THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE SCUBA DIVE PUBLISHER Durrell AUTHOR Mike Richardson YEAR 1983 CATEGORY Arcade DESCRIPTION Scuba diving arcade game with a HUGE collection of sea-beasts! CONTROLS Redfinable Keys INSTRUCTIONS Take control of a little guy in scuba gear as he explores the sea from his boat, looking for hidden treasures! As you swim about (avoiding the assorted marine-life), you will find clams on the ocean bed. When they open their shells, swoop down and grab their pearls! Return these pearls to the ship to earn points. Watch out for you air level - you'll need to return to the boat when it gets low, but the boat doesn't stay still - it moves! To get the big points, find the octopus. Swim under him (it's pretty hard!) and you'll find a lower down section with much bigger clams (and fish!). Find another octopus here and swim down again, and you'll find a chasm. Leading off this chasm are many narrow passages. Hidden in these passages are treasure chests which are worth bucket-loads of points! Watch you don't crash into the rocks too many times though, and keep an eye on that air level! There are air tanks which you can refill your oxygen from in these lower sections, but they're few and far between! INLAY CARD TEXT CHEATS POKE 55711,x where x is the number of lives you want POKE 45696,0 makes the clams stay open longer POKE 55845,0 to grab yourself infinite lives SEQUELS/PREQUELS None. SCORES RECEIVED URL ftp://ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/sinclair/snaps/games/unsorted/s/scub adiv.zip GENERAL FACTS Crashing into rocks when carrying pearls or treasure is a really bad idea, 'cos you'll drop whatever it was you were carrying and that's it - you can't get it back! The sea bed is random every time you play the game! No remembering where that treasure chest was from last time, eh? The play area also wraps around - swim far enough to the left or right and you'll come back to where you started. Handy for catching the boat if you lost it ages ago - just swim in the opposite direction! Mike went on to write other top games for Durrell, including the marvellous Turbo Esprit! NOTES A good game! Not particularly fast paced, but it has it's panic-inducing moments! I think the point of the game is just to score as highly as possible.