Previous Next

The saga of crazy-wacky student antics continues with Vyvyan, Rick, Mike and Neil competing for social domination in their seedy student digs. Comrade Bolowski, their landlord, has had enough of their slovenly living habits and is turfing all four out. You must help them pack up their belongings so they can leave.

To start, you choose which Young One you want to become, and a different set of belongings has to be gathered up for each character. The characters all act appropriately: Mike, for instance, wants to take his loud ties while Rick won't leave without his anarchic girlie dresses. Each character has to collect his belongings and put them into the appropriate moving-out container. Rick packs a rucksack, Neil has a wheelbarrow, Mike uses a suitcase and Vyvyan chooses the bin liner. Once these have been located it's a case of pottering around the house trying to get things together. Packing is made difficult because the other three also pick up some of your character's property.

The game is controlled via a nested menu system, with three main options: Action; Talk and Walk. Action enables you to pick up, drop, open, close, eat or smash objects. Talk puts words into your characters speech bubble paying attention to what is said provides clues to the whereabouts of objects. The walk option allows movement round the property. Walk' accesses a list of rooms, and selecting the required location moves your character. The radio and T.V to provide hints, too.

Once your character has packed up all his belongings he is free to leave the house and search for somewhere new to crash for the night...

Control keys: P page up menu, ENTER page down menu, 0 to select
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: not very subtle
Graphics: just adequate
Sound: blips and burps
Skill levels: one
Screens: split screen play area

'There is nothing about this game that stands out or impresses me in any way. It's unplayable, unaddictive and generally boring. The graphics, although colourful, are full of colour clash; the character animation is jerky and a bit flickery and the sound is limited to the odd spot effect here and there. The one thing that really surprised me was the swearing! It isn't something that I've come across before in computer games. There isn't much to this game. I doubt even ardent fans of the series will be impressed'

'I realty wanted this to be a good game, but it's the exact opposite: useless. The inlay is highly amusing, but largely irrelevant to the game! The things said inside the speech bubbles are initially quite amusing, as you see the characters saying things you hear them say on the T.V., but after a while the language gets pretty appalling. The graphics are small and uninteresting, and colour clashes occur everywhere. I think The Young Ones is really substandard. Orpheus' slogan reads 'never look back'. I wouldn't waste my time even turning around for a game that's as bad as this.'

'Yes, the TV series was great, but I'm afraid The Young Ones computer game is a terrible let down. All it seems to be is an excuse for Orpheus to put a few swear words in the game and think that 'the kids' will love it. One problem with the idea, though, you've got to have a game to start with. Not so in this case. The only relevance to the TV series is that there are four 'guys' living in a building. You can't really play The Young Ones seriously in my opinion - more fun is had watching the other people in the house walking around saying very stupid things. When I played the game properly I got very bored, as there isn't much to it. I can't recommend it.'