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Sacre bleu! Well yes, in a way it is blue. The private life of the local henhouse explodes onto your screen in this rather unusual, but definitely tongue in cheek offering from Firebird.

Set in a henhouse with two doors to the outside world on the left and right walls, a central "bedroom" and two nesting platforms against the back wall, the idea of the game is to keep Madam Chicken satisfied by... hmm... well... ahem... doing what Cockerels are best at. All this takes place in her boudouis behind a closed door. For every... hmm... thingybob ... you do (takes a few seconds you know) she'll produce a fertile egg and a heart appears at the top of the screen.

When you feel you've had enough, leave her room and Madam will follow a moment later, make a bee line for the nesting boxes and lay the same amount of eggs that you... um leftgooseberrybushesunderherbed.

It is here that the game now gets rather frantic. You see all the nasties that loaf around the farm - racoons, snakes, porcupines, rats and the like start to come into the henhouse and try to break the eggs. If you don't peck the bad guys (this sends them away) in time then they'll break the eggs and madam won't be too pleased to say the least: in fact she'll come out and biff you with her handbag. You've got three lives available and you lose one each time your wife biffs you.

Just to make life a little more difficult, as well as guarding the eggs you've got to enter madam's little room and give her something to help her produce more eggs. As the eggs hatch the chicks rush down and go into their Mummy's little room. If there aren't any more eggs and the last chick disappears into your birdy wife's boudoir, then she'll get very angry and give you more of the handbag treatment. So there's always got to be at least one egg on the nest waiting to hatch at any one time.

All this hectic exercise makes you pretty tired out. As you get more and more tired you begin to slow down - a big disadvantage if you're to catch those beastly baddies. Luckily there's plenty of grain lying around which you can peck up to keep you fit and energetic. Occasionally worms which stick their heads out of the ground. Peck these up and you'll be truly rejuvenated.

You score points according to how long you manage to keep all the eggs safe and madam happy. Extra lives can be gained throughout the game and later on, when the going gets frantic, you certainly need them!

Control keys: 5 left, 8 right, 6 down, 7 up, 0 peck also redefinable
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: great!
Graphics: big and jolly
Sound: nice tunes and effects
Skill levels: gets progressively harder to survive
Screens: one