This highly original game, the arguable father of Boulderdash,
was a very popular arcade hit during 1983. The original
Universal game has been perfectly copied by Datasoft
under official license.
Mr
Do is a clown, although at the moment not a particularly
jolly one. He's stuck in a surreal candy striped underworld
and there are meanies trying to get him from everywhere,
what a predicament! The only way of escaping is by either
collecting every single cherry that's dotted about the
screen, or by destroying all the pursuing monsters.
Even then it's a case of 'out of the frying pan into
the fire' and onto an even harder screen.
When
you start the game you find yourself at the bottom of
the screen, which has a few tunnels, apples, cherries
(in groups of 2x4) and a door in the centre of the playing
area. As the game commences, red creatures emerge from
the door and give chase. It is your choice whether you
start burrowing through the ground or charging through
the tunnels.
There
are two ways of finishing the screen. Firstly you can
eat all the cherries, and the best method is to run
over a group of them in one go. If you get eight cherries
without stopping between any of them, then you'll get
a 500-point bonus.
The
other way is by killing all the ravening monsters. To
do this you can use two methods. When you start you
are given a magic powerball that may be fired at any
time. This bounces up and down the passageway until
it meets a nasty, which it destroys by exploding. The
other technique is to drop one of the apples Boulderdash-style
onto the pursuing denizens. Usually it is best to tunnel
upwards under an apple and wait until there's more than
two baddies coming up the tunnel. Move left or right
and let the apple drop on their unsuspecting bonces.
As
you progress through the screen, you sometimes get a
creature that emerges from the top with a letter on
its chest (E, X, T, R or A). Destroy this and the letter
appears at the top of the screen. The other way to get
these letter monsters is by waiting until all the red
nasties have emerged. When they do then the door turns
into an item of food. Get this and the red nasties freeze
and a letter monster emerges to give birth to three
more 'orrible blue meanies, which you give chase. You
can squash these as usual, but only one at a time since
the monster following the one that has just been squashed
will eat the apple. If, on the other hand, you squash
or blow up the letter monster, the blue ones will turn
into apples and fall. This is quite useful -- if you
can catch the letter monster at the right time then
you can squash most of the red nasties as well. Once
the letter monster has been destroyed, then the red
ones will unfreeze and chase you at an even faster rate.
If
you manage to destroy the correct letter monsters and
spell out EXTRA, then you'll automatically finish the
screen, go to an amusing animated cartoon and be awarded
a bonus life.
After
every third screen you are rewarded with a cartoon-style
screen where you are given a 'very good' message and
told the time and scores for the three previous screens.
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