Raise Your Heartbeat

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Described as 'a cross between Ghostbusters and The Gauntlet', Tynesoft's new offering Phantom, puts you in the tole of a professor, arms you with a trusty EPA (Experimental Nuclear Accelerator), and sets you off to rid four buildings of ghosts.

The game begins with a cute introduction featuring a haunted chimney pot and the professor advancing in his car. You start in 'Ye Olde Inn' and must collect a key before progressing to the next room.

The games uses Mode 5 with interrupts, to achieve a six-colour display. The screen is divided into two sections. The upper part shows a plan view of the current room and the lower part, your current status.

Ghosts appear at random and proceed to make life as difficult (and short) as possible. Your present state of health is shown on an oscilloscope display. You start with an ECG (pulse) rate of 70, which rises on contact with a ghost.

I didn't get very far through the game but came to the conclusion that there was little to do. I also found the game too difficult to play. Ghosts appear to raise your ECG rate without actually making contact, making death inevitable. Also, it can take more than one shot to kill a ghost, which drains your energy all too readily. This may be intentional, but irritating.

With all the points against it, I can't really recommend Phantom. If you are after something in the The Gauntlet vein, there are btter games on the market, like Bug-Byte's Dunjunz. What could have been a great game, given some careful thought, is simply boring. It's really a case of 'nice graphics - shame about the game'.

Robert Miller