C&VG


Mouse Trap

Publisher: CBS Electronics
Machine: Coleco Vision Games System

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #23

Mouse Trap

If you are looking for a maze game for your brand new Colecovision then the choice so far is pretty limited.

In fact there is just one, Colecovision's own Mouse Trap - based on the Exidy arcade game of the same name.

Mouse Trap is considerably more difficult to learn than Pac-Man which perhaps explains its comparative failure in the arcades.

Mouse Trap

However, this added difficulty is a bonus for home use - where you can have an infinite number of games without the arcade shutting or running out of cash!

You are a mouse running through a maze eating pieces of cheese as you travel. Bonus items appear at random throughout the maze such as keys, spectacles and safety pins.

There are also larger cheeses worth more points and dog bones. When you have collected several bones you can push the dog button which turns you into vicious bulldog and set out after the cats that are trying to thwart your mouse's progress.

Just as in Pac-Man, your score multiplies according to the number of cats you can catch.

Gameplay is brought a stage beyond the basic maze idea by the ability to change the shape of the maze as the game takes place.

A series of gates can be closed and opened to prevent the cats getting at you.

At the higher skill levels, there is also a hawk which dives at you - although I must say the creature looked more like an aircraft than any species of feathered friend that I've spotted in the English countryside.

The bird is also easy to dodge and is more of frill than adding anything to the game.

Colecovision's unplayable joysticks at at their worst in this game where manoeuvrability is the key to high scores.

Verdict

An excellent maze game, but will someone, somewhere, please design a decent joystick for this exceptional new machine.