Previous Next

Phantomas is a mutant. No ordinary mutant mind, but one specialising in robbery, plunder and pillage. Intended for use in the battle of the red moons on Alpha Centauri, his talent for eluding capture has worked against his manufacturers and Phantomas escaped, becoming a free agent.

Stories of great wealth abounded in the local press and one that particularly caught his eye was details of the miser Goldter's horde secreted somewhere in his mansion on the clone planet Earth-Gamma. Naturally, the mansion was destined to be burglar-proof, but a little thing like that had never stopped Phantomas before.

The mansion comes in three different parts. Parked outside are a variety of flying craft which will transport you to assorted outposts. Then there is the palace itself and an underground complex. In order to 'liberate' the strongbox, Phantomas must find and throw thirty-six levers scattered about the house and grounds. There are also jewels to be found but you must first solve two riddles if you are to succeed. The game features many other little twists. When you fly off in the helicopter, you see a switch lying next to a pile of machinery. Pull the switch and you are immediately pursued by a giant snowball. The only way of escape is by rapidly hitting to keys a la Daley Thompson's Decathlon.

Energy cubes lie all over the place to replace whatever you lost in unfortunate collisions with the nasties. Another nice touch which separates this from run of the mill platform games is that Phantomas has two distinct types of jump available to him - a long jump for added distance and a high jump that enables him to leap tall buildings (well, small obstacles really) at a single leap.

There seems to be a tend at the moment for mixing platform games with arcade adventures in order to produce a new hybrid and Phantomas is definitely towards the top of the range. Full of original and inventive ideas, the eighty screens will keep you hunched over your keyboard for many a long hour.