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One cannot review Kat Trap without mentioning it was the winning entry to issue 29 of Crash Magazine's, 'Genesis: Birth of a game' competition in 1986. Out of the 4000 entries received, a 14 year old, Jonathan Eggleton won the Grand Prize of the game idea contest, receiving £1,000 in prize money, plus a 10% royalty of games sold, a trip to Crash Magazine HQ and visits to Domark HQ and discussion sessions with the game coding team creating his game.

Design Design developed the game for all home computers and released it through Domark's new label at the time, Streetwise. The fictional story is set in the Future - the 24th Century to be exact. However, two hundred years earlier humans abandoned an uninhabitable Earth as a result of Solar Explosions. When they return, to their surprise they not only find the Earth habitable once more but inhabited and taken over by Cat Men. Humans send in their MTED (Mulit Terrain Exploration Droid), a type of hard armoured, egg shaped robot, with multiple weapon capabilities to go behind the defence lines of the Cat Men, reach their main battle computer and blast it to oblivion!

The beauty of Kat Trap is it is a unique portrayal of Jonathan Eggleton's imagination and ideas, coming to life more vibrantly on the Amstrad CPC than on other versions of the game. Design Design created a fantastic linear horizontal left to right scrolling shoot-'em-up, boasting atmospheric background screens with a delightful use of colours through a variety of different game zones. While only four colours would normally be used in the Amstrad CPC Mode 1, with the use of rasters, 8 different colours were used in the CPC game, giving this version much more sharpness and greater graphical detail of each of the environments - its retro look still holding up quite well today.

Movement of the MTED is determined by each screen. The MTED can move along quite speedily on flat surfaces or it may be required to jump over obstacles and enemies. How does a hard armoured MTED robot jump? Like a robot should - quite awkwardly - it is quite retro charming in its own way. Each enemy sprite is original for each section of the game with the Cat Men appearing at almost every location. To defeat each enemy requires a certain type of weapon. For example a laser will kill off the white fish while a spear will kill off the angry black dog-like fish.

Some weapons can be used for multiple enemies too. There are six different weapons plus grenades to collect to provide your MTED with the necessary firepower to eradicate all of the enemies, but be careful, because the ammo and lives are not infinite.

Kat Trap has a wonderful array of enemy sprites. The amount by today's standards is not huge but for the time this would have been considered to be quite high. Each enemy character drawn fits the style of the game, and their animation and movement has been executed with great care. The game is considerably beatable up to the point to reach the main battle computer of the Cat Men, where you are required to deactivate the Death Grid by shorting fifteen electrical pulses within a minute and thus destroy it!

With Kat Trap there is always something different on each location like getting your timing right when moving through the 'Scrap Crusher' machines or trying to navigate those dreaded rolling boulders in the 'Ruined City'. However the successful return to base and completion of the game largely depends on the random appearance of the enemies, remaining lives and the ammo left available! It also has a bug where if you perform a jump incorrectly you get stuck.

Amstrad Action gave it a 'Rave' review, scoring it at 83% (AA #17). Personally, I think it's a really fun and enjoyable game, if you love shoot-'em-ups and blasting away at lots of enemies you will love this game, but I would have given it a higher score if it was properly designed with enough ammo on the way back to the base to complete the game. A tip when playing: When in zones with Cat Men, release your weapons bullets fire from the previous screen, this way they will vanish, having no time to shoot at you!