The last American Software's release that we're going to release is probably their best one, a little cute budget masterpiece by enfant prodige Timothy Closs [he was very young, IIRC], yet to pen his most famous efforts, I, Ball I & II. It's a colourful romp through a maze, Ultimate-style via Bubble Bus's Starquake in which you must whizz through hundred of rooms, your goal being, of course, to stabilize ten qdigits, whatever that means, while zapping dozens of floating and swirling nasties with the laser that the little man from Jetpac lent you. It's got a very nice presentation, and you're welcomed by a synthetized voice bellowing the title just after loading finishes, and then by a tyipically ultimatesque tune in the option screen. Moreover, you didn't even have to map the game if you didn't want to, because a map was provided with the game - which now is fairly common possibility, thanks to Pavero's hundred of contribution in the Spectrum games topography science. The only defect is that the nasties can appear very very near you out of nowhere, making it very easy to die, although the explosion is nicely coloured too. Aside, that very enjoyable stuff.
4/5
Review by YOR on 06 Apr 2022 (Rating: 3)
It's another game of running around and shooting things, yay, this time with a robot of sorts and I have to say a rather odd looking one at that, I thought the thing above him was a quiff and I'm kind of saddened that it's not. Anyway I like its look and I like the idea of the game but it fails somewhat on execution, which admittedly was a problem in a lot of Tim Closs' game, but this one is easily among the best I've seen from him and it turns out it was one of his earlier arcade titles. But there was Bomber Bob which was a mediocre Bomb Jack game, European 5-a-Side was an appalling soccer game and then there was Skateboard Kidz which was absolutely dreadful. this trumps all three of them combined and the latter two came after this. As a game alone, not that great, but it certainly looked the part and compared to his other work, it stands out.
