With a new Crash annual in the pipeline, it's time to revive an old Crash cover tape character: Egghead.

Written in November 1989, the first Egghead game was a platformer in the Manic Miner tradition but as my programming style developed the series started to resemble the Monty Mole games, more through accident than by design.  Egghead's last outing - Egghead Round the Med - was a 128K affair boasting 140 screens.  The next game in the series will return to 48K so won't be quite as large as its predecessor but with a new screen compression method it should surpass the 52 screens of Egghead Entertains.

Egghead 6 will be a return to the collect-em-up outings of Egghead's first 2 games but using a similar engine to Egghead 4 and 5 with numerous enhancements.  There are more sprites on screen and some new obstacles to worry about as well as the odd feature borrowed from other games in the genre.  The game-within-a-game meme continues too; Egghead 4 had a Donkey Kong room, Egghead 5 a fruit machine.  Egghead 6 will feature a classic ZX81 arcade game on one screen.

Can you believe it is 10 years since Egghead 5 was written?  No, nor can I.  If you're looking to refresh your memory, the previous Egghead games can all be downloaded from the World of Spectrum site.  Alternatively, get yourself a Vega (or the soon-to-be-released Vega+).  Cassette versions are also available from Cronosoft.