Personal Compuer Games
1st February 1984
Author: SC
Publisher: Arcadia
Machine: Oric 48K/Atmos
Published in Personal Computer Games #3
Mushroom Mania
Mushroom Mania is manic indeed and is one of the better adaptations of Centipede available for the home market.
Your task - just in case you didn't know - is to blast everything in sight, which in this version includes centipedes, spiders, and indestructible 'pac-people' as they dance up and down a screen filled with mushrooms.
If there's nothing around to kill, you can take it out on the fungi - provided you're busy destroying all known life forms, your score will continue to increase.
In this version you select a one or two player game and adjust the skill level (0 to 9) before you start - the higher the level the faster the action. Your bugblaster prints up in the bottom centre of the screen and moving left, right, up and down is done by pressing the appropriate arrow keys, so there's no problem remembering which ones to use.The firing system is unusual - there is no single shot option, you just press the space bar and your gun will blast away continuously until you press the space bar again, whereupon it falls silent.
Continuous fire means you can spend your brief existence concentrating on the movement keys, which is something of an advantage, but the action is fast enough to stop the game getting too easy.
Each time you lose one of your six blasters you start again in the centre, which can be risky if the program decides a spider should start in the same place. But, apart from this occasional annoyance, Mushroom Mania remains one of the better games currently available for the Oric.
