Producer: Automata UK
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.00
Language: Machine code
Author: Jason Austin
Burt has been miniaturised and injected into that favourite playland of so many programmers - a computer. His mission is to track down the Big areas of RAM, collecting all the objects in each memory location. There are a variety of minor bugs in each location. Red bugs have the power to tunnel after you, but the white, green and magenta bugs can only follow in your tunnels. Tunnelling under the edit keys, win cause them to fall, and if they fall on a bug, you send it back to its starting position and gain points. Lighting up the letters of the word EXTRA at the bottom of the screen gives you an extra life.
COMMENTS
Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left /right
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, Cursor type
Keyboard play: well placed and responsive
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: reasonable size, smooth and cheerful
Sound: good tunes and spot effects
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 5
Screens: 61
A very playable, frustrating and addictive game. All the graphics are neat and not jumpy like so many other games. Each screen has a faster, sometimes more intelligent, set of mini-bugs for you to squash or flee from. On each screen you must make up a routine which you should stick to, otherwise your tune will run out (you have roughly 1 minute and 55 seconds per screen). Every 10 screens there is a bonus screen which is near to impossible to complete. I really enjoyed playing Pi-In-Ere, even though it might be a little behind the times.
That super hero of super heroes, Burt, is back again in another Automata game. Burt is portrayed using very good graphics, the way he turns around is brilliant. The graphics are good, bright, colourful and amusing. Pi-In-Ere is a different yet playable game. Because there are 61 screens, don't worry about losing your last life on 59 and having to start again, as the game always starts from your last level.
Ifs nice to see that Automata are producing some playable games for a change instead of games that are fun, but a bit pointless. Pi-In-Ere is a very original idea probably conceived from an arcade game along similar lines. Graphically, Burt is a marvellous character - he's very well animated, swivels round, moves up and down with his arms waggling - he looks so jolly and bouncy. This game has an incredible amount of screens although they don't vary very much, the bugs are different with every screen. They also look very and snappy. You'll probably be able to play this game for a long time without getting bored with it, although after a while it may become tedious just collecting the objects needed to continue on to the next screen. Overall, a very colourful, jolly game - a trademark of Automata games - jolliness.
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