Crash


Rat-A-Tat
By Joesoft
Spectrum 48K/128K/+2/+3

 
Published in Crash #1

Rat-A-Tat

I'm sure on a lot of flights across the world, there will be a rat or two that managed to sneak aboard and hide in the cargo hold, eager to bag themselves a free flight somewhere. If theycould read then they may have a clue where they're actually headed rather than it being just pot luck - unless of course they were just after an adventure.

Our protagonist here, Ratty, had always wanted to visit London, so he scurried on board the nearest plane heading for the UK capital, luggage in tow, and started making plans for his visit.

Unfortunately, a rather large storm interrupted proceedings and shook the cargo doors open, leaving Ratty, and his suitcase, falling to the ground.

Rat-A-Tat

Good job he had a parachute. His suitcade unfortunately did not, so it's now down to Ratty to scour the city to look for and collect his belongings. With a hungry belly craving cheese and the usual enemies you find in London (giant worms?), how will he fare in his quest?

Paul Davies

Ratty is quite spritely, moving around pretty smoothly and has a bit of a jump on him which is good, as sometimes there's quite a distance between platforms - these will still require some pixel perfect accuracy though.

The one thing you will notice about Rat-A-Tat is that once you move across to the next screen, there's no going back even if you haven't collected your suitcase item from the previous room. This is deliberate, as I'm told that you can end up going back to these screens later on in the game - should you progress far enough. That's me out, then.

Rat-A-Tat

The game itself is a pretty standard platform affair although there are some elements that require expert timing and skill; with enemies moving with various speeds, patterns and occasionally in their multiples, it's definitely a challenge getting to those pieces of cheese and baggage items.

I found some of the rooms took a lot of navigating and timing to get past dropping nasties, flying birds and stamping machines looking to flatten you. The biggest drawback in particular in this area was having to wait a sustained amount of time to make your move, it meant running out of energy and having to start the game all over again.

Comments

Control Keys: Q, W, SPACE.
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair.
Graphics: Colourful.
Sound: 128K tunes.
General Rating: Frustrating but enjoyable at the same time.

Paul Davies

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