Gregory has gone to sleep, but a ghost has come along and taken his alarm clock! He now has to enter his dreams and find the four pieces of the clock before he wakes up again. The first level is set in a warehouse of some sort, and then it's on to a jungle full of strange inhabitants, an art gallery, and finally a battlefield. It's a game which is aimed at younger people and this is clear from the blocky but bright graphics, but there's not much sound, and it's not very good, anyway. The first level is OK but the second level will have you tearing your hair out.

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6

As far as I know the world's only 'garden-'em-up', the aim of this oddity is to nurture a garden, and keep the pesky insects away from it. This is done by switching between the game's two characters – Grell, a gnome who mainly comes in handy for killing the insects, and Falla, a fairy who flies about sprinkling various dusts on the garden to make it grow. It may sound easy, but soon becomes fast and furious as you desperately switch characters to kill insects in some far-off corner of your garden! The graphics are fine – quite colourful and cartoony, as you would expect from Codemasters – and the sound effects are OK too. It's just the game itself didn't grab my attention. A passable attempt at a very different genre of game!

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5

The town of Kingston Falls has been overrun by gremlins. You are Billy, who was responsible for introducing them in the first place, and you must now rid the town of the gremlins by any means possible. This is a text adventure with illustrated graphics for several of the locations. A nice touch is that the pictures change based on events; for instance, if you have killed a gremlin, the picture will show the gremlin's corpse. However, all of these graphics may be the reason why the parser is fairly limited, though if you have seen the film that the game is based on, you will recognise a lot of the puzzles and have an easier time solving them.

See also: Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

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7

Gremlins 2 has, in my opinion, some of the best graphics on the CPC. You're Billy Peltzer, from the film of the same name, and you have to battle through the Gremlin-infested TV studios where you work. It doesn't sound like much, but the game is seriously fun! Characters from the film are instantly recognisable, and the Gremlins come in all sorts of different guises. The sound is pretty good, too, but this game is all about the graphics! Giant Gremlin faces appear on huge TV sets as you pass, and the spider boss is one of the best-looking bosses ever! A truly great film licence. Be warned though, it is quite easy, and shouldn't pose too much of a problem to a seasoned gamer. Not that it matters, because you'll be coming back to finish this again and again!

See also: Gremlins.

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9

Enjoying a few drinks at the local pub, a cat named Norman the Wise learns that Mauron the Evil One has stolen the Orb of Life. It must be retrieved and returned to the Cup of Sorrows, so that peace and love will reign once more across the land of Greyfell. The problem is finding the Orb, and for that, you will need to find some of your friends, who will provide you with some very cryptic clues. If you can work out their meaning, you will know which object to collect and give to them so that they can help you a bit more. It sounds like a promising adventure game, but it is appallingly slow. It takes ages for Norman to go anywhere, and most of the locations are drab and dull. The mostly monochrome graphics and awful sound effects make things even worse.

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2

Go for Super Bowl glory in this American football management game. Offering a choice of sixteen of the top NFL teams, you are in charge of finances, team selection and player transfers. Unfortunately this is an extremely shallow simulation of the real sport. There are no player positions, players can literally play anywhere, there are only eleven guys who apparently play the entire match (offence and defence), and there are no tactical options in the slightest. For a game that is built on plays and movements, this is a shocking omission. The game simply revolves around you moving players in and out of your reserves as they inexplicably lose energy, before watching the slow and crudely drawn match highlights from a distance. This seems like it's been designed as a rugby game and re-skinned to take advantage of the American football craze of the 1980s; a shocking waste of time.

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1

Groops! is an addictive puzzle game; make combinations of specific boxes and see them explode! To begin with, the graphics are magnificent. There are sixteen colours on the screen with highly detailed boxes and backgrounds, and the explosions are impressive as well. The choice of colours used is so precise that one might think that it is a game for the Plus machines. The sound is state of the art; there are many themes, all of them composed with care and imagination. The gameplay is fast-paced, enjoyable, challenging and entertaining. There is a variety of game modes, further boosting the playability. The grab factor is nothing less than addictive; this game can easily become an everyday habit. To conclude, this is definitely one of the best CPC games ever and a brilliant masterpiece in general.

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10

This is the second of the two Adrian Mole games and it's extremely similar to the first. It's so similar, in fact, that you might as well go and read the review for The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole! The garish graphics are still here, as are the well written entries and the lack of interaction, where all you do is make the occasional decision from three possible options, which affects your score (again starting at 40%). Er... is there anything else I can say?

See also: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.

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5

Gryzor
(Ocean, 1987)
Reviewed by Chris Lennard

Lance and Bill have to rid the Earth of the very H. R. Giger aliens that have invaded it in this excellent conversion of the arcade coin-op Contra. This game boasts superb graphics and really shows off the graphic capabilities of the CPC. Along with some great sound effects the gameplay is also just right and it's a really enjoyable challenge. The 3D sections are quite impressive and it's well worth completing as the ending is hilarious.

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10

A blatant rip-off of Vigilante, The Guardian Angel (or Freddy Hardest in South Manhattan to Spanish readers) puts you in the shoes of a red-bereted Guardian Angel (surprise!) as you walk the streets taking out the bad guys, who attack from the front and behind, until you reach the end of the level. The graphics are very detailed – perhaps too much so, as the sprites often become hard to distinguish from the background – a problem made worse by the game's immense lack of colour. Also, the sound effects are bad. And on top of that, the game's far too hard; you just can't get past Ricky 'Death Star' Chan in his forklift truck on the second level!

See also: Freddy Hardest.

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2