Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Software Creations

A career in the health service is much like any other, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. And as a nurse straight out of college and into your first hospital, life isn't going to be easy. All those howling babies screaming for food and water and milk and love and hugs and attention and nappy changes... it's enough to drive you round the twist!

You and your fellow trainees enter the hospital just as the last batch of students leave. They weren't very good... In fact they were really awful, the baby ward is in utter chaos. The little darlings have all clambered out of their cots and are roaming around willy nilly.

As you might expect, babies aren't the most responsible of creatures: they're horrible grimy pink things that make ghastly noises at the most ridiculous times at night, and they're very inquisitive. Plug sockets and mysterious boxes hold a fatal attraction for the little dears, and too much prodding and poking ends in a nasty shock for them - 240 volts to be precise.

The hospital wards are split into three levels, usually with a single cot on each floor, but occasionally slightly more densely populated. A counter on the status screen shows how many babies are on the loose. Starting in the shoes of Nurse Brenda Bumwipe, you chase after each one of the little horrors, pick them up in your caring arms and deposit them in their own little cots. But who wants to be cooped up in a horrid hospital cot? Not the babies that's for sure. Out they clamber and begin wandering again.

When you've finally collected up all the babies and replaced them in their cots, you can move on to the next ward. The wards rarely vary in layout, but as you proceed the baby population begins to grow, making it increasingly difficult to cope. It's just as well that you have three trainees to your credit, as there's no real job security in this hospital and too many lost babies results in early retirement for the offending nurse. If poor old Brenda gets the boot then Fiona Feedface steps in and takes over, her departure in turn makes room for the final trainee, Nina Nightnurse.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right and M to stun gas
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2,
Use of colour: very good, but colour clash present
Graphics: well drawn, humorous and smooth
Sound: limited
Skill levels: one

Mad Nurse won't keep any self-respecting games player happy for longer than a couple of goes - there just isn't enough variation in gameplay, and the intro bit at the start of every level is so monotonous. This reminds me of one of those hand-held game thingies so popular a few years back; the action consists of one task which gets progressively harder, and becomes progressively more tedious the longer that you play. Even the extremely sick nature of the plot doesn't appeal to me... which is quite unusual. I can't recommend this, even for the price it's unplayable triteness.
BEN

I don't know what those folks at FIREBIRD see in this rubbish, every aspect of this game is dire. The graphics are full of attribute problems, the sound is extremely basic and there are no addictive elements at all. In fact one game was enough for me! Mad Nurse is also very sick - surely babies getting electrocuted and falling down lift shafts is only funny to a sick mind. Stick an '18' certificate on it. At least that would save most folks from buying it.
PAUL

Mad Nurse is occasionally funny, it's also very pretty to look at but it becomes so dull. There's nothing to make you return to it after its been played once (well, that's not totally true, I did put it on twice just to have the pleasure of watching babies plummet to their deaths). The front end is also incredibly tedious and unnecessary; and there's no way of skipping through parts of it either. Mad Nurse is a disappointing release from FIREBIRD, it's simply a dull game covered up with a few neat graphics.
RICHARD

Firebird
£1.99

At last, a game that caters for my maternal instincts. You watch while the massed infants of the maternity ward crawl around, swallowing enough tranquilisers to keep themselves quiet for a very long time, discovering gravity with the help of the lift shaft and sticking their fingers in sockets for some juice - and I don't mean Ribena!

What? Oh, sorry. Apparently you have to stop them doing all these things. Bo-ring! I'd prefer Saturday night in casualty to keeping the crawling horrors at bay. It calls lot a lot of running around between three floors if you're to dump them all in their cribs. At least you're armed with stun gas to handle persistent offenders.

There's only one thing that stops this satisfyingly sick game being addictive though. There's far too little variety. The first time I played I clocked up such a high score that I feared I'd never see my last life. And when I did, whadja know? No table for the heroines who run into hundreds of thousands. Nursing is so-o-o-o unrewarding?

A pity, because the graphics are gruesomely great as the little dears give up the ghost and there's a triffic sequence whenever you get a new nurse too. But even dedicated Flo Nightingales aren't likely to stick with this one for long. Pass the bedpan, Alice.

Label: Firebird
Price: £1.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

If you look at this game in a highly critical manner and take it at first glance you could almost be forgiven for thinking that it is a complete and utter load of rubbish.

Mad Nurse however, is, a very whacky and entertaining little game.

It reminds me somewhat of a hospitalised Skool Daze in its layout - with three levels, connected by lifts, of nursery wards, each with various cots, medicines, and electrical sockets.

The scenario has you as a trainee nurse in the baby wards, and it's you job to scour the wards for naughty babies who have climbed out of their cots and causing havoc wherever that go. As you move your nurse around (they have delightful names like Brenda Bumwasher and Tracey Toetickler) you find babies about to put their fingers into plug sockets or opening medicine bottles, or intent on chucking themselves down the lift shaft.

You've got to overcome any powerful urge to just let them go ahead and write themselves off and build up your score by saving the tots, and returning them to their cots.

Get too many babies in one cot, and they all hop out again twice as fast! Collecting the bottles also gives you a bonus score, but you don't get much time for that.

It's all in extremely bad taste which is to say it's definitely a game to look out for.

MACHINES: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Firebird
PRICE: £1.99
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum

This game should be taken into council care. It needs help. Dead babies for entertainment. Wonderful.

Mad Nurse is set in a maternity hospital crawling with little bundles of joy. Trainee nurses appear to be in control of the place. These would-be Florence Nightingales delight in such names as Brenda Bumwasher. Humour isn't dead even if the babies are.

The babies refuse to stay put and got to sleep. They crawl all over the place, swigging from medicine bottles, apparently electrocuting themselves and - wait for it - this is the really clever - falling down a liftshaft and going splat at the bottom.

Controlling the nurse you must round up the babies before harm befalls them, put them in bed and collecting stray medicine bottles. Points are scored for babies saved.

During a game you have three nurses, each of which is allowed three mishaps before getting the sack.

I think this game is probably the sickest game I've ever played. Don't buy it.

Firebird
£1.99

Definitely a game for the dubious taste department. Set in a hospital that's severely understaffed, you play none other than Mad Nurse herself as she tries to stop kamikaze squads of babies coming to harm by swigging down medicine, sticking their fingers in light sockets or crawling to the end of the corridor and plummeting down the lift shaft. You score points by picking up babies and placing them back in their cots. Some babies immediately rebound back onto the floor like gymnasts.

Each level consists of three floors of the hospital and the babies crawl from left to right towards the dreaded lift shaft. The lift connects all the floors and your major decision is spotting which floor is about to become a potential disaster area. Unlike NHS nurses you are provided with 'stun gas' which pauses the screen when things get hectic allowing you time to think out your next life saving move.

The graphics are surprisingly good and if your sense of humour stretches to seeing the funny side of the game you could well enjoy this one. As a game in itself without the babies in jeopardy idea, Mad Nurse would be a little lacking in the action department but when you see those babies heading for the open lift shaft it's difficult not to press the stun gas button and save them. A budget oddity.