The poor design of Ulysses becomes even more apparent when you load up a game like Terrormolinos, brought to you via Melbourne House from the team who wrote Hampstead.
These jokey lads have now come up with the ultimate in package holidays and a program that, by virtue of its screen display and rather slow operation, betrays Quill origins. As we all know, The Quill isn't exactly renowned for producing complex games with huge vocabularies and multi-word input, but Terrormolinos is the perfect example of a game where limited facilities have been totally overcome by excellent design.
In this game, you can take photos, join in bull fights, hire taxis and go to the airport, speak Spanish (with a little help from the cassette cover), and shepherd your wife Beryl and two kids Doreen and Ken from beach to bar - all with two word inputs. That's quite an achievement in my opinion, and only goes to show that complex inputs and huge vocabularies aren't absolutely necessary for a great game.
The idea behind Terrormolinos is that you should not only go to Spain, but that you (and your family) should return in one piece. This is not, dear friends, very easy. Not only must you go there - you must prove you've gone there! And the only way to do that is to snap off some pretty piccies of, well, whatever you think will go
down well on film.
Believe me, there's no shortage of photogenic situations, but you've only got twelve exposures and must return with ten good pics, so any more than two boobs will lose you the game. I reckon even David Bailey would find this almost impossible and the only thing I took a picture of was so unbearably humiliating that I refuse to discuss it further.
If the pics are tricky - try keeping track of your family! If Our Ken isn't dawdling behind somewhere, then Beryl's fainting, or Little Doreen is wandering off on her ownsome. Despite the fact that you can't really interact with these characters (apart from "Call"ing them, which you have to do constantly to keep them together) they really come to life. The moment little Doreen comes running when you call her is enough to make you feel downright proud and parental - until you discover that you've missed the plane, or the taxi, or your footing on the ladder and ooops! That was a naughty word daddy said, wasn't it?
In fact the program doesn't understand much in the way of naughty words, but whatever the limitations of the vocabulary, or the occasional slowness of the responses, this is a game well worth looking out for. You can sit back and load up a holiday in your bedroom - I reckon you'll need one when you've finished it.