| Mr. Boston | |
| |
| Developer(s) | GCE |
| Publishers | GCE |
| Release Date | 1982 |
| Genre | Maze |
| Mode(s) | Single player only? |
| Media | Cartridge |
Due to the usual pattern of a game making it huge, clones of that game usually come next, which Clean Sweep proved to be no exception for when Pac-Man got gigantic in the arcade. However, even though the basics of Clean Sweep were pretty much identical to Pac-Man (clear mazes of dots, use special areas to turn the tables on your attackers), the idea of the game was totally changed, as the player(s) controlled a vacuum cleaner (!) used to suck up money that robbers have attempted to steal from the player(s') blown-up bank.
Note: in this version, the player controls a top hat.
Gameplay
The player(s?) move a top hat through a maze in order to suck up dollar bills that are strewn throughout the screen. After several bills are vacuumed up, the top hat will increase in size. After several size increases, the hat will become full and will not be able to vacuum up any more bills, so the money must be deposited in the vault in the center of the screen before the hat can start gathering up money again.
Robbers (which look like the player's blaster in the Tempest arcade game) begin appearing, entering via the two escape tunnels (as opposed to Pac-Man's one) that run vertically and horizontally in the maze. If a robber catches the player they will lose a life; run out of lives and the game will end.
Along with using the escape tunnels (which will warp the hat to the opposite end of the maze [i. e. entering an escape tunnel from the bottom will cause the player to reappear at the tunnel entrance at the top of the screen]), there are four special rooms -- one in each corner of the maze -- that the player can enter in order to be able to dispose of the robbers for a brief time. The robbers will re-emerge from an escape tunnel seconds later though, and any remaining robbers that the player was not able to eat up will start blinking, indicating that they are about to return to their previous, dangerous form.
The difficulty level increases by having the hat to fill up quicker, causing the player to make multiple trips to the vault during a level.
Controls
- Choose between players--button one
- Choose starting level--buttons two and three
- Start game--button four
In-game
- Move hat--joystick or D-pad
Scoring
- Gathering a bill--10 points
- Depositing a bill--20 points
- Supercharging--50 points
- Eating up robbers--100 200 400 800 points
- Extra life--10,000 points
Starting levels
Game one is the regular game, whereas game two is a "lights out" variation where the maze walls cannot be seen.
Trivia
This is the exact same game as Clean Sweep, although this version was a promotional release for the liquor company of the same name, Clean Sweep had a much wider release, and the player controlled a vacuum in that version. There are very few copies of this game that are known to exist.
This article uses material from the Clean Sweep article and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.