Another playable Code Masters release is Fast Food (68%). Despite the strange moniker, this is actually a souped-up version of Pac-Man! The hero, however, resembles that old egghead, Dizzy. Hamburgers chase the oval hero around many mazes, while he tries to eat all the other food. Special abilities may be obtained, including burger-eating, by collecting various objects. What really disappoints is the pedestrian pace at which the action takes place. But amusing, animated screens every three levels provide an incentive to keep playing. The neat presentation is improved further on 128K machines by the inclusion of a neat in-game tune.
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Code Masters
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann
Those Oliver twins seem to knock out a new game about once a week. Don't they eat? Don't they sleep? Don't they surround themselves with luscious dusky young lovelies willing to obey their every command, no matter how illegal or physically inconvenient? (Doesn't look like it. Ed) Oh well, never mind, 'cos at least they're busy writing Speccy games for us mere gamesters. This one is aimed at the younger end of the market, which is another way of saying that practised Spec-chums may find it a touch dreary. Pac-Man is the inspiration here, which means 30 different-ish mazes in which Dizzy (yup, same one) runs around avoiding nasties and chasing goodies - bits of scoff, in fact - which have to be consumed before you move on to the next level. The other main inspiration is Bubble Bobble, and so anyone who really fancies playing a sort of scaled-down combination of the two will probably love it. As it's for the kids, ifs pretty easy - it's also beautifully presented and, in a splendid new step for the Code Masters empire, has neither a photograph of the Darling brothers nor a 'press' quote by David Darling anywhere on the cassette inlay. Hip hooray. For us more sophisticated mites, of course, it's snore city, but then should everything be designed for unashamed thrillseekers like us? Quite. It's not a Dizzy game, though - not in the sense that Diz fans would understand, at least. Leave it to the sprogs.
Label: Codemasters
Author: The Oliver Twins
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Andi Cummings
Remember those first generation computer games which all involve chasing things in and out of mazes and getting bonus points? Thought those games werre gone forever? Think again. Because Codemasters are bringing them back in the form of FAST FOOD but is it a tasty little snack or just plain indigestible?
FAST FOOD is a maze game with a vengeance. Bits of assorted junk food are spread around various parts of it, you eat the food to gain points and eat the other objects that appear randomly.
Some of these enable you to increase or reduce your speed - some let you eat the monsters chasing you (ring any bells?). The best food lets you appear and disappear which makes it difficult for the monsters to find you The game is not, as you may have gathered, astoundingly original. But there is enough here in the gameplay and graphics not to make it a total yawn.
The objective in the game is for you to clear as many screens as possible, by eating your way through all the food and getting bonus points by eating objects and the monsters chasing you. I got through around 15 levels, though there are more. There are no great differences in layout, the only changes to each level being in the colour, more monsters chasing you on every sheet and a slight increase in speed on later levels.
The graphics are reasonable but not astounding. There just isn't that much you can do with a yellow blob, though the various foods ie: hamburgers, chicken and pizzas are all done reasonably well. The sound is pretty decent (a voice says "Fast Food" at the beginning of the game) and the "blob gobbling its food" noise is done quite well.
I think the game begins too easily on the first two screens, there are no monsters chasing you, so the excitement is not exactly fever pitched. Things get harder but not that much. Could be just the thing for really young kids, otherwise avoid.
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