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!).
