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The Astonishing Adventures of Mr Weems and the She Vampires has been through a few marketing changes recently. The game, by RamJam, was originally going to be sold for around about £5 by a mystery company, with all the instructions you needed to make as many copies as you wanted. The idea being you would send the company, as a matter of honour a quid or so on every one you distributed. The game at that time was known as Mr Weems and the Sex Vampires. This was a bizarre idea and didn't make it too far, past the twelve bottles of Pils in the pub stage. Now the game, under its new title, is to be sold by Piranha for £8.95. This is a more conventional plan.

The game is yet another Gauntlet. This is not so bad because nobody else is selling a Gauntlet variant this week so the game might do OK. The setting even looks like the stoney alley ways and mazes of Gauntlet only the deadly weebles being different. In this case you get a pudgy bespectacled bank manager as hero and assorted horror film bit part actors as the bad guys (and girls as it happens).

Mr Weems runs around firing his rather pathetic garlic bullets at everything in sight except - keys (to get through doors. dummy!), blood (restores energy), Garlic Bombs (blow everything on screen away), smart Garlic (gives Weems temporary immunity) and the assorted vital objects that you need to collect in order to kill the Great She Vampire on the final screen. If you manage to kill all the bloodsuckers on a screen you get to start blowing up coffins - which is fun.

There are a few secret exits to be found, a few transporters to shunt you about and the only really significant difference between levels is the colour. The effect of the garlic bomb is, however, pretty impressive - serious flashing. Different monsters require more or less garlic hits - this is strategy of sorts.

Graphically Mr Weems is OK, though the way the screen flips between sections is a bit crummy. The only real problem is that the large number of small (but detailed) graphics makes the screen look pretty confusing - you better make sure your TV is well tuned in. Ours wasn't and caused much heartbreak and I shot keys and smart Garlic a plenty.

The game isn't going to win any awards, but Mr Weems is a perfectly adequate Gauntlet variant, at £5.00 it would have been quite a bargain. As it is it gets a definite maybe for those not yet weary...

Gauntlet variant with horror figure and Garlic. Nicely executed, suffers from being one of a dozen or so similar titles.