Producer: P.S.S.
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: Machine code

It was probably inevitable that at some time or other the Pink feline thingummybob with a tail and a penchant for stealing diamonds would appear in a computer game. Les Flics isn't someone's name of course but a bit of French slang for the police, and in fine Peter Sellers style French, the inlay explains the situation. This is an arcade game with adventurish overtones, or rather it's several arcade games in one.

The first screen shows a plan of a city centre with a maze of tree-lined roads connecting nine buildings, their doors indicated in red. You appear as the Pink Thing with a tail on a road low down the screen. As soon as you start to move, two police cars appear on the streets, zipping about, but generally homing in on you.

The idea is to enter the buildings and pick up useful objects, which will enable you to find and steal the blue diamond. The interiors of all the buildings are designed as platform games with five levels and holes in the floors. Levels are connected by staircases, up or down lifts and firemen's poles. The buildings are littered with all sorts of things including daggers, a bag, a spanner, knives and forks, a key, money bags, beard disguise, masks and of course the famous diamond. There are some other odd things like heavy weights and poles. These can be moved around and weights, if dropped through a hole, will fall and squash the chasers on the floor below.

There are food 'pods ' dotted around and passing over them when in possession of the knife and fork will replenish your rapidly depleted energy levels. Numerous doors in buildings may be entered and exited from if in possession of the key. The chasers include Gend'armerie Kaolin (disguised as a chef), and of course Cleudeau - famous idiot detective.

The main task in this novel game is to collect things which will allow you to do the right things in other buildings, while remaining free of pursuit. Disguises help in some cases, the dagger will help in others. And all the while, the police cars are waiting outside...

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors plus 0 to collect items and in combination with direction keys will operate lifts, poles, etc
Joystick: Kempston, Protek, AGF
Keyboard play: pity about the cursors, but responsive
Use of colour: good and varied
Graphics: very good
Sound: good, but the tune between lives gets irritating - an interupt key might have been useful
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3
Screens: 11
Originality: very high in content and style

At first, this game looked quite primitive with its block graphics, but once inside a building this all changes to good, detailed, colourful and well-animated characters. Finding the gemstone is fairly easy but getting it is difficult. With only a set number of buildings, I wonder how long its good playability and addictivity will last.

Unless the copy I was given had lost an extra set of instructions inside the larger plastic cassette case, Les Flics has a massive oversight. Nowhere does it tell you how to play the game or what the controls are. Of course, half the fun here is in finding out what does what and when it does it, but some control keys would have been nice. Trial and error proved them to be the cursors, rather a drawback in a game of this speed. Apart from this quibble, Les Flics is a great deal of fun, original, and combines several ideas in one game. The graphics are large and smoothly moving, amusing things happen, the lifts work very nicely, and there are enough adventure elements to make it all playable and addictive.

It can get to be extremely frustrating when you have got a key, a bag, money, you're well fed and everything, and the diamond is around the next corner, to run into a police car through inept maze dodging! Les Flics got me real mad - so it must be a pretty good game. Initial impression of simple graphics quickly gives way to the smooth, fast and large ones of the building interiors. One of the nice touches is the incompetence of Inspector Cleudeau, who will often come along and knock a Flic unconscious for you, just before the cop was about to nick you. I thought this was fun and really addictive.

The aim is to steal the Purple Puma diamond. First though, you must collect all the objects and then experiment to find out what they do, at the same time avoiding police cars, policemen and Kaolin the Chef.

Alex: Based on the Pink Panther movies, this is a cops-and-robbers maze game - but one which includes some well-executed graphics. The trouble is they tend to get boring after a while. This could be due, in part, to a not particularly impressive choice of colours which cause the display to appear hazy. A better choice would have made the game a lot better. MISS

Alan G: It's not the sort of game to keep you glued to the screen for hours, but it does make good use of the Spectrum's graphics; it's well-drawn, and moves very smoothly. However, while choice of colours is well above average, there's lots of overlapping that takes place - mainly because the characters are quite large. There's also a really good Pink Panther tune between lives. HIT

Alan H: The general idea is original, but the effect isn't. It ends up feeling like a cross between Pacman and an adventure - probably because the aim of the whole thing has been to give an adventure theme, while taking away a lot of the work. However, the technical execution is very good, with clear, smooth graphics, enhanced by well-chosen colours and a playing speed that's just right. MISS

Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor

The initial difficulty you encounter with Les Flics is reading the cassette cover. In its wisdom, PSS decided to write it in Clouseauspeak, that devastating version of English employed by Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movies. Fortunately for your health, you are not called on to play the scourge of the Surété but the pink-tailed thief who, doubtless for reasons of copyright, is trying to steal a gemstone called the Purple Puma.

The idea is all great fun but the game is rather less than the sum of its concepts. The main screen is a town map; you have to run round the streets avoiding the police, Les Flics of the title, trying to discover the whereabouts of the Purple Puma.

The graphics are poorly-designed; little attempt has been made to control colour overflow when moving characters collide and the people and objects are for the most part single-square characters of little visual interest.

PSS wasted a good opportunity in Les Flics; the game could so easily have been a Spectrum classic. Instead, it s just a run-of-the-mill fix for joystick junkies.

MAKER: PSS
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £6.95

Dressed up as an "arcade adventure" in the style of the Pink Panther ("'Allo, ahm Unspecteur Cleuseau") films, but actually just living proof that a whole can be less than the sum of its parts.

With joystick or cursor keys, you buzz a car a round a maze and enter different buildings. Within each, you avoid les vieux bill and ascend a structure while collecting various objets. Thus it is to varying degrees derivative of Manic Miner, Donkey Kong, Atic Atac and one of those ancient arcade car-in-a-maze things, without coming within a mile of any of them.

Tres ennuyant, mes enfants.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys, Kemp
FROM: PSS, £6.95

First, a French lesson. Les Flics translates into English as 'The Cops'. So why not just call i that, you might well ask. The reason is that the game is based on the Pink Panther films in which Peter Sellers played Inspector Clouseau, whose English was as inept as his detection.

You play the part of the Pink Panther who wants to steal the Purple Puma, a priceless gemstone. Steadfast in their attempt to foil you are Inspector Cleuseau and his trusty gendarmes.

The game beings with a maze 0-chase sequence in which you have to escape from the pursuing squad car and enter on of the nine rooms containing various objects to help you in your crime.

Most of the rooms are a combination of levels, lifts and greasy poles. Objects to collect include a key, a bag, a disguise, money and a very useful dagger for disabling the gendarmes.

Once the Pink Panther has collected an object he has to escape from the room, get back in the car and speed off to another one.

Eventually he will have enough equipment to enter the room where the Purple Puma is kept. It's not easy for him to get his paws on it, though, because the room is swarming with gendarmes sporting their stylish kepis.

Players will find themselves confronted many a time with the message: 'You have been sentenced to life imprisonment in the Bastille' - a bit odd considering that the Bastille was destroyed in 1789. Much worse is hearing a horrible version of the Pink Panther theme-tune every time you are caught.

However, the game is good fun and will take some time to solve. Animation and graphics are good, but perhaps nine rooms is a little skimpy when compared to what some software houses manage to cram into a Spectrum.

Controlling a "Pink character with a tail" you must avoid Inspector Cleudeau, Kaolin and Les Flics in order to steal the diamond .

The plot of Les Flies is simple enough, although it is explained in appalling mock-French. The game, though, is more complicated. First of all you rush round town, avoiding the police cars, and then you enter buildings, collect the objects there, avoid the other characters, use the objects collected at the appropriate times, and steal the diamond.

The main problem is that the uses of the objects are not explained. Some of these become apparent very quickly, while others remain totally obscure. There can be little more infuriating in a game than being able to enter every building, holding all possible objects, but not having any idea what to do to win.

Les Flies is produced by P.S.S., 452 Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry; and costs £6.95.

PSS
452 Stoney Station Road
Coventry CV6 5DG
£6.95

More confusion for the overheated brainbox!

PSS tell you the aim of the game, to find and pinch the Purple Puma Diamond by controlling the "Pink character". I seem to recall a similar theme in a series of films!

The problem is they don't tell you how!

First you start driving a pink motor around a set of streets avoiding the police cars, there are nine different buildings which you can visit. Once you enter one of these buildings then you become a large animated panther, a-la cartoon.

There are eight other items to collect and use, each has a purpose but you only find out by trial and error. Also in these buildings are various characters like PC Kaolin (disguised as a chef) and Inspector Cleudeau.

The intro is amusing but the gameplay is quite serious - Peter Sellars would have been quite upset not having a banana skin to slip on!

Good graphics, fair sound and an enjoyable and challenging game. I found no appreciable advantage by using a joystick, only Kempston is provided although the keyboard game will operate with the cursor mapped variety - AGF/Protek etc. Awkwardly, they provide two recordings, one on each side of the tape, for keyboard or Kempston rather than an option from within the program.