Rentakill Rita

Mastertronic
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

This is one of the most blatant rip-offs of a game I've ever seen, but in this case Mastertronic has used a good model - the gut-wrenching brilliance of Jon Ritman and Bemie Drummond's Head Over Heels. I can't say I'm too displeased - I was getting a little bored of the cheapie labels ripping off Fairlight and Sweevo's World (their usual models for this sort of 3D isometric game), when they could be duplicating the one that has really set the standards. So here we are with Head Over Rentakill Rita, or whatever it's called.

And really it's terribly good. The programmers (uncredited) have half-inched loads of Jon and Bernie's routines and turned them into a spanking good game. You are the aforementioned Rita (another female hero - times are a changin', and for the better), and it's your job to rid your employer's manor house of some irritating bugs which wander around several rooms. The only way you can do this is by crushing them under huge weights, and this you control by jumping onto switches which are always in the most out-of-the-way parts of the screen. It's puzzle-solving time in fact, and although there's more stress on pixel-perfection than in the original, some of the teasers are quite ingenious.

Otherwise it's all the usual nasty-avoiding and map-making stuff and although I've only got part of the way into the game, there's enough to keep you occupied for more than the odd evening.

And as Jon Ritman has no plans as yet to follow up his masterpiece, this may be all that we addicts can get. Unless our Game Of The Year award has some influence...