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PREVIEW

So you thought you needed a laser disk system to run on interactive cartoon-based game? The Scooby Squad at Elite believe otherwise... we checked out progress on the Amstrad cartoon-action game which should be released this month
Derision time as Scooby slithers down the refuse chute — time for you, the player to intervene.
In the action sequences you will follow Scooby and Shaggy as they search the castle and need to help them solve (or avoid) problems as they arise and generally guide them on their way. You drive the action in the game, acting rather like a film director, taking decisions that affect the outcome of events. After each action sequence has been played through, the scene will fade to a descriptive section where you eaves-drop on conversations and can pick up clues, tips and hints which will help you solve the mystery.
When we visited the Scooby Squad they were confident that they had perfected the cartoon generating system that they would use to edit the screens into the finished game, and most of the design work on the individual screens - - or 'shots' — from the storyboard had been committed to computer memory with the animation sequences. A few final details needed working out, and then the editing would begin. For with this game creating system, assembling the final program is rather like editing a film or videotape. The raw material is all there, as is the means to combine it into a sensible whole — it's the skill of the editor that accounts for the polish of the finished product.
In the beginning, there was the text-only adventure game. Then came the adventure game with graphics, which developed into the arcade adventure. Elite could well take a significant step forward and become known as the creators of the Cartoon Adventure. Scooby's a game to watch for...

Rather than produce a straight arcade adventure, the team of programmers working on the game of the cartoon Scooby-Doo decided to try for a very different game — a game in which you direct the action rather than play in the more usual "up/down, left/ right" modes. From the very start of the project, the plan was to produce a form of computer generated cartoon film, which starred the quintet of characters made famous in their adventures on the TV screen. Scooby-Doo cartoons all follow a similar storyline — the quartet of humans, aided and abetted by the lovable, easily scared and permanently hungry hound, find themselves investigating ghostly goings-on in a spine-tingling location.
While the artists in Elite's Scooby Squad began studying videos of the cartoons, working out accurate animations from freeze framed action, the programmers set about developing a system which allowed them to compress data and combine screens and animation sequences so that a cartoon film could be squeezed into a home computer.
The plot soon developed. Set in a Scottish castle, Scooby-Doo, the game, features the ghost-hunting chums — Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma. Shaggy's auntie owns the castle and has had spook trouble for some time. She finally decides to leave her home forever when who should turn up, but her nephew Shaggy and his friends. Auntie is just leaving as they arrive and the gang persuade her to let them have a go at getting to the root of her hauntings.
Auntie agrees, and decides to go away but only for a couple of days while they try to sort things out for her — if they don't work out what's going on in 46 hours, however, she's leaving and never coming back.
Essentially, the game wilt feature seven or eight action sequences which are separated by descriptive scenes in which characters in the game interact by meeting and having a chat. The whole game is played against the clock, and to complete it you will need to go through all the levels and unmask the 'spook' who has been trying to scare Auntie off for so long.