RVG Forum

Palace Software’s Cauldron is, like many others, a game that is fondly recalled from the 80s. Also like many others, it has unfortunately not aged well. Playing a witch (or rather ‘hag’ as the game gleefully notes on the lives bar) the object is to collect six ingredients that allow you to cast a spell to defeat the malevolent pumpkins and obtain the coveted golden broom. Of course, each ingredient is hidden behind a locked door, so the hag must first locate each relevant key. Your witch can trot along the ground or fly on her broomstick. Upon leaving her home, she is attacked by all manner of beasties that sap at her magic. Fortunately the broom boasts a nifty magic cannon, but this too exhausts the witch’s magic supply. On the surface lay several doors, upon entering witch (sorry, which) there’s a fairly unexceptional platforming section, with plenty more nasties. Cauldron is generous with the lives but it needs to be. It’s rock hard. It’s impossible to fly anyway without getting zapped and even firing back uses valuable magic making it a better choice to simply try and whiz across every screen. Converted to the Spectrum from the Commodore 64 original, the game shows its origins. The graphics are slightly more blocky than many similar games and the abundance of colour has an unfortunate and well-known side-effect. The scrolling, predictably smooth on the C64 has now been compromised into a jerky half-screen effect which hinders gameplay even more on the indoor sections. It’s a shame that going back to Cauldron deserve to remain in the past.

“Ghostbusters! Ah ha ha ha ha!” Or as it sounded on the Spectrum: “Gersssssssssstbussersagharagahaeargh”. This famous title was the first big movie license on the Spectrum and it sold an absolute bucket load, boosted of course by the phenomenon that the movie had become. God knows why. I hated it - the game that is. With a light dusting of financial management out of the way (choose your car, ghost busting equipment etc.), it was onto the main map which displayed the city of New York. Mosey around a bit and a ghost will appear somewhere on the map. Then follows an atrocious section where you drive up a 3-lane road with nothing to do other than hoover up the occasional ghost (provided you bought the ghost vacuum, if you didn’t then this section was even more boring). Once past this, you stood outside a building with the errant ghost, which was always a slimer-type, buzzing around and waiting to be caught by your particle streams. Ghostbusters was a game completely lacking in any skill. The strategy section at the beginning was a no-brainer due to lack of funds; the driving section offered no risk at all, you could just leave the Speccy alone for 5 minutes if you wanted, and the random nature of the ghosts often meant a boring wait or one to wander into your energy streams. I know a lot of people have fond memories of Ghostbusters the game, I don’t.

One in a line of fine arcade conversions from Elite Software, Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins continued in the tradition of accurately portraying its arcade parent, including the rock-hard playability. Obviously lacking a certain amount of colour from the original, the Speccy version was still a delight to play with all the basic elements present and correct. The key (as with most arcade games) was memorising enemy attacks and methods so that you could combat them accordingly and the Spectrum did a valiant job in replicating most of this.