Previous Next

To begin with, I can see no relationship between the cover picture, a Vampire or Zombie type being in front of an old gothic building, and the game.

You control Spike, a small, averagely animated graphic creature, as he moves left or right or jumps. From the first screen he moves and jumps across a series of platforms in the caverns of the Golden Dream World.

As you wander you collect keys to open further doors and jump to press buttons to enable you to progress or to reach different platforms. Eventually, provided terminal boredom doesn't strike, you will come upon the Dream Sphere which will follow you back to the Hall of Dreams. This sometimes breaks away and leaves you forever - end of game, very irritating.

The usual variety of sprites try to cause your demise and you have five lives to succeed with.

There are many spin-off games from the original Manic Miner, some are even better, most are indifferent. This one is poor.

Admittedly there is the challenge of working out how to cross the screen and timing the jumps is often critical, but somehow it is all rather tired and flat band uninspired.

Sound is very basic, colours clash and detection of collisions appears to be at attribute rather than pixel level.

There is nothing actually wrong with the game as such but compare it with, say, Spiky Harold, a similar style game from Firebird at the same price, and it suffers considerably.

As a supporter of Firebird and all responsibly priced games, it pains me to have to say that it is not worth the money unless you are an avid platform games junkie desperate for a fix.