Exterminator C64

When you need more than a can of Raid!

Oh dear! It looks like the houses in the neighbourhood are experiencing a little bug problem. So who are you going to call? In this case they called a giant pair of floating hands to smash, crush and shoot away all the nasties. I guess this is what you call a hand job. Exterminator is a port of the 1989 arcade machine by Gottlieb.

The player controls one of the floating hands in a third person perspective looking from one end of a room to another. Various types of insects and other small pests move toward the player. The pests can be catagorised as flying or ground type. The flying insects include moths, wasps and hornets. The moths are harmless and simply need to be crushed. Trying to crush the wasps however will result in damage from the stinger so best to shake them off with a waggle of the joystick. Hornets are very aggressive and will constantly attack the player making well timed crushing vital. The ground enemies can all be squished on the floor. Spiders are again harmless but there are frogs that will use there tongue to eat you and even remote controlled tanks with real firing bullets! When you see cans, tomatos and toy tanks coming to life and attacking I think it's time to call in an exorcist instead.

The aim of the game is to kill a pest strategically over a grid of black and white squares on the floor. As a insect hits the floor a white tile will slide from the back of the grid forward toward the screen. Once a row has been turned completely white the room is clear and it's time to go to the next level. There are 6 houses with the levels being different rooms in the house. Clear all the rooms and you travel to the next house to start again. A bonus level seperates each house where the player can earn extra points and a slight energy refill.

The graphics are nice and colourful retaining the look of the digitised arcade original. The sprites are huge and very detailed. The backgrounds are static, prerenders. Again with lots of detail to keep the eyes busy.

I love the music in this game and can still hum the theme tune all these years later. The levels have some great tunes too. The SID chip rendition of the Flight of the Bumblebee is fantastic and a nice A-team theme tune sound-a-like will keep your head nodding.
Overall this a great game. A very simple premise that is executed in a fast, exciting way. It's a tough challenge and not many exterminators will see it through to the end but it's an amazing ride.