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You couldn't get away with this now, not even in the Xbox Live's indie games scene. Automania is a total of two screens in size. By contrast Manic Miner, a game released a year before had 20 and Wanted: Monty Mole, a game released the same year, has over 30. Hell Donkey Kong, released back in '82 at least had an even four. But no, Automania has just two. Of course you have to play these screens 11 times and each time the item and platform placement of the second screen is different so I guess you could pretend there was 32 screens - and yet it was a successful game. It could have something to do with the fact that the game is perfectly programmed and the controls were spot-on. It could have something to do with the graphics being big and detailed for the time and the system. It could have something to do with Mikro-Gen being good friends with Crash Magazine, who had a good influence over how the Spectrum scene spent their money. Or, maybe, it could have something to do with the game being so bloody hard that you never got far enough to notice you were playing the same two screens. I'm sorry, that's hyperbolic, it's not that difficult once you work out the timing of the two crazy tires but it is very challenging.

The gameplay can best be described as thus - imagine if you were doing a fairly simple jigsaw puzzle but before you could place each piece you had to play a level of Donkey Kong in a set time. It's not as annoying as it sounds even if Wally is a little slow on his feet. The puzzles in question are a series of cars - starting with the ludicrous Citroën 2CV and moving up from a Mini Coop, a Jeep, a VW Beetle, a Landrover and eventually up to a prestigious Rolls Royce. The car's progress is shown on the left screen and the parts are collected on the left, a screen made up of ladders, platforms, possessed tires and falling debris, which despite my complaining does re-arrange itself per car changing the challenge. A challenge that is already pretty challenging from the start, the game requires a great sense of timing and being able to use that great sense of timing as fast as possible - your time, measured in an energy bar at the top of the screen, runs down fast and will only get faster.

Automania was identical on the Commodore in every way except that it didn't have the ZX Spectrum's colour clash, both versions sold well enough to allow Chris Hinely to work on a sequel...

Wally Week

The unassuming hero of the series. Wally was created by Mikro-Gen Ltd's sales manager Paul Denial, who had come up with the idea of having a typical northern, flat cap wearing Average Joe as the character for Chris Hinley's in production game Automania who then drew a rough sketch of the character, and so the big nosed, beer bellied everyman hero of the series was born. Wally used to be a mechanic and eventually ended up as builder despite being pretty poor at DIY. In British slang a 'wally' is an idiot.

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