I agree with EgoTrip! When I bought the game (with my Christmas tenner) in early 1985, I had to burn my copies of Pyjamarama, Technician Ted, Mutant Monty, Roland In Time, Blagger, Manic Miner, Roland In Space, Fire Ant, Roland In The Caves, Jet Set Willy, Bruce Lee, Sultan's Maze, Knight Lore, Oh Mummy and Roland On The Ropes as this was such a superior product!
I showed it to my Speccy & C64 owning friends and they smashed their own, inferior, machines and bought CPCs just to play this game!
Maybe your version was simply a bad crack; it did have an infinite lives cheat, after all!
I blame illegal games piracy for your bad experience with this masterpiece!