A Nibbler variant in which you collect dots (I mean diamonds). Your character in this game stands above ground and pumps away as your mining line moves through the underground maze. Come into contact with any of the inhabitants head-on and you kill them, but if they touch your line, you lose a life. It's a dated-looking game, but one that slowly grew on me. It requires a lot of concentration and strategy.

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5

Little Dianne has to collect 160 diamonds scattered over four levels, and deposit them in several safes, which can be found on each level. Of course, there are a lot of monsters which try to stop her from doing this, and on each screen, they will try to block your way as much as possible, although there are gates which you can swing open to kill them temporarily. You can move between the levels by finding the teleport, even if you haven't collected all the diamonds on a level. It's nothing original at all, and the graphics and overall presentation of the game look really dated.

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4

Dick Tracy
(Disney, 1991)

The famous comic strip detective must rescue his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart, who has been kidnapped by Big Boy Caprice and his gang. The game involves lots of shooting and beating up Caprice's henchmen, some of whom are heavily armed. Occasionally they will leave behind guns which you can collect, but their supply of ammunition is limited. The film that this game is based on was memorable for using only primary colours, and the graphics in the normal CPC version retain this theme, although they are blocky and poorly defined. The cartridge version has much better graphics (as you would expect), uses scrolling instead of flick-screen action, and makes great use of the extra capabilities of the Plus machines. Note that my rating is for the cartridge version; the normal CPC version only deserves a rating of 6 out of 10.

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8

An alien breeding experiment on the spaceship Taccia has gone badly wrong and the ship is now overrun with alien species. You are the last remaining human on board, and it is your task to set the self-destruct mechanisms on board the ship and find the escape pod. Energy barriers and teleporters provide access to other parts of the spaceship, but you'll need to find the correct tokens to be able to switch them on and off, and you'll also need to find a computer terminal nearby. While this shoot-'em-up may have a marvellous title, it doesn't live up to expectations. Although the action is fast and smooth, most of the rooms are fairly spartan, with hardly any variety in the aliens that you can kill and objects to collect being scattered very thinly.

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5

In this platform game, you move around and clear away the monsters by digging holes in the floor. The controls are responsive, but the monsters move a little too fast at times. When you clear a screen, new monsters appear, but the layout of the platforms and ladders on the next screen remains the same – yet if you lose a life, the layout changes. Each new screen places more monsters randomly on the screen, meaning that you may be unlucky in your current postion. Average visuals and limited sound effects. Presentation-wise, this game looks a little bare.

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4

A simple shoot-'em-up in which you control a submarine and must fire missiles at 'planes, helicopters, boats and other submarines. The submarine can only shoot upwards, though, and while you're trying to aim your missiles correctly, the enemy craft are firing ammunition of their own at you. As you progress through the levels, there is more ammunition to dodge, and your movement is also increasingly restricted as you won't be able to move up to the surface of the sea. Unfortunately, each level has exactly the same enemy formations which makes the game too easy and repetitive in the long term.

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6

Dizzy
(Codemasters, 1987)

This is the Dizzy adventure that started it all, and it's stood the test of time well. Dizzy has to defeat the evil wizard Zaks by making a magic potion consisting of four ingredients – but finding them will not be easy. The graphics are reasonable and the music is quite cool as well, although there are no other sound effects. The game is a little easy (although there is a secret area which you will need to discover), and there are lots of extra lives to collect, but if you fall into the trap in the haunted forest, you won't be able to carry on. It's very annoying and loses the game some marks for me. A cut-down special edition of the game for one of Amstrad Action's covertapes also exists.

See also: Bubble Dizzy, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Dizzy Down the Rapids, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Fantasy World Dizzy, Fast Food, Kwik Snax, Magicland Dizzy, Panic Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy.

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8

Despite the name, this is not a dice game but a fruit machine simulation, although it doesn't have all that many bonus features. However, if you score points, you are always given the option to gamble by guessing what type of fruit will be selected on a spinning wheel. If you are very lucky indeed and manage to light up six fruits in the correct order, as shown at the bottom of the screen you can play a dice game in which you can win up to 200 points by guessing whether the next roll of the die will be higher or lower than the previous roll. As well as playing a 'normal' game, you can also try to break the bank by amassing a certain number of points. The graphics are colourful, as one would expect, and I actually like its relative simplicity, although if you want a fruit machine simulation with lots of bells and whistles, this isn't it.

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7

It's yet another silly game with Dizzy thrown in so that it might sell. Dizzy's in a barrel and he's floating down a river, and he's got some apples that he can throw at any creatures who'll sap his energy. It's totally unexciting – the game moves at a terribly slow pace, firing apples doesn't remove most of the creatures, and it's much too difficult – you can't avoid the creatures and you lose too much energy. Still, a barrel isn't exactly the most manoeuvrable of objects, isn't it? The only good thing about the game is the cutesy music.

See also: Bubble Dizzy, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Fantasy World Dizzy, Fast Food, Kwik Snax, Magicland Dizzy, Panic Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy.

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3

The troll has taken over the king's castle and the princess has been captured! Only Dizzy can save the day in the smallest of the seven adventures which Dizzy stars in – there are only about 30 rooms. It was also supposed to appear exclusively on the Dizzy's Excellent Adventures compilation, but it was later released as a stand-alone budget game anyway! The graphics are quite good and a nice little tune plays in the background. You also have to collect cherries, which replenish your energy. It may be smaller than the other Dizzy adventures, but it's still a challenge.

See also: Bubble Dizzy, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy Down the Rapids, Fantasy World Dizzy, Fast Food, Kwik Snax, Magicland Dizzy, Panic Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy.

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8