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Actually it was just Brad and Janet, the all-American bores, who dropped by to play The Rocky Horror Show computer game. Based on the stage play rather than the film and approved by Richard O'Brien, the show's creator, this version of the game from CRL was the very first game for the Spectrum 128 to arrive in our offices. It's very similar to the original 48K version in which either Brad or Janet is turned to stone by Frank N. Furter's Medusa machine and the other half of this happy couple has to seek out all the pieces of the De-Medusa machine which are scattered around the house.

You can choose to play either Brad or Janet and, as you wander around the house, you can collect keys to all sorts of unwholesome and strange rooms, not to mention weird characters like Riff-Raff, Magenta, Fast Eddie and Rocky himself. Magenta has the rather disturbing habit of ripping your clothes off when she bumps into you, and this prevents you from collecting any pieces of the De-Medusa until you've found them again. Riff-Raff is a little more conventional - he just zaps you with his pitchfork, while Eddie will try and run you down with his motorbike.

The inside of Frank's home is rather chic, with long staircases, old-fashioned cage lifts, four poster beds and so on, all drawn in fine detail. The game itself is more or less identical to the 48K version and the number of screens is the same, though a couple of bugs that were present in the original seem to have been cleared up. The additions are the special effects screen at the end, in which the house takes off, and (drum roll please) the music! At long last Sir Clive has put a decent sound chip into the Spectrum and, rather than the usual feeble BEEPs, this game is accompanied by a three-channel rendition of 'The Time Warp'. This is a "funked up" version of the song, also approved by Richard O'Brien, and hearing sounds like that coming from a Spectrum was quite an eye-opener (ear opener?) and we've had the game running in the office just to provide a bit of background music. Obviously, it's early days for the 128, but if this is an example of the sort of sounds it can create then we've got lots to look forward to.