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St Bernard's mission dogged by disaster
ADVENTURES of St Bernard for the 48K Spectrum was produced by a husband-and-wife team and the graphics by former fashion designer Linda Ferguson are very attractive.

The story features Brandy the St Bernard dog, who is trying to rescue his mistress from the clutches of the Abominable Snowman. In the first stage of his mission, Brandy is besieged by a pack of wolves. If he manages to kill them all, by turning to face each one, he goes on to stage two which involves jumping over icy pools, in many cases inhabited by a walrus which makes a successful leap more difficult.

Stage three features tumbling snowballs and more wolves. Then there is the Snowman and finally more pools and a horde of skating penguins.

The game is an addictive one and should appeal to anyone with plenty of persistence and a good sense of timing. It also makes a pleasant change from the more violent scenarios of most Spectrum games.

The Adventures of St Bernard is produced by Carnell Software.




THE ADVENTURES OF ST BERNARD Memory: 48K Price: £5.95 Joystick: Protek, AGF II Gilbert Factor: 7

THE ADVENTURES OF ST BERNARD
Carnell Software / £5.95
Every day, Brandy the St Bernard dog has to face blizzards and other hindrances on his way to rescue travellers. His current adventure is to rescue his mistress from the Abominable Snowman.
Gerralt It's rather a slow game, not only is there sluggish response to the controls but the animation is also jerky. The graphics are reasonably good on the characters and the landscape, but on the whole I found it rather boring. 6/10
Ieuan Good graphics detail for the characters and the arctic landscape, but the animation is rather jerky. I found it more pleasing to the eye in monochrome. 7/10
Dilwyn Players tend to become frustrated at having to go through the first rather silly stage, every time the game re- starts. But overall. not too bad. 8/10

Dilwyn Jones, Ieuan Davis, Gerralt Jones

Well what can I say, apart from that this game is crap? Really, really crap.

I was unfortunate enough to buy this for my Speccy back in the day, and my hard earned £1.99 (I got the Mastertronic re-release) was duly wasted.

Would you believe that Carnell actually had the gall to charge £5.95 for this turgid piece of 'arcade action' originally? It wasn't even worth the £1.99 that Mastertronic were asking for a year later. Still, you've got to look back and laugh eh?

At least Carnell redeemed themselves with the excellent text adventure 'The Wrath of Magra'....

Aventures Of St Bernard - ZX Spectrum
The whole point to the game was to rescue your 'mistress' (oohh matron) from the clutches of the abominable snowman. We should have rescued the gamers from this abominable game.

The inlay instructions actually used words like 'intrepid' and 'icy wastelands' to convey the terror and action of the situation. Well it doesn't work quite like that...

The game is a horizontally scrolling affair (supposed to arcade action), and you control the hero who must fend off attacks from wolves and jump over broken bits of the icy ground.

Wolves always attack from your rear, so you can scare them away by turning to face them or if you time it right, bite them (use your imagination) to kill them outright.

After you have got far enough (the background scrolls painfully slowly) you will reach stage two. Now you have to jump over water patches and avoid the walrusses that poke their heads up through the ice-holes.

If you have the luck or patience you'll reach stage three where you have to climb a hill and avoid the rolling snowballs. If you make it past this it'll be more by luck than judgement - I never ever did, and never ever will.

You have to laugh as the instructions actually ask:
"Will it go on forever? Is she really worth it? These and many more questions
can be answered in this multi-level, fast moving, colourful
arcade style game."

They also boldy state that the game was written in full machine code, featuring arcade action and cartoon style graphics.

I honestly can't see how this was written in machine code. The controls are so un-responsive it's beyond funny. Your character takes longer to turn than a jug of cream - and timing jumps is well... you've got more chance of winning the lottery.

Oh - and a special mention must go to the sound. It truly is a revolutionary use of the Spectrum's beeper.

On a positive note I suppose the main sprite is quite nicely drawn - it's a shame the animation on it is crap.

Maybe I'm being too hard on this game. It did come out in the early days of '83 so I've got to cut it some slack, but really, play this for comedy value only. It's a load of pish.

We recommend getting hold of the real hardware - but if not then download a ZX Spectrum emulator and download any other arcade game (but not this). Alternatively you could try and play something else online.

GENRE: Arcade Game (Even though it's slower than bullet time)
RELEASE DATE: 1983
RELEASED BY: Carnell Software / Mastertronic
DEVELOPER(S): No idea.
PRICE: £5.95 then re-released by Mastertronic at £1.99 - UK