Your Sinclair


The Inheritance: Panic In Las Vegas
By Infogrames
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #17

The Inheritance: Panic In Las Vegas

When I first loaded this game up I admit to thinking it was rather poorly documented and took a little time to get into, but I'm glad I persisted as it's starting to give me a great deal of enjoyment, despite some major irritations.

It's an icon-driven game, so it's more a case of cursor control than your actual GET LAMP, DROP TROUSERS, and the basic storyline is that you're living in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1960's, in a squalid room in an apartment block. You haven't paid your rent for months, and life looks pretty grim till you receive a lawyer's letter informing you that you're heir to an inheritance from your rich aunt. As if all this wasn't implausible enough, there's a condition to the inheritance - you have to repeat your aunt's feat of 30 years earlier, when she won a million dollars in one night at Las Vegas. Luckily for you the letter also contains $200 and an airline ticket to Las Vegas. Unluckily for you, the flight leaves almost at once, meaning you have to pack your bags and find a way of getting out past the landlady and various neighbours who impede your progress by insisting you return various things that you've borrowed.

The game's in three parts, the first being 'In the Building', and this is where the cursor control comes in. You start in your own room, the graphic of which takes up most of the screen, and you move a cursor around as in Infogrames' earlier Vera Cruz, this time using the DELETE key to move objects about and open and close cupboards and doors. Place the cursor over the doorhandle and you go through the door to the corridor outside, where you can move around and try your luck opening other doors.

In your room is a bag, and you can store eight objects in this, though you only have one key to cover all operations. In the cupboards are a variety of objects, from broken radios to battered trumpets, but you can only display one at a time on the screen. You can't flip through the objects, you have to pick one up in order to have the next one displayed, and then drop the one you've just picked up to allow you to pick up object two and so see what object three is.

Part two is 'At the Airport', which so far seems to be on a similar basis to part one, which I have to keep going back to as I discover I haven't got the things that I need. Part three is 'In Las Vegas', and I haven't seen that yet as mean old Infogrames didn't give me the code that you need to load up each separate part. In part three you can then choose to enter a variety of gambling games which you're given the rules for, in your attempt to win $1 million. A great deal of graphic complexity has gone into the program, and it's certainly an adventure with a difference. I don't normally go for icon-driven games, but this one won me over. And if you do win $1 million, by the way, I hope you'll remember who recommended the game to you.

Mike Gerrard

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