THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE PSSST! PUBLISHER Ultimate Play The Game (ACG) AUTHORS Chris and Tim Stamper YEAR 1983 DESCRIPTION Shoot'em and collect'em up. INSTRUCTIONS: GROWING INSTRUCTIONS Plant these seeds in good soil, growth can be speeded up by collecting all compost bags, keeping young shoots free from all garden pests and by looking after the leaves, which collect sunlight. Remember, the more leaves the plant has, the faster it will grow. As the young shoots give off an exotic aroma, the plant is especially prone to and will in fact attract hoards of Interstellar Space Slugs, Scuttling Leaches and Menacing Midges. Use of correct repellants will prevent all these attacks. Please note: Only approximately 20% of all plants will blossom and reveal Robbie's Ultimate dream. Growing time approximately 2 to 5 minutes. CONTROLS: CONTROLLING YOUR ROBOT Your Robot is fully controllable using either the keyboard or a joystick. KEYBOARD CONTROLS LEFT Robot will move left by using the 'Q' key on the third row. RIGHT Robot will move right by using the 'W' key on the third row. UP Robot will move up by using the 'E' key on the third row. DOWN Robot will move down by using the 'R' key on the third row. FIRE Robot will fire the various spray cans by using the 'T' key on the third row. PAUSE The game may be paused by depressing the CAP SHIFT key on the first row. JOYSTICK CONTROLS PSSST can be controlled using KEMPSTON Competition Pro Joysticks, please write for further details. CHEATS: SEQUELS/PREQUELS/ RELATED GAMES: Pssst was released in mid to late 1983 along with Jetpac, Cookie, and Transam. INLAY CARD TEXT: Robbie the robot, sits in his garden, fetching the odd bag of compost to help his prize Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil grow. When suddenly, the whole garden is invaded by the most devilish, destructive insects you could imagine. But Robbie is prepared! Equipped with three spray cans of the latest insect repelling drops, smoke and streamers, Robbie bravely fights to keep all of the deadly garden pests at bay. All he has to do is figure out which spray kills each insect outright, as the wrong spray will only stun the momentarily. If Robbie leaves his plant unnatended the insects will swarm all over it, eat the leaves and the plant will wilt, shrivel back and die. Little vermin. Leave my plant alone, Oy! My plant's dying. No! No! Nasty bugs sucking the life from my Thyrogodian Megga Chrisanthodil, making her shrink, wilt and die. I'll soon put a stop to their little game, quick Spray-O-This'll sort 'em out. There! Take that, and that, Ha! Ha! Mustn't die, mustn't die. It's got to flower, it must do. It said on the packet, "Takes between two and five minutes to grow", it can't be much longer, won't be long now. Why! you little...Quickly, get the Super Space Slug Spray and then the Leech Laser. Quick, quick. They breed so fast, can't hold them back for long. Hurry! Hurry!..Arrggg... FEATURES Full 8 way movement. Massive every hit explosions. Lives left display. High score display. One and Two player games. Pause button. Fantastic sound effects. Insect Stun. Rapid Continious Fire. Weapon Compartments. Joystick control option. Fully growing Chrisanthodil - plus growing leaves. Arcade standard game. Super game tunes. Three different insect spray cans. Compost bags. Fly swatters. Bonus point features. Thousands of insects. On screen scoring Flowering Chrisanthodil SCORE LINE The Score Line displays: One player and two player scores One player and two player lives left Highest score obtained. Various game options are available including Joystick/keyboard select and 1 or 2 player options, upon start of game. SCORES/REVIEWS: SNAPSHOTS/IRL'S: FACTS ABOUT THE GAME: Pssst was among the first batch of games (others mentioned above) to come from the (what was to be) legendary software house. Whilst other software companies were busy writing arcade conversions in very poor code and graphics. Ultimate were making arcade quality (at the time) games with bright, bold colours, great sound, and above all, GREAT GAMEPLAY. NOTES: