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Once upon a time, in 1984, a young lad called Dave went to the market in Redcar and saw a couple of BBC games for sale for 50p each. The sad thing was... Dave didn't have a BBC, he had an Electron. However, these were the days when games were a tenner a pop, and Dave had heard that there were a few BBC games that worked on the Electron. So he decided to buy the games, which were both by Software Projects and were called Ewgeebez and Crypt Capers. And, do you know who that young lad was? Why, it was me. And do you know what I found when I tried to load them? Ewgeebez worked a treat and was 100% playable. And Crypt Capers didn't work at all.

Some forty years later however, Snuggy187 has worked his magic on the original BBC game and produced an Electron version. Actually, I'm not sure if he needed to work a lot of magic on it, as he mentioned that he had found an Electron version of the game on an old 5.25" disc labelled 'pre-release'. But anyway, whether he laboured over its production or not, it bears his moniker as publisher and originally came from Michael Jakobsen, who you may remember as the author of the epic Citadel, and the spiffy PD game Pantheon. Crypt Capers predates both of these, and likely was Michael's first published release.

It's a linear maze game of the type where you complete one sheet to proceed to the next. You are placed in a maze with a number of collectable objects displayed on the walls and, as you try to get from your start position to the exit door, you will need to keep a wary eye out for the patrolling nasties who will kill you instantly if they collide with you. You have a gun to shoot them with but it's easier said than done when the passages are so cramped and the nasties move so quickly. By the time you turn to face them, let alone fire your gun, they have already turned you into mush.

The first thing I noticed about this game was that the character you control is the very self-same sprite that graces Citadel. In this game he can't jump and, naturally enough, he's viewed from overhead. But it's unmistakeably him. The second thing I noticed was how fluidly the game moves, especially considering it was likely written in 1983. As for the rest, well, you've probably gleaned from the above description that there's not really a lot to the game itself. You run around, collect the artefacts, avoid or shoot the baddies and eventually manage to escape to a slightly harder sheet. And on it goes.

It's not a particularly easy game. It looks like it will be, but the cramped spaces mean you often get killed before you can react. And, to be honest, it's not the type of game that you really want to persevere with for long. The maze layouts do vary, but they're a bit too similar for my liking, and the higher concentration of nasties on the subsequent sheets makes you conclude that it's likely not really going to change much, no matter how long you play it. If it had worked on my Electron back in 1984 I suspect I would have played it to death (I actually managed to complete Ewgeebez) but in this new world I suspect most people will tire of it very quickly.