Category:The Trap Door

The Trap Door is a series of two action games that were released by Piranha on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64 in 1986 and 1987 (the CPC and C64 versions were developed by Five Ways Software); they were based on the CMTB Animation/Queensgate Productions television series of the same name (which was originally aired on BBC1 in 1984, but when the second game was released, it had been succeeded by the rather inferior Stoppitt and Tidyup), and in 1990, the ZX versions of both games were rereleased by Alternative Software on a compilation that was entitled The Trap Door Collection, one on either side of the magnetic tape, by which time the show had again been succeeded by Bump the Elephant.


 * The Trap Door (1986): The original title in the series saw the player take control of the friendly blue creature Burke, overworked servant to the Thing Upstairs, as he attempted to perform a series of tasks for him; if he took too long over completing one, the Thing would yell to Burke that his time was up and set another one. Once Burke had completed all five tasks, the Thing would send down his wages on the dumb waiter in a tough-looking safe which he would have to push to the room of the castle with the crusher (after raising it three-quarters of the way up the screen) - because the crusher would automatically come down on the safe and open it, but if the crusher had been raised too high the safe would be crushed, and if it had not been raised high enough the safe would not open.


 * Through the Trap Door (1987): The second title in the series saw the player take control of both Burke, and his spider friend, Drutt (who may have been gray in the show, but due to technical limitations, he appeared as yellow in both games), as they went down the eponymous trap door to rescue Boni the skull (who had been kidnapped, by a skeletal and headless bat-like monster that lived down there); many small objects were placed around the trap door's four areas for Burke to eat, all of which had strange effects on him (like growing a pair of bat-like wings and flying into the air, bouncing in place like Drutt until his jump was high enough to leap over a large monster, and becoming invisible for a short period of time). Both of the characters also had to work as a team in the game.