Previous Next

I am glad I didn't buy this game but got a present of it. It would have been a shame to waste good money on it. After having played so many good and enjoyable games on my Spectrum, this was one of the worst offerings I had yet seen, and must be a new low for Spectrum software.

You begin the game by finding yourself in Count Kreepie's castle. You have to find your way through five mazes, kill Count Kreepie and find his treasure trove. Along the way, you have to kill man-eating, blood-sucking bats. A certain amount of bats have to be killed before you can move onto the next maze. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?

When you first load the program, there is no screen, and thus you have no nice picture to look at. There is nothing wrong with this and it does save time when you're loading your program. The instructions in the program are quite good. Then, the worst happens. You have to wait approximately two minutes before you move into the first maze. The program is generating the maze during this time. After getting through a maze, you have to wait another two minutes before you get onto the next maze. And I thought computers were supposed to speed things up. More fool me.

The maze isn't too difficult to get through and a map of it can be got each time you kill a bat, but the game draws the map line by line and this takes about twenty seconds. Once again, you're sitting down, twiddling your thumbs. The graphics of the maze are pretty ordinary and at times the windows on the side wall are out of persepctive, giving the program a very amateurish look. You only get one life and so, if you're killed, you have to wait another two minutes before you can start again.

If you're a person with plenty of time to be looking at blank computer screens, this game is for you. Transylvanian Tower also probably suits players with a heart condition and is liable to be a good way to put the kids to sleep at night. But if you're a space invader/Krazy Kong fan, stay well away from this.