Mastertronic
£2.99
Crikey! Gregory has lost his clock! Poor lad, he'll have to resort to using his hundred pound gold watch! No, seriously, he put his clock on his bedroom chest of drawers and went for a kip. A naughty ghost came and stole his clock (along with everything else in his bedroom including his body!) and scattered bits all around the dream world. Greg must now find all the pieces of his clock and put them back together to wake him up in the morning.
Different objects must be used in different situations to progress through the adventure. Don Priestly, the programmer, the man behind such classic games as Trap Door, Flunky and Popeye, has his own inimitable style, and it's used again to great effect. The great thing about Don Priestly's games is that, despite the huge graphics, there is no colour clash at all. This doesn't mean there isn't any colour though - there's loads!! It's simply all been used so that no clash is visible. The cartoony style graphics are excellent, with Greg clad in his PJ's looking a bit like Jack The Nipper. The puzzles are just complex enough to keep you playing, and the different action sequences, like the helicopter and tank bits, add that extra addictiveness.
Gregory Loses His Clock is simply wonderful! Buy it today, and I guarantee you will never regret it.
BARGAIN BASEMENT
A bumper New Year collection of cheapie rubbish (whoops!) from that king of the skin-flints, Marcus Berkmann, and his preppy pauper (ha ha) Jonathan Davies.
Mastertronic
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann
The world is divided on the merits or otherwise of Don Priestly, creator of Popeye, Trap Door and sundry other braintinglers. Critics, naturally enough, love him - there's nothing else like his gaems, with their enormous sprites, devilish puzzles and extraordinarily hard gameplay - but the punters disagree strongly. Some find the games too slow, some too fussy and others too damn hard. I'm on Don's side, though. Yes, the games - and Gregory Loses His Clock is no exception - are viscously difficult. Yes, there's no compromise with the fainthearted who wonder what's going on. But, my, what good games. This one sees the young Gregory of the title go to bed, nod off and immediately have his beloved alarm clock snaffled by thieving ghosts. Greg then gets himself thrust into Dreamworld, and has to find five bits of his alarm clock before 12 o'clock in order to escape. Every screen presents a new conundrum, leading you first to scratch your head in frustration, then get violent as you fail to work it out, then open the bubbly when you finally crack it. The sprites are as vast as ever, the strategies needed to get anywhere are often extremely sophisticated, and, best of all, I've got the cheat sheet and you haven't. This is the best new cheapie I've seen in yonks, if not since I started writing this page 18 months ago, and certainly one of the few to merit the coveted Megagame sticker. Well played, Don - and, meanwhile, anyone who likes their minds stretched before breakfast should invest the necessary quidlets immediately.
Label: Mastertronic
Author: Don Priestley
Price: £.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins
Whoever wrote Gregory Loses His Clock (fnar!!) must have had a supper of pickled eggs, camembert cheese sandwiches, sprouts and salami the night before. It's definitely the product of a disturbed stomach, if not a disturbed imagination.
At first glance GLHC (weird title, but more accurately descriptive than say Extremely Strange Adventure) looks dire; I honestly thought it was one of these educational programs where little men with strangely shaped heads learn to count up to seven. In fact the star of the show IS a little man with a strange shaped head, but this is an arcade adventure not edsoft, thank you.
The crux, yes, the crux of the matter is that inoffensive little Gregory is prone to nightmares which take on a disturbing reality. During one of them his alarm clock is stolen and hidden in five parts in dreamland; if he doesn't retrieve the parts, he won't wake up on time (or ever, we assume).
As you can see from the pix there may be nothing remarkable about the plot, but the graphics are most odd; there huge and chunky, which is why the whole do looks like a Mr Crazy Counts to Ten program. The fact remains that using the keyboard or joystick you can interact with the backgrounds to pick up objects, put them in your pocket, and use them to negotiate the obstacles in your path.
Typical challenges include the Horrible Rising and Falling Pillars of Doom, which you have to walk across without being mashed to a pancake against the roof; the Fountains of Nastiness which bar you from entering various doors, and which can only be switched off by finding the correct waterwheels; and the Crazy Flying Sparks from Hell, which you can fight off using a popgun.
In later stages, finding a jumping bean allows you to jump over dangers, but it's hard to judge how extensive the game is because I find it a bit hard to play; if anything it's too easy, the solutions too obvious, so you don't tend to see them immediately. Perhaps it's really aimed at younger players.
Though there are some nice touches such as selectable messages giving you clues and showing the time remaining, there aren't any really snazzy graphics or sound effects. You might enjoy GLHC, or it might give you indigestion.
Mastertronic
Spectrum/Amstrad £2.99
One night, while bubble-headed Gregory slept, an evil force sucked his alarm clock into another dimension. If he's going to wake up in time for school, he'll have to send his dreamy self tom find it - and this is where you come in, of course. It's one of those games in which you have to cart objects from location to location, solving puzzles by standing on a hat box here and dropping a cheese sandwich there.
It's a Don Priestley adventure, which like his earlier Popeye, Trap Door and Flunk features huge colourful sprites. More variety makes Gregory loses His Clock Don's best to date, and even if you didn't spring a tenner for his earlier work, you'd have to be a bit of a stingy bot not to shell out three quid for this 'un.
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