Previous Next

I can imagine that working in a fast food drive-through restaurant must be, at times, quite hectic. Not that I've ever done the job myself, but nonetheless I've at least been on the other side of the serving window a few times. And how annoying it is to wait for the supposed 'fast food', or when the order that you're handed from the (usually student-aged) server is incorrect, or even being sent to the wrong window to collect someone else's sustenance. Usually, though, things did run smoothly.

If I did work in the sort of quality eatery that Jonathan Cauldwell depicts in Banger Management, for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, that would at least be an interesting if surreal experience. You see, you don't cook the food and pass it over to serve it; the food roams around and must be guided to one of three window outlets as the order comes in. To do this, you can change some of the platforms with your marker to direct the pesky porkers, cups of tea, sandwiches and even healthy nourishment such as apples as appropriate. The orders appear above one or more of three windows to the left of the screen, of up to three at a time. Each food item can leap, or be forced left or right. There's nasty blocks to avoid, which will kill off your stock, and more drop from the top of the screen to replenish it after a set time. If you don't get the order to the window within the set limit, or manoeuvre the stock incorrectly, you get a complaint. With three customer complaints (per level), you'll be subject to disciplinary action, coming in the form of a verbal warning and then a written warning. Beyond that, you find yourself fired. However, if you fulfil all of the orders without any problems, then you get a star to go on your name badge - lucky you!

What we essentially have here is a kind of Lemmings-alike game, in that you can end up with many roamers to guide. As they might group together, it can be difficult to see what is what, but this is entirely intentional, as a good player will try to separate each group of foodstuff as much as possible to make things a little easier. But with three windows to serve, all of which can have hungry customers waiting on the other side at any time, even the best-laid plans are soon laid to rest. My only real complaint is that you could have an order for a sausage and a cup of tea when you only have tea cups to hand and can be waiting for the next lot of sausages to drop down, by which time it can all be too late. However, the level designs are more devious than this.

Banger Management is simply a superb, occasionally frustrating and completely manic and addictive Speccy game that really must be played, especially if you like to see a lot happening on screen. With 128K machines, there's some lovely, bouncy music composed by Matt Westcott as well. Mr. Cauldwell is back to his best.

Product: Banger Management
Price: £Free (Cassette TBA)
Developer: Jonathan Cauldwell
Publisher: Byte Back - www.byte-back.info/hbchallenge.html
Platform: 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum

Jonathan Cauldwell is back to his malevolent best with this excellent and warped platform-cum-puzzle game.