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Games Computing
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Publisher: CBS Electronics
Machine: Coleco Vision Games System
Published in Games Computing #2
Pepper II (CBS Electronics)
Here's a great maze game which is simply and sufficiently different from the popular game of Pacman but is just as addictive to play.
Instead of darting you way round the paths of a maze you move your Pepper angel along the walls, or tracks, which make up the maze. When you have chosen your skill level you see the maze display on the screen. At first it looks complicated but once you've read the instruction booklet thoroughly and died a few times on the screen during your first attempts all will become clear.
The maze is designed to form 'rooms' walled by the paths of the maze. The manual refers to the walls as zipper tracks because the graphics display looks a bit like the teeth of a zip. The fun and frustration of Pepper I comes when you start zipping up the tracks. As you move your Pepper angel along the tracks they will change colour, from blue to pink. This means that you are on your way to earning some points. When you have zipped all the tracks enclosing a room you earn some points, but be careful where your angel treads because if he backtracks over a path he's already covered he in effect unzips the track. And that means the angel has to tread that way again.
![Pepper II](/ills_small/coleco_vision/cbs_electronics/rom_carts/Pepper-2-000.gif)
And while you're desparately trying to work all that out, there are other things to get in your way. Particularly the roving eyes. These perform the same function as the ghosts you find in the game Pacman. They run around the tracks of the maze and if your Pepper angel bumps into one of them the angel is instantly devoured. And you lose one of your five lives (if playing on skill level one) or three lives (if on any other of the skill levels).
You'll notice that in some of the rooms of the maze are pitchforks. These are important because when you zip up one of these rooms it means that your angel's role is reversed and he can, for a few seconds, chase and eat the roving eyes - but you can only make a meal of them if they are coloured, and don't chance your luck too far because they have a nasty habit of reverting to their normal red colour just as you are about to eat one. Then you die instead.
Bonus points are up for grabs too, taking the form of safety pins or hammers. These are there for the taking if you enclose a room containing a bonus prize. In the centre of the maze is a room which sometimes contains a pitchfork and at other times contains a magic box. If you enclose this room and the magic box your angel turns into a pepper devil and you can once more eat up the roving eyes.
One particularly nasty character is the speedy green Zipper Ripper. He's only got one thing in mind and that's to unzip all the tracks round rooms that haven't been entirely enclosed. Another trick up his slimy green sleeve is that he can eliminate your pepper angel, if you are silly enough to let your angel get in contact with him.
And if you don't like the maze you start off in, you can travel into three other shaped mazes. To do this you must move your Pepper angel out one of the four exits located at the top, bottom. right and left of each maze. This automatically brings you. onto one of the alternative mazes.
All said and done I found this game in the Colevision' range of recently released cartridges to be the most fun. Mainly because it was much easier to grasp the controls of the game, it was a novel idea containing a lot on-screen action and added little game play incentives, as well as providing comparative value for money (as far as these cartridge prices go). Also the controls in this game didn't prove to be too awkward, although sometimes was, if anything, too responsive.