Viz, for those of you who aren't aware of its existence, is a 'comic' which was a rather amusing novelty when it first appeared. Unfortunately, Viz lost its appeal by, ooh, issue two, and since then has been merely a rather sad collection of cartoons swearing at each other. Viz the Computer Game attempts to bring those lovable rascals (?) to life on the small screen, in the form of a race through their home town of Fulchester.
    This involves you taking control of one of the three characters in the race, and attempting to overcome the various obstacles positioned along the way by using special 'powers'. You get your powers by having a bash at your characters special bonus level.
    Unfortunately, everyone's special powers do the same thing - they simply speed you up and get you over obstacles. This has very little to do with the main event, which basically involves you walking quite slowly around each obstacle.
    As you can imagine, this type of gameplay doesn't make for an incredibly addictive and fun-packed game. In fact, it's pitifully dull, and the dreaded multiload system means that you have to reload virtually the whole game in every time you die, just like in Ghostbusters 2. What's more, there's no sound at all on the 48K version, and the game occasionally loads other character's bonus levels instead of your own. Worst of all, the programmers (Probe, who normally write pretty good games and should know better) labour under the delusion that adding a heap of bad language will excuse the appallingly dull game.
    Viz's only redeeming features are the nicely drawn character sprites and the miscellaneous 'Top Tips' you get when you complete a bonus stage.
    Unless you're particularly unobservant, you've probably noticed that I don't think much of this game. Well, you'd be right. The game's packaging says that "you'll never play a bigger load of crap", and in the face of the evidence, I have to say that it's absolutely right.

Ratings given by other magazines

4/10      8/10

Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database

YS Cross-references
		Viz/Virgin	YS67	76