Jokers Wild

Following on from their Dodge City double cassette game, Phoenix now offer Jokers Wild, which follows the same format, ie, an arcade 'Action' tape with four levels to be got through before you are given the running code to play the adventure tape.

The scenario is set in 1972 and our intergalactic enemies (fed up with all those Tie Fighters and laser bases) are posing as a funfair. Before you imagine our intergalactic enemy as a hundred and fifty foot high Big Wheel with people going round in him, be aware that they are posing as funfair people and are placing hypnotic playing cards in 'bunko booths' to capture people's souls. 'You' and Captain Phoenix have been summoned back from the future to lock the hypnotic cards in a lead-lined security box. From there you must find the time vortex that is holding our enemies in the space time continuum of earth 1972.

The arcade tape presents a screen of forty squares surrounding a long black edged box in the centre. This latter is the lead-lined security area. The four corner squares contain four playing cards, one of each suit. All the squares (or rooms) are connected by doorways in a varying arrangement, so you can't just zip from one to the other. Those rooms without a playing card have various coloured keys in them, only a few with black ones. You can't enter a room with a playing card in it unless you have picked up a black key. Only one card at a time may be deposited in the vault. On the first level there is one chaser - an alien Knave, on the second level there are two, three on the third and four on the fourth. Between each level cleared you are given some clues which will be vital to you during the adventure part, and after the fourth level has been cleared you will be given the code without which the loaded adventure will not run.