Producer: Mosaic
Retail Price: £14.95
Author: ODE

After an undistinguished but eventful political career, Sir James Hacker is inexplicably elevated to the position of Prime Minister. With the competent (if not always straightforward) aid of senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby and the straightforward (if not always competent) aid of Secretary Bernard Woolley, Hacker must make the most difficult decisions of his career.

And in Yes, Prime Minister - a licence from the eponymous TV show - you take the role of Hacker, ensconced in an office full of icons: a telephone (calls report crises in the outside world), an internal intercom, a teletype, an ideas box, memos and a diary.

Hacker can leave his office to make visits to such places as the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Room, of his minions' offices - though they're not always in. (Those Whitehall lunches do drag on...) His diary gives a list of meetings, and a desk clock indicates how near an appointment is.

During the in-depth conversations, frank exchanges of views and wide-ranging discussions that he has with Appleby, Woolley, and other political colleagues such as the Foreign Secretary, Hacker is presented with sets of choices in a text-only format.

Each choice represents a different viewpoint and each has a difference consequence. The choices Hacker makes, 'advised' of course by his aides, affect his popularity in the opinion polls. To check that the voters still love him, this blundersome political supreme can open his office safe and discover his previous day's rating in the polls and his present popularity - one these numbers depends Hacker's future.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: excellent digitised faces, otherwise reasonable
Sound: limited

When it comes to 'choice' games Mosaic Publishing has the industry sewn up, what with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and The Archers and now Yes Prime Minister. They're all the same - funny the first time, but the losing attraction. Running the country is all very well but none of the decisions you make in Yes Prime Minister have any bearing on the game, and I never felt in contact with my public - the action is limited to the confines of the very drab Prime Ministerial office. And after playing all the way through I didn't feel any compulsion to run the country again - especially not for almost £15.
PAUL [55%]

Yes Prime Minister doesn't the interest for long - after just four games I'd seen all the text, and though the rather thin humour works first time round things are very tedious thereafter. I did enjoy the odd parts of the 'TV series which my overworked schedule allowed me to see, and I find the computer version disappointing. The screen display is bright and functional, but still looks a little unattractive. I'd recommend Yes Prime Minister only to fans, and then purely as a collector's item.
MIKE [49%]

Mosaic
£14.95
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Ah, Sir Humphrey. Come in, come in. Do sit down.

"Thank you, Prime Minister."

Well, what can I do for you?

"Well, it has come to my attention that those personages who may be described, if not by me, certainly by those people who could by no means be described as being, well, me, as the writers of a notable and highly lucrative series of entertaining half-hour humorous playlets on the televisual apparatus, have been branching out from these humble, if not actually modest beginnings and perpetrating further outrages and satirical comments on the workings of government and, specifically, the civil service, by means of books, T-shirts, radio programmes and now, it seems, some form of information technology which I believe is commonly known as the 'Speccy'..."

You mean there's a computer game version of Yes PM? Yes I know.

"You know, Prime Minister? How did you find out?" Well, I'm in it, Humpry, as are you. Take a look...

Yes, Yes Prime Minister (as opposed to No No Nanette) is but the latest 'licence' to be bought up by a software company and slapped onto your Spectrum. The company behind this wheeze is Mosaic, known in the past mainly for a few low-key adventures. But YPM is a very different kettle of memos, what with its plush red packaging, its digitised pics of the characters and the hefty price tag (15 nicker, I ask you!). So wossit like?

In a move that'll gladden the hearts of Mrs T and all the other YPM fans, the Speccy game is immensely faithful to the spirit of the show. It's mainly reminiscent of US Gold's Killed Until Dead, with that splendid game's desk-and-phone scenarios and colourful graphics. Moving your cursor around, you identify what's going on (meetings with bigwigs and so on) and react accordingly. You get phonecalls from your advisors and attend meetings with them, in which you take decisions that are the basis of your success or failure in the game. Your long conversations with people are very funny and based, I'd guess, on dialogue used in the shows. There's the occasional hint around if you can find it, and if you can get into the safe, you'll find the latest poll results, which measure how you're doing. You score brownie points for showing judgement and knowledge, which by some curious process bump up your poll rating. Similarly, the polls decline if you keep making boo-boos.

The game's a multi-loader and takes place over five days, during which you have to avoid the big E. There's a random element in each game, but after a few plays you'll find the same events recurring - I suppose it's called 'experience'. There's a lot to it, and even though it sometimes seems a little slow, I found you can speed up the game by clicking the cursor over the clock, which'll take you to the next moment something's due to happen. It's a problem solvers' game essentially, which means it's all right by me. There are a few ways of winning, I'm told, but loads of ways of losing, many of which I've already found!

So if you're a fan of the wittiest and best written gag show on TV, you'll want to snap this up swift-ho. It's only just this side of Adventureland, so it may not appeal to hardened zappers, but I look forward to many a warm winter evening trying to crack the Whitehall code and survive my week in office. As Jim Hacker himself once said, "You've just got to grit your teeth and bite the bullet..."

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Looking for something cheap? How about RICH PELLEY (now at half price - a snip)? Er, on second thoughts...

Mastertronic Plus
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

As well you may have guessed, Yes Prime Minister (the game) is based on the popular TV comedy show. I say "popular" because, well, it was, wasn't it? The PM's favourite telly prog apparently. But what does she know? I thought it was crap (but that was probably because I never understood the jokes).

But what about the game? Well, you're the Prime Minister trying to please the British Public so that everybody likes you and wants to vote you back into office. So, no, you can I double the Poll Tax in Wales (even though they deserve it - ho ho, just joshing). To succeed you have to make the correct choices at the right time to various random problems, with clues lying around the place to help you on your way. Come to think of it, the thing's really more of an adventure than a 'proper' game with lots of text to read and people to interact with (so what it's doing here rather than in Uncle Mike's grotto I don't know). The main difference is that you manage all this by moving a cursor around, and clicking on things, such as the phone, or a letter when you want to do something. Everything is operated by choices ("Do you want to do this, or that?", that sort of thing) and all the problems for you to sort out are random. It's a bit hard to explain it in full but it's very playable and well presented, so if this sort of thing sounds like your bag then go get purchasing.

Coming, erm, now actually, to a cinema near you...

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO FILM AND TELLY GAMES

Knowing full well what a square-eyed bunch you are, we thought it was about time you were given the facts on film and television licenced games. Once again, JONATHAN DAVIES was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

(Cough. Deep, manly voice.)

'In the beginning there were loads and loads of Speccy games. Loads of them. They sold all right, but not exactly in enormous numbers. The trouble was, you see, that none of them seemed particularly exciting. They had nothing that caught the public eye. They were just computer games. Had no 'cred'.

Then a small cog within a long-since-extinct software house had an idea.

"Why don't we give our next game the same name as an incredibly popular film? Then everyone would buy it just because they'd seen the film and they'd foolishly think the game would be just as good. How about i, eh?"

"Er, we could do, I suppose."

"Great."

"But what if the film company finds out? They might sue us or something."

"Oh yeah."

"Tcha."

"I know - we could ask them first."

"That's a point. Go on then."

"What? Me?"

"Yeah. Give them a ring and ask if they'd mind."

"Oo-er. Cripes. Okay then." (Dials very long trans-Atlantic phone number.)

"Hullo. We'd like to name our new game after your film and we were wondering if it was okay by you. Right... yes... oh, I see." (Cups hand over receiver.) "They want us to give them lots of money."

"Erm, well in that case we'd better." (Removes hand.) "Yes, that'll be fine. We'll send you some right away. Bye."

"Super."

"But. er..."

"What?"

"How are we going to come up with a game that's anything like the film?"

"I don't know really."

"How about if we have a bloke walking around shooting people?"

"That sounds fine. I'll program it right away."

And so the film and telly licence was born. It... cough. Choke.

Oops. There goes the deep, manly voice.

Anyway, film and telly games, eh? Everyone's doing them these days, as they're one of the few remaining ways of making serious money with computer games. Run a grubby finger down the charts and you'll find nearly all the top-sellers are film and telly licences. (Or arcade conversions, of course.)

But why do we keep buying them? After all, just because a game's named after a really brill film doesn't mean it's going to be any good, does it? Surely we aren't buying them simply because of the flashy name on the box?

Erm, well in the old days, software houses assumed this to be the case, and chucked out a stream of absolutely appalling games with 'big name' titles. Things like Miami Vice, The Dukes Of Hazard and Highlander were all pretty dreadful, but it was hoped that they'd sell on the strength of their names. But we weren't fooled. Oh no. The games didn't sell well, and the companies were forced to think again.

Eventually they came up with... the 'bloke walking around shooting things' idea. And they've used it more or less ever since. Lucky then that they tend to be jolly good all the same, and sometimes come up with the odd original idea to spice things up (like The Untouchables did, or perhaps Back To The Future Part II).

RATINGS

As always seems to be the case, the trusty YS ratings system doesn't really seem adequate when it comes to film and telly games. So here's what we've put together instead...

LIGHTS
What does it look like? Nice? Or not very nice at all? (You mean are the graphics any good? Ed) Er, yes. That's it in a nutshell. (Then why didn't you just say the first place? Ed) Erm...

CAMERA
How does the general atmosphere compare to the film or telly programme the game's meant to go with? Have programmers just taken a bog-standard game and stuck a flashy name on it? Or have they made an effort to incorporate a bit of the 'feel' of the original?

ACTION
Does the plot follow along the same sort of lines as the film or telly programme? Is there plenty action-packedness? And is the game the same all way through, or does it follow the original's twists and turns?

CUT
Um, how does the game compare to all the licences around at the moment? Is it better? Or worse? In other words, is it a 'cut' above the rest? (is that really the best you can manage? Ed)

YES PRIME MINISTER
Mosaic

The 'hilarious' Downing Street-based sitcom would seem to be virtually impossible to convert to the Spectrum, and indeed Mosaic (who?) had to come up with a completely original structure for the game. Thankfully they avoided a predictable 'walk around Whitehall collecting things and beating people up' game and plumped instead for a semi-adventure game where you've got solve prime-ministerial problems over a period of five days to get your poll ratings up to a decent level.

The game revolves around your desk, where you receive memos and phone calls informing you of what's going on. The most important events are meetings with your colleagues where you have lengthy conversations interspersed with multiple-choice bits. Pick the right thing to say and your standing improves, with a corresponding increase in your poll rating. It actually works very well as a game, and somehow manages to pack in all the atmosphere and humour of the programme while still being fun to play. Its a bit text-based though, and certainly wont appeal to everyone.

Label: Mosaic
Author: Ode
Price: £14.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jason Roseaman

It's not easy being Prime Minister. 9 am and a memo comes onto my desk reminding me of a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary. 9.10 and a Telex is received about a Road Safety campaign. Naturally I miss it because of a meeting with Bernard. 10.30 and another phone call from Bernard comes in reminding me of a meeting with the Home Secretary but alas I have forgotten what it is about. Things do not look good...

Yes Prime Minister is an icon/menu game where, in a mad frenzy of activity, interrupted only by hours of boredom you have to move from memo box to intercom, intercom to telephone and telephone to meeting. The game has been programmed by Ode now famed for its Trivial Pursuit for Domarks. Menus and scrolling messages abound a game which is the first I can think of to be totally set in an office. Your objective - to survive a week in Government. A clock ticks away the hours and each moment is fraught with pratfalls.

You play Jim Hacker star of the television program said to be MT's favourite. Helping and hindering are Bernard and Sir Humphrey.

As you might expect Yes Prime Minister, the game, is full of jokes and one liners. Most of the conversations you have with other people are played for laughs and there are 8 few very good jokes but its mostly more smirk than belly laugh.

The game continues with you playing in one day sections over a five day week (I've never understood how 5 days can equal a week). Each day you are presented with an assortment of random problems. These will be in the form of political characters with whom you can have lengthy question and answer sessions. Your response is all multiple choice a la Adrian Mole (is Mosaic obsessed with exam formats?). I found no good way of finding the right replies so just guessed.

Many of the multiple choice questions are just based on general knowledge. Knowing things like how many watts a Gigawatt equals could possibly help. This seemed kind of irrelevant however..

The multiple choice format does raise doubt about the variety in the game. The fault with the Adrian Mole games was just this system of interaction and I thought for a moment that Yes Prime Minister could be the same. Oddly enough though, the system actually works quite well possibly because this offering was programmed by a different team.

Graphically there is not much to Yes Prime Minister. The office of the PM is quite impressive, similar to the lounge in Trivial Pursuit. But the digitised graphics of Bernard, Jim and Sir Humphrey leave a lot to be desired. In fact Humphrey seems to have gained a huge moustache in his transformation from the TV.

The only problem I can see with this game is its long-term appeal. The game used a random problem generator to ensure it is a bit different each time you play but I realised that many of the same situations kept appearing. It certainly entertains for a while - weeks certainly - months. I don't know.

Mastertronic Plus
Spectrum/C64/Amstrad £2.99

A week is a long time in politics, and this - the licence from the hilarious and more often than not accurate TV series - puts you in the shoes of the Rt Hon Jim Hacker, a politician not noted for his intellectual capabilities. Your task is simply to survive in power for five days - no easy task by any stretch of the imagination! You have your two faithful (!) civil servants to aid you, the cunning and ingenious Sir Humphrey Appleby, and the tactful Bernard Wooley, both of whom will do their utmost to aid you (and themselves) along the way.

Myriad events (some trivial, some of world-shaking consequence) crop up during the week, all of which have to be acted upon in due course either from your office, or from the House of Commons itself. If you're successful, Parliament will carry on, and the good name of J Hacker PM will remain unsullied. Failure will result in scandal, and an unwanted appearance on the front page of The Sun.

Anyway, all three versions play much the same, apart from minor graphics differences, and present excellent value for only three quid. If you loved the TV series, you'll enjoy this, so grab it at the first chance.

MOSAIC give you the keys to Number 10

Those of you a 9 ecl over 50 or 50 I n v O t probably remember the days of Eton collars, the war. Clement Attlee. and the day when Mosaic first announced that they would be launching this game. OK, so the Pilg exaggerates a teensy bit. but let's face it. this game has been a very long time in the making. Now it's waiting on the shelves for you. clamouring for your vote and your money...does it deserve either? No. unfortunately it doesn't. In fact, this game, based on the humourous TV show of the same name, goes down in the Prig's book as one of the biggest missed opportunities of the year Lefs see what went wrong...

First, the game uses the same basic principle of the Adrian Mole games from Level 9/Mosaic. This means that rather than move about from location to location the program tells you a story, so to speak, and pauses at opportune moments for you to select from a number of possible alternatives. Depending on your choice, the plot then proceeds in various different directions and new situations develop The storyline of Yes. Prime Minister takes place in five parts, each part being a day in a working week of Britain's Number One. The display shows you the interior of your office, complete with two phones, two drawers, an ideas box', a telex machine, a clock, an intercom, and a blotter.

Gameplay is as follows. You have a symbol (it varies from machine to machine, but is basically a pointer of some kind) which you can move about the screen using the cursor keys or a joystick. As you move it, new areas of your office scroll into view (on the Commodore and Amstrad versions, the screen flips on the Spectrum). By 'clicking' on an object, you select it and may. occasionally. be able to interact with it...

For example, you start the game on Monday and scroll the screen to show your clock, which says 9.00am. The minutes tick by pretty rapidly, so you should find out what your appointments are for the day.

This is done by clicking on the left hand drawer of your desk, which causes a diary for the day in question to be displayed. The most youH have in a day is three appointments - sometimes there will be none Your appointments schedule does not change from game to game, though what happens in between meetings does.

While you're doing this, you may have heard a plaintive beeping. Scroll the screen around your desk and you will notice the phone flashing Click on it. and the screen changes to text mode, with the caller's message displayed There's nothing for you to do except read what he has to say. then read what you say in response, and occasionally select one of several speech options at cntical moments.

Whether it's the intercom beeping, or the other phone, the procedure is identical To liven things up a bit, a memo will occasionally appear on your desk, which you can read by clicking on it. and which will probably contain some droll message from Bernard Woolley. your private secretary. You can also read incoming messages on the teletype (usually giving notice of some foreign disaster) and some rather uninteresting political platitudes that spring from the 'ideas boxAs the clock flicks through the day. you will find yourself attending meetings in nearby offices. To get to these you click on your door and then choose the appropriate destination from the list presented. You never actually 999 another location, but simply read on-screen an account of what happens there. That account, as with almost all 'events' within the game, will be composed almost entirely of dialogue between yourself, Bernard, and Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Cabinet Secretary.

POLITICAL AIMS

Your objective in the game is to stay in power and boost your rating in the polls, which you can check by clicking on the Union Jack in your office, to reveal a safe behind it. Clicking on the safe gives you an up-to-date poll report - you start the game with 50% and must obviously attempt to improve on that figure as the days roll by The manner in which you achieve that objective lies in the way you select the vanous options dunng the games. For example, suppose you have a meeting at 9.30am with Sir Humphrey. Providing you aren't busy answering the "phone or reading a memo at the time indicated, you will be able to click on the door, select Sir Humphrey's office, and enter into dialogue with the nit-picking old busy-body.

Sir Humphrey, for example, may wish to discuss with you your plans for setting up a Ministry for Women. 'Do you not think. Prime Minister', he might say, 'that this will offend: (a) your loyal male supporters (b) your loyal female supporters'. The program then waits for you to click on one of these choices, which is somewhat strange since it's Sir Humphrey speaking and not you Even more strange, if you make him say something inappropriate (such as (b) above), he will start getting crotchetty! You then reply to him. and have a similar opportunity to direct the flow of your own side of the conversation among the somewhat limited alternatives.

Despite the slight illogicality of being able to direct all sides of an argument, this actually adds a little to the gameplay and makes things more interesting. In fact, the text of the dialogues is really very witty in parts and every bit as good as the TV series.

So what went wrong? The biggest problem lies in the repetitive nature of the game-play. There is a basic storyline which does not alter from game to game, and on top of this various 'random scenarios' will occur. Each meeting you attend can lead you, depending on which options you choose, into different sequences.

The trouble arises when you have played the game about five times (and it doesn't take long to finish, either). Despite the fact that new scenanos occasionally crop up, the variety steadily grows stale, and the bulk of the game becomes depressingly familiar. What you end up with is an initially enjoyable game, that turns out to be a disappointment.

Mosaic reckon you'll want to return to it in much the same way as you would return to a book you've already read. The Pilg is not convinced, and I suspect that this sort of game needs a massive text-database, a 20meg hard disc, and more intelligence to succeed.

Reviewer: The Pilgrim

RELEASE BOX
C64/128, £14.95cs, £19.95dk
Spec, £14.95cs
IBM PC, £24.95dk
Ams, £14.95cs, £19.95dk

(A) £14.95 (B) £19.95 (C) £24.95
(A) Spectrum, BBC, CBM64 and Amstrad CPC tape
(B) BBC, CBM64 and Amstrad CPC disk
(C) Amstrad PCW and PC Compatibles
Publisher: Mosaic

At last yon have your chance to see how you can measure up to the Prime Minister when it comes to running the country. Your task is made slightly easier in this game as you don't have to compare yourself with Supermaggie, just everyone's favourite PM, Jim Hacker. Can you maintain the popularity with which you start the game in the face of adversities like drunken Ministers and adversaries like Sir Humphrey Appleby?

It takes more than a simple word like 'strategy' or 'adventure' to define a game like this - it's more of an icon-driven multi-choice comedy strategy game, quite definitely aimed at the Christmas present market with lots of appeal to families and those who don't care what category a game is so long as it's fun.

And Yes, Prime Minister is certainly fun. The storylines in it are all original but so faithful to the Whitehall spirit that you feel they could have been lifted from the TV series. The TV scriptwriters gave the words their blessing, so that says something for authenticity.

You take the role of Jim Hacker and the aim is simply to get your popularity up as high as possible in the opinion polls over the course of five days (five separate game sections). You are credited with 50% to begin with which is not bad for any politician. The aim doesn't really matter, though, as there are as many laughs to be had when your popularity's plunging and about to go down the drain.

The screen presents a view of your Downing Street office, and you move a pointer to access various options. If the phone rings, move the pointer to it to answer it and the resulting conversation comes up on screen. You can open the drawers on your desk, examine telex messages (Hackergrams!), use the intercom, open the safe and put the pointer over the door to leave the office, when you'll be presented with a menu of possible destinations. These don't come up on screen, just the conversations that take place there, though there are some nicely digitised graphics of the TV actors at the top of the screen.

In the style of Adrian Mole you have to choose between the options presented at various stages. When a Minister is arrested for drunken driving just as you're about to launch a road safety campaign, would you come clean to the press, promote the constable who arrested him or maybe have a quiet word with the Chief Constable about the Honours List and the likelihood or his name being on it? Or to put it in the words of Sir Humphrey, is a cover-up desirable but not possible, possible but not desirable, or both possible and desirable?

When you return to your office you may discover that you need to deal with a Hackergram, or a note that's been popped on your desk - or even a phone call from your mother. Quite a few jokes have been put in for computer buffs, like Hacker being hacked or wondering why a computer's been named after the Kray twins. The conflicts between personal and public interests, and between the Cabinet and the Civil Service, are extremely well done. The tone of the TV series has been well-captured, giving not only laughs but an insight into the workings of government. Nor for nothing has the game been play tested by various civil servants and other political figures who also advise on the accuracy of the TV show.

The only worry has to be on the question of price. The game is undoubtedly fun while it lasts, but in 30 minutes you can be through all five days and even though you will want to play the game several times and it's different each time you play, the story choices are ultimately finite - how often could you watch the same TV episode without getting restless? Nicely packaged, well-written and a lot of effort has gone into it, but maybe it's a fiver too much in terms of value-for-money when compared with other more complex games that are around. Still a Yes to Yes, Prime Minister, but just for this Christmas it might he better to receive than to give!