1st June 1985
Those "down under" blues
Now let me see if I've understood this - blue ones fall but gold ones don't - so much for Newton's Law, but then this game is about whinging misers and I suppose even gravity doesn't come free and has to be paid for!
As you may have already gathered, this game is set "down under" and you score points by digging your way through the goldmine and for every gold nugget you manage to pocket. Rocks are blue (but then isn't everything after sixteen pints of Fosters?) and have the habit of getting in the way.
Then there are the natives (or misers as they are affectionately known) - six in all and each one a nasty piece of work. As you go around minding your own business, pocketing a few million here and there from the misers' mine, they chase after you. Your only real defence is to drop the blue rocks on their horrid little heads by tunneling under the rocks. To make things easy, first time out there is just the solitary miser in pursuit but the number increases as you progress.
Just like the average person, you have three lives. You must pocket the 13 gold nuggets, and if you succeed in doing that, then you gain another life.
To increase the tension you also have to beat the old clock, and the alarm bells begin to ring as your time runs low.
As you may have already learnt from the May issue of Acorn User (page 15), there is some lovely loading music produced by Melvyn Wright, which is well worth the cover price alone.
To summarise then, nothing too taxing but a good one for the kids (young and old) and well worth the £2.50 outlay. Gud' day!
Other BBC Model B Game Reviews By Bruce Smith
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