutz? (What a ridiculous sentence. Go back and write again - GT) Oh, all right. What do I think about Gutz in general, all things considered, weighing it all up and taking the price of fish into consideration? (That's marginally better, but not much - GT). Um. It's quite nice really. Bit of a larf. But nothing spectacular. Call me difficult to please if you will, but I didn't find Gutz very challenging. After Firefly and its great SU cover game I was prepared to lick Special FX's collective shoes every time it threw a release in my lowly direction, but to be perfectly honest, that'd just be a waste of lick.

The graphics are OK, the gameplay's just about there, but you'll not be swallowing your joystick, or a spaceman for that matter, in desperation to play it. There's not enough, "Just one more go,' about Gutz. It's simply a perfectly reasonable game. And being a completely unreasonable person, I didn't like it half as much as I'd have liked to. (Wah? - GT)

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.95, Diskette: £14.95

REVIEWED on the Commodore 64 in TGM006, the Spectrum version of Gutz is programmed by Jimmy Bagley, with graphics by Chas Davies. The inspiration for Gutz came when Special FX's graphic artist, Andy Rixon had a medical checkup which resulted in some very pretty pictures of his own guts being revealed!

Gutz is set in the internal organs of a space monster which has swallowed you whole. Gutted, to say the least, you decide on an escape, and the alien's mouth seems the best place to aim for.

The four levels are split into three regions, connected by arterial tunnels. To get out, you need to run through each section of the alien body, collecting parts of a Super Weapon required to defeat the alien's end-of-level major organs. More powerful weapons can be collected en route to defeat the parasites and germs infesting the body. A map can be used to work your way round each level and helmets provide extra shields.

The monochrome screen of Gutz adds to the atmosphere of being within the dark caverns of an alien lifeform. The walls of the alien insides are reasonably effective, although end-of-level organs are graphics more in the style of medical views than that of the gory Alien Syndrome. The tune playing throughout is really sound effects strung together to form a sort of music.

The eight-directional scrolling is smooth, although it's easy to get stuck turning corners and in narrow corridors, making parasites almost impossible to avoid. The gameplay is enjoyable but repetitive after a while, mainly because each level is the same in style. This together with the combination of a too-large main character, narrow passages and tiny bullets fired by parasites makes it a difficult game in which skill takes a backseat to luck.