THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE



MRS MOPP



PUBLISHER

Unknown



AUTHOR

Unknown



YEAR

1983



DESCRIPTION

A very basic arcade type game of picking up objects, using them

to perform certain tasks, and doing it all very quickly!



CONTROLS

A - Up

Z - Down

N - Left

M -Right

S - Magic Spell



Kempston Joystick



INSTRUCTIONS

The game is based around a single screen and several storage

utensils!  You control Mrs Mopp in her kitchen. As soon as the

game starts, rubbish, dirty glasses and laundry start appearing

all around you. You have to run and grab the utensil which is the

same colour as the rubbish in order to clean it up.  These

utensils can be put down at any time and exchanged for

anotherone, but only one may be carried at a time and you must

replace the utensil where you found it. When carrying the wrong

utensil, you may not walk over the rubbish, so as the screen gets

fuller it becomes more difficult to move. You must therefore

change utensils regularly in order to prevent the screen from

becoming too cluttered (and to stop you getting trapped!).  After

so many pieces of rubbish have been picked up in a utensil, it

(and Mrs Mopp) will begin to flash, indicating that it is full.

When this happens you can no longer pick anything up until you

have emptied the utensil into the relevant cleaning machine

(sink, washing machine, bin, etc.).



Doing well results in level advancement, where you get a wider

variety of rubbish to pick up (including some fantastic Y-Fronts)

and things appear much more quickly. Mrs Mopp has to be kept

happy in order to work well, and to aid in this task she is

provided with a bottle of wine (!) which you can make her

drink at any time when she is feeling less than 'Happy'. Be

careful though, drink too much and she'll get drunk - and a lot

more difficult to control!  Release from impossible situations

is provided in the form of magic spells, which are earned when

you work well and can be used to destroy any rubbish in your

immediate area.



CHEATS

SEQUELS/PREQUELS

None.



INLAY CARD TEXT

I don't actually have the inlay for this, although this little

rhyme appears on the title screen (you'll have to excuse the lack

of pictures...!)



Mrs Mopp works hard to keep her house neat.  She just glides

around, 'Cos she ain't got no feet



These are her tools, But these items, when tidied Must then be

processed.  Through utensils provided



Spectrum games of this era often contained such marvellous prose!





SCORES RECEIVED

As far as I can tell, Mrs Mopp was released before any of the

major Sinclair mags were around (apart from maybe Sinclair User,

but I don't recall that far back!). It was never re-released, so

only the oldest of Speccy users will remember it (sob, that's me,

I'm getting on....)



URL

This snapshot is NOT widely available. I got my copy by

requesting it from ca4aba@osiris.sund.ac.uk.



However, to fix this I have uploaded the snap to ftp.nvg.unit.no.

It is now available in the pub/sinclair/snaps/games/arcade

directory as mrsmopp.zip, thanks to Arnt's very speedy service!

Many thanks to him.



GENERAL FACT

Not much is known (if you know more, please update this

document!), but here is what little I have worked out :



Mrs Mopp can play up depending on the model of your Spectrum. The

keyboard control causes major problems in Issue 3 Speccies - i.e.

it just doesn't work!  This can be shown using Gerton Lunter's

Z80 emulator by selecting Issue 2 emulation OFF...try and move

her now! This is one of only two games I know of which fails on

an issue 3 Spectrum (the other being Rasputin, in which the

music sticks on one note if you don't have an issue 2). This may

have something to do with the fact below :



Mrs Mopp is written in Spectrum BASIC and compiled into machine

code using a BASIC compiler, which identifies itself in the

snapshot as



ZX COMPILER  V2.0

1983 THRELFALL and HODGSON

Compiled OK



It plays pretty fast, but you can see how it could have

originally be a BASIC game! It would probably fit into 16k, but

starts too late in memory and is therefore 48k only.





NOTES

I love this little game - it takes me right back!  I'd recommend

it to anyone who got their Speccy way back when they weren't

trendy (i.e. any time before Christmas '83!).

