There's quite a funny story associated with The Bulgulators. (Smirk smirk.) I saw an early version of the game, back when it was called Mr Pac, and it had rather a splendid set of tunes. They were the tunes from Pacmania to be exact. It seems Colin Macdonald was unaware they were copyright, and that Grandslam had just ripped the music off from the arcade game themselves. What an amusing misunderstanding, eh readers? I must submit it to the Radio Times and see if I can get on to the same thoroughly entertaining letters pages which brought us Mrs Gillian Nuttall of Rawtenstall and her hilarious childhood memories of 'The Borrowers'. Some sort of PS about David Jason will probably do the trick.
    But in the meantime, a few words about The Bulgulators. It's the first commercial game from erstwhile Speccy PD aces ESI, and it's a Ms Pacman game. There are one hundred levels and assuming there's a different maze for each level, one hundred mazes to navigate. (Bingo. Ed) The idea is, as ESI point out, 'as old as the hills' but for the benefit of Andy (who doesn't like to see huge blank spaces in his well-designed columns), here's a quick resume of the game style, made slightly more interesting by the employment of Nordic vowels.
    You have to eat all the dots in each maze, avoiding the ghosts. Eating one of the four power pills enables you to eat the ghosts for a bonus. Fruit also pop up to increase your score, and later levels promise one-way passages and locked doors. Hurrah, eh?
    
It may only be a weather balloon Colonel, but it's a damn scary one
The Bulgulators hardly shows off the Coupe to full effect, but there's great use of colour and the sprites move very smoothly. Actually, on some levels the background colours are craftily chosen to make the dots blimmin' invisible (or as near as dammit) which adds an extra dimension to the gameplay and won't win ESl any friends.
    The Bulgulators is a highly playable game but one with a very irritating fault - the ghosts move randomly. Now any Pacman fan will tell you the point of the game is less about clearing levels than getting as many ghosts as possible with each power pill. (Erm, no. Several Pacman fans) I suppose that with one hundred mazes it's impossible to have predictable ghosts (indeed, some would argue that would take away much of the thrill of the chase) but it's terribly annoying to get caught between two of the blighters through no fault of your own and to have to ignore the ghost bonuses, instead using the power pills to frighten them away so you can clear more of the maze.
    Still, those fiends at ESI provide plenty of merriment with mazes stacked with dead ends and horrible open spaces, fruit that, erm, isn't (and kills you) and tunnels that don't come out on the opposite side of the screen. (Extremely nasty.) If I've a bone to pick with the actual maze designs it's that you never start in the same place twice, and a longer pause to find out just where the heck you are (trickier than it sounds with some of these backgrounds) would be very helpful indeed.
    So then - a playable maze game but one that misses the point about the power pills, is far too tough for the beginner and expects you to work miracles for those blimmin' passwords. Fun but very dated, and frustrating in a big way.