Arachnophobia (Amiga) :
Ah yes...time for anyone with a hatred for things with more than six legs to look away! This BlueSky Software game is based on the 1990 movie of the same name and has you take control of bug exterminator Delbert McClintock, John Goodman's character in the movie
A deadly Venezuelan spider had hitched a ride in to town and got frisky with the local arachnids, creating an infertile but dangerous horde of offspring. Driving around a map that reminds me of the Ghostbusters game, Delbert must stop and go through the houses in eight different towns, killing all the spiders in each one.
He's armed with a can of bug spray, and you can aim the joystick in the required direction depending on where the spiders are, and give them a blast of the repellent...be careful though, as some of the little feckers will jump at you, making it easy to miss them as they try to chew your face off and web up your insides!!
You also get a couple of gas bombs that you can set on the floor, and these will wipe out all the spiders in that room....unless of course it's a queen spider! Yes, in every town there will be a queen that you have to track down and kill. She's not always easy to find, but the compass on the map screen will handily point in the general direction of where she might be hanging out...
You'll discover her nests everywhere though, and these need to be taken out to stop spiders spawning in the houses. Also, if you find yourself running low on spray, a quick jump on top of a spider should squish it in to a sticky, bloody mess...a trick worth remembering when you're in a tight spot. If you run completely out of spray, you'll need to leave the house for another can y'see...but this spawns all the spiders back to life when you re-enter...
As I just mentioned, gas bombs will only slow the queen spiders down when you find them...not kill them....and spray is pretty useless against them too. No, these silk spinners need a special kind of finishing off! Somewhere in town there will be a red can lying around. This allows you to spray fire once you aquire some matches, which will also be lying around somewhere...it's worth checking where the queen is first though before you light up and waste the spray, as I've been told the queen sometimes isn't in the same house as some of the matches, meaning you might light up only to discover you've no flame spray left when you actually need it!
It's a fairly enjoyable little bug hunt, and the spiders move around in a suitably creepy way. It can get a bit repetitive I guess, but in the short time I've played it it's never really become a problem. Whilst looking for the box art I discovered a little extra something awaits those who clean out all the towns too, so I'll definitely be going back to the game later to try and do just that! And also try to avoid the screen below that greets you every time you die....
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