ARACHNOPHOBIA

 ARACHNOPHOBIA is only the latest of many computer games based on hit 
movies. But few of these games have been very memorable. Weak 
connections with the film and poor game play have often produced 
nothing more than an obvious attempt to make a profit from the movie's 
reputation. This action game is no exception. (This review is based on
the IBM version.)

 The object of ARACHNOPHOBIA is simple: Kill spiders. You are an 
exterminator (called "arachnid abatement technician") hired by the 
exterminator from the film. You start out in the own of Canaima (also from 
the movie), where you must destroy the queen spider. Of course, you 
have to search through the town to find her. Pick a house at random, use 
the cursor keys to drive your truck around, and then pull up and see what 
you can find.

 When you walk into the first house, you have a full canister of bug spray, 
full health, and two bug bombs. Spiders will be crawling around the floor, 
and if four bite you, you die. The manual claims that although one spider 
bite is normally enough to kill, your uniform protects you from the bites. 
But if these spiders are as deadly as the ones in the movie, this would 
have to be a _very_ special uniform.

 You can either use your bug spray, the bug bombs, your shoes, or a 
home-made flamethrower to kill the spiders. But to make the 
flamethrower, you have to find matches and an aerosol can, which are 
scattered around the houses in the town. And if you get bitten, you can 
always use the first aid kit in each house to heal yourself. Once you 
destroy the egg sac in a building, a bugometer is activated that will give 
you the direction in which the queen can be found. Then, after destroying 
the queen, you go into another, more difficult city, to fight more spiders.

 Later on, the game adds a second type of spider, one that hangs from 
the ceiling. However, it hangs too high for your spray to reach, so you 
have to wait for the spider to come closer to the ground. But the only way 
the spider will do this is if you walk under it. It falls fairly slowly, so you 
usually have time to react. But thanks to poor controls (either a joystick or 
the keyboard), it is almost impossible to kill the spider before it returns to 
the ceiling.

 With the joystick, you have to aim at a diagonal and fire in order to spray 
at the spider. If you aim straight up, you will only succeed in jumping. It is 
very difficult, almost impossible to turn around twice and then fire up to 
get rid of the bug. Often, you only end up jumping (which is what happens 
if you fire while pointing up), since the game is not forgiving in 
recognizing diagonal movements, missing the spider completely. And 
there is always the chance that the spider will bite if you don't position 
yourself exactly. (The range of the bug spray is obviously very limited, 
and you have to get extremely close to the hanging spiders.)

 Or you have the option of using the keyboard. But you must press a key 
on the numeric keypad once to aim and a second time to turn around. 
Tricking the spiders to come down is even more difficult; after running 
under one, you have to double-click on two different keys to turn around 
twice and then aim and fire. By the time you go through this long 
sequence, you will often be bitten by one of the spiders in the room.

 While one or two hanging spiders is no problem, in the higher levels, 
they completely destroy the game. Since you only have a limited amount 
of bug spray, and only a limited tolerance for spider bites, more than a 
few hanging spiders will make a level virtually impossible. I was never 
able to figure out a reliable technique for destroying them, so I was never 
able to get past a few of the earlier levels in the game.

 There are also other problems with ARACHNOPHOBIA, such as a pathetic 
(almost non-existent) save game routine. If you wish to load a game, you 
must do so at the title screen by pressing the "L" key. You will receive no 
message that your load request was found; you simply have to hope the 
game received the key press. You will begin the game at the start of the 
city where you last played. Once you die (or abort the game), you have 
the option of saving the current level or to replay the current level from the 
start. However, if you die in your first game after restoring, when you 
select "play again," you will simply start over from the beginning of the 
first level. You must first save the game again after restoring but before 
replaying.

 ARACHNOPHOBIA comes on both four 5-1/4" (360K) and two 3-1/2" (720K) 
disks. Hard drive owners must use the included install batch file which 
copies the files and decompresses them. To play from floppies, simply 
make a backup and run the program. Only CGA and 16-color (Tandy, 
EGA, or MCGA) graphics are supported (and the graphics are nothing 
more than fair), and only the Disney Sound Source or internal speaker 
can be used.

 There is off-disk copy-protection in a brown-on-red sheet with pictures 
of spiders. You must match a spider to its color on-screen representation. 
At least once there was no suitable match in the choices on screen, and 
on another occasion, several choices were presented that seemed 
acceptable. The manual is adequate.

 I would like to be able to pass ARACHNOPHOBIA off with a review saying 
that this was another Disney Software production intended for young 
children. But with very little variation in game play and poor controls, I 
doubt that more than a few players of any age would be able to enjoy the 
game. The difficult controls make it hard for extremely young players to 
enjoy, and older players, who might have more luck with the game than I 
did, will quickly be bored with the repetitiveness of the game. In addition, 
virtually every other product on the market offers better graphics and 
sound support. If you enjoyed the film ARACHNOPHOBIA, I would advise 
going to your local video store and renting it. But do not look to the 
computer game to provide the same entertainment.

 ARACHNOPHOBIA is published and distributed by Disney Software.