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NO PRIZES for guessing that Bristles is a painting game - yes, all right it could have been a shaving, game, ho ho.

Right, grab the stick and guide the little housepainter round the house. Do it fast there's a very tight time limit. Be careful because there are dumb buckets, flying half pints, steam pipes and sundry other aggravating hindrances. There's also Brenda the Brat who sticks her nasty little mitts on your nice new paint and loses your score.

The house is shown in cutaway on screen with time indicators below. You use ladders and lifts to reach the various floors and the various nuisances will knock you back to the basement or deprive you of a brush if you collide with them.

Although there is nothing new about the scenario, the game is certainly ultra-fast and demanding on your reflexes. There are eight buildings with six skill levels for each, making a total of 48 permutations.

If you're into this sort of thing then sit back, switch your brain off and get sploshing.



Richard Price

BRISTLES Statesoft Memory: 48K Price: £7.95 Joystick: Sinclair, Kempston, Protek Gilbert Factor: 6

BRISTLES
Statesoft / £7.95

Roger: Toshing out the crumbling walls of the Willis ancestral pile with half a gallon of budget emulsion was never like this. Bristles is about painting and decorating, a subject which I sincerely doubt is close to anybody's heart, but manages an appeal to lovers of quick-fire arcade activity through a sort of covert complexity.
At first sight, simplistic graphics representing the eight houses to be attacked by brush - with a choice of skill levels and the odd bit of trickery stirred in to give it gloss (sic, sic and sic) - are enough to make anybody fall asleep on the job. Its speed and scoring system just about save the day, however. Climbing up the skill levels introduces any aspirant tosher to the delights of working with clear varnish or doing it in the dark.
All sorts of graphical oddities get in your way, banishing you back to the start. There are also elevators that can transport you all over the shop. However, having this info lodged in-brain did little to help me on-screen!
Why, playing this game could be just like serving an apprenticeship without getting magnolia all over the carpet. 2/5

Ross: The graphics are pretty awful, but the game was certainly fast. It gets really frustrating round about the sixth and seventh levels! 2/5

Dave: Colourful, if crude, graphics - shame about the tunes! The sort of game that gets you asking that all- important question Why? 1/5