• Completed
& Reviewed by Neil Collins
Grange Hill was a hugely popular UK kid's TV show in
the seventies and eighties. It was low budget and badly acted, but we
all loved it (it wasn't badly acted! - Vinny).
I really wanted to play the game but never
seemed to get hold of a copy back then. It's probably
because nobody had a copy, being as the game is bloody
awful! It's an arcade style adventure where you control Gonch, who I think was the
ginger haired kid in the TV series. The whole adventure
is based on retrieving a walkman (!?) - which is pretty
silly. You have a mate, Hollo, who hangs around too -
and has a very minor part to play in completing the
game, so he's almost pointless. You have to collect
items to give to various characters which allow you to
access different areas of the game. You get to just say
'No!' to a drug pusher in the game - so the anti drugs
campaign from the TV series is evident within the game
too. It's a shame that the programmer didn't take this
advice, as it seems he was high when he wrote this game. The game looks a bit better than the Spectrum
version, but the sprites are chunky and badly drawn. The
animation is jerky, the control method is terrible and
the game is short and very dull. It's pretty awful.
Here comes the
ending...
...and there it goes.
The End!
HOW WAS IT COMPLETED?:
I found a solution online and followed it. It didn't
take long at all as there's very little to do.
SO WHAT HAPPENS?:
To beat the game, you need to return home to your mum
with the walkman. If you manage this, you get to read a
few paragraphs of dialog between Gonch and his mum. He
basically shows her the walkman, she isn't interested,
she says you have to fill an insurance form in and that
you will have to break back into the school to return it
?!? etc etc It's all a bit silly and pointless. It's one
of the dullest conclusions to a game I've ever read. I
would have actually preferred a simple 'Well done!', or
ideally an animated sausage on a fork flying across the
screen.... oh well...
Grange Hill
