[{"TitleName":"Grell and Fella","Publisher":"Code Masters Ltd","Author":"Allister Brimble, Chris Graham, Peter J. Ranson, R. Fred Williams, Shan Savage","YearOfRelease":"1992","ZxDbId":"0009355","Reviews":[{"Issue":{"Name":"Your Sinclair Issue 79, Jul 1992","Price":"£2.5","ReleaseDate":"1992-06-18","Editor":"Andy Hutchinson","TotalPages":68,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"SCHOOL'S OUT FOR EVER!\r\n\r\nWhen you have nothing to say, say nothing. I did. Anyway, what was the first thing you did after your last exam?\r\n\r\nEditor: Andy (Got arrested for being drunk and disorderly while at college) Hutchinson\r\nArt Editor: Andy (Flicked the V's at a teacher and then skipped home) Ounsted\r\nDeputy Editor: Linda (Went baby sitting) Barker\r\nStaff Writer: Jon (Sat down with a cream tart and a nice cup of tea) Pillar\r\nArt Assistant: Maryanne (Tried Sherry for the first time) Booth\r\nAdvertising Manager: Alison (Sighed) Morton\r\nSenior Sales Exec: Jackie (Went shopping) Garford\r\nProduction Coordinator: Lisa (Burned her books) Read\r\nPublisher: Jane (Went for a wee) Richardson\r\nPromotions Manager: Michelle (Went to see David Bowie in concert) Harris\r\nPromotions Assistant: Tamara (Burst into tears) Ward\r\nGroup Publisher: Greg (I Went screaming off in a customised Beetle across Waterloo Bridge shouting along to Talking Heads' Psycho Killer & The Only Ones' Another Girl Another Planet)Bingham\r\nCirculation Director: Sue (Went and had a froffy coffee) Hartley\r\nAssistant Publisher: Julie (Left Coventry instantly and vowed never to return) Stuckes\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair (Went to bed for a week). Future (Considered a career as a dentist) Publishing [redacted]\r\n\r\nManaging Director: Chris (Drank most of a bottle of bubbly and then... can't really remember) Anderson\r\n\r\nSubscriptions: Future Publishing Ltd [redacted]\r\n\r\n©Future Publishing 1992. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from Bertie Arbuthnot of Calcutta Deirdrie's motorway cafe.\r\n\r\nISSN: 0269 6983\r\n\r\nYour Sinclair fails its exams, but just doesn't care with other rebellious mags like: Commodore Format (Went on a Venture Scout jamboree), Amstrad Action (Burnt school books), Amiga Format (Went down to the beach in Bournemouth), PCW Plus (Dived fully clothed into a swimming pool), PC Answers (Signed up for re-sits), PC Plus (Cried), Sega Power (Won a race to get out of a three hour exam and into the bar first [winning time 45 mins]), Amiga Power (Asked everyone else what question five had actually meant), Amiga Shopper (Caught a plane to Venice), Classic CD (Listened to a nice symphony), Needlecraft (Stitched a noose), Cycling Plus (Went home), Photo Plus (Joined the moonies), Mountain Biking UK (Went to see a personal supervisor to explain why they'd only turned up for half an hour and written their name in the first exam of the season), PC Format (Fed school blazer to the dogs and watched them rip the thing to pieces), Public Domain (Broke wind), ST Format (Went inter-railing to Greece, France, Germany etc). Total! (Dossed in the sun until shoehorned out of the garden by mom and dad to go and get a job) and Today's Vegetarian (Went hurtling to the pub faster than you could say transcontinental plate tectonics) and coming soon... What Scart Lead.\r\n\r\nBut what we really want to know is... if Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck and Pluto's a dog, what the hell is Goofy?"},"MainText":"Code Masters\r\n£3.99 cassette\r\n[redacted]\r\nReviewer: Linda Barker\r\n\r\nUnlike quite a lot of little girls I never wanted to be a fairy, I wanted to be a cute pixie with pointy ears and a green tunic. Since those distant days I've acquired the green tunic and years of pulling my ears has given them an almost imperceptible sharpness. When Grell & Falla appeared I thought my time had come, I was about to take on my rightful role as a green midget. But alack and alas, the only pixies here are baddies. I was just going to have to put my prejudices to one side and pretend to be a fairy who can't swim. (Pretty apt, eh Linda? Ed) Okay, okay, so I can't swim but that doesn't make me a fairy. Anyway, upwards and onwards as some groovy chap once said.\r\n\r\nGrell's the dwarf, Falla's the fairy and the two of them meet down the local employment agency and decide to go into business together. They are taken on by a sorcerer as gardeners and set to work, ready to slope off in a few hours. But 'tis not to be for this is a magic garden, full of untimorous beasties left by the old owner - a nasty witch. Eek! It's a bit lucky then that there are two of them to sort the mess out, eh? Grell & Falla is not, as you might expect, a two-player game. Instead you move one character at a time and make sure the other one is safe out of harms way. Should Grell or Falla die then a message will appear on screen bidding the other to hurry to the scene of the accident and administer the kiss of life.\r\n\r\nGREEN FINGERS\r\n\r\nThere are 50 levels here, so it's a biggie. (Oo-er! Ed) Oh, per-lease! You're assigned a different task on each level, you have to plant bulbs and turn the nasties into honest, hardworking creatures who will help the garden grow. You can also buy useful implements and the like at the garden centre. Coo, eh? The garden itself is a sideways-scrolling, platformy kind of affair. It's one of those places where you can't get lost, however hard you try. Y'see, if you were to cut out this game, you could roll it up into a freestanding circle. But you can't, so let's just pretend I didn't say that.\r\n\r\nGrell and Falla have their own, erm, inimitable characteristics that make each of them dead useful to you. Grell can punch baddies 'til their faces are wreathed in docile grins and Falla can run and fly faster than a very fast thing in a hurry. Grell might be a bit dirty, but he's the biz when it comes to digging whereas Falla, being dead girly, doesn't like getting her hands dirty. Instead, she hovers around sprinkling fairy dust on the seeds.\r\n\r\nActually, Falla's a bit too speedy and Grell doesn't exactly crawl along. The two of them kept running on long after I'd stopped pressing the right buttons. (You mean inertia. Ed) Inertia? I thought that was when thing's didn't move at all. (Well you weren't. Ed) Oh, anyway - there's a high inertia factor and it's dead annoying. Y'see, Grell and Falla can't swim and whenever I tried to stop them at the banks of rivers, they refused. Instead of skidding to a halt, they just jumped in and lost vital energy. This didn't help when it came to converting baddies either. Rather than stopping just in front of them and giving them a good punch on the nose, old Grell just ran full-tilt into them. Result? A dead dwarf. Pshaw I Now I know that the easiest way to deal with this situation is to go slower and take things a bit easier, and I tried. I managed to get to grips with it all eventually, but I really had to concentrate on how fast I was waggling. (Which meant that I couldn't wallow in the cuteness of it all.)\r\n\r\nCUTIE, OR WHAT?\r\n\r\nCutie, definitley cutie - there's no 'or what' about it matey. Grell & Falla is full of my favourite things, there are piles of flowers, handfuls of fairy dust, starburst spells, butterflies and ladybirds. What's more it's a complete riot of colour. The programmers really have gone to town on this one - the skies are blue, the grass is green, the rabbits (sorry - wabbits) are fluffy and the bees are buzzy. If it wasn't for that darn inertia this would be one fluffy-wuffy Megagame, as it is it just misses by the span of a ladybird's wings.","ReviewerComments":[],"OverallSummary":"Amazingly cute scrolly/platform action that just misses being one of the best things ever.","Page":"13","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Linda Barker","Score":"85","ScoreSuffix":"%"}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Falla jumped up and down a bit and twirled her arms a lot. It was a blatant attempt to attract the moths, but she had no shame."},{"Text":"Grell hated playing leapfrog with Toby Toad, he always ended up cricking his back. It simply wasn't fair - it took him ages to straighten up properly."},{"Text":"Grell looked up and saw the first apple of the year, with a bit of momentum he'd be able to grab it for Falla. Maybe she'd give him a kiss in return."}],"BlurbText":[{"Text":"BLIM!\r\n\r\nNot all fairies are good. The original Tinkerbell was a jealous little cow and many have been known to steal. In 1783 the villagers of Stinchcombe in Gloucestershire were plagued by a whole group of fairies who curdled the milk and stopped babies from going to sleep by tickling their feet with feathers."}],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Life Expectancy","Score":"84%","Text":""},{"Header":"Instant Appeal","Score":"92%","Text":""},{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"90%","Text":""},{"Header":"Addictiveness","Score":"82%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"85%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]},{"Issue":{"Name":"Sinclair User Issue 125, Jul 1992","Price":"£2.2","ReleaseDate":"1992-06-18","Editor":"Alan Dykes","TotalPages":52,"HasCoverTape":false,"FlannelPanel":"Editor: Alan 'Excellent!' Dykes\r\nDesign: Yvette 'Babe!' Nicholls\r\nSU Crew: Garth 'Bogus' Sumpter, Steve 'Party On' Keen, Ed 'Head' Laurence, Pete 'Source of all knowledege' Gerrard, Graham 'Hate Mail' Mason, Phillip 'Missing in action' Fisch, Jason 'Good game' Baptiste\r\nAd Manager: Tina 'Foxy lady' Zanelli\r\nAd Production: Matthew 'Yin-Yang' Walker\r\nMarketing Man.: Mark '?' Swallow\r\nMarketing Persons: Sarah 'Hello dearie' Ewing, Sarah 'TNT' Hilliard\r\nPublisher: Mike 'Malibu' Frey\r\nManaging Director: Terry 'The professionals' Pratt\r\n\r\n(c)1992 EMAP IMAGES\r\nPhone: [redacted] (is there anyone out there?)\r\nFax: [redacted] (Information at the end of your eyelids)\r\n[redacted]\r\n\r\nColour by those wonderful Colourtech people\r\nPrinted by Kingfisher\r\nTypeset by Altyp Inc\r\n\r\nAbsolutely no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system or copied, resold etc with the prior permission of the publisher. However, if anyone feels like putting a copy of SU in a deep space probe, sent out to seek other worlds and communicate examples of earth's wonderful things, of which SU is probably the best example (along with a well known brand of lager) to alien races in space, I don't think Mike will mind too much! Y'all have a nice day now."},"MainText":"Label: Code Masters\r\nMemory: 48K/128K\r\nPrice: £3.99 Tape\r\nReviewer: Ed Lawrence\r\n\r\nGrell and Fella are garden bound odd-jobbers with a difference, thus we had to get the most experienced muck raker on the Crew to sort them out... Ed Laurence pulled out his little trowel and got digging.\r\n\r\nSeeing as one of these characters is a dwarf and the other a fairy you might be forgiven for thinking that their odd-job experience would be restricted to mining or cleaning more dishes than any other washing up liquid, but that is where this duo depart from the norm. Grell and Fella are in fact currently employed as magical gardeners in a fantasy kingdom. Their employer is a benevolent sorcerer who has recently come into a plot of land after kicking an evil witch off the premises and now he wants his garden cleaned up.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, what should have been a couple of days hard digging combined with a few good rain spells has been turned into a full-scale battle by the hordes of evil garden creatures left behind by the witch.\r\n\r\nPlaying both Grell and Fella it is your job to traverse the platform terraces of the garden, turning evil creatures into friendly ones (by hitting them or shooting them with a variety of stars and fairy dust), whilst simultaneously planting pretty flowers and creepers to make it all look nice.\r\n\r\nThe job is made somewhat easier by both Grell and Fella's intuitive grasp of magic. Grell can only cast offensive spells, although these come in very handy, whilst Fella has a wide magical repertoire at her disposal. Soil quality is improved with Fella Fairy Dust spell and her deluge incantation is just the job for watering thirsty seeds. Unfortunately, the chums have rather poor memories, and every time they use a spell, they also lose one charge, eventually they forget the spells altogether. More charges can be purchased at the Garden Centre though (conveniently situated at the foot of the garden itself), but our heroes must first earn enough money (in the form of pebbles) to buy them!\r\n\r\nThe object of the game is clear up the entire garden, making all the animals happy and good and leaving the ground a sculptured masterpiece of flower and vines. Of course, Grell and Fella earn money for this, but exactly how much depends on how quickly and efficiently the job gets done. Earn enough and the pair can retire in peace... botch the job and they are doomed to an eternity of spadework.\r\n\r\nGrell and Fella must be the world's first gardening simulator! The plot and game objective are certainly as bizarre as they come, so it's slightly disappointing when the game loads up and you discover it's really just another platform collect 'em up. Nevertheless the graphics are colourful and detailed, though this does result in some colour clash which can make it difficult to see where your character is at times. There is also very little sound to speak of, though what is available is of reasonable quality.\r\n\r\nGameplay definitely needs getting used to, and even then it'll never be completely satisfactory. The main sprites seem to be either glued to the spot or hopping mad with very little control, all over the place. The design and concept of Grell and Fella is entertaining and makes for an interesting game, however difficulties in controlling each character and suspect collision detection - there are times when your shots pass through enemies harmlessly, and others when a killer bunny miles away starts draining your energy slightly mar it.\r\n\r\nIn theory, Grell and Fella should have been a strategic platformer with lots to do and some teasing puzzles. In practice however it has turned out to be a mite frustrating to play but still an interesting title for the price.","ReviewerComments":["I love the idea behind this game, Ed's right... It must qualify as the world's first gardening simulator. Control is annoying and sprite detection somewhat dodgy but not to the extent that the game is unplayable. Without these problems Grell and Fella could have been § most spectacular title, but even with them I still think it's worth a look.\r\nGarth Sumpter"],"OverallSummary":"In concept, Grell and Fella sounds great, but in the flesh it can seem to be an ugly beast. On the downside graphics are colourful but a little confusing and control can get frightfully annoying at times. On the plus side the storyline is original and there are lots of things to do and implements to do them with, along with plenty of power-ups and a nice friendly shop keeper. Not really my choice of game but a title that does deserve some notice.","Page":"30,31","Denied":false,"Award":"Not Awarded","Reviewers":[{"Name":"Ed Lawrence","Score":"73","ScoreSuffix":"%"},{"Name":"Garth Sumpter","Score":"","ScoreSuffix":""}],"ScreenshotText":[{"Text":"Fella only casts good spells, a bit of a softy."},{"Text":"Grell can cast offensive spells, plant lovely bulbs and runners and thump the hell out of nasty frogs, rabbits and birds."},{"Text":"Grell is a fast mover."},{"Text":"Ohh, she's lovely."},{"Text":"Yes, he's an all round Mr. nice guy!"}],"BlurbText":[{"Text":"IN THE GARDEN CENTRE...\r\n\r\nThere are many spells and items of gardening paraphernalia available in the shop where you'll be greeted by what looks like a distant relative of Grell. All the tough guy spells belong to Grell and all the softer ones belong to Fella. This particular garden centre stocks: GROUND SPELLS, which make the ground healthy; CREATURE SPELLS, which affect the good and bad creatures you encounter, POWERUP SPELLS which make you go faster and save you from death and OBJECTS such as plant seed for Grell, traps and dynamite. It even stocks flamethrowers for those difficult moments."},{"Text":"YOU TOO CAN BE A GARDENER!\r\n\r\nPhotosynthesis: This is the process by which plants convert harmful carbon dioxide into friendly oxygen, helping us all (yes, even YS. readers) to breathe. Green plants utilise light energy from the sun to produce food molecules from carbon dioxide and water.\r\n\r\nPerennial plants: A perennial plant is one which lives and propagates for more than two years. Herbacious perrenials have aerial stems and leaves which die each autumn. They survive during the winter by means of an underground storage organ such as a bulb.\r\n\r\nTranspiration: The loss of water from a plant by evaporation. Most of the water is lost from the leaves through the pores (known as stomata). Most of the water is lost from the leaves through pores known as stomata whose primary function is to allow gas exchange between the internal plant tissues and the atmosphere.\r\n\r\nThistle: Thistles are a prickly species plant associated with Scotland but they belong to the same generic family as the cactus. A Runner is not Linford Christie it is in fact an aerial stem which produces new plants, type of stolon."}],"TranscriptBy":"Chris Bourne","ReviewScores":[{"Header":"Graphics","Score":"78%","Text":""},{"Header":"Sound","Score":"64%","Text":""},{"Header":"Playability","Score":"72%","Text":""},{"Header":"Lastability","Score":"76%","Text":""},{"Header":"Overall","Score":"73%","Text":""}],"CompilationReviewScores":[]}]}]