FISH!(written by Mike Gerrard, published in Your Sinclair magazine No. 41 in 1989)I have
to admit that Fish! (with its free exclamation mark) puts me in a tricky
position, and I don't just mean at the start of the game when you're swimming
upside down in a goldfish bowl. No, what I mean is that this latest Magnetic
Scrolls title is co-written by our very own Phil South, so it's a bit
difficult being objective when you've heard about the game from the start
and seen the blood, sweat and beers that Snouty's put into the writing
of it. Nevertheless, I shall try. I shall also try to avoid fishy puns,
mainly because every one you could possibly think of (and some you wouldn't
want to) have already been used in the game, or in the packaging. Our
old friend the blue box this time contains the inevitable disk - very
sorry, tape-type persons, but this is about 170K of adventure - and a
one-week travel card for the Hydropolis Underground Omnibus Company, which
is not valid before 9.00am Mondays-Fridays, except Dogger Bank Holidays
- gerroan! There's a Fish Identification Chart, a sheet headed "How to
Look After Your Fish" and a document from the Mission HQ of the Department
of Inter-Dimensional Espionage. At this point you might be forgiven for
thinking. "Goldfish... espionage... swimming upside down in a bowl...
what the fish is going on here?" What you obviously don't know is that
some fish are in fact really Inter-Dimensional Espionage Agents in disguise,
and that means you. You thought you were on holiday in a bowl, but you
are about to be recalled to duty by your boss, Sir Playfair Panchax, told
to pull your fish finger out and get on the trail of the Seven Deadly
fins, that dangerous group of inter-dimensional anarchists. To help you,
your boss has conveniently sent you three time warps, and you can go through
any of these at the start to revert to your normal state (whatever that
is) and wind up in three different introductory adventures. It's through
tune-warping that the Fins manage to commit many of their dastardly crimes.
On the other side of one warp is a recording studio - the music business
features very heavily in Fish! You might even find a cassette made by
the Fins, and the machinery with which to play it - that's provided you're
quick about it as the producer keeps asking you to make him a cup of coffee
and if you don't oblige he throws you out on the streets, where you automatically
warp back to your goldfish bowl - and warping hurts! Another warp leads
to you waking up in the back of a grotty van, and you now seem to be the
roadie to a group of some kind, who've all gone and left you to wander
round in the ruin of an abbey, trying to avoid the attentions of a group
of hippies. This isn't easy, especially as you end up wandering past their
camp-fire carrying a church pew. This does rather tend to draw their attention
to you. By now you will have gathered that Fish! is one weird game, probably
a love-it or hate-it job depending on the wavelength of your sense of
humour. Anyone weird enough to read YS in the first place is probably
going to love it. I did have some trouble in the third warp, however,
which leads to a forest clearing where another espionage agent, Micky
Blowtorch (author of Warping Along With Blowtorch), is lurking. Not that
he's very co-operative. In order to have a good look round the location
where he was stubbornly staying, I asked him to go south east. The response
was "Micky Blowtorch says, "What would anyone want to go Please insert
the game disk and press any key" Now I know the games weird, but not that
weird. The game disk was already in the machine. I pressed a key. Same
message. I turned the disk over, even though I knew the 'B' side was blank.
Same message. I turned it back again, Same message. I switched off and
reloaded and made a note not to try that again! There were niggling parser
problems elsewhere, too, partly due to the tricky things you had to try
to do in the game. I thought the problems had just a bit too much emphasis
on timing - doing things in the right numbers of moves, which means that
you have to repeat actions quite a lot so as to work out the best order,
that type of thing. But one thing you cannot say is that Fish! is just
another mundane adventure. It's one I've kept loading up, returning to
each of the warps in turn and trying to make a bit more progress in the
hope of getting through to the following major part of the adventure which
takes place in Hydropolis. It's tough going! It's also full of funny finny
jokes, leaving no fish unpunned, and no barrel unscraped in the quest
for aquatic cracks. Spectrum adventurers seem to like that kind of thing
- and they should definitely like Fish! (Can I have that fiver now, Snouty?) |
