Phantomas

by Alfonso Azpiri, Enrique Cervera Mateu, Nigel Fletcher
Dinamic Software
1986

Label: Code Masters
Author: Enrigue Cervera
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joysticks: various
Reviewer: Grhaam Taylor

If I have to bounce my way around any more mansions looking for treasure and dodging obstacles I may go mad.

Phantomas, one of the first releases from Codemasters, a whole new software label, has finally sent me over the edge...

Screen after screen of funny (ie not funny) shaped objects hopping backwards and forwards, objects you need to collect that flash, things that must be jumped over. It goes on...

I can't stand many more cute characters either. This one like an orange with feet and a beret leaps around unpredictably, the way the jump button is pressed seemingly having little relationship to the height of the jump.

I tired too of backgrounds constructed of featureless bricks and steps that don't have any function because you can jump over them.

There is, I suppose, something to be said for the sheer volume of material in the game, there are screens and screens of it. Three sections: one is a sort of junkyard of odd vehicles and rockets, the next is the palace and then there's the underground world.

Eighty different rooms it says on the front of the box. proudly. Well, different is stretching a point a bit. It's more a case that the silly sprites all come in various guises...

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Overall: 1/5

Summary: Another sub-Manic Miner budget bounce 'em up. No real original thought has been put into it but it's huge.

Transcript by Chris Bourne