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Ah Diddums from Imagine Software started as a professional promotion campaign complete with the customary long wait. In the end, Imagine Software turned out to be imaginary. Now everybody is imitating the promotion, this is one 16K Spectrum game that will have to stand up for itself.

Ah Diddums has one of the silliest and most downright complicated scenarios yet invented for a cassette insert. It's done in daddybabyteddy language, presumably to get you in the mood, rather than as a reflection on the documentation department.

You're this teddy. Your baby is crying so you must comfort it, so you try to climb out of the toy box. But if you succeed, Mummy and Daddy will turn out the light and prevent the other toys from playing.

So that's why you're controlling a TB being pursued by numerous toys in an effort to escape from a toy box. Defending you from soldiers, spinning tops, trains and so on is a pea shooter (of course) and a friendly Jack-in-the-box.

You escape by picking up coloured boxes and stacking them in order on a ladder at the top of the screen. Once you've got the boxes right, you escape the toy box only to discover the first really ridiculous loophole in the plot.

Poor old Ted. He's working from inside a set of 99 nested toyboxes. So there's level after level, toybox after toybox to get through.

The packaging fits in with the Imagine philosophy. This is how it should be done although it could do with the Fuller ad being removed. People gave this up with brooks and records a long time ago.

Ah Diddums recognises and uses joysticks. Fuller ones. If you've bought someone else's joysticks there's no need to despair. There's an order form for the Fuller range included.

Now all Imagine has to do is rewrite the instructions so that they are as clear as the copyright notice. For starters, why can no one document which way up to load the cassette? "Printed side upwards" it says. Fine... there are two.

Imagine guarantees the cassette for life, including freebie replacements if it does not load first time. The review copy did load... after three attempts. Perhaps I should send it back.

Ah Diddums has no on-line instructions. Just a full-screen coloured toy-box, full of flsahing toys and shapes. Imagine is proud of graphics but they're not quite right. Animation is fast enough but everything flashes and jitters.

The Spectrum's two colours per character block rule means that there's a horrible mess when two objects cross. And Ah Diddums isn't without its vanishing and mysterious objects.

It's such a shame because Ah Diddums is simply over-ambitious. It would look great on a true eight-colour display.

Getting started proved well nigh impossible. It took a while to figure out the controls. Almost all of the keys do something or other though you only need six to play. This is supposed to give you a choice of keys but only results in a confusion of fingers.

It goes something like this. Every alternate character on the bottom row moves left or right. A, D, G, J or L on the second row move down while Q, E, T, U or O on the third row move up. In between these, W, R, Y, I or P picks up or puts down any objects the teddy is touching. S, H, F, K or ENTER is used to throw objects teddy is carrying or fire the infamous pea-shooter.

So I rushed Teddy round box one, picked up the blocks and stacked them as instructed. Climb up ladder. No go. Charge ladder from base of screen. Bangs Teddy's head. Rearrange ladder. No help. Pick up the pea-shooter and destroy everything in sight.

Hint: Shooting the last baddy on any screen ends in almost certain plasticine. Not nice.

Six people tried and none of us could figure out what you were supposed to do. After 1.5 hours I phoned technical support at Imagine. A word of help and I was able to progress to an entertaining and original game.

The blocks may look right but the lower ones can be out of order. So you stand on the ladder and keep pressing 'Pick up' around ten times to move on to the next level. But putting a block down while you're on the ladder automatically puts it in the right place. End of problem, start of game.

Ah Diddums gets to be great fun and it's quite hard by level 5. Each level brings more toys and more temper. You have to work hard with the pea-shooter. Teddy gets five lives per game but each one starts back at the beginning of the current level 1: blocks scattered, pea-shooter hidden behind spinning tops, soldiers back. Oh, and that damn train waiting in the corner.

Ah Diddums is an original and fun game. It's a shame that Imagine has produced an unhelpful cassette insert and probably the first arcade game that needed hotline support to get going. Maybe I should retreat to the safety of dBase.

Ah Diddums also suffers from the limitations of the Spectrum but I'll bet it will make owners of other machines jealous (Ah Diddums, indeed!) It's survived its false start and it's going to be a hit.