CONTRAPTION

■ PUBLISHER: ICON SOFTWARE ■ YEAR: 1985

Ask anyone to name a BBC platform game and chances are it’ll be Frak! by ‘Orlando’. It made a huge impression on its release in 1984, not least for its large, detailed graphics, use of the full screen and unusual sideways‑scrolling levels.

Splendid though Frak! may have been, it wasn’t the only show in town. Another great example, which arrived in the following year, was Contraption by Dave and Helen Mann. Inexplicably, this title seems to have been as universally and comprehensively overlooked as Frak! is celebrated. Indeed, it’s so widely forgotten that the ZX Spectrum and MSX conversions appear to have been entirely lost to history and are nowhere to be found online. (Happily, the Amstrad CPC version does survive.)

Like Frak!, Contraption features attractively detailed graphics that make full use of the whole screen area, at a time when most platform games used chunky graphics in only about two‑thirds of the display. The gameplay is routine enough in concept. You play a professor who has to collect apples to feed into his contraption, and to that end you jump around the screen on both solid and crumbling platforms, avoiding mobile and static killer objects and heading for the exit door. So far, so Manic Miner. Unoriginal it may be, but the setting is appealingly whimsical and the game is fun – albeit very difficult!

The game was extremely well‑reviewed on its release, with universal praise directed at its graphics, and at least two reviewers claimed to find Contraption a better offering than Frak!. Try both games and make your own judgement about that. What’s clear, though, is that Contraption doesn’t deserve to be so forgotten.

[BBC Micro] Walking on pistons in Contraption… If this first level initially seems tough, be warned that the game gets much harder later!

[BBC Micro] Once collected, apples must be fed into the Professor’s contraption by dropping them into the chute at the top-left of this screen.