After crawling around numerous air vents looking for Jones the cat in Alien, we finally make our escape in the Narcissus, and turning to our next game in the Your Sinclair Top 100 we discover that Number #21 is another tie-in, but this is from the MAD Magazine. Loading onto our CRT screens is two psychotic black & white members of the espionage ilk, as we’ve arrived at Spy vs Spy.
It was back in 1985 that Spy vs Spy arrived from Beyond Software, the same publishing house behind the fantastic The Lords of Midnight, and this violent cartoon strategy game was created by Tag and the Kid. There were two ways to play the game – either with one player vs CPU or Simuplay (not a cybersex game) being the two player mode, which is in truth the way this game should be played.
You find yourself as one of the infamous spies locked within a building close to an airfield, and you need to quickly get out to the plane on the runway, leaving before your nemesis does. It, however, is never that simple, as hidden throughout the building are four objects and a briefcase, and you’ll need these before you can get to the exit; this is what the opposing spy is looking for too. To slow down your professional enemy you have a series of traps you can place within within the numerous rooms. These include a large, tightly wound spring, a bucket of electrified water, a gun and string, a time-bomb with a 15 second fuse and this is where the fun really comes into the game. You become more engrossed in placing traps into pieces of furniture than you do in finding four objects and a briefcase, as the sadistic streak emerges from deep inside of you.
Spy vs Spy was a firm favourite of mine on its release due to the total anarchic fun it brought to playing a game with a friend. Still now the game is enjoyable and it captures the look of the MAD comic strip well (it’d be difficult not to really as the strip is drawn in black & white). Spy vs Spy is a game that really comes into it’s own when played with two players, alone it’s good but nowhere near as fantastic when you have a friend cursing you, one foot away from you ear.
If you fancy unleashing fiendish, painful, retro hell upon a friend, but don’t want to spend twenty years eating porridge at her Majesty’s pleasure then I’d wholeheartedly recommend Spy vs Spy.
Originally published August 8, 2016. Updated October 25, 2022.
