C&VG


Piromania
By Automata
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #37

Piromania

It'll take some skillful playing to get your name into the Piromania Hall of Flame.

The game is set in Automata Towers and you have to help Walter Hose to put out the fires. You can travel around the blazing building by some fairly fast keyboard-digging or joystick wobbling. What you're after is a fire extinguisher or a bucket of water. Then just press the right key to douse the nearest fire.

The actual graphics for the fires are quite realistic with good flickering effects. Then, when extinguished, they turn to just a puff of smoke and fade away to nothing, accompanied by a wonderful hissing sound like when you pour water onto a hot frying pan.

Infernal Combustion

There are taps around the building, so when the buckets are empty you can fill them up again. But extinguishers will disappear when all the foam has gone.

Quite why Automata should store dynamite in their offices, I don't know, but there is some around, and these must be removed to prevent explosion. There are also bonus points for rescuing valuables and even more points if you do it faster than anyone else.

If you fancy this game, I suppose you'd better hot-foot it down to your local software store. It's one of Automata's better games, but still has an awful Pi-Man single on the other side of the tape. The game runs with a Kempston Interface or Sinclair Interface 2.