Urban Upstart is a single player text adventure with graphics set in a dead end town, somewhere in England, sometime in the 1980's. Scarthorpe is a dead and dreary place, the kind of plate that no-one ever visits and no-one can ever leave. It is a tough town, as the inlay says 'even the dogs carry flick knives'. The object of the game, therefore, is to find a way out of town. The text parser allows the player to string commands together in the form 'TAKE BALL AND GO SOUTH'. The game can be saved when partially complete. The player's progress is measured by a scoring system, the maximum possible score being twenty two. Though the game is a text adventure with graphics the pictures in the Commodore version can be turned off if required.