Previous Next

Alternative Software - with the help of the Dreaming Djinn, alias Charles Sharpe of Wizbiz and S.M.A.S.H.E.D. fame - has come up with something for frustrated cricket buffs to play during the football season,

Cricket Crazy is a two part adventure written using Incentive's Graphic Adventure Creator. Like many Charles Sharpe games, it has a novel approach to what could be an almost plausible situation.

You are the England team manager during a trip to the island of St. Malcolm. Hidden deep in the seas of the Caribbean, the island is well and truly cut off from civilisation. With abundant natural food supplies and few worries other than the occasional hurricane, the islanders have become obsessed with cricket.

Due to its small size and minimal political importance, St. Malcolm, for all its fanaticism for the game, has never managed to attract the attention of the major cricketing nations. Until, that is, the British Government realised that the island, home to millions of sea birds, was a vast natural source of guano.

Accompanying the players is Giles Amfitz, a chinless wonder from the lower echelons of the government. His task is to use the goodwill generated by the cricket tour to persuade the local officials to give us the sole rights to their extremely useful, if a bit smelly, natural resource.

The game starts with the team travelling in a somewhat dilapidated DC-10 somewhere over the Caribbean. A stroll down the aisle will identify a few of the team members - Ram Botham, Bill Edmonds and Larry Lamb appear to be the only well known players awake at this time.

Another passenger, who is all too awake, is a shady foreigner, an employee of an Albanian fertiliser company and is trying to forestall developments by hijacking the plane to his home country. In the ensuing melee the pilot catches a bouncer and is laid senseless. You now have to show your mettle and get the team safely to their destination. Having little faith in all-rounders, Giles Amfitz grabs the only parachute and floats away leaving you to cope with the situation.

Once on terra firma, you might think your troubles are over. Not so. Decisions, decisions... a manager's job is never dull. Quicksands, cannibals, an introverted apeman and the local police all pose a few problems that you will have to solve before the big match. Do you, or don't you accept a friendly against the local youngsters? All in a day's work for some, but can you rise to the occasion?

Having solved these everyday details you may finally get to part two and the reason for the team travelling half way round the world. At the last minute, Ike Gating is unable to take the field.

Who will now captain England's finest? You have probably guessed who has to stand in and do his heroic best. Not only must you tell Ram Botham how to bowl and the Gooch how to bat, but you must also decide on overall fielding tactics. The home team will do their darndest to win by an innings, and they have names that will bring back a few memories to followers of the noble art of the willow versus leather.

Graphics are limited but colourful and, for the text-only among you, they can be turned off. The parser is fairly standard GAC, accepting multiple commands and, on occasion, somewhat more complex inputs than just verb and noun. A reasonable vocabulary list for each part of the adventure is given on the cassette inlay, but expect to think of others for yourself.

Cricket Crazy has a lot of humour and is as whacky as previous adventures from this fertile source. It is important to EXAMINE or SEARCH all sorts of things, and you must not be put off by a large number of boringly negative responses. As low cost adventures go, it has to be good value. There is nothing seamy except the bowling.