Reviews

The Stampers signed off from the Spectrum with their best game where you pay the outlaw hunting sheriff in the wild west.
The local boys directed you to the bad guy and you could speed after him on a comic book carnival horse. Here at last was a game that looked and played well, made smoth haste in 3D and best of all doesn't require a map.
My favourite Ultimate games all make good use of the fire button - Gunfright, Jet Pac, Lunar Jetman, Atic Atac, Cookie and Pssst! whilst their other games, even the revolutionary Knight Lore left me luke warm.

Following on from the disappointing Nightshade, this was the second and final Filmation 2 game. This was also, apparently, the final Spectrum game which the Stampers worked on and would have made a fitting swan song were it not for the four subsequent lacklustre releases on the label.

With the limitations of the, albeit graphically impressive, engine becoming apparent Ultimate stripped the gameplay down to the basics. You no longer had to hunt to find your enemies, as there were people who would point the way for you, and there was only one weapon; your trusty six shooter. This makes it a much more enjoyable and direct game, but still rather simplistic compared to Knight Lore, and even the earlier 2D games like Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf.

On the plus side though, it's one of the best looking Ultimate games and there are some great graphical touches, such as a panto horse you can use to speed up and protect you from collisions. It's also refreshingly free of the random unavoidable death element that blighted a number of other good Ultimate games.

by Tim Stamper, Chris Stamper

Filmation technical prowess and lot of running around, but overall slim gameplay.
3,5/5

Oh Ultimate, your games were surely great 30 years ago but they are of little appeal to me now. This is Nightshade but with a western look. The controls are just as awkward and so to is the bore and lack of thrills. I'm just going to say me and isometric games don't blend together.

As the sheriff of a Wild West town which for some reason is continuously targeted by the worst outlaws west of the Rockies, it is up to you to maintain law and order with your six-shooter. Engage the baddies in a duel and remember - do not draw first!

Gunfright is an old favorite of mine and never ceases to give me plenty of fun. Now, if those nasty townsfolk would move a bit less erratically... They end up being more annoying than the outlaws themselves!

1985 Ultimate (UK)
by Chris Stamper

I'm not the biggest fan of isometric games and by this time this type of offerings were no longer a novelty and were starting to get a bit repetitive. It re-uses Filmation II from Nightshade, which is basically Filmation I with large scrolling environments, something already seen in the groundbreaking Ant Attack, the obvious inspiration for the Stamper Brothers. You also get buildings which will partially disappear when our character passes by them (maintaining just an outline of the buildings). But you end up with empty squared areas to move. This could have been enriched with objects, like furniture. Also this new engine made both Gunfright and Nightshade more straightforward shooter games, like Ant Attack was. Still the game has it's adventurous side and some planning is advised, because bullets are limited.
It can be fun but sometimes I find it a bit boring, because the task is always the same and executed almost always the same way. Maybe it would help to have a wider variety of townspeople. I no longer play it, but I remember spending some good times with it, the Stamper brothers always managed to give their games a great playing value.

Well, here we go with another iconic ZX game. Not so for the typical characteristics that every average ZX fan would demand as for the excellent technical section. What happens...Well, these same marvels were already "very seen". But that does not take away the merit.
This game features Filmation II and that's more than sufficient to be very high regarded.

As Chris Stamper admitted in a Crash magazine interview, Gunfright was the last game the Stamper brothers 'developed as a team', in other words, the last true Ultimate game, as the later releases, Cyberun, Bubbler and Martianoids lacked the 'magic' the company used to include in previous games.

Gunfright is the second Filmation 2 game after Nightshade. Maybe a technical advance, but they never reached the gameplay and fun of the original Filmation games.

This game, being similar to Nightshade -a far west town instead of a medieval village, outlaws instead of ghouls-, is a bit more playable, as it features useful characters like the guy pointing at where the outlaw is, the horse to ride faster or the final duel to shoot every outlaw, a true minigame.

But as the player progresses through the game, the game becomes dull and repetitive.