Moonlight Madness (video game)

Moonlight Madness is a platform game for the ZX Spectrum home computer, published in 1986 by Bubble Bus Software.

This requires the player to traverse the mansion's rooms while avoiding hazards such as dangerous house servants and fatal falls.

Players must guide a boy scout through a 23-room mansion in order to obtain 16 keys and a 4 digit combination before running out of lives.

[1] At the start of the game the player has four lives; a life is lost should the boy scout fall too far or come into contact with one of the mansion's servants or traps.

The man, a mad scientist, expresses surprise that the boy has managed to get past the guards and booby traps in the mansion's grounds.

[4] Your Sinclair's reviewer began their piece by stating "Hmmm, don't like the title Moonlight Madness much, howzabout Daylight Robbery.

"[9] Computer Gamer's reviewer stated "Had it been released on a budget label, Moonlight Madness would have been fair value for money.

As a result it is possible to double-up movement controls with these two functions, effectively causing the game to pause and unpause or for the music to toggle constantly as the player moves in that direction.

The background music was described as "...the only thing that is remotely interesting about this appallingly tedious game..." by Popular Computing Weekly's reviewer.

"[1] Crash magazine's three reviewers were more positive about the music, stating "The sound is fairly well done...",[3] "The title screen plays a nice tune..." and "...the game's drawing point is the sound..."[3] The game's graphics were described as "fairly crude",[5] "unattractive" and "...none too exciting, consisting of colourful but flickery characters.

"[3] One reviewer stated "The graphics are large and colourful but there is a lot of character clash..."[3] Overall impressions of Moonlight Madness were negative.

The boy scout (bottom left) makes his way through the maze corridor