Please login to submit a screenshot

Escape to boredom
ALCATRAZ Harry, from Mastertronic, captures the essence of prison life brilliantly - intense boredom. It is a maze game in which you must find secret files and amass equipment before escaping.

The maze is a grid containing a scattered selection of revolvers, ladders, wirecutters and similar objects. There are also guards to complicate the route.

The graphics are flickery, and although there are a great number of screens, there is very little detail in each one; a few simple buildings or a watchtower at best. Movement is slow, and although the scenario seems promising at first, it rapidly palls through lack of variety.

For the low price, the game is adequate. But in terms of quality, the game falls way short of what is possible.



Chris Bourne


ALCATRAZ HARRY Memory: 48K Price: £1.99 Gilbert Factor: 3

ALCATRAZ HARRY
Mastertronic / £1.99

Ron: Imprisoned in Alcatraz, it's up to Harry to search for and steal some secret files which've been stored in an underground vault and, once found, he must escape through a hole in one of the fences.
Now all this seems pretty simple until you see a grid map of the prison layout, which shows the 144 different locations in which the files could be hidden. To make sure that you visit most of them, it's necessary to search for 30 items of escape equipment as well. This done Harry must be helped back to the compound and begin his walk across the minefield to safety beyond the electrified fence.
This is no easy game to complete, but with only average use of colour, flickering repetitive graphics and a fairly slow playing speed, it's unlikely anyone would want to. However, to its credit, there are some fun locations to visit; for instance, go past certain guards too many times and you'll be arrested for loitering and have your head blown off - violent stuff, but done with humour. Definitely reasonable value for the price that's being asked. 2/5

David: It's a shame Mastertronic's machine code programmers were out to lunch when this one got away. Thus, play is fairly slow and tedious. 2/5

Roger: This one's a curious mixture of arcade and adventure action, but overall I'd say Harry deserved to stay incarcerated. I think some thrilling text might have made it better. 4/5