ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES: COMEDY PACK

Del and Rodney are back with the crème de la menthe of CD-ROMs

DEL BOY'S BARGAINS

• Calculator - Experience the luxury of a leopard-skin calculator complete with charming tunes.
• Calendar - Enjoy lovely Peckham through the seasons with your own 'snow globe' calendar. 
• Clock - A genuine, marble effect, 70s clock, complete with flamenco dancers, to keep you ahead of the game.

RODNEY'S DIPLOMA IN COMPUTERS

• Tart up the old beige box with wallpapers, icons, animated cursors and sounds in that unique Trotter style.
• Plus - top-notch screensavers including video clips, background scenes and a message maker.
• You know it makes sense!

THE NAG'S HEAD KNEES-UP

• Video Browser - Browse the Radio Times for your favourite clips from fifteen years of Only Fools and Horses.
• Pub Quiz - Test your knowledge of Only Fools and Horses and see how good you really are - will you be a Del Boy, a Rodney or a Trigger?
• The Fruit Machine - Crack the jackpot by matching up the stuff of Only Fools and Horses on the fruit machine. Pick up extra points with some chancy gambling or - even better - work out how to cheat the machine!
• Luvvly jubbly, so everyone's a winner!

ROUND THE 'OUSES MAZE GAME

• See if you can improve your rating from 'plonker' to 'millionaire' as you carry out Trotter 'missions' around Peckham. Deliver merchandise, get involved in a spot of decorating, take charge of Boycie's sports car and more.
• He who dares, wins!

~ from the back of the box

 
If you're British, you likely know all about Only Fools and Horses. Chances are you'll occasionally revisit an episode or two on a regular basis, quoting 'lovely jubbly' or 'you plonker Rodney' whenever you can. The famed BBC sitcom that sporadically ran from 1981 to 2003 is forever ingrained in our culture. By the time Only Fools and Horses: Comedy Pack arrived in 1999, the show was an annual event airing newly-produced specials each Christmas. And while this multimedia CD-ROM threatens to be nothing more than a coaster for much of its lazy and uninspired content, there is one surprising mini-game that makes it worth a look.

But before we get to the good stuff, we have to trundle through the junk. Over three themed menu pages, you have access to some useless desktop apps, highly compressed videos clips and mini-games. The first you're greeted with is Del's Bargains, probably because you won't want to visit the page otherwise. It's a suitcase full of tat including an animated clock, a leopard-print calculator and an ultra slow calendar. Each of them provide a whole two seconds of fun and offer up functions even the earliest of Windows operating systems could surpass.

You have to go through quite a few loops to do maths with this kind of flair (left).

Not even marking the date on the calendar could make me on time (right).

Rodney Trotter's Diploma in Computers shows off his technical knowhow with a whole array of options to customize your Windows '9x desktop. All of those cursors, wallpapers and screensavers are useless now, but even back then I would've likely scoffed at their low quality. The big event is when we join Uncle Albert's Nag's Head for a Knees Up. Everything you would find interesting in a CD-ROM such as this is found here. You can view a healthy amount of clips in the Video Play or test your knowledge of the show in the Pub Quiz. You can even cheat at the Fruit Machine to win man mondo dosh which, alas, cannot be spent anywhere else.

The biggest draw, however, is the mini-game called Round the 'Ouses. Looking like a poor-man's recreation of the original Grand Theft Auto, it has you driving a car around a dubiously accurate map of Peckham in a multitude of fetch quests that make up the ten missions. You are to pick up a stated number of suitcases before high tailing it to a specified location within the tight time limit. This will earn you money which is little more than a high-score counter. You careen around the streets of lesser-known London in Del Boy's trusty Robin Reliant, but should you hit walls or other cars it will cause damage. Driving into an Auto Repair garage will fix it, but it will cost you some of that hard-earned moolah. There are power ups that do the same thing for free so you might as well hunt those down instead.

Round the 'Ouses should be called Grand Theft Peckham.

Follow the yellow arrow (left) to locate packages and their drop off points (right).

Other vehicles aren't always law-abiding citizens either. A Pink Cadillac or a fleet of black cars owned by the mob-like Driscoll Brothers will take aim of your canary-coloured three-wheeler inflicting as much damage as they can. To know where you're going, a floating arrow will point you to your destination, though you will have to make your own way there as it's no Satnav. Press space to bring up the map for a better way to plan your route. Who knows? By the end of the 10 missions you might just be a millionaire!

While the cars are 2D spites, the map is made up of three-dimensional buildings in much the same way as its inspiration. While all of the levels take place on the same map, it's not so small that it can't contain a number of curious locations and varied road layouts despite mostly consisting of right angles. It's nowhere near representative of the real Peckham - too colourful for a start - but it makes for an amusing mini-game with a depth few other multimedia CD-ROMs would attempt. It alone makes the whole package worthy it. Cushty.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses PCem running Windows '98. Press Ctrl-Alt-PgDown to toggle fullscreen. Press Ctrl-End or middle mouse button to release the mouse. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

IMPORTANT - Remember to shut down the emulated version of Windows before exiting PCem. This could potentially result in errors, lost saves and corrupt data. Close the program only when it is safe to do so.

File Size: 606 Mb.  Install Size: 0.98 Gb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download


Only Fools and Horses: Comedy Pack is © BBC Worldwide Ltd
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

Like this? Try These...