From   CRASH Online   Issue 13

Producer: Mastertronic
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £1.99
Language: machine code
Author: David Jones

Here's the first of a batch of new year Mastertronic budget games. In Finders Keepers the King of Isbisima is upset because he has nothing to give his daughter for her birthday. As a magic knight you have been ordered to find the Princess Germintrude a very special present. Should you succeed you may be invited to become a Knight of the Polygon Table.

To carry out your appointed task, the king transports you to Spriteland which is a welter of platform-type screens and two mazes teeming with electro-historic nasties that sap your energy and useful objects in the shape of small white triangles.

There are two possible objects in this game; either you may elect to collect as many valuable objects as you can and escape from the castle, or you may collect the treasure to please the king and princess and join the polygon table. Finders Keepers is an arcade adventure, and 'adventure' in quite a literal sense, because when you are next to a white triangle you can examine or get it. On getting, you are given an inventory of what you already carry, and when the limit of five objects is reached you have the choice of dropping something first. Some objects react to form other substances, sometimes more useful than the original two, sometimes less, so finding a philosopher's stone is good, because it will transform a lump of lead into a bar of gold. Scoring is in two sections; percentage of rooms explored and cash value of objects collected. Some objects are useful in as much as they can be traded with the ghostly traders who waft about, others have a function which will help you on your way.

The screen display is a square with a status panel on the right. The platform screens are all linked horizontally and vertically. Control is in four directions, up being used when on the move to jump. In the mazes, the knight remains centre screen, while the large maze scrolls across.