Big Nose's American Adventure


by Martyn Hartley
Code Masters Ltd
1992
Sinclair User Issue 121, Mar 1992   page(s) 28

Label: Codemasters
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Big Al Dykes

Does anyone remember the TV series 'Time Tunnel'? What a show! The incredible story of two all-American boys traversing the corridors of time wearing designer 1970's clothing with wide lapels and tons of screen make up. Oh the drama, the excitement, the pace... believe it or not I used to love this sort of old rot.

New York is a dangerous place, especially for lovely furry prehistoric animals which have mysteriously been transported to the great metropolis and imprisoned without so much as a 'by your leave'. The only person capable of saving them has also traversed the corridors of time to see if he can help. His name is Big Nose; he has a disturbing lack of '70's designer clothing and if you get in the way he might just chuck a great big prehistoric rock at you (Quick, quick it could become a collector's item).

As a cute platform adventure Big Nose scores highly indeed, the main sprite is fun if a little difficult to control and his enemies which include policemen, bouncing bombs, builders and wavy feather dusters of doom come on fast and furiously. To free his friends from their cages Big Nose needs to collect keys which are scattered around the landscape. He can also pick up a variety of other icons some of which are helpful, others less so. Watch out for ones like the glue can and the beer glass, they could leave you in a sticky situation!

Big Nose's American Adventure is not to be sneezed at. The graphics are not at all snotty, they're big and cartoon like and although sprite detection as your character jumps between platforms can be a bit runny, the game has lots of playability and is a good old wheeze at the price.


GARTH:
A good, original budget release from those original budgeteers, Code-Masters. Humourous, pretty to look at and fun to play makes it something that you shouldn't look down your nose at.

Graphics: 71%
Sound: 67%
Playability: 80%
Lastability: 83%
Overall: 82%

Summary: Big Nose's American Adventure is a humourous bash through New York with a distant relative of Fred Flintstone and a plethora of bungling cops and builders. A playable enjoyable game that can get a little infuriating because of the questionable sprite detection but well worth a look.

Transcript by Chris Bourne

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