[{"TitleName":"Frightmare","Publisher":"Cascade Games Ltd","Author":"Rod Ashley, Sean Conran","YearOfRelease":"1988","ZxDbId":"0001877","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Crash Issue 51, Apr 1988","Price":"£1.25","ReleaseDate":"1988-03-31","Editor":"Steve Jarratt","TotalPages":124,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Steven Jarratt\r\nSubeditor: Barnaby Page\r\nStaff Writers: Katharina Hamza, Mark Caswell, Nick Roberts, Lloyd Mangram\r\nEditorial Assistant: Frances Mable\r\nPhotography: Cameron Pound, Michael Parkinson (Assistant)\r\nTechnical Writers: Simon N Goodwin, Jon Bates\r\nStrategy Writer: Philippa Irving\r\nContributors: Matthew Stibbe, Paul Evans, Roger Kean, Paul Sumner, Paul Glancey, Julian Rignall\r\nEditorial Director: Roger Kean\r\nPublishing Controller: David Western\r\nArt Director: Markie Kendrick\r\nDesign & Layout: Wayne Allen, Yvonne Priest, Melvyn Fisher\r\nPre-Print Manager: Jonathan Rignall\r\nReprographics/Film Planning: Matthew Uffindell, Nick Orchard, Ian Chubb, Robert Millichamp\r\n\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Roger Bennett\r\nSales Executive: Andrew Smales\r\nAssistant: Jackie Morris [redacted]\r\nMail Order: Carol Kinsey\r\nSubscriptions: Denise Roberts\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nTypesetting by The Tortoise Shell Press, Ludlow. Colour origination by Scan Studios [redacted]. Printed in England by Carlisle Web Offset, [redacted] - member of the BPCC Group. Distribution by COMAG, [redacted]\r\n\r\nNo material may be reproduced whole or in part without the written consent of the copyright holders. We cannot undertake to return anything sent into CRASH - including written and photographic material, software and hardware - unless it is accompanied by a suitably stamped addressed envelope. Unsolicited written or photo material is welcome and if used in the magazine is paid for at our current rates.\r\n\r\nTotal: 96,590\r\nUK/EIRE: 90,822\r\n\r\n©CRASH Ltd, 1988\r\n\r\nCover Design & Illustration by Oliver Frey"},"MainText":"Producer: Cascade Games\r\nRetail Price: £9.95\r\nAuthor: Rod Ashley\r\n\r\nEach persons subconscious stores primeval memories which seep into our dreams. Frightmare dares the player to step into this psychic abyss and surrender to fears in the landscape of their darkest imaginings.\r\n\r\nThe nightmare takes place over a period of eight and a half hours in the supernatural environment of four dream zones, travelling through a surreal world of ruined, crumbling statues, networks of skeleton trees and rooms of blood-red skulls. In true dream fashion the ability to jump is weirdly enhanced - death by falling is a strange impossibility.\r\n\r\nThis dreamscape is haunted by the victims of five ancestral tales and legends. Contact with any one of them means the loss of one of the dreamer's five lives. Ranging from zombies to scarlet disembodied hands, these can be countered by a series of collectable weapons. Holy water kills all monsters instantly; revolvers (for which you also need to collect bullets), crucifixes and random potions have a more selective effect. Other icons increase your ability to jump, represent extra lives, and allow you to warp to different rooms.\r\n\r\nAs the inner self is penetrated, the dream state, recorded in letters at the top of the screen, alter accordingly. Beginning with a 'bad dream' the state slowly advances to finally become a 'nefarious frightmare'. After that all you have to do is wake up.\r\n\r\nEach new room visited moves the clock on by six minutes; at 8.12 am the frightmare is over and the harrowed dreamer awakes.\r\n\r\nCOMMENTS\r\n\r\nJoysticks: Sinclair\r\nGraphics: badly drawn and crudely animated\r\nSound: poor spot effects","ReviewerComments":["I didn't know that my darkest dreams were full of badly drawn characters, colour clash and irritating gameplay, but that's what the Frightmare adverts say, so it must be true! The best thing about Frightmare is the inlay, full of ghostly descriptions of the inhabitants of the frightmare itself. The game itself is the pits. The animated ghosties flicker all the time and none of them look remotely scary. Many of the screens are similar and range from bare to bland. The best graphics in the game are on the title screen with the word 'Frightmare' scrawled across the top. If you are looking for a ghosty game then this isn't the one for you. The now aging Ghosts 'n' Goblins is far ahead of this.\r\nNick Roberts","Thank goodness my worst nightmares aren't half as creepy as the guys in this game! Graphically, Frightmare is pretty good. Of particular note is the loading screen picture, based on the cassette inlay. The in-game graphics are also quite good, with some rather nasty looking adversaries to be either killed or avoided. Although the game is initially playable, with a very athletic hero bouncing around the screen, I soon discovered that it was little more than a 'run around collecting enough objects to continue through to the next, even more bizarre part of the nightmare' type of game. Although quite chilling at first, sadly I found that tedium soon sets in.\r\nMark Caswell","Like a recurring dream, the promotion of Frightmare has been haunting the magazines with monotonous regularity for months. Unfortunately, the realisation is never as good as the dream. Nevertheless, Frightmare is entertaining enough. The macabre graphics create a fittingly ghoulish atmosphere and even the control method - somewhere between jumping and floating - is expressive of the surreal ambience. The real nightmare, however, is the price. As a platform arcade adventure it's hardly a pioneering breed. Unremarkable spot effects, messy collision detection and slightly clumsy controls mean that it doesn't even rank as one of the best of its type. Frightmare can get very addictive, but £9.95 is a high price to pay for some fairly standard fare.\r\nKati Hamza"],"OverallSummary":"General Rating: Of strange curiousity value for those with a spare ten pounds.","Page":"25","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Nick Roberts","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""},{"Name":"Mark Caswell","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""},{"Name":"Kati Hamza","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Frightmare: look before you leap."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Presentation","Score":"73%","Text":""},{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"47%","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"57%","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictive Qualities","Score":"57%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"57%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 29, May 1988","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1988-04-13","Editor":"Teresa Maughan","TotalPages":116,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Teresa Maughan\r\nArt Editor: Darrell King\r\nDeputy Editor: Marcus Berkmann\r\nTechnical Editor: Phil South\r\nProduction Editor: Jackie Ryan\r\nDesigner: Catherine Higgs\r\nContributors: Guy Bennington, Richard Blaine, Audrey & Owen Bishop, Ciaran Brennan, Lucy Broadbent, Jonathan Davies, Mike Gerrard, David McCandless, Duncan McDonald, John Minson, David Powell, Peter Shaw, Tony Worrall\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Mark Salmon\r\nAdvertisement Executive: Simon Stansfield\r\nAdvertisement Director: Alistair Ramsay\r\nProduction Manager: Judith Middleton\r\nMarketing Manager: Bryan Denyer\r\nArt Director: Hazel Bennington\r\nPublisher: Kevin Cox\r\nPublishing Director: Roger Munford\r\nFinance Director: Colin Crawford\r\nManaging Director: Stephen England\r\nChairman: Felix Dennis\r\n\r\nPublished by Dennis Publishing Ltd, [redacted] Company registered in England.\r\nTypesetters: Carlinpoint [redacted]\r\nReproduction: Graphic Ideas, London\r\nPrinters: Chase Web Offset [redacted]\r\nDistribution: Seymour Press [redacted]\r\n\r\nAll material in Your Sinclair ©1988 Felden Productions, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of the publishers. Your Sinclair is a monthly publication."},"MainText":"Cascade\r\n£9.95\r\nReviewer: Jonathan Davies\r\n\r\nIf all games were presented as nicely as this one we'd... er, it would... um, well, they'd be a darned sight more interesting to look at! Frightmare is all dressed up in some great artwork, with a large instruction leaflet, cum poster, a trendy character set and a reasonably atmospheric tune.\r\n\r\nEven the boring, irrelevant blurb isn't too boring and irrelevant. According to Cascade, deep at the back of your subconcious lie Frightmares, figments of the darker side of your imagination which, with the help of ten quid's worth of computer software, will escape from behind their thin veil of reason. They will appear to you in your dreams and imprison you...\r\n\r\nOh, enough of this trash. This is a game, not to be taken seriously. Anyway, I'm scared.\r\n\r\nHaving been trapped by these nasty dreams, the obvious thing to do is escape, of course, by waking up (although if you've ever tried waking yourself up in the middle of a nightmare you'll know how tricky it can be). Tipping a bucket of cold water over yourself is out for a start, so you're going to have to do it by advancing the clock to 8.12am - wakey, wakey time.\r\n\r\nThis is done by exploring every room, sorry, dream, in the game, each one adding six minutes to the clock. Points are scored by shooting the assorted ghouls and vampires etc, you'll find knocking around the innermost recesses of your cranium, which will increase your \"dream state\" to a higher level.\r\n\r\nEssentially, what it all boils down to in a nutshell, is a platform game. Horrific, but true. It's heavily camouflaged with some well-designed graphics, but after years of training I can pick out a Willy clone at a hundred paces! You are represented by a little bloke who jumps around the screen, leaping around rotting corpses, dodging monsters and collecting objects. Huh!\r\n\r\nAnd sadly, like most unoriginal game concepts, even the most original of plots can't make it any more fun to play. It isn't even particularly scarey, (although perhaps that would be asking a bit much of our flexible friend). P'raps they should have shoved in a few members of the EastEnders cast, or even a couple of digitised Gateway check-out girls. Now that would have made your hair stand on end!\r\n\r\nAnother unfortunate case of \"Here's a good plot! Now let's base a game around it!\" I've seen scarier things on \"The Flumps\"!","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"\"Frightened? You may well be if you look too closely at the price-tag on this one!\"","Page":"52","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Jonathan Davies","Score":"6","ScoreSuffix":"/10"}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Come on! Why aren't your teeth chattering? That's you with the gun, having just fired one of your precious silver bullets at a monster. \"Bad Dream\" is your current dream state - pretty tame compared to a \"Nefarious Nightmare,\" the ultimate in-bed entertainment."}],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"8/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"6/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Value For Money","Score":"6/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictiveness","Score":"5/10","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"6/10","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 73, Apr 1988","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1988-03-18","Editor":"Graham Taylor","TotalPages":116,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Graham Taylor\r\nStaff Writer: Jim Douglas\r\nStaff Writer: Tamara Howard\r\nArt Editor: Gareth Jones\r\nDesigner: Andrea Walker\r\nAdventure: The Sorceress\r\nZapchat: Jon 'quite interesting' Riglar\r\nTechnical: Andrew Hewson, Rupert Goodwins\r\nContributors: Tony 'a fiver if my name goes first in the list' Dillon, Chris 'I'm expecting a fiver any day actually' Jenkins\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Katherine Lee\r\nAdvertisement Executive: Alison Morton\r\nAd Production: Emma Ward\r\nPublisher's Assistant: Debbie Pearson\r\nPublisher: Terry 'I would have scored five but then these ten blokes all jumped me...' Pratt\r\nMarketing: Clive Pembridge\r\n\r\nPhone: [redacted]\r\nFax: [redacted]\r\nSubscriptions: [redacted]\r\nBack Issues: [redacted]\r\nEditorial and Advertisement Offices: [redacted]\r\n\r\nThis Month's Cover: Russell Harvey\r\n\r\nPrinted by Nene River Press, [redacted]\r\nDistributed by EMAP Publications Ltd.\r\n\r\n©Copyright 1988 Sinclair User ISSN No 0262-5458"},"MainText":"Label: Cascade\r\nAuthor: Rod Ashley\r\nPrice: £9.99\r\nMemory: 48K/128K\r\nJoystick: various\r\nReviewer: Chris Jenkins\r\n\r\nThe longer you dream, the worse it gets... no. It's not an SU editorial lunch, it's Frightmare, Cascade's latest bid to disprove the, \"one-game company,\" tag.\r\n\r\nSince the success of A.C.E. and A.C.E.2, Cascade has decided to adopt a higher profile and bring out a wide variety of games titles. I'm not sure if Frightmare is the best game to start with though, 'cos, let's face it, guys, it's basically a cross between a platforms-and-ladders game and Ghosts 'n' Goblins. And the big question is: Can you make it through from 12 midnight to 8.30, surviving assaults from the deepest darkest demons of your subconscious, without going bonkers?\r\n\r\nThere are four dream zones to play through (each with many screens) ) and each time you enter a new screen, the clock ticks off an extra a six minutes. The screens, consisting of the usual platforms, pillars, ruined buildings and plants, are haunted by all the mythical ghoulies of legend and history; vampires, werewolves, medusas, severed hands, zombies, mummies and swamp things. Of course, hidden throughout the screens are weapons which can be used to kill off various monsters; holy water kills practically anything; watches slow them down; crucifixes freeze zombies, demons, serpents and various other offspring of evil; and many of the less powerful monsters are vulnerable to ordinary bullets shot from the revolver. If you find another revolver, it doubles your rate of fire.\r\n\r\nThere's also a single silver revolver, which is the only weapon which will destroy zombies, werewolves, and Satan. Well it would wouldn't it? You can collect several weapons, and switch between them using the inventory at the bottom of the screen.\r\n\r\nAs you leap around the screens, other icons will also help you out; rings give an extra life, wings increase the size of your jumps, a transporter moves you across the screen, and a chalice increases your dream state rating. This rating varies from BAD DREAM to NEFARIOUS FRIGHTMARE (which is the height of scariness). The pairs of nouns and adjectives change as you score more points by shooting monsters, picking chalices and using weapons.\r\n\r\nNow you might have noticed that this isn't the most exciting review in this month's issue, or indeed for several months' issues. The reason for this being that it's always difficult to whip up any enthusiasm for a game which is perfectly competently programmed, has pretty graphics and lots of gameplay, but not one jot of originality and no outstanding gimmicks. The most frightening thing about Frightmare is the price; it's certainly way better than the average budget game, but for £9.99 I certainly expect at least originality, excitement and, dare I say it? Superlative quality. Frightmare, sad to say, doesn't have it.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"Ghosts 'n' Goblins derivative with a merely average scare-factor.","Page":"66,67","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Chris Jenkins","Score":"6","ScoreSuffix":"/10"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Overall","Score":"6/10","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment) Issue 8, May 1988","Price":"£1.5","ReleaseDate":"1988-04-07","Editor":"Peter Connor, Steve Cooke","TotalPages":124,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Advanced Computer Entertainment\r\nFuture Publishing [redacted]\r\nTelephone [redacted], Fax [redacted], Telecom Gold 84:TXT152, Prestel/Micronet [redacted]\r\n\r\nCo-editors: Peter Connor, Steve Cooke\r\nReviews Editor: Andy Wilton\r\nProduction Editor: Rod Lawton\r\nStaff Writer: Andy Smith\r\nArt Editor: Trevor Gilham\r\nArt Team: Angela Neale, Sally Meddings\r\nAdvertisement Manager: Jonathan Beales\r\n\r\nCOVER PHOTOGRAPHY\r\nStuart Baynes Photography [redacted]\r\n\r\nSUBSCRIPTIONS & SPECIAL OFFERS\r\nCarrie-Ann Porter [redacted]\r\n\r\nCOLOUR ORIGINATION\r\nWessex Reproduction [redacted]\r\n\r\nDISTRIBUTION\r\nSM Distribution [redacted]\r\n\r\nPRINTING\r\nChase Web Offset [redacted]\r\n\r\nCopyright - FUTURE PUBLISHING LTD 1988 - No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without our permission."},"MainText":"Cascade get traumatised.\r\n\r\nWhat can you expect from a program endorsed by Grot Bags the Witch, you might ask yourself - a boring old platform game full of timing problems? Well that's what you get here alright, plus a few other niggles as well. Collectable weapons, extra jumps and the like are all very well, but half of them are practically useless while the other half are so vital you might as well give up if you waste one of them. The supposedly nightmarish graphics are really rather dull and the sprites seriously lacking in colour, leaving the program as a whole somewhat below the standard you'd expect of a two-quid game.\r\n\r\nReviewer: Andy Wilton\r\n\r\nRELEASE BOX\r\nC64/128, £9.95cs, £14.95dk, Out Now\r\nSpec, £9.95cs, £14.95dk, Out Now\r\nAms, £9.95cs, £14.95dk, Imminent\r\nIBM PC, £19.95dk\r\n\r\nPredicted Interest Curve\r\n\r\n1 min: 40/100\r\n1 hour: 40/100\r\n1 day: 30/100\r\n1 week: 30/100\r\n1 month: 20/100\r\n1 year: 10/100","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"","Page":"67","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Andy Wilton","Score":"285","ScoreSuffix":"/1000"}],"ScreenshotText":[],"BlurbText":[],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Ace Rating","Score":"285/1000","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]