Your Sinclair


Journey To The Centre Of Eddie Smith's Head
By Players
Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #12

Journey To The Centre Of Eddie Smith's Head

Who is Eddie Smith? And why should you want to get to the centre of his head? Perhaps it's something to do with the bomb that Eddie's threatening to blow up the world with, and it must be some bomb! Why do we first encounter Eddie in his laboratory in the company of a Teddy Bear, who says "Leave Eddie alone" if you try to either GET EDDIE or GET TEDDY? Who put the trampoline under the window ledge so, if you're foolhardy enough to jump, you just bounce right back again? And why does the coffee taste so awful? And who's that with the pointy beard clutching a condensor?

The answers to these and other questions may or may not lie in the depths of this adventure, where you have to defuse Eddie's bomb. Eddie is one of the country's top physicists who's unfortunately gone raving bonkers having bumped his head on a nuclear reactor.

One of the early problems you face is finding something to drink so you don't expire after the first 69 moves. Having found a coffee machine that responded to a bit of violence, I obtained a cup of coffee. I drank the coffee, and the program said OK, but the coffee tasted awful and my inventory still showed the coffee. I drank it again, same result, but despite this never-ending supply of coffee I still died of dehydration! I later found a friendly hostelry, the Green Potato Inn, but could I get a drink out of the landlord? I know I only had 50p but you'd think he'd have sold me something. I got the annoying feeling that it was the unfriendly vocabulary that was preventing me quenching my thirst.

And yet in spite of these faults in the program, which are usually the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned, I found myself enjoying the journey into Eddie's head - the chemist selling arsenic, the short-sighted optician, the butcher and his sausages, the building site brick and the tempting jeweller's shop window. I'd have welcomed a GRAPHICS OFF command, as the pictures are pretty duff stuff - you wouldn't catch me sitting on that toilet, I can tell you! You might catch me playing this adventure again, though. Give it a try.

Mike Gerrard

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