Ug the caveman is intent on stealing some pterodactyl eggs, and he has to collect three of them. However, he can only carry one at a time, and he mustn't drop it on his way back to the cave! And then there's the prehistoric monsters to watch out for as well... There are nine islands in total, and in between each island, there's a two-screen bonus level where you collect wheels. The colourful cartoon graphics and the phrases that appear on the screen when you collect fruit ("twistin' my melon" is one example) make the game appealing, but it's a bit too easy, and having to complete the same bonus level after every island is very tedious.

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Well, the loading screen looks both grim and foreboding, suggesting a great adventure is at hand. When the gameplay begins, your heart sinks and you realise that this is a simple game of "dodge the falling objects." This in itself is very difficult to achieve, and if you do make it to the right-hand side of the screen, more of the same follows. They should have called this one Cavern of Frustration; it's a very poor game indeed.

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Caves of Doom? It's more like Graphics of Doom! OK, maybe I'm being harsh – the game is ancient and the graphics are very colourful – but they also suck! But look beyond the graphics and you'll find a pretty challenging (but not impossible) and enjoyable game. The story is that you're trapped in the bowels of the Caves of Doom and must find all the keys, whizzing around in your trusty jet pack, before making your escape in a handy rocket. It's nothing ground-breaking, but it's got a certain charm to it! The graphics are bad (one of the more intimidating bad guys is a stick man!), the sound is bad, but the game is good simple fun! Oh, and one other thing; it's much easier to play using a joystick.

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Centre Court
(Amsoft, 1985)

I'm not a fan of tennis, but as far as tennis games go, this early effort must rank as the worst of the lot. The first thing you notice when playing the game is the truly awful, flickery graphics; two little stick men being watched by several other stick men, with the ball being represented by a tiny dot. The next thing you notice is that the game is unbearably slow; definitely not the fast-paced action that you'd get at Wimbledon. There really is little else that I want to say about this game, other than that it is rubbish!

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Centurions
(Reaktör, 1987)

Doc Terror wants to steal the entire world's supply of tyron dichromate from the Weapons Development Centre, and only the Centurions – Ace, Jake and Max – can stop him. The game takes place in an enormous maze, and the aim is to locate six segments of a key. These segments are locked away in buildings, and in order to obtain them, you must open the doors to the buildings by looking for the key with the corresponding shape. To make things more difficult, these keys are surrounded by 'moats' which can only be passed if you are controlling the correct Centurion – either Air, Land or Sea. The gameplay resembles Gauntlet, but most of your time is spent repeatedly trudging from one end of the maze to the other in a search for the correct door or key, and boredom will soon set in.

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You are the captain of the Cerberus, a pirate spacecraft. You've heard news of a freighter which contains lots of treasure, and you fly your spacecraft towards it – but then you are surrounded by the Starfleet Police. It's a trap! Now you must shoot your way out of this situation. A nice story, but this is just another standard space shoot-'em-up, and it's not a very good one. The graphics are quite good, although there's no scenery – just vast, empty space. The game moves at a fairly leisurely pace and there isn't much action. All you do is encounter the same waves of aliens; there are no levels or targets to reach, so there's not much point in playing it.

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5

The Anti-Nuclear Party has infiltrated a nuclear power station and programmed the robots so that they are now running amok inside it. In just 30 minutes' time, the entire station will explode! You must prevent this by collecting 18 fuel rods and disposing of them in the pit that lies at the centre of the first floor of the station, which has seven floors. Despite a nice loading screen and some good music on the menu, this is a mediocre game with horrible and garish Spectrum-style graphics. You can only collect one rod at a time, and if you're on one of the higher floors, it's a pain to go all the way down to the first floor to dispose of it, and then go all the way back up. Also, the time limit seems to be too tight to allow the game to be completed.

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Gog, the evil Gobot, is mining Moebius with the goal of creating an army of transforming killers. Gog's goal is to take over Earth. There is only one Gobot left on Moebius who will stop at nothing in preventing Gog's plans. You play Leader 1 and fly along a scrolling landscape taking out the miners in a Defender-style game. The controls can be tricky at times, but overall it's an easy game to get into. OK graphics with dual-plane scrolling is a rare thing on the CPC, but you get it in this game!

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Baseball is popular in America, but not all that popular elsewhere, and this game is a very poor representation of it. The graphics aren't the problem here – although the players are badly drawn, the game switches to an excellent animation sequence, shown from behind the batter, when it's time to pitch the ball. It's not that there's almost no sound, either. It's just that the game is very slow indeed, and it seems to be impossible to hit the ball without fouling. Even the computer can't hit the ball!

See also: Championship Basketball.

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If you're thinking that this is a 'proper' simulation of basketball, think again. It's a two-on-two game – in other words, there are only two people in each team, and rather than being able to travel up and down the court, the game is always played in one half of the court, and each team takes it in turns to aim the ball into the net. The graphics are small with a bad choice of colours being used, and there doesn't seem to be any sound. Anyway, it's an unexciting game that is awkward to play.

See also: Championship Baseball.

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