Your Sinclair
1st February 1986
Costa Capers
Call this a holiday? It's more like a nightmare!
Poor ol' Ted has lost all his luggage on his way to Spain, and he's first got to find his credit card and then buy back all his belongings... especially his camera so that he can take snapshots to show his workmates back home. Drinking cans of lager help him in difficult moments... but a drunken Ted is not easy to control, and the hangover's even worse!
At first sight, Costa Capers really looks the biz. Modelled on Jet Set Willy, there are loads of screens cluttered with various nasties as well as useful items, such as parasols to keep the sun off. Trouble is, you can't tell which objects are useful to pick up and which ones kill you - you often just have to lose a life to find out and then remember which objects to avoid. The programmers have also opted to include the 'die for ever' syndrome from JSW, in which you keep falling through screens to your death. (If you get as bored as I do with this, an undocumented tip is to press the Break key and return to the beginning.)
Another little tip is to switch off the accompanying theme music as soon as you can - playing Costa Capers with the plaintive strains of Viva Espana in the background is no fun at all!
Overall , the idea of Costa Capers is an awful lot better than its execution.
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