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This is the first time that a newspaper cartoon character has appeared on the Amstrad and he's probably the last as well. He's a beer-swilling, cigarette-smoking, layabout and he's had his dole cheque stolen.

You start the game on Monday morning with a pittance in your pocket and your ever-loving wife Flo, demanding your dole cheque. The screen is split into two parts, the upper play area and the icon area at the bottom. There are four icons: wallet, speak, fight and action. The wallet icon is used to get or give away money and to buy things when necessary. If you want to talk to any of the other characters in the game then you use the speak icon.

Violence is sometimes necessary to get you out of bad situations, and this is done through the fight icon. The final icon is the action icon which deals with the manipulation of objects. There's also an alcometer that must never be allowed to read empty; if it does, your game ends. No prizes for guessing where you top up on alcohol.

The rest of the screen display shows Andy and the rest of the characters that you'll have to interact with in the game. If you want to make a getaway from someone you can shock them into standing still by blowing a kiss at them.

The graphics are very similar to those found in the newspaper - black and white. Andy and friends are large and well animated; pity that they wander around town so slowly. Sound effects are minimal to say the least, but there's a good tune that plays before you start the game. If it sounds familiar, think about small brown loaves of bread.

It I was to compare this to anything, it would be games like Marsport and Dun Darach. You have to spend a great deal of time wandering around doing nothing and solving puzzles periodically.

Second Opinion

The comparison to Marsport and Dun Darach seems to me to be purely in the movement area. The actual game tasks aren't anywhere near as absorbing, atmospheric or tricky. A strip cartoon licence strikes me as strange, particularly if you present it exactly as the cartoon in the paper.