Reviews
Reviews by WhenIWasCruel (1024)
Rather archaic, but good, adventurous explorative platform game.
A classic fusion of simplicity, humour and addictive playability.
I think it's a playable, well programmed (as you would expect from Mike Lamb), but rather dull beat'em up, with very easy early levels - although the common opinion among speccy people is quite enthusiastic.
It surely gets better in two players mode.
Not as good as the first Renegade, in my opinion.
A good arcade conversion from U.S. Gold - a futuristic race against time, an athlete making its way running through a technological environment.
The graphics are neat and fast, the gameplay inevitably rather ripetitive, but the playability is good - although to progress in the game, after the earlier levels, you have to learn perfectly the features of each circuit.
Appreciable and a bit underrated.
Cookie, 23 Jan 2009 (Rating: 3)
Cookie was one of the first three Ultimate releases, along with Jetpac and Pssst, and, as the others two, tried successfully to be a home version of those old one-screen arcade games that were popular at the time, but with an original concept to it.
In fact, as Pssst, Cookie is a strange kind of shoot'em up, in which you don't destroy waves of aliens one after the other: in fact, you're a cook struggling with some ingredients not very much keen to be thrown into a giant cup, where they will mix up with the ingredient of the next levels. Consequently you don't annihilate what you hit with your bags of flour: you will just bounce it in other directions.
In short, a well programmed and finished off little arcade, although not with a particularly enjoyable gameplay: his brothers Jetpac and Pssst! were more playable. Nonetheless, one of the best of 1983, and a nice, original concept.
One of the first software houses to get into the coin op conversions business - that was going to change the Spectrum games industry, and not for better - was Elite who, anyway, was able to produce a streak of good renditions, of which Paperboy was part of.
The concept/gameplay, throwing papers into the postboxes of the neighborhood dodging various obstacles, is not one of the most exciting, and the programming doesn't present any outstanding feature, but there's enough fun to keep you playing for a while.
This 1986's game was a stroke of genius in exploiting the narcisistic fantasies of little kids dreaming to become a professional footballer - that is, almost all of them.
Contrarily to the common football game, it is in fact structured to follow the career of a single player, an attacker of which you can choose the name, in his attempt to become the best player of the league, beginning from the lower divisions. The only few moments of football you actually play are a couple of chances to score a goal, that you can obtain buying the mysterious "goal cards".
I didn't know that footbal worked like this.
Anyway, the game can be dangerously addictive, and makes you waste hours with a gameplay that is rather silly:
buying "goal cards" to have a chance to shoot, as Marco Van Basten undoubtedly used to do, facing smart goalkeepers that always jump aside while you're shooting centrally, checking the position of your team - which often INSISTS to be first in spite of a dozen lost matches -, trying spasmodically to understand what's happening while an "incident" is occurring, and giggling stupidly when, most coherently, the alarming beep resolves in a "sorry, no incident this time" message.
Ultimately, the only real fun of the game are its clumsy features I listed above - aside that, it remains a mesmerizing, numbing trap.
Slightly more professional version of its predecessor, with less clumsy features.
Which were the only worth things in the first game.
I have strange feelings about this game: it seems a mediocre effort, with the usual monochrome graphic, ugly sprites, a scrolling that seems terribly laborious, frequent slowings of the animation, non-existent music and sound effects(in the 48k version)and maybe too easy to play - although the third level is a full immersion in a bright blinding yellow that makes it difficult to understand what's going on.
Yet, on the other hand, its easyness is not absolute, but it is of that kind that makes you think that you can nimbly finish the game with a little more effort - it's amost the opposite of those forceful, frustrating Dinamic's games: in spite of all its flaws, it is pleasantly relaxing.
So, in the end, I must say I like it: I like jumping killer snails or kill them with an axe, skateboarding through the forest, jumping from cloud to cloud and all that - in the relatively quiet pace of the game.
Not memorable, not considerable, not a marvellous conversion, and technically a bit bad for a 1987's release, but, anyway, a little, nice jerky [multiload] platform.
Cobra, 01 Feb 2009 (Rating: 5)
One of the most amusing and adrenaline-filled Speccy's games, blending various styles in its gameplay (platformer, beat'em up, shoot'em up), and mixing it with comic book graphics, nice music and irony.
Joffa Smith's masterpiece, in my opinion.
- - - - -
22 November 2016 review:
by Jonathan Smith, Steve Cain, Martin Galway
I think a new type of game was emerging between 1985 and 1986 which united multilple genres into one gameplay, I'm referring for example to Ghosts 'n Goblins, which merged platform and shoot'em up elements
in a multi-directional scrolling environment, or Green Beret, which, although scrolling horizontally, added a beat'em up element in the form of the use of knife [very short range weapon, as punches and such], and the Green Beret conversion for the Spectrum was the great late Jonathan Smith's assignement before Cobra, and I think there's a clear hint of that in the latter. Cobra, in fact, it proposed again that new type of multi-genre game, stressing the platform and the beat'em up aspects [you start with just your head as weapon, and in fact you're encouraged to "[i]use your head[/i]"], and making it frantic and hyperkinetic, while when you actually manage to gain the most powerful shooting weapon, you feel almost almighty, until it lasts, which one of the reasons why this game is so good - the relief of being able to sweep away all of the silly nasties trying to overwhelm you, including distressing damsels with bazookas, after a vulnerable start. Moreover, although the game is a tie in from the Stallone's Cobra movie, it's all Over The Top, it's a demented spoof of the movie and of Stallone in general, enriched by cartoonish graphics, rhythmycall engaging tunes, persistent jingles and a top notch loading screen. It's initially hard to get into the game, but once you get used to the frenetic pace and the non-stop danger coming from a costant flow of peculiar and lethal characters, then you find a pretty entertaining game. And don't forget that your fiancèe will come to defend you from the nasties, once in a while. Just don't shoot at her, she doesn't like it. Ah, I forgot, beware of the baby carriages, of course.
5/5
p.s. the final part is disappointing, but whatever.
by Javier Cano Fuente, Emilio Martinez, Jose Manuel Munoz Perez
To me Tres Luces De Glaurung a.k.a. Conquestador is one of the great Spanish games, underrated and surely better than other more hyped releases like Sir Fred. Gameplay-wise it was nothing innovative, and maybe a little late, with his Ultimate-like Underwurldesque approach: explore the castle and the dungeons, find three pieces of the item X and then find the exit and leave. But the implementation is good enough, and with enough personality and nice touches, to make it remarkable, in my opinion. Playability, for instance, is far superior to stuff like Underwurlde, and you have complete control of your character, which doesn't bounce around the rooms madly like a flipper ball - moreover, you can even practice the "flying walk" a limited but very useful and pleasant walk over the floor, which can be used to pass over voids and reach platforms, or to accelerate your motion. An original feature, just like the technique you have to use to defeat the several enemies crowding the castle, from waddling green vikings possibily shooting arrows at you, to black knights, to unidentified spear-wielding ancient soldiers [Greek, Etruscan, whatever, who knows], and the best spiders since Wiggler, spitting fireballs when in bad mood. Jump on them to defeat them and they'll vanish in a poof [not in the sense that they become homosexual], but they need just a touch to kill you, and they like to jump too, so you have to be attentive and choose the timing of your move. The movements are very smooth, and the graphics very nice and detailed, with no or almost no colour clash.
Other nice touches are the big viking mouths that you can enter, which - after a brief and very cute interlude in the dark - will bring you to a different part of the castle, functioning as shortcuts. What else? Chests. There are chests littered around the place, and their content may be good or bad, and may be even one of the items you need to be able to leave the castle.
Or it can contain a curse that turns you to a hilarious and grotesque being, a sort of bipedal swine. The same happens when you linger too much in a room: you turn into the funny thing, while a disquieting, dark and lethal creature appears and slowly flies towards you, while a menacing buzz resounds. The English version loading screen is great [less so the original Spanish one], and you're welcomed in the option screen by a fantastic baroque/medieval two channel tune. Maybe it's because I played it a lot at the time, and it was one of the few that my sister liked, her favourite one to be precise, but I still think it is greatly appreciable, particularly for mapping enthusiasts.
4,5/5
Old February 4 2009 review:
Las Tres Luces De Glaurung is a nice spanish game, retitled "Conquestador" and published by Melbourne House in Britain, during 1986.
It can be described as a mix between Ultimate's Atic Atac and Underwurlde: it possesses the playability of the first, its fast pace (in part) and the kind of maze and view, colorful and well drawn, of the latter.
The goal is to find three amulets and then reach one of the exits of the castle, killing or avoiding knights, vikings and spiders shooting fireballs, jumping from platform to platform, or "walking in the air" to reach them - which is a peculiar feature of this game (but after some paces you'll start to fall) - and opening the chests that you'll find on the way, which will give you an useful object (arrows, for example), turn you into a strange, clumsy creature for a while, a sort of rampant pig, or free a hidden enemy.
Conquestador was received in a strange way by the english magazines: Sinclair User considered it trash, Crash wrote that it was average, Your Sinclair appointed it Megagame.
I agree with the latter.
1942, 05 Feb 2009 (Rating: 4)
February 05 2009 Review:
A vertical shoot'em up, part of the bunch of good coin op conversions that Elite made between 1985 and 1986.
Once you master it and you learn how to use the loop, to avoid bullets and the other planes, it's quite playable.
The sprites are nice and well animated, as is well drawn the aicraft carrier at the start and at the end of each level.
The background, however, is rather blank, and in the early levels is constituted almost entirely of a cyan screen, which, anyway, makes it easier to see the bullets.
From the fourth or fifth level the background changes, and you fly over green and yellow islands. There's a big colour clash problem in these levels: at the beginning and at the end of the islands, where the new colour begins and ends, there is a band of pixels where everything disappears, merging with the background, and in which you can crash against aircrafts and bullets without being able too see them.
Aside that, the lack of variety and the lack of changes in the pace of the game, it's quite good.
[because tied to good memories].
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June 2016 Review:
by Syrox (Dominic Wood)
I always liked the very clear graphics and sprites, although is easy to achieve when there's almost no background.
Anyway, it's playable and fun shooting down all those cute little planes, and for once you don't have to memorize complicated waves of aliens or enemies, because each level has basically the same structure, with the apparition of a team of red aeroplanes which can give you a power up, then a medium plane, and then big one, all this for two times, before you reach the end of level aircraft carrier. It's quite pleasant a little more relaxing than a harder, busier and more varied vertical shoot'em up like Terra Cresta.
Druid, 05 Feb 2009 (Rating: 4)
A Gauntlet clone, released before the U.S. Gold official conversion, but with some different elements, more weapons and interesting spells - which you can find searching the chests littered around -, useful to destroy ghosts, giant beetles and whatever comes in your way to the stairs that bring you to the next level.
Unluckily, there's no two players mode.
All in all, although it's an almost forgotten game, it's better than the one that inspired it, with more colorful graphics, more variety and maybe even more playability.
In this sub-genre it is probably second only to Into The Eagle's Nest.
Very good.
Futuristic platformer/beat'em up/shoot'em up. You have simply to kill everything that comes in your way using a long mechanical arm, while the landscape scrolls from left to right, and be sure that your oxygen doesn't finish, destroying some small structures that will release a cluster of bubbles - at the end of the level a lift will lead you to the next levels, where you'll probably be able to get more weapons, but I've never been further than the third level - so I'm not sure.
Nice colourful graphics, good tune. Not a bad game at all, although it's hard to control your movements.
Surely one of the best vertical shoot'em up for the Spectrum - challenging and full of tension.
Its only real flaw are the yellow monochrome graphics, which can be a little confusing at times.
Suprisingly colourful space shoot'em up, it was a technical achievement for the Spectrum at the time, and it's still very nice to watch now.
Not only, it's even quite a tough, but addictive game, with furious action, and lot of things to destroy or dodge.
There's a flaw, to be true: there aren't power ups, and, consequently, you can't get the brief feeling of "almost-omnipotence" that can be found in later shooters, and that are one of the main attractive of the genre, I think.
Nevertheless, a classic.
17 October 2016
by John Heap (Denton Designs)
The Great Escape was a further development of 3d isometric games, taking the scrolling approach of Nightshade [or even Ant Attack] and linking it with a strong arcade/adventure gameplay, based on exploration and use of items, in order to escape from a prison camp. It follows the direction of Fairlight, more than the platformer inclination of Knight Lore. Not only, it creates an enviroment that is organic, if very circumscribed, and that works in a collective movement of characters busy in the cycle of the day, prisoners and guards. It's the classic loop movement of a character or element of an ordinary game - moving through a pre-established trajectory – here expanded to become the dynamic representation of a small community, the community of a prison camp. Another exceptionality of The Great Escape is that there is no death, there are no enemies to kill or to jump or dodge in order to avoid a consequent death: your only possible death is a moral one, a terminal demoralization that makes your character lose any will of escape - each time you're caught, and do time in the isolation cell, the flag displayed at the side of the screen will lower: once it touches the bottom, there will be nothing you can do - your sprite will follow the daily routine without being controllable anymore.
It's up to you disrupting the mechanicity of the routine, skipping, for example, the exercise time or breakfast time to look for tools and items useful to the escape. The kind of charge-up tension while you're in a forbidden area or room, picking a lock, with the bell ringing alarmingly, fearing the sudden appearance of the captain or guards is something rare in a Spectrum game.
In the 2d world, a small community in movement had already been depicted in Skool Daze, with a set of very distinctive characters, stuck in a loop of school lessons, so not in a more somber way as the whole days and nights in a prison camp in TGE. The black and white graphics turn into black and blue in the night, and you'll discover at your own peril that going out of the barrack in these hours is very dangerous – lurking spotlights could find you, and the guards start chasing you. The days are differentiated by the arrive of the Red Cross parcel, a box you can open, which will cointain a different item each day for various days before restarting from the first one. A relatively small portion of the playing area is displayed, framed in barbed wire, while your sprite wanders around totally identical to the other prisoners, details that help to create a slight sense of claustrophobia and loss and and a sense of depersonalization, or just of... lack of memory.
5/5
The best football game on the Spectrum along with Emlyn Hughes International Soccer - in spite of the facts that the action is not fast, there are only about eight players in each team, and they, as my 12 years old cousin puts it, seems to wear a nappy.
On the other hand, you can peform a good variety of kicks, and you can carry out precise tosses and, hence, compose a satisfying web of passages - an effort that in other Spectrum's football games resolves easily in a chaos. So, this is an important quality to the game.
Anyway, that's a feature that Match Day II inherited from his previous incarnation, which, however was, slower.
and the players looked like bears.
Quite good.
Bedlam, 13 Feb 2009 (Rating: 4)
Madly frantic vertical space shoot'em up of the late eighties - released in a 128k version only.
It contains a pinball subgame, that sometimes interrupts the destructive main game.
The funniest to play, in the genre.
by Mike A. Richardson, Jane Richardson, Julian Breeze
The tongue winding out of its blazing jaws, the majestic wings flapping, the restless pointed tail, with its impressive size, perfect drawing and its detailed and convincing animation, the ferocious green dragon of Thanatos was arguably the best sprite ever appeared in a Spectrum game until then, and it was all yours, in all its wickedness, to play and destroy humans, monsters and helpless virgins. At the same time, this dragon's heart is fragile, and must be used with care - and this give the game a slower, more brooding rhythm - being often forced to rest. The eerie music is played by Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
4/5
---------------------------
14 February 2009 review:
The main attractions of this game are two:
first, you are a dragon, therefore you are the bad guy, and you can fly around grabbing humans, smashing them, throwing rocks at them or burning them to ashes - and, last but not least, you can eat helpless maidens to restore your ardent breath: now, this might sound as if i'm a potential serial killer with cannibal tendecies, but - in a game - being a powerful creature with a heavy breath and unleash your wicked side can be quite pleasant
and
second, the graphics are simply beautiful.
In particular, as a child, i used to observe the main, green sprite and be delighted noting the small movements of the body, the tongue winding through the jaws, the tail twisting like a snake and all that.
That said, the game is, in fact, more enjoyable for its look than for its gameplay - although it's highly atmospheric, with epic clashes between dragons at the end of the level, witches to collect along the way (they're hitchiking apparently), and giant creatures of all sorts.
But all is rather slow and monotonous, and you have to stop frequently to let the dragon rest - a necessity signaled by the tachycardia represented by, of course, a heart at the bottom of the screen, and emphasized by sound effects.
Hence, overall, a good game, but more on the aesthetic side than on the fun one.
Pssst, 14 Feb 2009 (Rating: 5)
I think there's something poetic in the concept of the game - the protection of a growing flower from the many insects that attack it.
It's particuarly beautiful and satisfying when it finally blossoms and a merry jingle is played.
Aside that, Pssst has the most intriguing and complex gameplay, among the first three early arcade-like Ultimate's releases: while in Jet Pac and Cookie you have to face just one kind of "enemy" at the same time, Pssst challenges you, as you progress through the levels, to beat'em while they're attacking the flower with a joint action - which you will be able to do changing quickly the type of insecticide you're using, that's putting down the one you're holding, and reaching out for the right one, dodging the entomological traffic.
So there's more action and more variety in this game, than in many other Ultimate's productions - and, above all, more playability.
And this is why Pssst is my favourite.
Karnov, 14 Feb 2009 (Rating: 4)
Not the fastest jump'n'shoot game on the Speccy, and not the most fluid animation, but big, colorful sprites with very little colour clash, and beautiful backgrounds, which form a landscape that cointains at least two routes to finish each level, and portions that can only be explored by using ladders or "jumping shoes", to find, for example, useful objects literally "hidden in the sky" - which increases the interest in the game, and adds depth.
There are enough weapons, levels, routes and monsters to keep you occupied for a while, if you want get to the end of it.
Me, personally, I'm stuck in the third level since who-remembers-when...
But, examining Pavero's maps I've seen that there's lot ahead, particulary a beautiful submarine level.
Which I'll see one day. Well, maybe.
It was a simply ridiculous game back in 1985. So even more now.
And that's why I like it.
(Especially in two players mode).
2009 review:
Definitely inferior to the C64 version, but still one of the most clever, original and playable platform games ever.
2017 review:
Potentially my favourite game of the year, a creative platformer in which you jump around 8 towers
through a rotating scrolling, trying to reach the top. Unluckily, the C64 version is better - with colourful graphics in high definition (no blockiness) and bonus levels.
Spectrum, what a crappy home computer.
5/5
Pippo, 14 Feb 2009 (Rating: 4)
Simple, silly and stupidly addictive italian game, in which you have to colour all the squares dodging jumping objects.
The main character was inspired by a demented puppet, from a famous italian tv show of the eighties.
One of the undisputed classics of Spectrum softography.
Original and funny.
In 1988 Denton Design returned to the black and white 3D arcade/adventure style of The Great Escape, creating another masterpiece, wider and more complex, with four characters to control - all set in a story and in a environment that blends Conan Doyle's The Lost World with b movies.
Best Spectrum's football game.
Back in 1989 I caught the Rick Dangerous fever. I had found this game titled Caverns of Kalt, in one of those unfamous italian pirated tapes that I used to buy at the newsagents. It was pretty good. For a while, every morning I was looking forward to come back to school to play Caverns, solve the puzzle of the spot where I was stuck and go further in the game. It was one of the best Speccy trip in a while. Rick Dangerous is a spoof of Indiana Jones, and it fact it starts as the first movie, with a rolling boulder running after you. Overall, it's structured as a platformer, but a special one, with, inside the same level, split screens and scrolling sections, filled with insidious traps, cunning mechanisms and poisonous bolts out of stone mouths that litter the four levels, set in the Amazon, in Egypt, in a Nazi fortress and, the final one, in a futuristic environment. The graphics are pleasantly cartoonish, with no colour clash, detailed and moving very well. Playability is supreme, with the first two levels being one of the smoothest and most enjoyable gaming experiences on the Speccy and beyond. With only a 81% from Crash and78% from Your Sinclair, I think Rick Dangerous was rather underappreciated.
5/5
[07/04/2019]
Highly entertaining platform game mimicking Indiana Jones.
[14/02/2009]
yeah, just as Stack says.
i bought this one, back in '89. who cares? nobody.
first level: this is the best level. swinging with your bat-rope, killing people jumping on them, or slashing them with your fabulous bat-frisbee, dodging the toxic drops, and pushing the bastard joker in a deserved pool of acid. it's quite similar to robocop, only you're not rusty and slow.
second level: rather boring ride on the bat-mobile, the only fun is trying to hook up on the lamps and turning fastly without having to stop.
third level: nice'n'easy puzzle.
fourth level: unbearable dullness. dodge helicopters, cut the ropes that keep the toxic balloons near the streets and citizens (wherever they are) of gotham city.
fifth level: as the first one, so, not bad at all.
overall, the usual ocean's multilevel tie-in formula, too similar to the previous, and with various boring levels.
3/5.
edit:
ok, i'm gonna raise the vote of one point, because of the first level.
Ok, what could be said against Sir Lancelot? It's a minor Spectrum classic, but still a classic - and not because of flashy graphics and presentation, it owes it all to the sheer addictiveness of the simple, fast and fun gameplay: it's a frantic version of Manic Miner, in which you don't have to worry about falling from whatever height: falling it's part of the game, and you need it to solve each screen - in which, of course, you have to collect all the flickering objects before being able to go to the exit, which in this case appears only after you've completed the collecting. The graphics are simple but nice. The beeper is merrily beeping. No less than 4/5.
nice, cartoonish game, with big, colourful sprites, a couple of bloodstained touches, and an oniric "plot", although the gameplay is more on the arcade side than on the adventure side.
you start in your own bedroom, you go to sleep, and some thieving ghost steals your alarm clock: you fall in a nightmarish world, and your aim is to rescue the various pieces of the clock, to be able to wake up at 6:00 am, which is also the time limit for solving your quest. there's a fragment of the clock in each "level".
second part: a weird place, with small aliens, fountains, and crazy elevators that crush you against jaded ceilings.
third level: in the jungle, among hungry crocodiles, hanging snakes, a parrot that insists on making omelettes on your head (which is flat like a frying pan, coherently), malaric mosquitos, and a playful monkey which is busy throwing fatal tennis balls at you.
fourth part: you're in a gallery art, more similar to a maze, and you must find the reproductions of the two paintings in the first room (AND the piece of clock), to be allowed to enter the fifth part of the game.
fifth part: this should be the last one, you're on a war zone, and strange things happen. i don't remember much about it.
so, a weird game, very pleasant to watch, and not bad to play. i've always enjoyed it very much.
There's something almost unbelievable about this game.
It'a Raf Cecco game, AND IT'S PLAYABLE.
And, not only that, IT'S EVEN EASY.
And, what's more important, it's good fun, a beautiful conversion of an arcade game that I played just once: but the Spectrum version seems far better.
Really enjoyable jingles and music, nice graphics - although less colorful than the other Cecco's games: one of the best Spectrum platformers, in my opinion.
i am not able to get past the first level, which is a maze game with neat graphics and repetitive gameplay: run along corridors losing your orientation, shoot aliens, check storerooms, find a computer, try a wrong password.
which is not much fun, after a while.
Xen, 14 Aug 2009 (Rating: 3)
standard vertical space shoot'em up, with swarms of alien starships to destroy, wave after wave. it's playable, but not entertaining, and very far from being exciting, so there's nothing to keep you interested in it, as far as i can see, although the graphics are quite good, with very coloured spaceships, à la light force - but without those absolutely square shapes. but they're still angular.
----
New review, December 1st 2016:
Xen [Sparklers]
Vertical shoot'em up with a clear debt towards Lightforce, which means that, at least, it's a colourful one, contrarily to the trend of the year.
It doesn't seem to have much more to it, though.
2,75/5
didn't play it much yet, but it seems quite appreciable.
this is a mighty difficult and yet mighty addictive spanish basketball game, one on one style, with nice graphics and presentation, replay of the most spectacular actions and other nice things.
old review:
a rather poor ghosts'n'goblins clone, with virtually no animation, scarce playability, exceedingly fast movements EXCEPT when you need to jump and dodge: in this case, the response is not immediate, and the jump is low and slow: you'd need a more agile hero to play such a game. the gameplay is all a jump'n'shoot thing, but you almost can't improvise: you absolutely have to memorize the enemies' positions and movements, because they're too fast to be dodged or killed the first time.
stick to the original or some better clone.
new review:
Sort of poor man's Ghosts 'n Goblins. After all it costed only 3.99£. Still, it can become diabolically addictive for half an hour or so.
it seems a decent space maze game in the style of nodes of yesod and on the run.
coloured backgrounds characterized each area of the maze, which you have to search all looking for the usual objects that will help you saving the universe or simply going back home, where there are not so many space bugs to shoot. maybe. i didn't read the instructions, as you might guess. the only thing is that seems very hard to go back up once you've fallen or descended into the maze. in fact, i'm only able to go deeper and deeper until i get stuck.
well, nevermind.
it got bad reviews back in the days, but it doesn't seem so terribly bad to me.
it's a shoot'em up set in an organic environment. that's, you are inside some organism. at least i think. and i don't know exactly what you have to do. probably destroy the cholesterol that you piled up through the years, thanks to all those french fries and mayonnaise.
anyway, the animation is good, and the graphics are not bad. your vehicle floats slowly and atmospherically through the veins or whatever they are, and it's not that exciting a shoot'em up, to be frank, but it's sufficient, and, anyway, you can speed up your ship a bit picking up the right floating object.
any question?
a late years, yellow platformer based on some cartoon characters (who the muck is potsworth? and what about co?): it's shockingly playable and smooth. really easy to get into and quite enjoyable.
this is a nice vertical shoot'em up from 1989, a little different from the others: in fact, as you MAYBE can guess from the name of the game, you are a dragon. which is nice. usually fantasy creatures like dragons are attached to boring rpg's or slow text adventures, but this time there's really action as you try to spit fire on various flying creatures and throw something at others placed on the ground. what do you throw at the latters, supposing it's not fire? personally, i have a good hypothesis.
a two minutes' fun game. and then it's time for something else.
ok. let's take a look at this sequel: there aren't flip screenS, this time, but a continous horizontal scrolling, unusually from right to left, you need costantly to sweep away enemies with hails of bullets, you have enter tight tunnels and dodge this and that, there's less colour but more playability: luckily the difficulty is more balanced than in airwolf 1. but, after all, almost all existing games are easier than airwolf 1.
ANYWAY THERE ARE STILL THOSE HORRIBLE WALLS THAT YOU HAVE TO PIERCE BRICK AFTER BRICK TO PASS THROUGH, AND THIS TIME YOU MUST DO IT BEFORE THE SCROLLING SMASH YOU AGAINST'EM.
not bad. quite enjoyable.
la mision ha fracasado!
this game is a bestiality. a dinamic's poorer version of dinamic's game over, with ugly sprites, bad animation and swarms of irritating creatures impossibile to avoid. this game is like being trapped in a room with hundreds of mosquitoes.
highly recommended!
this is a strange game. well, almost each of the sixty millions spanish games produced for the spectrum has something strange. anyway, i started the game commanding this huge and terribly slow robot, shooting at everything in sight - with this peculiar thing happening behind me: the background was slowly getting swallowed by a black void. just like in neverending story! so, i went on killing every moving pixel on the screen, followed by this hungry blackness, and fell into a giant hole into the ground. and died after a while, because el poder oscuro had reached me, i think. there was nothing that i could do to go back up on the surface. how was i supposed to get past the hole? so i tried again, and failed again, hence i was ready to give up.
but, then, pressing some random keys hoping to find something interesting related to the three icons in the lower part of the screen, i found out that pressing two or something, some kind of floating vehicle comes out of the robot's head. and so i descended the hole with this flying thing. and there i was stuck again, surrounded by shooting enemies, very busy draining my energy. there were two tunnels, one on the right and one on the left, but they were too low for the floating wreck to pass through. so i tried another semi-random key. and a little man came out of the ship. interesting, indeed. so, now - like alice after eating one of those pills, or was it a mushroom?, or maybe she drank something uhm - i could enter the tunnels, jumping happily from platform to platform, killing euphorically those not-better-identified-enemies. and then die again, swallowed by the black nothing.
the graphics are weak, and when you are on the far end of the field it's hard to place your man in the right position, because of the "miniaturizing" perspective.
overall, it's sufficiently playable.
not totally bad.
Good, coloured shoot'em up, with animations similar to those in Zynaps, and nice music in the options screen. But rather hard.
You're walking and jetpacking horizontally through swarms of baddies and you're suddenly riding a spacecraft while a strange thing in the middle of the screen is erupting red nasties.
And stuff like that.
3,5/5
pretty hard horizontal shoot'em up, with nebulous black and white graphics - in that the sprites tend to camouflage themselves with the background. and no sound at all. with this introduction it may seem a terrible game, but actually i played it non-completely-disgusted for twenty-minutes.
August 17 2009 - 1st Review.
cute platform-maze-shoot'em up set in a futuristic environment. you have 20 levels to go before reaching the princess of your dreams, in some remote futuristic castle. there are various weapons, safe passes, exits, spells. quite hyped when released, personally i find it rather dull.
but it's still ok.
June 23 2016 - 2nd review.
by Shaun Hollingworth, Peter M. Harrap, Chris Kerry, Steve Kerry, Terry Lloyd, Ben Daglish
It's a cute "multi-genre" game by the usual crowded Gremlin team, mixing platforms, shootings and adventuring in one pretty decent package. No less than:
3,5/5
a variation of tetris. you have to form lines of cubes of the same colour, vertically, horizontally or diagonally, using triplets of them, descending from the top of the screen. very enjoyable.
nicely done trivia about various subjects.
but it's still only a quiz.
Axons, 19 Aug 2009 (Rating: 2)
mediocre vertical shoot'em up, too slow to be fun, and with strange, confuse graphics, full of colours like an abstract painting.
you know what is boring? this game.
i'd have the programmers put in the delorean and sent back, in order to do a proper job.
playable platform/shoot'em up, with nice touches: a well drawn and animated dog sometimes helps you in your mission (whatever it is), blocking snipers and enemies, letting you kill'em.
late multilevel shoot'em up, in which you are a secret agent in various dangerous situations. the levels are playable and strangely short, especially compared to other multilevel games like batman - the movie, and there's not much to it.
anyway, always staying inside the limits of shoot'em up gameplay, there's a bit of variety: kill parachuting, kill riding a motorbike, kill underwater, kill walking somewhere, kill the big baddie at the end of the level.
kill kill kill.
a "false scrolling" beat'em up based on the darkman character. "false scrolling" means that, after you have killed all the enemies in a precise portion of the street, the screen scrolls briefly leading to another well defined (it never changes) segment of background, where it stops again. in the first level you have to kill from two to three identical enemies (and which seem identical to the ones on us gold's vigilante) per screen, some equipped with a gun, some not. sometimes you have to jump on a yellow rubbish bin or whatever, placed on the centre of the sidewalk, or dodge a dog that drains your energy and drags you backward. the rest never changes, and you have only two moves, the punch and the flying kick. it's a boring, repetitive, scarcely playable effort.
it's a miserable tie in, a theft, considering that it was a release from a major software house (ocean) in 1991, and that the programming techniques were quite advanced at that time.
that's why i'm giving 1/5 to it.
edit: oh, oh, the other levels ARE DIFFERENT! 2/5, then.
well. you have to run horizontally, jeekily animated, through colorful - but not special - backgrounds, destroying robots, hovering (you have a jetpac or something) to higher corridors and platforms, and avoiding laser cannons. you have two weapons, and you lose a life when your energy ends. i don't know exactly that the aim is: i arrived at the end of the landscape, and nothing happened, i tried to go back (which it's possible) but died after some seconds. the game is confusing. there's a costant flow of robots coming out of nowhere, and it's impossible to dodge them all or shoot'em all, so that it seems almost useless trying to. apparently, the laser cannons can't be destroyed (or, anyway, i'm not able to), so you have just to suffer their fire.
suffering, in fact, is what you mostly do throughout the game.
i'm trying to figure it out. really.
nice and simple old-style arcade game, that reminds me of panic and burgertime.
the problems are a) the difficulty of alligning precisely to the platforms while using the stairs b) the typical lack of variety of this kind of games.
[2009]
The animation of your character is not very good: he looks like an insect moving frantically its legs. Anyway, it's Burgertime again, but this time you have to cook a whole Snowman, snowball by snowball, chased by quick little flames that wants to burn you and melt the snow. It's playable enough and ok to watch, a bit ruined by the difficult alignement with the platforms while using the ramps, frustratingly slowing down your race.
3/5
[2014]
multicoloured, multilevel, multiscrolling. the main feature of turrican is simply its plurality of qualities, from the vastity and variety of the landscape, with its galleries, platforms that reach to the sky, waterfalls, abysses and whatever, to the surprising playability, determined by the responsive main character - very easy to move nimly and fastly through the locations, almost as in the first bomb jack - , his big leaps, and the spheres that give you more powerful weapons and temporary invincibility.
the area to explore is wide, differentiated, and beautiful to watch.
one of the best games of the last commercial years.
quite strange early shoot'em up, in which you often have to strike the enemies shooting backward. by the way, they move wavening, in a similar way to zynaps starships. just not as smooth.
a more recent review [I forgot I had already reviewed it]:
It's a nice and very professionally done horizontal space shoot'em up, with enemies advancing with a sort of swinging movement reminding of Zynaps, although without its the sheer smoothness. So there are these enemies spacecraft swarming together from the right or the left side and shooting, some of them looks like syringes, probably the programmers were afraid of doctors and vaccinations. Also, there are some fixed space mines to avoid. So, you destroy swarm after swarm, and the shape of the enemies change, but I don't seen much progress in the gameplay, difficulty or such. Nonetheless, it's ok. 3/5
Edit: now 4/5
another spanish game trying to come out of the monitor and kill you.
the mother [or father (or both)] of the typical spectrum 3d isometric game.
one of the two games that inspired me to shake off my lazyness and draw a map.
not immune from the passing of time and surely not the most playable game, but still a classic.
it's a more playable and interesting version of TLL, the previous panayi's effort.
you have to drive an helicopter in panayi's usual colourful 3d graphics, flying over an archipelago, searching for five cubes, while a cyclone is moving around. well, we all know that.
i like it. i have fond memories of it, it's one of the first spectrum's games that really struck me back in 1986 (yeah, i was late, and the game was relasead in 1985), and it's still very nice to play, if you have patience and time - a game, in fact, may require a certain amount of time. but it's enjoyable and relaxing, (contrarily to TLL).
the detailed and colorful graphics, the original and playable gameplay, the number of features, make cyclone one of the true, real, original spectrum's classics.
soldier of fortune is a multidirectionally explorable ghosts'n'goblins, only much neater under every aspect.
it's 1988, three years has passed since g'n'g, it is technically palpable.
only decent racing game, there are plenty of better ones for the speccy, such as enduro racer, power drift, wec le mans and buggy boy. aside less fun and less playability, the difference is that there are a couple more options in this, and you absolutely can't get out off the road and crash against something: when you reach the edge of the track you bounce back losing speed. speed which you don't notice even when you're at the full of it.
the 48k version sound is loathable and rather ridiculous (and i usually like the ula...).
i'm giving it a 3, out of my immense, prodigious generosity.
laser'n'ladders for a flat game published on a YS cover tape.
pretty fast racing game, similar to enduro racer and wec le mans. not bad.
bounce four balls from right to left, beyond obstacles, animals and whatever. not particulary exciting.
Vertical shoot'em up, in which you drive a bike, on suspendend platforms dodging the fatal holes, à la Bounder. it's a Spanish game: hence, a bit too hard.
silly little platformer with no outstanding features. anyway, not bad for a budget game.
gothic game full of ladders, platforms, and rooms. i haven't the slighest idea of the aim of the game. which doesn't seem terribile, anyway.
when i tried this one in the eighties i thought it was clumsy and slow, in spite of the big, nice, colourful buggy - a beautiful sprite, different from any other in the racing game genre.
i played it again for the last speccy tour, and got to know the game better: and i've changed my mind.
it's really nice.
Xarax, 18 Jan 2010 (Rating: 3)
difficult, but smooth, little vertical shoot'em up.
decent, yellowish vertical shoot'em up, with waves of aliens in the style of light force.
Pretty unique platformer, characterized by a horror atmosphere, and flip screens crowded with monsters, ghosts and freaks of all kind. You can collect bullets and revolvers, and use'em.
i don't understand much of what happens. but the space whirl tends to hypnotize me.
a difficult and desolated monochrome effort.
now, that's what i call "strange".
it's like playing with the micro machines. at least, i suppose it's so, having never played with the micro machines. i like the neatly drawn, b&w graphics.
lots of colour, although not so well used, quick sprites, although rather lacking solidity, in a frenzy shoot'em up, claustrophobically occurring in small rooms. although not so exciting.
pleasantly colourful, although the gameplay is rather delirious.
one of the early multi-level movie tie in's by ocean, characterized by the classic monochrome cyan graphics of robocop and batman: the movie.
six levels of frenetic shootings in different sauces: jumping frantically in the first level, in operation wolf style in the second level, etc.
the best gauntlet clone. better than gauntlet itself, actually.
one of costa panayi's masterpieces. a most original shoot'emp up, and an indelible spectrum classic.
i like very much the caricatures of morrissey, bowie, mccartney, jackson and all of them, but the game itself is rather boring, altough it was an improvement over previous similar games as the biz and it's only r'n'r.
Although it's a 1985 effort, no better boxing game was published in the following years, on the Spectrum.
You can create your own boxer, and choose what kind of training you want him to do, which is an essential part of the game, and enriches it with a strategic element that complements the arcade section.
It's simple and complete.
pretty advanced for its time: lead a commando of four elements in a 3d isometric fortress, to neutralize a nuclear threat by destroying the central computer, placed, of course, in the innermost room of the four story building, protected by a door that needs a code to be opened, that you'll be able to collect, digit by digit, finding the scientists kidapped by the Enemy and kept in captivity in the fortress. its peculiarity resides in 1) the 3d isometric graphics, that it's not monochrome, as in your average speccy game of this kind, but quite colorful, 2) in the variety of moves you can make, as jump, somersaulting (even through windows), kick, duck, duck and walk, fire bullets, fire granades and 3) in the need of collaboration among the commando's members in order to progress through the game. sadly, the game tends to dramatically slow down when there are other sprites in the room, or when you jump over some harmful object - giving an ankward feel to the gameplay, which is already not so smooth on his own. it's interesting, but not terribly fun, and it didn't age very well. but it's still quite good.
some interesting enemies: especially the tall, robotic tetrapod, controlled by a man, placed in the superior part, inside a transparent dome, that hunts you in the later rooms. it recalls the alien robots from the war of the worlds' imagery.
Quack-shot!, released in 1985, is a clone of a coin-op titled "Tutankhamun", which already had an unofficial, quite playable conversion two years before (Tutankhamun, by Micromega). This rendition is more colourful and detailed, has a better overall presentation, it's more similar to the original coin-op, but doesn't keep the frantic action and the playability of its Speccy predecessor.
a sci-fi adventure game from 1986.
the story is ok. you've been condemned to a life-term sentence on a planet, alone with droids and machinery to recycle debris or whatever. your aim is to escape.
but - the map is strange, there are various bugs, and and the puzzles don't seem very well conceived.
and - it's not involving because there is not much to explore, there are not new locations to discover, and you simply don't know what you're supposed to do: there is not much sense of progress.
by the way, i'm crap at adventure games and i took a look at the solution.
2/5
a nice and obscure adventure, strangely nobody voted it or sent a solution. but it seems pleasantly simple so far.
6,5/10
"oh yeah, i noticed that a solution appeared. i will try it again. first time i was totally puzzled. i will be soon again. and then i'll watch the solution and wonder how can i possibly be so stupid. "
"ok. tried it again. explored some other rooms. got the message. put the knife overthere. and then i didn't know where to use the pencil, and anyway, i was tired. and so i watched the solution.
marvellous adventure. deep."
Circus, 26 Aug 2012 (Rating: 3)
It's a graphical horror/mystery adventure game. The text is very laconic and the vocabulary rather limited.
Horribly hard if you don't know that pressing enter you can swap the graphics with some information about the location. Then it's just terribly hard.
But the plot is original, and there's a good atmosphere. Decent.
dodge still and moving obstacles while water skiing.
nice and professionally done, but the gameplay is not very varied.
Pretty demented. Fly your superfast man through outer space shooting space insects.
They seems to be immune to your bullets, except for the head. Weird sounds.
Quite strange. Not so totally bad as the average WoS vote may suggest [although not even so much: it ranks about 5/10].
Still, completely lacking in variety and in challenging the player - there isn't a progressive difficulty or any change of sort.
drive your racing car toward the upper part of the screen dodging all kind of obstacles, to reach your opponents and try to win the race.
it doesn't seem a track, but a junkyard. not a totally horrible game.
a maze-game graphically clearly inspired by don priestley's maziacs.
although the still image looks good, the animation is slow and not fluid at all.
considering the gameplay, the programmer seems to have managed to create a different and original game, not a maziacs clone, but i've found it overall unappealing and irritating.
you have only one life, and it's quite easy to die: and after you die giant capital letters appears one by one scrolling from right to left with some unnecessary comment,
letters that made me wonder if i become astigmatic, or if i was wearing the wrong pair of glasses.
and it takes time before this process ends.
i gave up.
a one screen vertical shoot'em up that i'm liking a lot. i laugh playing it.
it often happens some laughable accidents: for example, i shoot the alien ship, which falls on another red alien ship which flies low to jam my bullets, which falls over me, in a chain of silly distruction accompanied by good explosive sound effects. you have to destroy the shield under the green alien rotating in the dome, in order to kill him.
but there's that big laser gun going perpetually from side to side shooting at you, a white flying thing bombing you, which is able to fly anywhere in the screen, and throw the bombs not simply where you are, but where it thinks you'll be in a moment, judging by your movement, if you're not still.
then there is the already mentioned red spaceship, which shoots a laser that destroy yours. but in doing that it risks to hit the white one, which, of course, can fall over you, or over the red spacecraft itself. which, in turn, can fall over you.
This must have looked pretty advanced for the time, with his vector graphics, and alien spaceships flying near and around your turret. It still looks nice.
The gameplay is simple, you have to sweep off all the alien spacecrafts from the grid. Complication: when they exit from one side, they enter from the opposite one, mantaining their trajectory.
They can disappear in front of you, and then get you from behind. You often die without understanding why. Anyway, there is a flip key that lets you perform an immediate 180° turn.
Overall it's a nice little game, albeit totally lacking variety.
early efforts by jon ritman.
a furious space shoot'em up with vector graphics. it's not easy.
i end up each game with a hurting wrist.
the celebrated don priestley created this sinister space cockpit game.
you must destroy evergrowing spawns of aliens, which eventually become adults and shoot at you red fireballs.
it's not bad, but it's rather hard to focus the target, because your movements are innaccurate, which is detrimental to the playability.
One of the earliest space cockpit games with star field and all.
You must travel through space and time and reach different "sectors", in order to destroy the aliens, and then you can land on the planets, if there is any around, and refuel, recharge and repair your spaceship. Next step is to find a time-gate to go back in time, and face a new bunch of sectors. The final aim is to go back enough to destroy the Squarm aliens before they conquer the galaxy and attack mankind.
It's atmospheric and well done, althought, naturally, rather aged.
Your control panel is relatively rich of informations on the condition of your ship, your position, a radar with all the planets and aliens, etc.
a world war II planes shoot'em up with big colourful sprites, a very blue (but very still) starry sky, and a couple of different sections. you must even manage to bomb some ground targets through the clouds and such.
in the other section, besides the planes, there are strange bombs going up down and anywhere to escape your gunsight. very strange indeed. i didn't understand much.
a satiric and surreal effort. as denis thatcher, you must keep yourself drunk and avoid your horrible wife and her speeches.
all the descriptions are in humorous rhyme, and the playability is sufficient, although it's clearly all technically limited.
anyway, probably the most original text adventure from 1983.
the title intrigued me but it's a basic adventure game that results slow even when heavily accelerated.
when you try to examine something, the regular answer is "eh! what do you mean?", when you try something else you receive a "what are you on about?".
a game to be left in the dust.
adventure game.
painfully slow, and with an impossible puzzle right at the start.
that was clever.
no, thank you.
a professional effort, with a wider parser, and more comprehension from the game for poor adventurers, in comparison to the average early adventure.
very playable and i'd say quite finishable. which is not a negative thing in my view. i can't see why adventure games should be near impossible. lots of titles in 1983 from brian howarth, and they all seems nice.
ok, well done, but too frustrating.
you shoot the aliens like a madman to obtain a diamond falling from the ceiling, which you must use to neutralize the magnetic gates that lead to the other room of the space pyramid,
but mostly it gets destroyed by the aliens or such before that, and you have to start all the process again: and this is all the gameplay, apparently - which is rather repetitive.
or is there something different later?
okaysh adventure game for 1983, it's simple, or at least it should be, but its simplicity can make it difficult:
if you think you have to use three instructions to accomplish an operation, you may get stuck at the second action, because you don't need it:
you just have to do the first and the third: the second will be done automatically by the game.
also, you shouldn't think that just because you're in a prison the doors are closed, really. well, whatever.
it reaches 3/5 because of the splendid loading screen, one of the best of 1983.
maze game maziacs (dK'tronics) contains one of the most remarkable examples of 1983's matchstick man.
i've only really played it now, never had it at the time. it's not bad, i must say. it surely isn't one of those games that goes on endlessly:
you "only" have to find the treasure, and then the exit, and the game is over - there's not a next level.
random elements and various skill leves constitute the variations. it surely plays well.
it's very strange that you don't really fight the enemy monsters, but you watch your character fight, rooting for him, becoming passive,
as if it was an animated rpg game (and if fact the level of your energy, and the possession of a sword plays a good role in determing the outcome).
nicely done. an early don priestley, when he wasn't yet programming interactive cartoons.
my favourite matchstickly maze game from 1983 is probably sunshine's androids.
i used to play a hacked italian version of this one, so there's a clear nostalgic factor, but i find it still good for the demented pace of your character,
and the twitching, random movements of the wicked, green ball-shaped aliens - which can be destroyed by your laser. there's not much else in the game, but it's enough.
i don't feel the need of a modern POV arcade/adventure game or whatever.
having a dentist's examination due for tuesday, i have of course fired up molar maul (imagine software), a game which i've never played before, but its pics always fascinated me, since when i saw an image of it on a magazine called "computer games" or something, when i was a kid, although that first picture was not of the spectrum version.
it's certainly a candidate for the 1983's Most Original Game Award. [other suggestions?]
anyway, it's not so terrible as i expected. i feel cleaner now.
the movement of most early platformers used to be upward, by jumping or ascending stairs (as in donkey kong) or whatever.
but bonkers (procom software) reverses the concept, and the goal is to reach the bottom of the screen, in matchstickly fashion.
it doesn't seem to be much appreciated, but i must confess that as far as simple-minded one screen games go, i quite like it.
by the way, it's an early effort by knight tyme famed david jones.
Space shoot'em up, with colorful sprites, and strange controls.
The sprites are well drawn, and at the start of each game they appear magnified, before turning into their playing size.
In the first level you must shoot asteroids wandering all around the screen until you have cracked them all. You can shoot pressing simultaneously the two left-right keys, or the up-down keys. Quite strange. But it works without problem.
You shoot a costant ray, and you must apply it to the asteroids changing their colour from blue to yellow to white and finally making them explodes.
This laser, or whatever it is, acts only on a specific point, and not along the trajectory it runs through to reach that point.
In the second level, a star field appears, and this time you must destroy strange space creatures going up and down the screen.
And then I've got too bored to go on, although there must be a third, different screen.
It's really nothing special gameplay wise, although it's by no means a bad technical effort for 1983's standards.
2/5
A decent platform game, with a couple of bland adventure touches, and ornated with neat, cute, smooth graphics.
In this cobra force game bullets and flying enemies are impossible to avoid, too many and too thickly present in the screen. That makes you feel as you had no real possibility of control on the game and on the chopper and you must resign to crash against a lot of those mean things. This is really detrimental to your narcissism, really.
Frantic Defender clone with smashing fuller box sound effects.
Three one-screen sections, with multiple levels of difficulty, for this early Ultimate-like arcade game by Star Quake famed Stephen J. Crow.
Smooth and colorful, and quite playable,
section 1 is some kind of Tempest mixed with Missile Command based on laser slowly getting at your egg, where your robot lies,
preparing for his robot life, followed by a trasitional second section, which takes you to the third, the most difficult one,
a sort of Panic mixed with Jumping Jack with Painter, with external elevators and holes.
Overall, it's not unoriginal, but the ideas are not fantastic neither, although nicely done.
It's not a bad one, anyway, especially for 1984.
2013 REVIEW:
It's a clumsy and gory mix between Jet Set Willy and Jet Pac programmed by a sociopath with homicidal tendencies.
2017 REVIEW:
Mediocre if not crappy maze game hiding behind some bloody graphics.
2,5/5
A very good sci fi adventure game full of beeps, flashes and aliens.
an original shoot'em up for sure, because of your jumping movement, that makes it weird to strike the enemies. you can't place/fly yourself at their height, and so you must target them while going up and down. although i don't think this is particularly good for playability. it's surely different. even though it seems to play on the space zoo craze of the jeff minter's imagery [was it already there?]. anyway you can control the height and lenght of your leaps, but once you send those inputs, you land where you land. [on some enemy or bomb probably]. there are cloudy platforms to help you, objects to pick up [only to increase your score, i think] while you [automatically] scroll to the right. i don't know if there are final baddies or variations, because i didn't advance much.
anyway it's an ok game.
programmed by dominic wood [1942, tutankhamun]
okaysh adventure game, fast enough for the time, based on the last third of a very very long italian poem by dante alighieri, written in the 13th century [or 15th century according to sinclair user] so, if you will, it's a fantasy text adventure with a literary and religious inspiration, in which you have to walk through hell and back. not much text, to say the truth. overall, above average for those years.
I was aware of the existence of Turmoil, and i might even had a pirate copy on a G.B.Max tape, but i never really played it. being a prominent 1984's game, according to WoS ratings [8.31 from 76 votes as for today], and 5 reviews in Spectrum 2.0 [two with the maximum score], i decided to try it almost immediately in my quest for lost [for me] 1984's games. and i quite hate it.
It's ok, but it doesn't convince me. The tune is a brutal rendition of a classical piece or two, the sprites compete for the Most Flickering Ever title [plus a good amount of colour clash], and playability is ok, not fantastic. I don't like being chased by arabs. Not only by arabs. But now i hate arabs because of this game. It's not fast enough, a game in which you're chased should be faster, just like Lode Runner, which is far better than Turmoil - it gives you really the opportunity to mock your enemies and the feel of quickness, agility, you feel able to do exciting things. not in turmoil - in spite of some acrobatic stunts. By the way, it's a platform game, with ladders, trampolines and swinging ropes, you must fill a can with oil and make your car start. The spring of the trampolines goes up and down, and needs the right timing to be used, which seems impossibile to guess if not by chance, which makes this thing out of control, and that's not very good when you're running away from some manic muslims. [christians are crazy too]. No more than sufficiency to me.
One of those early unofficial conversions, in this case of a coin-op titled Moon Patrol [which I don't know] - automatically scroll from left to right driving your lunar terrain vehicle, while dodging rocks, jumping pits, and shooting alien spacecrafts floating over you: your shooting in fact goes simultaneously in vertical and horizontally, two laserbeam being shot at once.
Anyway, you're welcomed by a cool enough [for 1984] rendition of R. Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries, or whatever it's called, after a tasty and promising colorful loading screen, I started to play and I think I died for almost ten minutes in the same one or two spots, not very far from the start. Let's say, the second rock, the first long pit. Somehow it was addictive enough, or promising enough, to make me insist, although I was thinking all the time about ARMY MOVES. I got past before those critical spots only two or three times before making the greatest discovery: the rocks can actually be disintegrated with your laser. I wasn't displeased with the game until that, so even more when the playabilty greatly improved implementing the greatest discovery, so I was able to go further and make close encounters of the shooting kind with some flying saucers and enjoying the game.
Anyway, I had tried before to destroy the rocks with the laser, but I didn't notice how short the scope of the laser was: you must be near enough to destroy them. Whatever. All well that ends well. This is the first real HIT in my travel back to 1984. Good one.
Another game from the twisted minds of Hudson Soft, the same that conceived Vegetable Crash [but, to say the truth, they were also the programmers of Stop The Express, Eric and the Floaters, Cannon Ball, It's Sundurious and whatever] - and it's yet another Star Wars corridor shoot'em up, only with dementend and colorful yellow "eyes", green frogs, and other strange things. It's utterly unplayable. The enemies are superfast and move crazily, spreading swarms of lethal blue bullets, while you're a space turtle and you don't like to shoot very much. Nice presentation, but worst Hudson Soft game. Bad.
This one's okay, a hallucinated ethological shoot'em up, your spitting space llama at the edge of time must drown descending spiders - your spit can bounce against the "roof of time", which you can even lower or move up, to better exploit the bounceability of your saliva - which is particularly useful when the spiders touch ground and start crawling toward you and you can't shoot them directly. The environment is all flickering and throbbing. Anyway, the gameplay seems rather limited and repetitive.
Another of those games inspired by Star Wars movies and coin-op's - shoot miscellaneous enemies along a corridor, the view is from behind your spacecraft - most of the time you're busy exploding, go down and explode against the floor, fly around and you're exploding being shot, go ahead and you're exploding because you're exploding. The height of the enemies approaching is uncomprehensible, and you're quite slow - I have managed to stay alive the most time just staying at the centre of the corridor, and doing nothing but shooting sometimes, when some bastards was in front of me. Anyway, at the end they shot me, and I exploded. Pretty bad game.
Shooter with view from behind your spaceship, while green things jump insolently over a grid toward you, and you have to strike down a certain number before your fuel is over, to pass to the following section. You can see how many enemies you still have to destroy at the top of the screen, where an horizontal bar piles from left to right each space foe shot. When the bar reach the extreme right of the screen you're onto the next level. In the second section you can even move up and down, and you must shoot a different kind of spacecrafts, in the third section you have spacecrafts AND asteroids, and then I don't know because I stopped, or died. An advice: keep the fire button pushed all the time while you move. The graphics are okaysh, the playability decent, but often is not entirely clear what's happening and how far before you the enemies are, or something like that. Not totally sufficient game. On WoS it has a 5.11 from 9 votes - which is not much disagreeable. Nice loading screen.
One of the most peculiar clone of Galaxian [or even Space Invaders or Phoenix]: there are no aliens, but you must shoot tomatoes, and such.
A shoot'em up for vegetarians? A revenge of the author, tormented by his mother during his childhood: "finish your vegetables, now" "ok mom, shoot shoot bang bang" - all this will remain a mystery. Anyway, it's playable and looks good - aside the movement of the space vegetables: they move from an entire block of pixel to an entire block of pixel, making you wonder if you're having neurological problems, after a while. Sufficiency.
This StarWars themed shoot'em up, in two or three sections, has a couple of nice coloured graphical touches,
but it's gameplay-wise unconvincing. [average vote on WoS: 4.0 from 9 votes]
Havoc, 04 Jan 2014 (Rating: 1)
Manage to create a better 3D isometric scrolling than your average Zaxxon clone of those years, but the game is subpar - the colourds are confounding - the enemies, once shot, stands there in mid-air with a spray of pixel over them, and the crates on the floor are still lethal after being shot. The low average vote on WoS is justified [4.27 from 15 votes]. It costed money too.
This was an official conversion by Atarisoft the of the famous coin-op, and it wasn't bad at all for the time. Now, of course, lots of better racing game can be found on the Spectrum - but rarely with such a nice presentation - look at that beautiful colours. The game is playable, relatively fast and relatively faithful to the original, albeit quite easier. The biggest defect is that your position in relation to the other cars is not clear, when you're near them - and so it's not much understandable if you're going to crash against them or if you are going to avoid them. It is rather aged, but not horrible at all.
Inspired by classic Treasure Islandesque stories, books, movies, comics and whatever's, here comes this action game, that starts terribly with two irritating mini-games, in the first - that can be seen in the picture - you must avoid some bad people and go aboard the ship, with a collision detection that is simpy MYSTERIOUS, in the second you have to jump from barrel to barrel avoiding SAILOR'S ARMS moving up and down. Once learned how to get past these two forgettable introductions, you land on the treasure island, and the real game begin, and luckily is a nice one. A fast maze game with a strategy element [if we want to use a noble locution for a very simple thing], in which you have to use the swords you find very carefully or you won't be able to go on, because you won't be able to eliminate enemies blocking the way. By the way, you can even steal swords from them. Strange swords to be used FLINGING THEM, and just once. Anyway, the aforementioned mini-games aside, it's quite cute. It would have been better without at least the first of the two. Oh well.
The sprites move without animation, the instructions don't instruct you, there are a lot of little monster flying around, you shoot little balls or axes, there's a hidden in room in which you can pick up bottles of oil, I don't know why, and, in short, it's a terrible game.
Move around the playing area [one screen] touching the green things, and avoiding most of the rest, walls included. The droid is in constant motion, once started, and you can only change direction. The title is the best thing of the game, although I don't see what's schizophrenic in the little metal guy. I WOULD HAVE LIKED a game with a schizophrenic droid. But we have this sloppy thing instead. Avoid this droid.
Copter, 06 Jan 2014 (Rating: 2)
You "are" a helicopter, and you must pick up people from the ground and take them to the top of the screen, avoiding and/or destroying other aircrafts - with your constantly automatically firing cannon or whatever. It's fast and playable, very easy, but there's not much else to it, except for: UDG graphics. [I think].
It held my attention for at least two whole minutes. Ah, the best thing is the loading screen which is very good.
A creaky, sinister manor, treasures to be found, and a very playable, smooth adventure.
Response is fast, and the parser understanding.
Noah, 07 Jan 2014 (Rating: 2)
Guess who you are in this one? Exactly, Batman, and you have to collect food and all kind of animals, and bring'em to the ark before the universal flood, occurring in three days. Graphics are quite poor, aside maybe the animals, you can see the map of the area anytime you want [many flip screens], you must avoid the pool of waters, because you suffer a violent form of hydrophobia, and try to push the animals towards the ark - which is a hard, terrible task - they follow you for some steps, then you must convince'em again to follow you again, and you're blocked by the obstacles, the passage is too narrow, so you must find another way, and for Christ's sake, I've had enough of this game. As time passes drops of rain start to fall. They never hit me, so I don't know if they're lethal, although they should given Batman's reaction to the pools. Of course it's a bad game [3.62 on WoS from 8 votes]. I'll give it one more point for the original idea. Although it was stolen from the bible.
Edit: there's a Noah adventure game from the same year! Fantastic. I must try it.
If it's not clear enough from the title what's the inspiration for this game, maybe you should take a look at the loading screen: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showscreen.cgi?screen=screens/load/r/gif/RaiderOfTheForgottenArk.gif
and if it's still not clear, and you've been on Mars in the last thirty-three years, maybe you should take a look at this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146316/reference.
Programmed in basic, with UDG graphics, relatively slow, jerky/blocky animation - jump over abysses, take the idol, come back, go through the maze, etc. it actually can be fun for about 30 whole seconds.
What are you waiting for - grab it now!
Pedro, 07 Jan 2014 (Rating: 2)
Pedro must protect his crop jumping on cockroaches, spiders, rats, giraffes and kangaroos and replace the eaten plants with new one, planting some seeds. Graphics are not great, nor totally horrible, action is fast but unprecise, it's hard to place your character in the right position to plant a new seed, and it's not clear when you're in the right position to jump successfully over some horrible creature created by the evil mother nature.
I'd say 2/5.
P.s. the loading screen is very nice.
Any good thing included in this clear mash-up of Atic Atac and Jet Pac is undermined by the awful slowness of it all. You're going to fall asleep before reaching a corner of the room. Maybe they made it so slow to make it last, being the map so small. Anyway, it's not a game about exploring, but about cooling some dangerous radioactive stuff or something, I think [I'm mostly making this up]. Anyway, the supposed slyness manifested with the attempted mixing of the two major hits of the most successful software house of the time didn't do any good. So there.
P.s. I like the tune.
This one is a superfast maze game à la Atic Atac, well reviewed at the time, but presently bashed and criticized, with an average vote of 4.88 in WoS from 8 users, and bad reviews on Spectrum 2.0 - but I think it's ok.
Very professional for 1984's standard, with very cutely designed and animated colourful sprites, fast run and fire action, keys to proceed through doors, teleports and decent sound effects.
It's got 1000 similar rooms? I don't care. It's a 3/5, and one of the best loading screens of the year.
Ok, a bull is running through some spanish town and you must fence him in where he belongs, while he chases you all over town. The idea is not bad, but the implemention is slow and poor.
I've exploded again and again and again and again. That was the real fun part.
Good presentation, professionally done, smooth movements, but all you have to do is picking up flowers while escaping from some killer tomatoes, and so on forever, in each level a new vegetable is added, but it's not enough for the game to become involving and to overcome its repetitiveness.
2/5
Deserves the lowest score if only because of the unnerving crash effect.
Slightly original platform, in which you can jump on the platforms using some small erupting volcanoes at the ground level - the aim is to push some boxes, three for each screen, to specific flashing spots at the bottom of the screen, because some space freighters must pick it up or something - while avoiding lasers, aliens, creatures, and who knows what else.
You use only two keys, right and left, plus a third to place time bombs - but I still have to use it fruitfully. This is a nice one.
I don't understand a mucking thing of what's going on, I am destroyed every two seconds, and there are two flying modes, you start as a yellow "U" at the bottom of the screen and if a red missiles or military helicopters pass you by, your sprite finally turn into a military aircraft, and you must face them, and most probably die. Still I find it somehow addictive. It's a vertical shoot'em up, if it's not clear.
Oh, there's a nice beeper treament of The Ride of the Valkyries, also.
Riding your Starbike, automatically firing all the time from the moment you start to fly, you must rescue some lost yellow jumping aliens, moving through about five enviroments scrolling in loop, e among which you can move entering something similar to a big screen. Of course you have your usual amount of spinning, bubbling, hovering, flickering objects all over the playing area - who are able to kill you very fastly. And ultrafast is your Starbike too and the game itself, with colorful and well drawn Ultimatesque graphics, high manoeuvrability and and a certain dose of difficulty. It supports the Currah Microspeech. It's surely well done. P.s. very good loading screen, again.
Oh my. That fly is drowning.
I can't believe this is really happening.
Antics, 09 Jan 2014 (Rating: 4)
Ok, another bug-ridden game, not in the informatic sense, but what would expect from a sotware house called Bug-Byte, anyway this is a sort of sequel of The Birds and the Bees, whose star has been kidnapped and locked away underground by some ant-thugs, you're Barnabee, his cousin, and must rescue him. So it's basically an exploring game, in flip screen, with you flying around, dodging disgusting ground insects, picking up flowers, which give you energy and opens passages on other locations, and searching for your silly relative. Also, some walls of the mazes are fragile, and they fall down after a push, opening new passages thorugh the maze. I particularly enjoy these crumbling walls, I like the small sound effect of the crumbling. And I like the game, not very fast, but not slow - it has just about the right pace - nice graphics, very good playability and Bach wheezing out one of his greatest hits through the beeper [you can turn it off pressing A]. Good, good, good.
4/5
This is an educational program that puts you in the shoes of a killer, a hired assassin, a hatchet man, in other words, a hit man - so you know how it feels. Side 1 gives you informations and instructions on the game with BIG colourful and detailed graphics, so much so that I almost identified the blood type of a guy.
Then you can finally load the real game from side 2. The boss tells you about the new job, the taxes on your payroll etc. [anyway it's always about killing government agents, which is part of the educational side of the program], then you must choose a vehicle to use for the getaway, but they cost and your budget determines what you can buy among a helicopter, a motorcar, a motorbike and a bicycle. Then you must choose your weapon among a crossbow, a laser gun, a magnum and a colt 45. Next step: you must find the hideout of the agents in the city, which is a slighty 3D view of a flat black ground littered with blue and cyan boxes that are supposed to be buildings, and when you touch their visible short side, walking against them with the yellow, microscopic, matchstick little man that is supposed to be you, you gain information about the position of the agent, through a contact, in the form a of a vertical and a horizontal arrow at the bottom of the screen. You can obtain four of these indications, the fifth time is your last chance to guess the right house - or your mission is a failure.
Anyway, once you have found the hideout, there's the shooting: the screen changes again and it's again big, detailed and colourful graphics, and you move a gunsight or something, Operation Wolf/Cop Out style, trying to hit the agent that sometimes peeps from behind a trash can or from a window - but there's a time limit. Once you have shot the agent, you must run away, but there's no arcade section for this, you just press a key and you discover if you are caught or not - which depends on the vehicle you used: a helicopter has a 100% of successful escape, the bicycle a 70% [you must be quite good at riding bicycles]. If you are caught, there's the TRIAL, and it's again just a couple of lines after pressing a key. I've been caught and put on trial two times, the first time I was found innocent: a real insult to my professionalism. Concluding, it's a unique themed game, lots of images and peculiarities, and moderately entertaining, in spite of the simplistic gameplay - but the details and a little variety make it quite funny. It was even more entertaining when I tried it with the 11 years old son of my neighbor. He's a Wii player, but was quite conquered by The Hit Man.
I hope he didn't learn too much from it.
You are pacifist, antinuclear girl mysteriously fallen into an Atic Atac clone, and your aim to stop Ronald "Raygun" before he decides to push the nuke button - in order to do so you must find him as he descends into the underground levels of the airbase and then KILL HIM WITH A KISS, or something. In fact, the base is crawling, crowded, swarming with soldiers and strange characters, that can be eliminated throwing LITTLE HEARTS at them - they all surrender [exploding], except for a mysterious woman that apparently cannot be corrupted with tenderness or sweetness or fond caresses, which is called Iron Lady or something. Graphics ok [mostly black and empty, anyway], action is fast, playability is ok, but the rooms are all the same and so the gameplay. It certainly has a different feel [and aim] compared to the other Atic Atac derivatives - so let's give it a 3/5 and push the nuke button.
It's not bad. But I've reached only the third screen, and the interest fastly waned. The gameplay consists in a robotic perfection in timing, which I found very limited and constrictive. It's smooth and very well done, early Spectrum cuteness [by one of the guys that will program Odin's catalogue], but not soooooo terribly entertaining.
You are a bear. You must open your mouth while under the trees and try to directly swallow the apples falling from the trees. Once your belly is full enough, you search for you lair, in a snowy mountain [well, it's there, they are one screen sections] - you must enter it avoiding purple skiers. Now you're in the cave. And you must pay attention to the spiders, if you want to go to ber for the whole winter. To start it all over again in spring. No mating for this bear.
Nice graphics, moderately entertaining, easy, I'm not able to give it more than 2/5.
It requires too much hyperaction for my limited skills.
3/5
edit:
Ok, there's something devilish about this game, it's terribly hard, but at the same time masochistically addictive - you want to show to your Spectrum [emulator] that you're not so hopelessly crap at it as it seems. Also, it requires far more hypermind than hyperaction - even because your chasers are faster than you are.
So, c'mon, let's give 4/5 to Hyperfrustration.
It's a sci fi game in which you have to land in some alien planet, run through some alien landscape, kill some alien alien, e save some human astronauts which were kidnapped or something. Great view from space, it makes me think that we're so small and makes me wonder about creation and let's land that I have some work to do. The landing was a mysterious thing, until ZX1 and some reviews enlightened me about it and it turned out it was less hard than it seemed. You fly over the oh so marvellous alien landscape, but you can't look at it, because you're too busy staring at a stupid pixel in a cyan circle on the left side of the screen. You must try to keep it at the centre of it until you score 8.0 points. Then you land, you BRAKE, hop out of the spacecraft. Now you're running [at walking speed] through the oh so unearthly alien landscape, following a beep, shooting alien hawks or something. I like the graphics. It gives me a sci fi movie feel of alien horizons, alien grounds, alien rocks. It's all so purple. And then there are other sections. The game was saved by the... save option, at the time, or it would have been too frustrating and boring. And now it's still okaysh. 3/5.
You are flying through a tunnel in your spacecraft or tunnelcraft, view from behind, and you must shoot.
The perspective is not much comprehensible, you keep on smashing against the ceiling, the floor and the walls of the tunnel - and I'm not able to target efficiently anything.
It's really really bad.
It's a Galaxian clone, or that's what WoS says, the enemies fly very smoothly, they're nicely superfast when they dive, and even your spacecraft doesn't move badly, it looks like a beetle, but walks like a crab [it really looks like it's walking]. It has top notch flickering and it's even playable, and after three of four waves of thunderhawks you get to a colorful mothership. I was tempted to give 3/5 to it, but it's a bit too easy - it's almost hard to die, at times. [by the way, not bad the explosion, if you manage to die]. It looks like you're always able to dodge the enemies' bombs for a pixel or two. It's not that bad, in spite of the 4.16 score on WoS, from 8 users.
Bongo, 15 Jan 2014 (Rating: 3)
What we have here is a platform game with ladders and slides that I feel would fit marvellously in a Colecovision. It's the sort of game I'd expect to play on a Colecovision - which is not a bad feeling.
You're a big mouse at the cheese factory, but here you have to run around picking up diamonds, chased by some sort of alligator, a while you're there, you can even catch falling letters falling from the top of the screen to the bottom - by which you can form the name/word "Bongo" - and I don't what's the consequence of that. More points, I suppose. Or a new life, optimistically, inside Swiss cheese, wife and children. I'm digressing. Your mouse and the alligator are both two-legged. After three/four diamonds taken the level ends, there's a pause in which you can rest with your blonde girl [a zoophile?], and then start the new screen, with a different placing of platforms, slides and ladders - I'm not sure if it's harder or not - or if later the alligator finds some other friends to help him in chasing you or what.
Also, you can try to jump on a nearby platform, so there's a certain variety in the way you can escape and bypass your enemies.
The colour clash is EGREGIOUS in this one, I mean, there's really a lot of it, and as far as colour clash clashes, it clashes egregiously well, for example, because of the colour of the platforms, your feet are constantly red - and when the characters use the ladders... wow!
That said, playability is very good, sound is tolerable - and there must be some speeches too, because the game supports the Currah Microspeech, or how it's called. But I didn't try it, so I don't know if they're any good.
I think that a 3/5 would do, all considered.
Note: Bongo wasn't reviewed by any magazine.
Happy birthday, Dean of the Games! [a.k.a. Games Dean]
Wow, almost 1000 reviews old!
Totally and completely a maze game, you must find the other exit after the door closed behind you - your sprite is colorful, the walls too - but you're very slow, which is particulary annoying when you have to go back because of the umpteenth cul-de-sac. Although pressing M [I think it was] you can visualize the map.
Which is quite big and twisted.
2/5
Ok, this should have been the first game of a trilogy, which for some reason remained a monology - although, nonetheless, through its star - Ziggy - forms another trilogy with the other two titles starring the pixeled space guy [The Pyramid, Doomsday Castle].
It's a maze/arcade-adventure game with some mild shooting - in which you have to search and "store" the various strange animals populating the planet, in order to unleash them against some baddies in the following episodes of the series - which, as mentioned above, don't exist. Each animal has its own zoological features, and so you must pay attention to what you've already picked up, and what you're going to pick up, because they could kill each other or something. Also, you must nourish them with the appropriate food. How do you learn all these things? Easy, the first load is a GUIDE, which explains all about the surreal fauna you're going to encounter, and each file is accompanied by a nice, big picture of the subject. So you must find'em, keep'em alive, bring them to your spaceship [I]or something[/I], and in doing that you'll need various objects, keys, space dynamites, to explore obstructed areas - and avoiding or shooting some flying fluffy bastards infesting the planet. It's relatively original [especially for 1984] and there's a certain craft and work in it - and it's playable too. At the same time, it doesn't seem to be so terribly involving, especially action-wise.
But it can't be less than 3/5.
I don't remember other games that let you [in this case, that force you to] move individually each leg and each arm, there's in fact a precise key for each of them - as you must coordinate your limbs in order to climb up a building hanging on ledges and windows and lifting yourself - the only other keys are left and right.
The graphics are ok, the animation of the climber is very good - and it could have been a nicely done little arcade, if it were not for the bloody difficulty level. You're constantly targeted by dwellers throwing vases and plants at you, or shutting down shutters on your fingers, all of which cause you to fall and lose a life: there's really too much going on at the same time, while you're trying to go up coordinating your limbs as a retarded sloth. So technically is a good effort, but it seems like not much time was spent on playtesting, on fine-tuning the gameplay - the game should let you start slowly, let you learn how to move - but right from the start it seems like a last level difficulty. Often, after losing a life, there's already a new vase falling on your head, only a few pixels away. It makes Army Moves look playable. In fact, this spanish guy could well be the one that started the Bloody Hard Spanish Gaming Style. So, it's a historic find.
You're a Super Mutt, with all the despicable, improper consequences that it brings: you must wear cloak, tights and underwear over the tights - which is rather embarassing, to say the truth, but, cheer up, on the bright side you can fly over the buildings, the forests, the trees, the whatever's - and then you can land. And enter the buildings. So we have basically two gameplays: the flying part, with scrolling and cute minute graphics, and the one-screen platformer part: when you enter the building you find a room, with some platforms, baddies to avoid, and a letter flying up and down, from left to right, just under the ceiling. There's a word flashing at the bottom of the screen, and you need those letters to access the castle where a friend of yours is prisoner - so you must catch the right letters, looking for them in all the buildings, until you've formed the word, then you should find yourself at the castle [at the end of memory], for the final phase - which I didn't see, so I can't say anything about it. You have limited energy, which is drained away while you fly [especially if against giant umbrellas and other things], or when you touch the monsters inside the buildings [at the same time, some of them can be used as trampolines too] - so you must take the apples to replenish your energy bar. Touching the wrong letters is lethal. I thought it was cute but slow and not so smooth in the platform section, but at the end I suprised myself enjoying it a bit, in spite of its 5.62 on WoS [from 13 users]. So, it's 3/5 to me.
It's a subaquatic version of Ultimate's Jet Pac - with fish and underwater creatures replacing aliens and changing in each level, and some treasures at the bottom of the sea instead of fuel or shuttle parts. Even the graphical cloud and acoustic effect when the fish or your character die reminds me of the early Ultimate stuff, not only Jet Pac, but Pssst! too.
It's eminently playable and smooth, and it can't have less than 3/5. If it deserves more, time will tell. I'll try it again in 30 years.
edit:
Tried it again, it's so playable that deserves a rise to 4/5
Shoot'em up with view from behind, fly over a grid, avoid the pyramids, shoot the rocks and the spacecrafts. Graphically nice, but it doesn't seem to go nowhere, the sprites and the shot don't seem to follow the perspective coherently, and, even because of that, it's hard to hit something successfully. There's something wrong. 2/5
I don't know. I think I hate it.
2/5
It could have been better, I suppose.
The description are laconic to almost the non existence.
It's not one of those adventure games in which you must perform complicated actions using adverbs, adjectives and interacting heavily with other characters wandering through the environment on their own.
And I quite like it anyway. Maybe because of the beautiful graphics.
Text adventure written in basic, and it shows, although the response is fast enough, the graphics are sketchy and usually bad, a few black lines on the white background, and terribly slow to draw. Luckily, the pictures appear just once, the first time you enter a location, and they're present in only a few of them [of course you can make the pictures appear again - or at least I think].
Width of the World was sold along with a same named sci fi book, and the game begins where the latter ends. Strange stories about the world dilating - whatever that means - and millions disappearing, and among them your wife Sarah, which you must find and bring her back again in the i-don't-know, normal world or something. So, you have a Volvo, you can climb in it, open the sun roof, turn on the stereo, turn the ignition keys, but it doesn't matter: there's no fuel. So you walk around, and anytime you find something that might be interesting... YOU DIE. [mind you, I've never been a good adventurer, in spite of my desperate attempts]
I was interested in the game, but it didn't take me very much to drop my interest. 1/5
I tried to play this text adventure, but after a while I wanted to die.
Text only adventure. You're stuck in a Mysterious Fairground, and you must find five treasures and the way out. The description are very laconic, speed is ok, the screen is blue, with white customed letters. So you walk around exploring and you're fastly stucked, because the "rooms" are already finished. To access to the rest you must use an object against another object, and that's fair. But, then, to find another passage you have to go through a non reported exit, in a not particularly common direction, without any logic or suggestion - and that's NOT fair. [maybe I didn't try "help", I don't remember]. A misteriously unfair ground.
Ok, your castle is sieged by the orcs, who are hauling and lifting up ladders to jump over your walls, and in the meantime they're shooting arrows from the ground, which eventually become FLAMING arrows - and you're done.
It's quite hard, and the inertia of your character makes it rather laborious to place exactly over the orc, in order to throw the black thing - whatever it is - over them and kill'em. [it could be even a pot of hot oil, I don't know]. When they reach the top of the wall, they start crushing its peaks, and then pull out the sword to hit you. At this time you'll need a sword too - and it will appear at the extreme left or extreme right of the screen. The same happens with the black thing/oil pot/black ball/whatever it is. The orcs are very fast in placing the ladders and climb them, so the action is quite frantic - in spite of your slow start running. At a certain point, it becomes very busy, with multiple arrows, normal and flaming, flying around, and hordes of orcs shaking swords under you. The graphics are a bit primitive, but functional. Can't give it less than 3/5.
edit:
tried again
I now think it deserves
4/5
Flux, 26 Jan 2014 (Rating: 2)
I find this one quite delirious. You are in the garden of some dwarf, the one that should be delivering the gold in the pot at the end of the rainbow, but lately he's become rather dishonest and he's keeping the gold in his garden, so you're there to retrieve it. It's one screen, divided in rectangles by the Magic Hedges, known as The Flux, who disquietly keep costantly moving: the passage to the adjancet hedges goes quickly back and forth, which can prove particularly frantic when the garderner [which must be another dwarf judging by his size] enters your rectangle and starts chasing you inside that small area. So, you must get the gold and some fungi too, I'd say, and there's even a deadly spade wandering around, but its trajectory are fixed and predictable, so it's not a great danger. I played it at one of the easiest level of difficulty and it was still quite hard - it goes at a wild pace. So, it's the game any good? No, of course.
2/5
This is a second Mothership from 1984, the other one being by Artic Software, and being a bit better. Here we're experiencing a new way to invade the earth: an intergalactic purple barbecue is dropping h's on the ground, and you, last humankind's resource, a green hot pad, are trying to stop them, catch'em as they fall. If you don't, they pile up, and when they reach your heigth, you're over. Splendid.
1/5
"We are in the 21st century.
The only energy produced is nuclear-energy."
Fukushima and Chernobyl occurred in vain. I didn't understand a thing about this game, but the final nuclear explosion sound effect was well done and a welcomed relief.
1/5
Wow-wow-wow, you're SuperTed! In fact, this is a tie in licence of the famous cartoon. Never heard of it? Neither I. Anyway, you must catch some baddies through a multi-screen maze, and when you touch flashing yellow objects you turn into a normal bear, but when you find a red object, SuperTed is back! And he's exactly as slow as when he's normal: I've seen common snails going faster. It takes lot of time to reach an exit to the other side of the screen, and in the meantime you can grow a beard and shave it. While, this game, well, you can shove it.
Nice features: when you catch a baddie then you actually have to drag it to prison, in the first screen. And if you touch a yellow object while going back, well, he'll be able to run away again, of course.
1,5/5
edit: ok, I was wrong, he moves slightly faster when he's SUPER.
Lots of LSD.
Your arch-enemy RAPSCALLION THE ROGUE threw you in jail and stole your castle, your crown, your power and your rolled oats. A fairy and some other magic friends try to help you transforming you into a bird, probably so that you can be a proper jailbird. Isn't it helpful? Anyway, now you can try to fly away from the dungeons.
In short, this is a maze game, with adventure elements, and lots of bizarre screens and dangers, drawn with peculiar big and blocky graphics. Did I say that you're now a bird? Well, that's not entirely correct: in fact, you're bird AND a fly too. You can change between these two, and it's necessary to cross safely or more easily certain screens or, for example, enter certain narrow passages, too small for the bird, but wide enough for the fly.
Unluckily, this change costs you a life each time, so it's something to do with parsimony. Anyway, through the maze you will find diamonds, and pixies too, which, once touched or taken, could help you to survive longer specific perils in specific screens - which one is communicated to you by the appearing of a message -, they could also give you useful informations, spells, keys, shields or even some extra lives. One of the weird touches of the game: when you're killed, a ghost leaves your body, and you can wander through the maze in this ectoplasmic form, but you can't touch anything, so to go on with the game you must go back and re-enter you own body. Once escaped from the dungeon, it's time to enter the castle and defeat RAPSCALLION THE ROGUE, and probably get back your rolled oat. Graphics are a bit rough, and in spite of being a simple 2D game, there are frequent slow-downs, but its quirkiness and inventiveness, added to the good playability, keep the score high.
Nice ancient crap.
You're a robot, you're on a ship, the ship tends to develop lots of holes at the bottom, filling up not-so-slowly of water. So you must wander among the "rooms", closed with waterproof doors, that you must remember to close, and pick up handles to turn the pump and spit the water ouf of the ship, patches, to fix the holes and there are other features that now I don't remember and I don't want to get into. So the concept seems very original [or were there something like it somewhere?], it's anciently cute, playble and very hard at the same time, at least, to me. So it's decisely good, but it didn't grab me. So, no more than 3/5 for now.
Basic one screen platform game set in an oriental laundry, your flickering sprite must pick up all the garments littered on the playing area, and drop them all, one by one, at the right top of the screen, so they'll be transported to the washing machines. All thise while chased by electric irons, soapy bubbles etc.
Of course each new screen presents an augmented difficulty, in the form of augmented number of chasers. You have a few shot of spray to immobilize them for a few seconds, when they're encircling or cornering you. There's really not much to do, and the game is far from spectacular, but sufficiently playable anyway.
T.L.L., 11 Feb 2014 (Rating: 3)
It's simply beautiful to look at, it was technically formidable for 1984, and I'll add that it's the link between Costa Panayi first manifestation of its personal colorful 3d graphics - in Android 2 - and the following Cyclone, one of the absolute masterpiece of Spectrum softography, wich added to Highway Encounter makes 1985 Costa Panayi's year.
So I can see Cyclone embryio in this one, but I can't play it, I find it too hard, I can't control the jet properly. I don't find the right playabilty. Not that I've tried so very hard, anyway.
But for now it's 3/5.
Another genuinely original variation on the platform/manic minerish lode.
You don't jump, and every fall even from the lowest height; in fact, in a dramatic twist, your astronaut turns into an open banana skirt while heading to his death toward the underneath platform. Althugh I don't think it was meant to resemble a banana skirt. Anyway, as I was writing, you can't jump: you move using a sort of limited teleportation, that works more like Spider-Man's shots of webcob lianes - an oblique line appears, going upward, it bounces once against a platform, and you appear under it. Which means that you can appear in the middle of nothing, and fall. So you must calculate the trajectory properly. The aim is to escape from the screen, but there aren't objects to be taken - you just have to avoid the nasties, different in each in screen. There are also little platforms which move horizontally or vertically once you step on them, to help you move around the screen - which is also a pleasant idea. The game is nothing exciting, but not bad either, and a little different from your usual one screen platform. 3/5
You're Santa Claus, you fly over the snowy peaks, on your reindeer led sleigh, trying to catch packages drop by little angels coming in many different colours, yellow, red, blue, and the red ones which seem demonic entities - all this while dodging the clouds, which STEAL the packages from your sleigh, preventing you to deliver them. Then you must THROW the damned packages, if you have any left, on the mini-houses, without stopping. In the next section the house are larger, and you can land over them, and enter the chimney. Here the game changes, and the chimneys are like THREE WAY HIGHWAYS, with fires and other things running up through them, while you descend. If you manage to reach the bottom, your enter the house, and the scenario/perspective changes again. Now it's a slightly oblique 3d view of all the rooms of the house, stuffed in one screen: you must reach the Christmas tree, where a package will be automtically left, avoiding the people moving around, using ladders, then you must pick up the key, and reach the door. And it continues like that until I don't know when. WHICH IS DULL. 2/5
A platform organized along a three story building, divided in three screens, stuffed with platform and ladders, and littered with ropes, which you must pick up [one at the time], and zombies, falling dust, moving blocks which you must avoid.
The aim is to bring 30 ropes to the last story, where the mayor of the city is trapped in a broken elevator, bound to fall anytime. With the ropes you can secure it and save him. So, it's a bit different platform, which doesn't make it great anyway, but it's Chuckie Egg fast and ok.
3/5
Save the tribbles! Lead them through five screens/stages. Protect them from the strange creatures, waterfalls, cactus and whatever's.
In screen one you have apparently just landed with some spacecraft in a foreign planet. You must dig up rocks, in order to build a bridge over a river and then, for some reason, make the spaceship explode with a detonator.
The problem are the tribbles. They slowly get out of the spaceship, and starts running around, although just one at the time - when one dies, another one comes out - until you finish them, and once they are finished, you're finished too. Essentially, they are your lives, if not your life. In fact, if their slowly coming out of the spacecraft looks like a childbirth/delivery, the game can be interpreted like a sci fi/fantasy first approach at parenthood. Or a forerunner of Tamagotchi. In fact, the key problem of the game is care about the little ones, protect them, and also feed them [the latter happens on the second screens]. It is, I think, quite an original concept for the time, for a game. Or is it? And the way you interact with the tribbles is nice too: they run around on their own, risking to fall in the water, or to get caught by some volcanic creatures - but once you get very near them, they start following you - so you can indirectly control where they're going - BUT you must learn to wait for them, or, if you get too far from them again, they start running around randomly again.
So, I think it's perfectly clear, judging by the attention that I'm giving to the game, that I'm really liking it:
WELL, NOT REALLY, IT GETS ON MY NERVES.
2/5
Another game in which you have to pick up hundres of thousands of billions of items.
This time are pieces of coal. And some tools too. What can you say against Wanted: Monty Mole? Not much, it's an early Jet Set Willy clone, but aesthetically and technically better done, and even more playable, I'd say - not being a fan of JSW. The difference that in WMM your path is obligatory, there's only one way to finish the game, screen after screen, while in JSW there's the exploration bit in the gameplay, you can wander off in every direction. The graphic s are very good, lots of colour, and your mole is quite well animated, the sound is bearable. The difficulty level invites you to another go, because you feel that you can pass that bit, playing more carefully.
Neat game, 4/5.
Beach Head was the european conversion of an american game, and it shows: there's all the american obsession for war in it. These are lots of military mini-games budled together as the various phases of a mission, so you can play different moments and aspects of the war: moving your fleet through a map towards some targets, going through a strait filled with missiles and obstacles, shootings of enemy jets in open sea, with subjective view, a sea battle against other ships, again in subjective view, a path full of obstacles and cannons through the beach, in your tank, toward the final battle.
Playability is ok, graphics too, sounds a bit bad. It's not all action, in fact, the sea battle section requires a little concetration, strategy and thought, especially if you're bad at maths [and I'm terrible]. The tank section is a real bore, the tank is cute, but awfully slow, and the avoiding of obstacles requires painstaking attention. This section really lower the vote, as I see it. The game was very good in 1984, very professionally done by the prolific David J. Anderson, but it hasn't aged terribly well. 3/5
Great game in which you are a human pinball thrown in every possible direction by flying monsters and demons, you can try to lower yourself into pits using some web that spiderman lent you, and go back up to the top standing on bubbles spit by volcanoes. But most of the time you just bounce around without any control on your character. Anyway you can learn to do slightly better. Colourful, fast and furios action, you must costantly be shooting to neutralize the monsters and their effects on your manoeuvrability. The goal, I don't know exactly what it is, probably to find a certain amount of diamonds that will open the exit from the Underwurlde for you to proceed to Mire Mare. I met a sort of minotaur. Maybe he's the one you have to corrupt to go out. I think it's frustratingly funny, smooth and fast animation, and your shooting goes in multiple directions like lapilli from a volcano. No less than 4/5.
It's Atic Atac, only more colorful, harder and placed in a jungle - which also means narrower passages, all ridden with animals, cannibals, etc.
The smaller animals can be defeated with your twirling sword, but the biggest, like hippos and rhinos, can only be pushed back and turner around in their furious race. The same with the cannibals. Anyway, of course it's a sort of treasure hunt, for the usual amulets or maps or something - plus dozens of other objects littered anywhere [this jungle seems like a junkyard].
Playability is definitely lower than in Atic Atac, and more akin to Underwurlde - but if in the latter there are more efficient techniques that you can learn to survive, in Sabre Wulf there are more random contacts with enemies appearing out of nowhere, and your self-defence is limited by the fact that you can use your swords horizontally only - so a lethal contact easily verifies - and if in Underwurlde it might mean only another session of bouncing around, in this case it's death.
So I'll give it 4/5 because is very well done, with a nice tune and all, definitely above average, especially for 1984 - but it has not chances to improve its score. Underwurlde is better, as far as I can see.
A frustrating early Jet Set Willy clone, with higher jumps and bouncing consequences.
2/5
Maze game in reverse, meaning that you have to touch the moving entities in the location and avoid the still items. Which is not even entirely true, because there are even moving dangers, here and there, as spiders, bees and other insects. So this review already doesn't make any sense. But I'll go on anyway. You are this guy, which I thought was an elder woman, and you have to catch all the butterflies fluttering about the maze of this big garden, and absolutely avoiding to step on the flowers and hedges because if you do YOU'RE DEAD. It used to happen the same when I was a kid playing football in the yard if I'd hit vases and flowers belonging to the toothless old lady living by. Furthermore, you have to be careful not to fall and drown in 2 inches deep ponds and brooks. You have to complete your mission in exactly four minutes or you'll fail. The game is fairly playable, the graphics acceptable, the background is the usual Speccy tar black environment, but the vegetation is quite colourful, and the animation smooth, and there's a quite enjoyable use of the beeper. I didn't dislike the game, maybe because it was specifically conceveid for people of my age [the spot on comment on the archive is "5-8 year olds"].
3/5
One of the weirdest release of those years, Pud Pud is a cartoonish, grotesque, surreal and black humoured little nightmare in the shape of a maze game with gravity and platforms, but you move mainly flying, although you can even walk. And when you fly you use your feet as wings. The aim is to find 10 puddings, which will allow you to leave this nightmarish world.
One of the problems is that you can only collect them in the pre-established order, and they appear just one at the time, randomly spreaded across the maze. The other big problem is that your energy vanishes very quickly, and to stay alive you must eat some creatures, but only the right ones - the others will drain your energy even faster. And, worst of all, if you remain too long in a location, Mrs. Pud Pud is going to appear, and she heads straight toward you and her kiss is lethal. The maze is littered with big ruins constituted by broken spectrums, heads, skulls, tombstones.
It's like a world through a very weird looking glass, in which only the name of the author is simply in reverse, while the rest is twisted.
All and all, it shows the precocious talent of Jonathan Smith, implemented in an original game, in which he poured his peculiar imagination and humour - mostly kept at bay in the following softography, mainly characterized by coin op conversions. Technically he was very good already, with its trademark use of the beeper, sounding as a synthesizer, smooth and colourful graphics. The game starts off quite hard, it gets better when you learn which creatures to eat and which to avoid - but it doesn't become terribly addictive anyway. Still, it's a peculiar and overall well done game - and the debut of one of Spectrum's greatest talent.
3/5
p.s. The first review is from april 1985, but the copyright on the main screen of the game says 1984.
p.p.s. I don't know what the role of Christine Smith in making the game is.
This is a game part of the classic pick-up-the-can genre, and it's as exciting as one might expect it to be. You just can't stop picking up those trash cans. You want to try it again and again. And again. That said, it's very colourful and well designed, the little sprites are cute and allow the view to be more comprehensive of the surroundings, people will invite you in, and if you do it right, you will be compensated with extra time, which is quite handy, because it passes rather fast, especially if you DON'T KEEP OFF THE GRASS and things like that. Beware of the dog.
4/5
Nice and playable enough text adventure, with a sci fi setting, you're stranded on some planetoids, your scoutship is broken, and you don't see mechanics in the immediate surroundings, or even galaxies. So you go out [if you manage to] in the smallest piece of space rock ever, but if you use your items well and then learn how to use the rods, then lots of new horizons will open up.
No less than 3/5.
From time to time you find a game that the other people don't seem to appreciate much, but you quite like - and this is the case of New Cylon Attack for me, although it's not horribly rated [7,09 from 11 votes], I would expect it to have a slightly higher average.
The game is a cockpit shoot'em up, you are in space, there's a Star Wars feel, and you must move your sight to shoot the enemies' spacecrafts, coming and going, shrinking and getting bigger, while moving in the starry playing area - of which you have a radar version, showing the position and direction of the hostile spaceships for a good range, covering almost all the "star battlefield" [but not all, because sometimes you notice that they disappear, so there must be a portion of it that always remain out of range]. The alien fleets are often quite thick, and you have to develop some strategy if you want to destroy it all before they annihilate your shields, killing you. There's even the fuel problem, which you can resolve by finding your mothership and giving yourself a break. Another moment when you need to go back to the mothership is when you have destroyed a whole wave of aliens, if you want to progress to the next level. It's a sort of tense space western shoot-out, quite playable, with some good acoustic explosions gratifying your good aim.
4/5
More or less, the neatest Galaxian conversion possible, and one of the best shoot'em up's of 1984.
4/5
Right now the average of this one on WoS is 7.40 from 44 votes, while the not totally dissimilar and vastly superior New Cylon Attack has only a 7.09 or something. But, beside the big colourful graphics [the asteroids more importantly], the rest is not much impressive: there's something wrong in the perspective, which makes you inadvertently collide against enemy ships, asteroids and bullets - there's no sign of motion, you seem to be completly still, no sense of depth, a star field completely still itself, the sounds are little silly "bip's": a starship explodes and all you hear is "bip". The playability is not that good either because of the perspective problem aforementioned. I'm tempted to give it 2/5, but for now I'll settle on a very narrow 3/5.
The Watchers are dronecops going mad and are hovering all over the city doing bad things. So you, with your vector graphics jecopter must fly through it and with the help of a radar, spot them and destroy them.
As mr. Alessandro Grussu writes in his review this is a mix between a simulator and a shoot'em up, and at the same it's neither, and it falls in a uncertain limbo. There not hot action, nor very complicated and "realistic" commands and such. It's nice learning to fly among the building and trying to fly over some of them, in the attempt of find the drones. But in the end there's not much going on.
3/5
by Simon Brattel, Neil Mottershead, Graham Stafford, Jon Ritman
Superfastest subjective space graphics, lots and lots of options to set the game as you prefer, four graphical cockpit approaches, peculiar hall of fame, and some of the most wicked flying bastards ever.
Space shoot'em up with lots and lots of planets and galaxies and whatever's to explore in order to destroy EVERYTHING THAT MOVES, and even lots of towers, which tend to stand still. It's impressively done, but too much space voyaging and fastest and cruellest enemies ever. 3/5 although on the highest side.
[like a 7,5/10]
by Ian Oliver, Andrew Onions, Graeme Baird, Oliver Frey
As WE ALL KNOW, brilliant unofficial conversion, by the vector graphics masters of Realtime Software, of the famous Star Wars coin-op by Atari, with big and relatively colourful vector graphics, and ok speed and smoothness - the latters not comparable to the absurd Dark Star, which, anwyay, has less happening all at once in the screen, and has a certain pointilistic style. On the playability side, Starstrike is still a bit hard, but there are various skill levels among which you can choose, but the gameplay is dense and pauseless, and it's fun enough. This makes a certain difference.
4/5
Booty, 18 Mar 2014 (Rating: 4)
Flip screen platform'n'ladders'n'doors game. Collect all the treasures, avoid the pirates, parrots and rats, don't fall from the platforms, and use the numbered keys to open the relative door, inside the same screen. The other doors, not numbered, take you to another screen. If in a specific screen there's an unreachable spot, closed by door with an unreachable key, probably you can get there from a door in an another screen.
Nice jolly [roger] tune, beautiful glimmering loading screen, ok colourful graphics, with a bit of colour clash, it's quite addictive, partially because it's a bit frustrating, and you get a bit angry at the game [well, I did]: there are too many random deaths. Rats and parrots coming out of nowhere while you have no possible escape, doors that sometimes, in a particular game, take you directly in the arms of some affectionate pirate, items hiding bombs, appearing while a pirate is chasing you and such. The thing is that these defects aside, is quite playable. So let's give it a [not on the abudant side] 4/5. It's cute. Just slightly sadic, at times.
by Alan J. Lloyd, Peter J. Stevens
Pretty good Defender clone, with lots of JetPac-like lasers.
4/5
by Kevin J. Bezant
A simple concept: run on the platforms taking all the objects, ascend automatically at the end of each of them, and beware while you're passing through their central part, because there's a sort of killer elevator going up and down, who could lethally hit you. Arrived at the top, you're onto the next level, where the bad elevators augment, along the same vertical line, but even other lines start to appear. It's smoothly done, but the concept is not exactly exciting, and I can't see what should make people get back for more. The main sprite is the usual appearing in other 2389293 Visions Software Factory games. Probably he has even got a name, but I don't know it. No more than 3/5.
by John R. Edmonds
Cute subaquatic one-screen game between Jet Pac and Fantastic Voyage. Of the latter it has the same sprite, the same way of carrying objects, and the same kind of swimming inertial movements - and for a reason, the author is the same [his only two games], of the first it retains the classic one screen arcade feel and setting, and the need to complete a task carrying and dropping objects: in Jet Pac it was pieces of shuttle and fuel tanks, in Devil Diver you must complete a submarine pipeline, so you dive from a boat with a piece of it at the time, drop it on the bottom where a piece is still missing, take the treasure that as a prize appears, and bring it to the boat, where your limited air supply is restored. Not so easy as described until now, of course, the other Jet Pac feature is the shoot'em up part: the sea [or ocean] flora is varied and lethal, but luckily you have your weapon. Once you complete a section, you're onto the next, where the marine animals, each with its own movement pattern and behaviour, and the difficulty augment. Playable, cute and nicely done.
4/5
Pick up the bags of gold, and put them in your purple wheelbarrow, or drop them on the head of your chasers, while they're climbing a ladder under you, through a series of flip screens, in the usual mine, full of elevators, shafts, trucks and hooks. It's bloody hard and picking up the bags is awkward, and right now my headache doesn't help either. I have a deep dislike for this game, although it's technically well done, and not totally unplayable, so it's a
3/5
by Martin Wheeler
A stolid, woody wizard flies around among almost inavoidable, and certainly not shootbale [given the fact that you can't shoot] zombies, flying blazing skulls and some other blokes, picking objects just touching them [from right to left], with left and right keys being magically one over the other [q + a], which doesn't make much sense.
2/5
by John K. Wilson
Looks like the poor man's Atic Atac at first glance, but playing and reading the instructions it seems it's got enough personality and nice touches on its own, although nothing fantastic. The nasties are really wicked, I'd say, jumping in from the doors while you're trying to get out of the room, and flickering unpredictably around you, and they're never tired to appear and re-appear, for all your attempts to definitely destroy them. There's definitely something suffocatingly evil in this game - the vaguely hellish fires you have to jump in the transition from a level and another, the deceptive shiny sphere-eggs that suddenly becomes new shooting enemies on the third level, etc. And you have to collect the treasures and bring them back to the first level. Distressing. Nice atomization and rematerialization of your character when he dies, and very cute blaring tune in the option screen, that contrasts disappointigly the absolute silence during the game.
All in all, it's not bad.
3/5
by Daren White, John Line
Looks like an uninteresting chase in the maze game with wooden udg graphics, to me.
2/5 [out of kindness]
by Donald J. Campbell, JJC
World Cup Football, the game that manages to capture football in all its sheer uglyness, and in which your movable player becomes cyan on green making it even more exciting.
1/5
by Steve Turner
Alien planet cockpit shoot'em up, in which I don't seem to be able much, aside being shot and crash against the lunar ground. There's something good, even if I can't catch it.
3/5
by Paul Barsby
You're a cat. You can jump. You can walk. There are screens in which you have to catch your quarries while you're on the ground [for example, in the graveyard],
and others in which it's required to leap on platforms [for example, in the building site]. These are not flip screens, they're like levels.
Sketchy sprites, but it's playable.
3/5
As I already wrote somewhere, controls and movements are a nightmare.
Monty moves slowly and steadily vertically, while extremely fast horizontally, and he's affected by a plague called perpetual motion, once you start him, he keeps going. It's very easy to lose control of the subject, if you ever had it. When you pass from vertical to horizontal, he can very easily slips away at full speed against some nasties. You have to dose carefully your key touches: in fact, horizontally the movement can vary. And you can even manage to make him walk backward. One of the most terrible experiences of the game is trying to enter vertical narrow passages, it's a really arduous venture. It's like trying to make a total drunk to urinate straight. At the same time, once you manage to control him almost decorously, the game beings to get quite good. The aesthetic is clearly Manic Minerian in a very cute way, little in game tune included. The gameplay is different instead, it's not a platform, but a one screen you're-in-a-maze-so-collect-the-items-and-avoid-the-nasties game, although I'm not certain this is the technical name for it.
3/5
by Peter Barber
The concept is that you have to take the right object to the worst nuisances and harassers that are keeping you from playing with a computer game [they are, of course, your kid, your best friend etc. etc.].
"That's the story of my life!" you might say, and even more so when you discover that the game they were keeping you from playing is crap.
2/5
Tron, 22 Mar 2014 (Rating: 2)
by J.D. Woodcock, S. Wilson
It's inspired by the Walt Disney movie Pollyanna. I hate this kind of game.
2/5
Dotty, 22 Mar 2014 (Rating: 3)
by Richard Stevenson, Philip Durbidge
Just a decent clone of the Space Age laser coin op, with no special features aside improved walls. They painted them.
3/5
by Bob Hamilton
Very well done variation on the Joust coin op, with a more interesting gameplay. Save the eggs and put them in your nest. [and then it gets different in phase 2 and 3]. You can even shoot.
3/5 [it could become a 4/5]
by Richard V. Tonkin
Ride the horse, jump the obstacles. In the main screen there's a view from above of the whole course, with your horse drawn as a pixel matchstick with a biforcation where the head should be. In the upper part of the screen, on the right, there's a big sprite of the horse, and, when you get near, of the obstacle you're supposed to jump over. So the main screen helps you to position the horse and run towards the obstacle, while the smaller portion with the big sprite helps you with timing the jump. All in all, it's not even that bad, but I suppose it's not my kind of game anyway.
2/5
by Software Conversions Ltd, Software Farm (Julian Chappell)
Greatly playable, but not at all addictive. You're at the bottom of a grid in perspective, and you can shoot along its segments, and you must destroy 15 white nasties, coming to get you, for each section, before shooting a bigger red spacecraft at the other side with a special missile, and of course it gets more and more complicated as you proceed, with indestructible red debris, and green "shurikens" or little stars, and whatever. Graphics reminding a bit a blocky Atari 2600 game. [For which was probably conceived the original version, I think]. No more than 3/5.
by David W. Harper
Maze-Shoot'em up-Adventure I don't understand much about, but that seems pretty good to me. The explosions are quite satisfying for sure.
And you have four pockets.
3/5 [could progress to 4]
UGH!, 23 Mar 2014 (Rating: 2)
by Tony Samuels, Stevie Beverly
Steal the pterodactyl's eggs to feed yourself, and avoid or kill the female tyrannosaurus rex, following a series of slightly 3D paths, so you must move your character diagonally and learn when your position is right for a change of path [it's not always a smooth thing]. Interesting sounding boogie tune and decent graphics. I can see the aim of the game, but I can't see the point of playing it. Maybe I'm too primitive to appreciate these modern videogames.
2/5
by Richard Huddy
Graphically a bunch of pixels and a couple of splats of colours, it's nonetheless quite a playable and moderately addictive game. You must paint the inner walls of a house, only it seems a house out of The Evil Dead, because it's all crazy and frantically moving, and if you run along a story you don't know where you will be at the end of the race, because there are demented elevators costantly going up and down, and not perfectly identified things running everywhere, maybe buckets [of paint], but why and how should a bucket run? Things got a little more sane when I discovered the jump button and the possibility of leap over the lift shafts, and the buckets etc. It's one screen at the time with progressive chaos and difficulty, later I've seen a woman appearing and I don't know what her function is, and then I had to pick up lots of gloves, and I don't know what's after that. So, it's better than how it appears.
3/5
by Christian F. Urquhart, Nick Pierpoint, F. David Thorpe
Phase 1: help three penguins cross the pack. Phase 2: be a penguin, play Pengo.
Graphics and sound are cute, but I find the Pengo part hard, and after a [brief] while it becomes boring going through the Phase 1 all over again, just to be crushed in three seconds in the Pengo section once more.
Sorry to say it, but this game just leaves me cold.
2/5
by Jason Austin, Colin Tuck
A fast and cheerfully coloured Q*Bert clone starring Pi.
3/5
by Donald J. Campbell, Gary Porter
Why do people play Centipede and Centipede clones? I don't know.
Anyway this one seems decent, even if I don't know why should I play it.
3/5
by Martin Bullar
You're a sheperd dog and you must take safely a herd of sheep through the woods to their enclosure, avoidin the "wooluf". It's a pretty unique scenario, and so it's a game that can count on the fact that it doesn't have any direct opponent, and so in spite of the far from spectacular production, it mantains a certain attractiveness and fascination, even because of the associations with dark fairy tales.
3/5
by ?
Must have been a bad Xmas for those who received this game as gift, or maybe they had been naughty boy, I tried it multiple times just to see if it becomes fun somewhere, as the the first screen seemed like an appetizer more than a complete game, and a frustrating appetizer I must say - but the gameplay it's all like this, ladders, golden apples, green lights and snowballs often suddenly appearing when they absolutely shouldn't, falling green stalactites, and some other random deaths, which I think were caused by electrocution, I don't know. Anyway, once dead, Santa Claus turns into a Christmas tree, somehow. It's not so badly done, it's just not fun. Now I hate Christmas.
2/5
by Colin Jones
One of the cutest and most original platformers of 1984, collect the parts of Frank N Stein's skeleton [or of Frank N Stein's creature's skeleton, more probably] littered around the screen [talk about cuteness], by using spring to jump on the plaftorms, steps [not ladders] to descend, or simply falling, avoiding fixed patterned baddies, slipping on ice, and having a wonderful electrocution or two [which doesn't kill you, but while you're busy being electrified a nasty can reach you]. As you pick up the pieces of the skeleton, which can be taken only in the right order from head to toe], the image of the creature appears in a box at the right bottome of the screen. And, it's well animated and designed, and greatly and pleasantly playable. No less than 4/5, for this not so famous classic.
by Clive Brooker
My personal technical assessment is that this is pants. [Sorry, Clive Brooker]
1/5
by Elliot Gay
It's Jet Set Willy with a bit of scrolling [that kind of (flickering) scrolling where everything stops while a new portion of the enviroment "comes forward"], and lots of swings and keys.
Swings are ok, especially the zigzagging multiple ones, and I don't mind dozens of keys littered around.
But it's all rather clumsy and slow and frustrating, especially when you have to restart again from the starting spot, and not where you died.
Could have been nice, but it's clearly why it was titled Son Of A Blagger: it wasn't really worth the money [5.95 £].
2/5
by Paul W. Reynolds
A kind of 3d isometric adventure, but graphically different from early Ultimate's ones, in fact it's coloured, it scrolls, the sprites are minuscule and when you enter certain closed environments, the display change, and it becomes a [still] subjective view of the place, to be searched à la Inheritance. Not only, when you reach spots hidden by walls or fences or whatever, the angle automatically changes to let you see what's happening. Gameplay-wise, it's quite different too - you're some kind of spy parachuted in an enemy's camp. There seems to be a lot of different things to do: find your watch, so that you can see how much time passed [you have only 10 minutes to complete your mission], sowing little mines around, try to open barracks and offices, find various objects, and, overall, running and running from the dogs and the soldiers which are chasing you all over the camp [a bit like in a Stan & Laurel movie]. So it's should be a terrible exciting game. But it isn't.
Anyway, it's all very well done.
3/5
by Victor Ruiz Tejedor, Santiago Morga B.
This must be one of the earliest title by the Spain based Dinamic Software, it's a quite cute arcade-adventure with a savage setting and big sprites, and it's not desperately and frustratingly hard. They hadn't found their way yet.
3/5
by Paul Owens
Another Ocean Software unofficial coin op conversion with an irritating preliminary game [as in Eskimo Eddie, a Pengo clone],
this time leading to a decent Burger Time game. But the aforementioned introductory minigame lower the vote. I'm in a bad mood too.
2/5
by ?
Standard maze game in which you stroll around in your spaceship among flashing walls, shooting stupid aliens shooting blindly in turn. The maze is, I think, piled up on three levels, and for to enter the next level you have to find 5 codes, in the right order. The aim is to reach the innermost room of the maze and discover its secret, the prize is 5000£ that Arcadia Software is still keeping for you for sure. Hurry up! Trite, but decent.
3/5
by Mr. Chip Software (Andrew Foord, Peter Foord)
The only satisfaction I had from this game is being arrested for murdering the stall holder. Probably it was aimed at a younger audience.
2/5
by John T. Harris
The little man running to his horse after being unsaddled looks like a madman chasing pigeons and geese in the park. The collisions are unprecise and prospectically wrong. And after while you get tired to hit yet another cactus and to find yourself lying down on the sand, and waiting for the sketch described in the first sentence to finish once again. Still it's scoring 6.53 of average from 17 votes on WoS. It's got two positive reviews on Spectrum 2.0, and I've seen an old Crash review which says is good. I think I'm gonna take another look before emanating the final verdict on this important matter.
edit:
No, sorry, it's too hard and waiting for that sketch to finish is unhorseable.
2/5
edit: I'd like to see a rzx of this one [there's still none]. Anyway, I quite like some of the graphics.
by Beam Software (Clive Barrett, Russell Comte, Greg Holland)
Neat game about running, jumping and things like that. They tell me it's called "sport", "athletics" and other funny names. It's not graphically cartoonish as Daley Thompson's Decathlon, it looks a bit more sombre/serious, in comparison. It's playable and well drawn and animated. Of course you have to destroy your keyboard or joystick.
3/5
by Christian F. Urquhart, Nick Pierpoint
A rectangular grid, you in it, and four moving lasers, one for each side, shooting at you, while you try to fly over coloured bits of the grid.
It pleasantly requires to your mind to be active, as you must be constantly aware of what the four lasers are doing while at the same time being busy with your task. 16K game.
3/5
Matrix, 27 Mar 2014 (Rating: 3)
by S.A.T., Jeff Minter
Strange and chaotic grid based game greatly appreciated by Keanu Reeves.
no more than 3/5
by Ross Harris
It seems a tough adventure to me, and I don't understand much of what's going on nor what the aim is. Maybe I should give a bad vote to me, then, and not to the game, which, by the way, is smoothily done. The lack of instructions or enlightning reviews in the archive doesn't help also. It's got 7.50 of average from 6 votes in WoS, but personally I don't feel entertained enough, and I'm perplexed by the puzzles.
2/5
It may work as a joke, but not s a game [especially if you paid for it].
1/5
by Colin Smith
Around 1984 the tension between nuclear superpowers must have been really palpable, and we can see the signs of that in popular culture, in movies
like Testament, The Day After, Threads and even in the small world of Spectrum adventuring: in fact in 1984 we have two almost identical games on the same topic, I Will Survive! and the one considered in this review: Ground Zero. The situation: a nuclear explosion is imminent, and so you must find or create a shelter in order to survive, while people and military are going berserk. I like the topic and - I probably mentioned this previously - the lack of fairies, elves, dwarves, orcs and wizards, and the game is playable, so this is a good one to me.
With a fatal flaw, unluckily: there's a hidden/invisible cupboard somewhere, no "examine" or "search" can make it appear, and not knowing this makes it impossible to find an object needed to finish the game. Nonetheless 3/5.
by Fergus McNeill, Ian Willis, Jason Somerville
I don't like adventure games in which 90% of the times "examine" is useless. An improvement compared to the first episode, but still not much of an adventure.
2/5
by Scott Adams, Alexis Adams
I used to have this on a Vic 20 cartridge , and that's how I played it, but the Spectrum version is practically identical. This one is going to have a high vote even because of strong memory value, then, because Voodoo Castle, along with Pirate Cove [titled Pirate Adventure in the Spectrum release], are the first adventures I played, and they worked, because they, in fact, intrigued me - they were a good first encounter with the adventure genre. It was creepy and fun. The coffin, the thunder, the chimney-sweeper stuck in the chimney. The riddle. Not understanding half of the words. What to do with a stupid "wand". What's a "wand"? A massive stone door with a sapphire ring. I was able to go past it when I was a kid, and then some years after I couldn't anymore. The cryptic and mysterious: "you can't do that... yet!". The inevitable in-game advertising.
4/5
I didn't play this game. It's missing in action too.
by Stephen J. Masters
Decent horror text adventure with a humorous intro and the all star team of monsters.
I mapped almost entirely the game using matches, stumbling down stairs, snapshotting furiously.
I forgot to visit a nearby location where I could have found a lamp.
3/5
by Stewart Peart
The response of this adventure is so slow that it seems like it's pondering the next move in a chess game. But it just has to tell you if you've taken the stupid fishing rod. It's a boring premise. It's a promise of boredom. The graphics are the most basic possible. Is it of any use? It's surely not much ornamental. Also, I was surprised by the misunderstanding of the classic cardinal point commands. In this case, nothing to worry about, a quick look at the instructions reveals that they're substituted by commands like "forward" and others. And that's all, because it's terrible. The instructions seems to indicate a rather complex and accurate game. Maybe the programmer put all his effort in them.
1/5
edit: and the copyright is 1983, hell.
edit: after all you can do much more than in the Holy Joystick adventures. 2/5
edit: you're nonetheless advised against playing it.
by Kevin Plunkett
One of those games that could have won you a lot of money, if you were able to solve it - and that's why they apparently made it unsolvable, I suppose.
I doubt anybody ever won those 25,000£. The game intrigues me but I couldn't go anywhere with it. I like the blue screen, with lines separating the description from the command lines, and each command and relative answer separated by another line, and the absence of a cursor too, which seems to have unsettleld more than a reviewer. You're in this mysterious place, where lights continously go out, and come back after a while, rooms don't seem to be always where you met them last time, and the description of the locations seem to be putting you on, and secret agents continously check your pass, while other just shoot, while you costantly inadvertently activate some ticking bomb which you must defuse choosing one of the usual coloured cables. This last thing finally made me abandon the game. I found a gun, a low level pass, a torch and a drill. Maybe I should drill every single room and see if something happens, but I won't.
2/5
note: the loading screen is a good Humphrey Bogart portrait, or maybe a digitalization, or something.
note 2: I asked Kevin Plunkett, the author, if I was missing some vital command in trying to do something with the various features described in the rooms - in particular, the shelves and the boxes. "Oh no!" he exclaimed. "the instructions tell you that nothing is what it seems. We wateched adventurers play this at the computer fair, and they all did the same as you, tried to examine everything everywhere! We had a good laugh. There's nothing there!" Ha! Ha! How very droll.
from the C+VG review, issue 37, page 122.
by Trevor Hall
Yes, I don't appreciate at all when an adventure doesn't let you examine things properly, and just doesn't understand this psychological need of mine, or tell sme that there's nothing interesting to see, or "everything seems normal to me" or other pathetic excuses. BUT this flaw can theorically be compensated with other redeeming features. Twin Kingdom Valley seems to be an example of when this theory meets reality. It's got fast drawning and, if blocky [a clear port], hypercolourful screens in every location [ok, many are re-used], lots and lots of items to pick up and use, plenty of places to explore, extreme playability. It's not one of those adventure where you're immediately blocked by a puzzling puzzle, or by INCOMMUNICABILITY problem with the parser, you can wander at your pleasure for a good while, discover new places and find things. Oh, the display is ok too, because the ink is nicely differentiated, on a black background: your lines are yellow, inventory is green, description and answers are in white [except when the program doesn't understand, which is black ink highlighted in yellow], and what about the magenta dotted lines that separate each cross talk? cutish! Unluckily I can't type at the speed I'd like, because in Twin Kingdom Valley typing prowess is not much appreciated. But game itself is fast. And you have a lot of options to determine how you prefer your graphical and text description. So, although I didn't really deepen this game, and I won't because I'm not interested in tolkenian fantasy and such, all in all it seems a fine example of good 1984's adventuring. Just forget about examining things.
4/5
by Scott Adams, Alexis Adams
Fundamentally, I can repeat my review for Voodoo Castle with this one.
And even more, because, being easier, it's really one of the perfect adventures for beginners. I liked it very much.
4/5
by Stuart Campbell, Simon Reid
This is a sloppy text adventure literally littered with bugs, and another one with the No Need To Examine syndrome [an insolent "Why? I've told you everything there is to see" is the only answer you get], it contains hundreds of sudden death conveying the concept Die and Learn for your next reincarnation, descriptions are dry and short. But I'm playing it quite a lot, in the last two days or so. So, a sloppy adventure can be fun. A sloppy adventure can be good. Sloppily good. This is another one of those Nuclear Fear games. I've already reviewed Artic's Ground Zero, and I've listed I Will Survive! [not reviewed yet, although I already played it last year, and liked it], but I missed this one, which seems, after all, particulary obscure - no reviews, no adverts, no solutions, no tips, unknown original price and only one vote from WoS users: a neat 5. So, as in the other two, you start in your house while mass hysteria is taking over people's self control outside. From the beginning you have a sense of roughness and approximation. The text appears letter by letter, which takes some time, annoyingly. You can't watch the tv. Your home is three rooms, and there's almost nothing interesting in them [vastly better homes in GZ and IWS!], and, by the way, you don't even have a bedroom? Not mentioning the lack of a bathroom. Those must have been really hard times.
And very soon you encounter your first bunch of Die and Learn sudden deaths.
And what about the bugs? Type an unrecognized one-letter command, and the game WILL FREEZE. And the only valid are the four main cardinal points, apparently. Sometimes the game seems to do just whatever it fancies to do in that specific moment. It attributes you trenchcoats that you never had. A guard that went away is still in the description. And lots of other marvellous examples of attention to details. Nonetheless, suprisingly, I've found myself playing it longer than expected. I like the topic, of course. But you start finding items, and solve little puzzles, and discover interesting bits, so you keep going, because after all and in spite of all is not that unpleasant, it seems. Sometimes the game becomes unexpectedly loquacious. Especially describing your new shining sudden death, and there are a really good number of them, and of all types too. Even some humorous touches start to emerge. And the map is not so absolutely meager as initially thought. It's a bad adventure for bad adventurers: it fits me like a glove. So it's a totally undeserved 4/5.
by Colm A. McCarthy
Another one of those adventure placed in a sinister building. Its average in WoS is 5, from 2 votes.
I don't agree. It's a playable and pleasant adventure compared to most of them.
3/5
by Barry Jones
Mighty crap. Alcatraz Harry walks through the screens as if he was a psychotic thinking to be Jennifer Beals on LSD doing some breakdance. And it's moderately slow too, so you can admire his movements in all their stunning beauty. Anyway, you must wander the flip screen sectors of your favourite concentration camp, looking for escaping equipment, which is automatically taken from you each time you return into a sector where a guard is. So you must remember the number of the sector and avoid it. This should be enough to throw the game off the window. There are lots of sectors and lots of guards, and we are all affected by Alzheimer's, by now. A honorable mention to the buildings and barracks too, which are smaller than your sprite. Buy it now!
1/5
by Barry Jones
Ok, Harry successfully escaped the prison camp and now he's on an island [or probably not], and discovers that the files he's stolen from the Bad Guys contain informations about the Doomsday weapon or something. So he must reach a ship harboured on the western coast of the supposed island [I bet it's not] so to sail to the Allies and give them the files, otherwise the Doomsday weapon will destroy the world. So you wander around this place, looking for food, diamonds and tobacco in the buts or admist the bushes, in order to swap them for useful information from other escapees, which seem doing better than Harry, judging by their nice colours and better drawn figure. Harry, by the way, lost his hyper-demented walk featured in his previous game, and now he looks only moderately idiotic. Anyway it's an improved sequel, and it's even half-decent a game. There's even a helicopter sequence, somewhere. And when you fail, you're gratified by the Doomsday sequence, in which you discover that the dreaded weapon is a sort of red and yellow penis hitting the ground. Unluckily, there wasn't an Alcatraz Harry III.
2/5
Skull, 14 Jul 2014 (Rating: 4)
by I.C. Docherty
Basically, it's the typical 3D maze game with subjective view that had plenty of specimens in the early Spectrum years - but its peculiarities makes it a bit more intriguing, to me. For example, the fact that you're nightmarishly chased by [well-drawn] giant skulls with rubies in their eye sockets. The live map displayed at the bottom right of the screen, showing where everything and everyone is, that fastly and gradually disappears, eaten up from the base to the top. There are portcullises, openable using the keys spreaded around the maze, trapdoors, ladders, and treasures that you can pile up, which adds points to your score, by which you can summon the map briefly again. Green crosses help you to keep away the skulls. This game seems to have been a bit underrated by the magazines of the time. I think it's quite good.
4/5
by Denton Designs [John Gibson, Karen Davies, Steve Crane]
A pioneering arcade/adventure, a big improvement on Alchemist, released just one year earlier, aesthetically exquisite, with well drawn, well animated and detailed graphics, some characters, and a more complex story. Although the gameplay is very slow-paced and a bit hollow. You wander a lot through empty rooms, and a map is necessary if you want to conclude something. Eventually you'll find some monsters, or your flyng sister Electra, or your evil mother shaped like a small cloud of small stars, or big spiders lowering from the ceiling, relieving drops of energetic water, the occasional message from your homies Apollo and Zeus, and lots and lots of Euclidian geometry. It's a relatively sophisticated effort, a joy for the eye, a gratification to erudite players with a weakness for greek mythology [not me, then], just a little boring. Oh, but what a style.
4/5
by Paul Owens, Christian F. Urquhart, F. David Thorpe
It's a nice old style maze game similar to Tutankhamun, in which you have to collect the pieces of a door, or something, to gain access to the following level, with a medieval scenario. Fun graphics and beepings, which slow down or stop while the screen is scrolling, but personally I find it a bit difficult.
3/5
Well, you're a potty pigeon trying to feed your babies waiting in their nest for you to bring them some succulent worms. So you must scout the 2D [and a half] environment, stretched along a dozen of screens, picking earthworms up and then fly back to your family branch, avoiding stealing birds, small helicopters, spiders, toads, cannibal flowers, automobiles and whatever. But there's another possibility: this game gives you the rare opportunity to stun your enemies for some seconds by dropping on them your guano. Also, you can even die of exhaustion, so you have to keep an eye on your energy bar at the bottom of the screen, and land on the ground or on some structure when you need to rest.
Graphics are colourful and childishly cute, and there's a nice beeper rendition of a snippet from a Mozart tune [the Turkish March, I'd say]. Playability is ok, although I didn't find the game very addictive, in spite of the fact that being a potty pigeon named Percy defecating on the world has always been one of my major ambitions.
Ahhh!!, 04 Sep 2014 (Rating: 2)
Fast and colourful old style shoot'em up, à la Space Invaders and such, with irritating sounds and alien patterns.
This time you're an adventurous mouse strenuously making his way through hostile flora and dangerous fauna, turned evil because of the infamous Wangling of the Furt or at least that's the scientific explanation included in the instructions. Your Old Mother did tell you all about it, but you didn't believe her, didn't you. And now you see that she was right: THE FURT REALLY WANGLED this time. You try to go home with the idea of sleeping until all goes back to normal, but you don't find the key in your mousy pocket: just a hole. So, your task is to find the key and enter home, but it's not that simple: you'll have to search through several locations ridded with FURT-WANGLED creatures and vegetation. At first glance it seemed just a platform game stretching through various flip screens, but I discovered that there's an arcade/adventure aspect in the gameplay, that makes it a little bit more varied and interesting. To proceed in your rodent quest, in fact, you're going to need various objects, scattered around the playing area, in order to solve little problems or puzzles and - hoping they're not perforated as the one that hosted the above-mentioned key - you can carry these items around putting them in your five pockets, and pressing the numbers from 1 to 5 when you want to try to use them. The commanding keys are multi-function, and have different purposes in different situations. This contributes to make the game a bit hard, especially at the start, along with some devious movement patterns of the FURT-WANGLED animals, sometimes difficult to avoid. For example, it's fundamental, to master the game, to learn how to grab the ropes, cling onto them, make them swing, and jump from them to safe ground - which requires a bit of practice. That said, the graphics are cartoonish and colourful, well drawn and animated, the controls quite responsive and the game, once overcome the initial difficulties, should provide a nice entertainment, in spite of the gasping and wheezing tune.
Subjective shoot'em up, repetitive, no star field, one enemy at time, seems to go on forever without interesting developments.
Simple graphics with disappointing explosions, a beeper rendition of the Star Wars theme on the main screen. Avoidable.
Vertical car game, in which you have simply to avoid all the other cars, which are all identical and travel at the same speed.
Nothing else seems to happen or seems to be required. Sparse graphics, and decent sound effects.
It could have been developed into something better, but as it is it's only a sketch.
You move simultaneously two shooting things, one on a vertical line, at the right of the screen, the other on the horizontal line, at the bottom, and you must shoot everything that moves, before, flying and boucing around, it crashes on you. When you clear the zone, you progress onto the next, which is harder and there are some new creatures.
It's not bad, with decent sound effects and presentation, but I found it a bit difficult and lacking variety.
2/5 for now, but it could get better, playing it again.
The Moons Of Craptalus is a subjective shoot'em up in which you rotate a laser tower producing a very flickery scrolling of the scenery, trying to shoot down alien spacecrafts which, apparently, freeze you while they fire - which is rather frustrating.
Could be even worse, but it's quite bad anyway.
1,5/5
Fred, 28 Sep 2014 (Rating: 5)
Still one of the best maze games.
Its pace is slow but absorbing.
The graphics flickering, but cute.
Find the the droid or whatever on the map, click on it, land in your futuristic wreck, run along the street and the pavement until you see the guy and shoot him. Or just clash against a passerby and you both fall on the ground. The control of your sprite is difficult, because it can't go up or down in a straight line, but slowly, in a oblique trajectory, and your running is irregular. All this makes it rather difficult to avoid the individuals on the pavement. When you kill a droid, it disappears from head to toe or viceversa, then you're back on your heap of flyng metal [it takes a lot before it rise and disappear] and back again to the map, where you can spot another unruly droid like a tear in the rain or something. Could be, or should be, and in fact is, a 2/5, although I like the presentation.
I was wandering aimlessly through a desert when a very beautiful big worm coming out of a Dune ate me like I was the most delicious food in the universe. When I read the instructions things got a little better, and I understood I have to go right all the way, in my Super Desert Fox thingie, avoiding obstacles and aliens through various zones, until you reach some base you have to penetrate or something. It's quite playable, I quite like the graphics and the presentation, the option and information screens have their own distinctive and appreciable look.
Stun the floating creatures once you've found the cup of cherries, pick'em up with your bouncing yellow bubble, so to open new passages through the blue caverns, where other entities wait to be stunned. You need keys to go on and the aim is to collect all the pieces of the Very Important I-Don't-Know-What which will enable you to save Whatever. Cute presentation, for a game in which the most important thing to do is TO CURSE, because it's really really really too hard.
Zoot, 11 Nov 2014 (Rating: 3)
Strange little platformer in which you have to interact with strange creatures, each one with their own name and features, to go on to the next level.
The interaction in the first level is just punching. On the second level, I already don't know.
Sprites are big and colorful, in a slightly clashy way, and the animation is a bit flickery.
Gameplay is relatively slow and not terribly engaging. It's nonetheless playable.
A horizontal shoot'em up in a loop environment, with plenty of helicopters to shoot down.
Could have been decent, but the wait and the terrible and persisting sound effect when you crash are too annoying.
The main screen tune is ok, and so are the graphics.
Silly little game in which you're a cock that conceives eggs with his chicken,
protects them until the chicks are born, pecks all sorts of hungry animals
trying to sneak in, and eats worms.
What more could you ask for.
Anyway, it's an old style arcade game, nicely done and greatly playable.
Zaxxon, 11 Nov 2014 (Rating: 3)
Professional David J. Anderson tries his best to reproduce Zaxxon, flickering and limping slowly.
Overall, it's not horrible to watch and there's sufficient playabilty.
Very basic gameplay realized in a sufficiently appealing way.
Basket, 12 Nov 2014 (Rating: 1)
Wonderful basket game written in BASIC, luckily the presentation is so slow that you're probably going to fall asleep even before seeing the tragedy of the game itself.
This must have been eagerly awaited, but it turned out a crappy and clumsy arcade/adventure. I spent quite some time on it when I was a kid, though, until I solved it.
"Very strange!" as The Pigles sing in Piggy Lane. But it's just a terrible Jeff Minter inspired shoot'em up, with animals, lunacy and a bad combination of control keys.
[The bar thing is already present in Minter's Metagalactic Llamas Battle At The Edge Of Time or something]
Seriously crappy platform game starring that horribly cute and twee British bear for kids.
This is a mix between Wheelie and Jungle Fever, in which you're riding the most bouncy BMX ever at ludicrous speed, and, moreover, in a jungle. You must jump everything. Raw graphics. I could give it 1/5 but it's 2/5 because it's so demented.
Multi-directional maze game with "shoot-at-everything" elements, adorned with graphics that was probably substandard even in 1985[*], but that somehow I like, and equipped with a jerky one-strip-of-screen-at-the-time scrolling scientifically conceived to make you stumble on some sudden lethal thing before you can even think of dodge it. This kind of scrolling even adds to the atmosphere, anyway, because it creates suspance. It's quite playable, although when the nasties suddenly appears in group, it's almost certain death.
Maybe I should give it 2/5. But it's 3/5 instead.
Edit: [*]even though WoS marks this game as released in 1985, and it looks like a 1983 game, it's really from 1987.
Re-edit: no, wait. It must have been released by Black Knight Software in 1985, and ignored by every magazine, and then re-released by Power House Software in 1987.
Dodge-them-all game with pixel perfect requirements, I like the graphics, but it's too bloody hard.
A colourful variation of the Boulder Dash concept, only harder. I don't understand how I should avoid the nasties. Boulders doesn't seem movable, only "fallable". Strange flowers grow.
The "facial expression" of your dog when it runs is hilarious.
Incomprenhensible, demented and almost unplayable maze/adventure game.
Scoop, 12 Nov 2014 (Rating: 2)
Getting up, washing and clothing myself was even more frustraing and boring than in reality.
Colourful, well drawn e superfast, Robin Of The Wood is a fine arcade/adventure lost in the natural maze of Sherwood forest, with lots of objects and various characters.
I was quite fascinated by this game when I was a kid, just wandering around surrounded by these sinister little creatures crawling everywhere, and encountering, very rarely, one of the big monsters, or the superfast shoes or whatever. Ultimate tried to improve furtherly under the technical aspect, with the scrolling Filmation 3d engine - and a couple of colours, but the gameplay regressed instead of improving.
I tendentially hate this one. I think it's far less playable than Knight Lore.
Should I give 5/5 to it? I don't know.
As we all know, it's a great and proper 3D isometric arcade/adventure, with the adventure element far more developed than in Knight Lore.
It probably remains the best one-on-one beat'em up on the Speccy, nice under every aspect: playability, complexity, graphics and sound.
Splendid strategy game in the form of an isometric 3D arcade.
Wicked maze game disguised as race game, between cute and horrific [the giant spider].
Review 2:
The Rats feels like a horror/nature revenge/disaster movie like The Swarm [1978], with the difference that The Swarm was a mediocre movie, while The Rats is a nice strategy/adventure game. It's highly atmospheric and pleasantly disquieting, starting from the initial cinematographic sequence [well, in so far as the Spectrum can perform such a thing]. The game starts, and you're the chief at the headquarter, coordinating the deployment of resources in order to restrain the invasion of BIG, BLOODTHIRSTY RATS EQUIPPED WITH RAZOR BLADE TEETH. So, while you're checking the map of the town and deciding what to do there's a sudden interruption: you're now in the adventure game section, you're a common citizen minding your own business, when you start to hear sinister noises... You must save yourself, find shelter before it's too late, and it's all in real time, and things are happening fast, so it becomes amusingly frantic and charged-up, and, anyway, if you don't survive, if you can enjoy the description of your death, and here's where the source of the game, a novel, is more clear. The Rats manage to rip through the page/monitor and kill you.
Sweet. 4/5
__________________
Review 1:
Great strategy game with horror adventure game interludes. The Rats are invading the town and killing everybody.
Appealing but rather dull and hard beat'em up with an original setting.
Arcade/adventure with a lot of nice icons, but rather slow and repetitive.
It's a monochrome 3D isometric arcade/adventure starring a little robot, but it's not Alien Eight, it's not even technically and visually good as Alien Eight, but I like it much more than Alien Eight: at least this is not Knight Lore disguised as a sci fi game. You have to build warheads and detonate the satellite, or whatever it is, you landed on, tasked by the American authorities, who think it's a Soviet thing. You character doesn't jump, but can carry items, and it's a pretty peculiar robot, who's ever heard of a robot needing food and water? So, you must not let your supplies finish, or you'll be finished too. Also, there's a time limit. And additionally there are lethal radiators, which dry your water faster, "eggtimers and electric toasters" [source: Sinclair User, WoS doesn't have the instructions yet]. It's a cute, atmospheric little sci fi thing, slowly paced, and without moving enemies, nice to map. Oh, nice sampled "Chimera" voice, and a cute scream when you die.
Spike, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 3)
Pretty decent, and humble, budget platformer.
Beautiful conversion of the C64 classic.
A slightly improved Match Day.
Surreal arcade/adventure that I find overrated.
Nice old style action game, starring Sir Clive.
Think!, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 4)
Very good puzzle game with excellent presentation.
Big, colourful and cartoonish graphics from the legendary Don Priestley, but the gameplay seems a bit lacking, to me.
second review:
So, you're a little tank escaped from the Risiko! game cardboard box, but, alas, only to jump into the fire. In fact, you're now in Panzadrome, a little island where dozens and dozens of Risiko little tanks are imprisoned after their attempted escape, and they're angrier than ever because of this captivity. And they mean to unload it all on you, in a very heavy way. So, in order to survive, you must destroy all the flashing squares present in the island [it's always about flashing things in Speccy games], which will somehow deactivate all the dangers or even have the island exploded. I hope you can swim. But you're only a poor and humble little blue tank, and you're really vulnerable, in more than one way. For example, your game can end even just because you are trapped between two craters, or a crater and a dead end [Q for QUIT] - and these craters will appear anytime a tank is destroyed. So, being the destruction of the enemies unavoidable, necessary for your survival, you're bound to have many crater-related problems IF you don't find the Poly-crete[TM] add-on, which will enable you to fill these holes and pass over them, and proceed toward your ultimate goal. In fact, in the maze of the island you will find about five garages, which, beside replenishing and healing you under every aspect, will add a new component to your tank, the Poly-crete[TM] garage being the first you're recommended to search and find - including a mortar-shooting turret, an anti-mine shield, a mine layer and what-not. The enemy tanks are not all the same: the black ones are not so terribly dangerous, but the red ones are rather dreadful: they chase you with particular aggressivity, and they can shoot through walls and barriers right at you, from any distance. Not only: diabolically, if you leave a room with a red tank in it, after some seconds an endless stream of red tanks will appear behind you in the next screen. So, think about it, because this problem has a relatively simple solution or two. Another very lethal presence in Panzadrome: fixed green turrets which shoot at you plumb and diagonally and can destroy all your shields very fastly. And the fuel! Keep costantly an eye on your fuel indicator because without fuel you ain't going nowhere [did you know it?]. But there are many features and conditions in this game.
So, is it any good?
Well, it surely is to me, in fact, after playing it and finishing it once when it was extracted and voted for the WoS Game Club a couple of years ago, I've played it and finished it again in these last two weeks, and it has officially become one of the favourite Speccy games of this reviewer.
Anyway, you must consider that:
a) the game annoyingly slows down very much when there are some tanks in the screen, and you may want to steadily use an augmented playing speed if using an emulator.
b) the first impact is frustrating and very hard, beginning with the lacking of Poly-Crete thing at the start.
c) you really need to understand where the garages are located, and what component they will give you, hence a very good memory, or the drawing of a map, or, if you're lazy and/or you don't have time, you can use the very good map[s] in the WoS archive [the one I've used doesn't specify what garage will add what, anyway]
d) I don't see it written anywhere in the on line instructions, but to use the Poly-crete you must press P and then shoot at the hole. While to shoot the mortars you must press M and shoot [repeat the M if you want to shoot another mortar]. Just press L to lay down a mine.
That's it. As I said, I like it very much.
5/5
first review:
Horribly hard maze/shoot'em up with little tanks that seem coming out from the Risiko! board game, very good IF improved by emulation with snapshots and augmented speed - and using a good map: it's too bloody hard, slow and it was superficially playtested, if it ever was at all.
Excellent platform game, fast, smooth and playable - although rather blocky.
N.O.M.A.D. [Ocean Software]
by Simon Butler, Ian Weatherburn, Roy Gibson
10 months ago, In a superficial review on Spectrum 2.0 I wrote "Decent maze/shoot'em up with no oustanding features", but now that I've played more, I think it's a pretty good and above average maze/shoot'em up game, with inertia, gravity and other tricky things. The graphics are appreciable, particulary the background are very nicely drawn and coloured. It can become quite addictive, because when you die you feel that an improvement is possible, so you try again, eager to see what's next, the rest of the futuristic city. The first two sections have only one route, the maze part appears only in the greenish third section. The aim is to penetrate this place, find the enemies' headquarter and blow it up. Or something along these lines. You robot is a bit strange and a maybe a little clumsy, looks a stolid Number 5 [the Short Circuit star], and you have to learn how to control it, because of the inertia thing, the tendency to get stuck on the background or to slightly bounce against it, and because of rooms with different kind of gravity. The atmosphere is good, with often narrow passages, and there's a weird music in the presentation screens. Quite nice.
4/5
Old review, November 2014:
Decent maze/shoot'em up with no oustanding features.
Nice but pretty dated baseball game.
Or maybe it's just because I've never managed to do much.
Xcel, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 3)
Vertical shoot'em up, a bit strange but really far from memorable.
I think the gameplay is tendentially terrible.
No 1, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 2)
Space skating that seems to go nowhere at all.
Sorry, I think I like it.
Basket game.
Extremely simple old style action game. Nothing even remotely special, anyway.
Nice and blocky wrestling game.
Nice, but not special, maze/platform/adventure with a sort of driving section near the end, as strange as it seems, if you manage to get there.
Rambo, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 3)
Passable multi-directional shoot'em up based on the Stallone movie
Rocky, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 2)
I finished it at my first attempt, and it was really boring.
Paws, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 4)
by Anthony Adam
Review #2:
This is a colourful maze game with a couple of original features.
You're a cat and you must find your kittens and bring them all home, but the neighborhood is ridden with dogs trying
to stop you and kill you. There are three kinds of them, which you can tell by colour, the simple-minded dogs just
follow a fixed pattern, the average dog may come after you if you walk near him, and the clever dog points straight at you.
Here's one of the peculiar features: if the right combination of dogs meet, they can fuse and morph into a more clever dog.
Not only, the dogs, which have some kind of lair in the bottom left corner of the maze, are forming a pack - and if it reaches 25 units, the game is over. So, you must try to understand the better way to win the game. You can even try to knock the dogs, with a sequence similar to the one in Maziacs, where a scuffle takes place and you just watch and wait. A clash of course takes stamina and strength away, but it also helps slowing down the formation of the pack. Is the calculated sacrifice of one of your nine lives something to be avoided, or could it be useful to reach your final goal and save all the kittens? So, it can be said, there's even a strategic element in the game. Of course there are lots of mice and stuff to pick up to restore your energy, and, luckily, a useful full screen map that can be summoned by pressing a dedicated key. I was able to save only three kittens or so, in spite of playing just the first skill level, so it's a challenge too, and maybe too much of a challenge. Anyway, I think it's a pretty good obscure game, and quite nice to look at too.
4/5
Review #1: Cute maze game, especially if you like cats.
Nice subjective shoot'em up riding some alien roads.
Demented conquest of the universe by toads, built around some shooting mini-games, and a cosmic grid. Well drawn and animated.
Glass, 13 Nov 2014 (Rating: 3)
Psychedelic space cockpit shoot'em up.
Greek mythology game in three arcade sections, a jumping one, a running puzzle one, and a 3D one. I used to like it quite a bit when I was a kid.
Review 1:
It's a more or less decent maze/adventure game, but rather boring, and made useless by the vastly superior examples in the same genre, as Underwurlde, Nodes Of Yesod etc.
2/5
Review 2:
Another maze game with treasure hunt included, one of the zillions of this kind released in those years. Radioactive experiment gone wrong. Mutants. Dangerous zone to be mapped, with important items to be retrieved, in this case seven flasks of something. Environmentally, these circumstances particularly developed the growth of mushrooms, but anyway all the flora is richly coloured and wraps everything, there is no building or artificial element in sight. Mutants flies around draining your energy, and there are lots of unidentified objects, of mysterious use. [Once taken, they just disappear, you have no visible pocket]. Little mushrooms give you back some energy. The game is fast and playable, you can fly and shoot, although your sprite has no animation at all.
The map is not exactly divided in split screen, because you can center the view on your character anytime, changing the portion of area shown. This makes it slightly different from the other games. [but not enough].
The radioactivity + mushrooms theme seems quite clearly inspired by the japanese sci fi/horror movie Matango. The map seems divided in sections by entrances guarded by frog statues. But the graphics of all sections are identical, so there's not much variety. Overall, it's okaysh.
3/5 or 3,5/5.
Quite nice shoot'em up structured in three sections identical to Star Wars, but with a different approach: view from behind your spacecraft and no vector graphics.
Review 1 [December 2014]
Classic ninja game with platforms, exploration, loads of enemies and bloodthirsty dogs, items to be retrieved, a sort of secret subway and a helicopter for you to run away.
Review 2 [February 2014]
You're a ninja that moves like a shadow in the night and stealthily infiltrates a building in search of some secret tapes or something. You stealthily avoid to beat the dogs, because you're an animal rights activist or because of possible karmic consequences, but you don't mind punching or flying kicking the humans watching the property, or even throwing typical oriental weapons at them, like shuriken, knives, bricks and stones. Anything that is at hand, actually. And there are lots of ladders taking you to secluded spots, hidden rooms, mysterious sewers. Then, take a merry ride on the mini-underground! Or fly away, stealthily, with whirling blades. And you're so agile that you can jump anywhere, especially on useless spots. Moving like a shadow in the night.
4,5/5
Seems pretty good, but rather difficult. The sequel is much more playable.
Beautiful to look at.
The best tennis game on the Spectrum.
Good but taxing platformer.
Its frustrating difficulty makes it addictive. It's a challenge.
Dangerously addictive underhand shoot'em up of sorts.
Eminently playable conversion of the arcade platformer.
Quite nice time travelling game.
The first good football game for the Speccy.
Immersive and enjoyable text adventure pivoted on a spy story, one of the best I've played actually.
Very good platformer, although not one of my favourites.
Best Pac Man game on the Speccy.
Savage, 17 Nov 2014 (Rating: 4)
Ooooh, look at those colours exploding everywhere.
The world government has changed the name of all the towns of the world to New York, and so New York is everywhere and everywhere is New York, and you're in New York, which means that you could be anywhere in the world. Moreover spirits are now illegal, and you're the one who must capture them. While doing so, you can appreciate a more interesting Ghostbusters game [than the official one] in which you have 20 different keys for 20 different actions, a 2D environment to explore and a ghostblaster thing which you must build yourself. Don't forget the ashtray.
Talos, 26 Dec 2014 (Rating: 3)
Quite cute maze game in which you're the hand of a battle robot named Talos looking for the rest of its body, piece by piece, limb by limb.
But terrible creatures like squirrels, snails etc. are mercylessly draining your energy.
3.5/5
edit: 58% is my best result.
Solve the murder case, first pointing and clicking the crime scene to objects to be examined, clues and whatever, and then conducting the very inquiry from your desk, ordering examinations of all kind, contacting the police of other towns to ask for informations, using a computer, asking statements from people involved, etc.
Your job is to help managing a big store, satisfying the requests of the customers and of your boss, extinguishing fires, shooting ducks, keeping all clean and whatever.
Very colourful backgrounds à la The House That Jack Built and Jack And The Beanstalk, decent playability, but I don't find it involving or interesting, and the clients blocking your way are a real nuisance.
3.0/5
Surreal platformer à la Jet Set Willy, only more playable and inventive, mixed with the arcade/adventure genre, with lots of objects to pick up and use.
Your task is to learn how to spell "Arabian". But you won't.
A wrist wrenching old style space shoot'em up with endless swarms of aliens.
Playable.
Strange arcade/adventure with killing fishes chasing you. Unless you shoot at them, in which case they start to run, insofar as fishes can run. I like the graphics too, it's weird. Then there are lots of items to take, and I don't know what to do with them. But it's the fish running away that convinces me.
Single screen platform, placed in a toy factory gone mad, in which you have to stop the engines, or whatever, to prevent lethal mad toys to be built, while you're chased by a doll named Hilda. It's playable, and not even remotely addictive.
Back to some Spectrum magic after a streak of mediocre games.
This is a smooth and furious maze + shoot'em up game with the usual quest for items, that, in this case, will allow you to activate the self-destrution process of a spaceship in collition course with the earth, while multitudes of robots appear from nowhere trying to encircle you - making it a bit like a Roboton 2084 placed in a labyrinth. Luckily, the crew decided to paint all the tubes and walls of the craft in many colours, so it's a joy for the eye, and it is to the ears too, being the jingles and tune quite pleasant. Throw in teleportations, armours, laser guns and you have a pretty good game.
One of those games where you have to descend in an abyss controlling a flying tin can, and avoiding platforms and ledges.
The graphics are... descent [HAHAHAHAHAHAH. pitiful], the game is playable enough, with three different lateral speeds,
but rather basic and uninteresting, morever the pause after each death is annoying, and seems longer than it is because of an awful beep effect.
It costed only 0.99 £ anyway, so it wasn't a bad deal.
2,5/5
Arcade/adventure with billions of keys and doors and an Atic Atac view, from the celing, with walls and doors that look like sloping toward the floor.
There are lots of wooden boxes to be opened, containing some theoretically useful objects, keys or, if you're unlucky, green monsters that chase you through the screens,
or a policeman arresting you. The aim? I don't know.
It's not that bad. But I don't like it.
2,5/5
A jerky and impossible variation on Boulder Dash. The time limit is ultra-tight.
It's surely a challenge.
It's a maze-game with mild shoot'em up and adventure elements, and with a huge map of one thousand locations. Feels a bit different than your usual game of this kind because the action is less frantic, the enemies are not so lethal or disturbing as in, for example Underwurlde or Sabre Wulf, there's a certain brooding atmosphere, if I may say so, and the plot, by the way, reflects the warning about the danger of an excessive development of artificial intelligence that has been voiced just in these days by Stephen Hawkin and other personalities. The world has been in fact taken over by robots controlled by a central computer hidden in the core of the maze. As a good robot secretly built by the enslaved humans, you can guess what your mission is. You can assume, by the way, two different shapes, the one of a shooting ball, or that of a faster vehicle, a sort of helicopter, unable to shoot. The shift is possible only in screens with a "swop" machine, anyway. And there seems to be some other nice features. I like the [sparse] sound effects too.
Nearer to 4/5 than to 3/5.
Here we go again: this is the sequel to Nonterraqueous, and you must do it all over again: apparently you failed your mission in the first episode, because the dictatorial computer is more bugged than ever, and feels quite unstable too, and so is projecting its self-destruction, which would mean the destruction of the whole planet too, including the surviving humans. So once again, these people build a robot, but, this time, they put a tormented human mind in it [the soul of the title], longing for self-annihilation, in short, a suicidal, which can only solace in the eternal rest when in proximity of the wicked computer, because his technological part will only allow him to do so in these circumstances. So, once again, nice sci fi ideas, described in only a few lines, and nonetheless intriguing, without accompanying the game with a whole novel or an inifinite narrative introduction in the instructions. But, this same review is becoming long as a novel. Better concentrate on the gameplay: which is different from the first one because the whole control system has changed. You can't levitate effortlessly, and you are affected by the infamous Underwurlde syndrome: you will automatically jump once reached the end of a platform, and, you will bounce around if you collide with an enemy [or even a platform, or an intermittent laser]. Moreover, there's specific key with which you can control the entity of your leap, which must be calibrated to reach the spot where you want to land, without the above mentioned bouncing consequences. The result is that your robot seems the most awkward and clumsy ever, and it's really difficult to get the grip of its controls. I thought it wasn't gonna be good as Nonterraqueous, but once I managed to move around in a more respectable way, it started to be fun enough. The aliens are more annoying, as described above, than in the prequel, so it becomes much more important destroy them once you enter a room, and it's done in a very satisfying way, to me, because the sound effect accompanying the explosion gives me a sense of destructive fulfillment, which happens quite rarely with the beeper. Moreover, once you destroy the aliens in the room, they don't reform, which makes it a little less frustrating than Underwurlde [although they appear again if you exit and re-enter], and it's more difficult to lose a life by falling, in comparison to the Ultimate's classic. Flashing pyramids, though, mean the immediate ending of the game. Anyway, personally I find it even more atmospheric than the first episode, in a creepy and sinister way, with lots of space skeletons barring your way. Sometimes it looks like Go To Hell or Soft & Cuddly, only with a proper gameplay behind the graphics.
Well, in short, it's 4/5 for me.
P.s. Ah. I forgot. These guys [Stephen N. Curtis, Mark Jacobs] put nice little ideas in their game, and this time you can fly BUT to do it you must push the same key repeatedly and without pause, essentially like in a Daley Thompon game, and your robot will stretch his arms and shake them, looking like a sardine desperately beating its fins, but this will cost you lots of energy [even in the game], for example, I consumed half of mine, trying to reach the top of a room. I don't know it's really useful, somewhere.
An admirable excercise in dullness, if that was the goal, and for only 8 Pounds! Before it was more wisely budgeted at 1.99, and still it was too much.
A repetitive horizontal shoot'em up with pleasant colorful backgrounds, scrolling with a parallax effect, in which you have to destroy wave after wave of strange UFO's while flying over a river. It's so easy that I got to the 8th or 9th wave at the first game, in spite of feeling progressively suicidal, because the major danger to my mission was boredom itself, aggravated by consequent existential anguish. All the enemies have a similar irritating movement of flying towards you and then going back, adding seasickness to the package [for only 8 Pounds!]. After the 7th or 8th wave there was a small variation, a very brief docking sequence, that I somehow failed, which would have refueled me, although I didn't have any fuel problem at all, as far as I know. Then they mercifully managed to kill me.
1,5/5
Hectic, 04 Feb 2015 (Rating: 1)
How much can a game be hated? A lot! A random platforming nightmare.
1/5
Man, this is mean crap, I tell you. You can't even properly drive your car, you just can make it change side of the road, jump and shoot I-don't-know-what.
And anyway, when you jump you're probably going to crash against the helicopter. Or, if you manage to dodge the helicotper, you'll land on Boss Hogg's car, which in the meantime positioned under yours. And if you change side of the road while the helicopter while it's dropping some nails or I don't know what, you're going to crash disastrously against them even though they're supposed to be still in the air, at that point. Crappy crap, man. Nothing to see here. And it's so terribly slow that it looks like you're driving a pedal car. Jesus Christ. The graphics are not that bad.
Futuristically jepacking through a brick wall maze looking for diamonds, while wicked and frantic beings kill you each 1 or 2 seconds, including some bugs from Pssst.
Basic and unappealing. More like Krapton Raiders.
It's scoring under 5.00 on WoS. I don't think it's that bad.
It's a simple subaquatic game in which you have to kill or avoid fish and submarine creatures of all kinds and sizes, moving along three or four platform levels, scrolling in loop as you move, and with the occasional hole in which you can dive. The aim is to save what I thought was a sort of drowned sailor with wings or fings. When you touch him, he exclaims "my hero!". So maybe he's a girl, your girlfriend or something. Or you just like sailors. [And he likes scuba divers]. Anyway, the graphics are a bit like an early arcade or an old console game, and so the gameplay, the sprites are a bit blocky. I quite like it, to say the truth. The green sharks are really ugly. Are they supposed to be so? Who knows. Anyway, the controls are quite responsive, which is essential in a game like this and helps making it quite playable. Don't shoot the purple blobs. I don't know what they are.
Universally panned, but I've seen worse. Ride around a town in your motorbike while you're sleeping [...] trying to find your mate Marti, so that he doesn't miss his spaceflight at the spaceport. If you awake, it's over. If you finish your fuel, it's over. But it ain't over until it's over. Supposedly, you should be able to enter the houses, and search for your friends, but honestly I wasn't able to do it. I'm barely able to not awake, while most would probably be barely able to stay awake while playing this thing. Until now, my main goal has been trying to reach the gas station, so to make the game last a little longer, and find more exciting things about it. But I still haven't reached it. Nonetheless, this made me play again and again. So, it's vaguely playable, and the graphics aren't bad. Your motorcycle, soundwise, emits little farts and there's not much else. Sound is a bit ugly, in fact. A vaguely perplexing game.
Monty Is Innocent! From the genius that brought you Jack and the Beanstalk, Giant's Revenge and The House That Jack Built... another dodge'em all and run-out-of-the-room game with huge, hyper-coloured backgrounds and no playability at all. You're chased by fast guards and skulls and whatever's which appear out of nowhere, and even directly OVER you, if they feel like, killing you immediately - while you constantly snag on elements of the background or you are cornered in a cul de sac. Surprisingly, the game was well received by virtually every magazine, maybe blinded by the graphics, I don't know. Anyway, thanking God, this was the last game of this kind, for Chris Kerry, which started redeeming himself the same year with the cute maze game Metabolis, in which finally the graphics become a decorative element of a solid gameplay, from there, he'll go on programming lots of decent and good games, including some favourites of the playing public [Footballer Of The Year, Avenger, Auf Wiedersehen Monty]. Monty Is Innocent tries to be an interactive cartoon, but succeeds only partially.
It seems like a prequel of Miami Vice and it plays exactly the same: a driving section around town with view from above, and a side view part where you get off the car and visit an empty place. Who could ask for more. The difference is that the driving section is far less busy, there is no traffic aside for another car, against which you won't crash very often, which means that there's a certain playability, and that on the by foot section I actually managed to find somebody, I think it was Linda, and seven whole notes from the hit No More Lonely Nights were played - not very much for a game based on one of the leading figures of decades of pop music. But, anyway, Paul's sprite looks exactly like him, if he was an anonymous blue conglomerate of anthropomorphous pixels. This game won't make you exactly twist and shout.
You're a time-travelling dog, but vandals have removed 8 parts of your time machine and scattered them around various timezones, and so you must retrieve them time-travelling. How are you supposed to do that if your time machine is missing essential parts is a mystery, but you do it all the same [to say the truth, the instructions tell us that you "temporary repaired it with your stock of chewing gum, sellotape and string"]. This perplexing preamble introduces us to a very simple maze game placed in a series of totally empty rooms, hosting only four thin white walls and killer umbrellas busy chasing you [there are different nasties for each timezone, anyway]. Once you find the component of your machine, you have to go back to the start, enter your time-machine [shaped like a cassette], and reach the next level. You should even be able to shoot laser beams, unless, like me, you aren't.
I find it cute in its simplicity, but it's not enough to keep you interested for more than two minutes.
It's a pleasant little space shooter with view from behind. You start with a bit of space slalom on the surface of a red and magenta striped planet, then aliens start to appear, initially just in front of you, then they'll try to stab you in/from the back [and usually they succeed]. Then there's a slightly different section, in which you're in the middle of a star field, hung in outer space. Anyway, it's playable and I like the graphics, the colours, and the shooting sound effect.
This Christmassy game presents itself with a cute seasonal loading screen, greets you with a nice two-channels tune, wishes you "merry Christmas" with a surprisingly decent Santa Clausy voice sample, and then welcomes you with a "prepare to die!" sign in the options screen. And you won't be let down. You're really going to die. In fact, it's the classical side view thing in which you're Santa flying in his reindeer-led sleigh over the rooftops, only you're not dropping gifts and presents, but you're shooting snowballs or Christmas balls against lethal things in your way, and it's all very fast - and, I'd say, easy in a very Crosswize/Sidewize kind of way. Moreover, the balls you fling, once ended their race, remain still in the air, not very distant from you, and you're going to crash lethally if you don't move up or down immediately. Suddenly I struck a chimney, but it didn't kill me. I found myself in the living room of a house. I realized that Santa Claus is a dwarf. I started climbing up the grandfather clock and jump down again and again, like a complete cretin. This woke up the entire family. I managed to sneak up the stairs, and I so I started to examine the new room. Then a venus flytrap ate me.
It's boxing time! But it won't last more than five minutes, then you're going to throw in the towel on this game. The graphics are not bad, you can move left, right, cover your face, and perform a belly-punch, or a face-punch [I'm a boxe expert] - so there's not much variety, but you can have fun for a few games, especially if you're a good at rolling with the punches. I had four or five attempts and never won.
You, as Harry, wander all around the world picking up precious things and trying to get out of one screen wide caverns before the oxygen is over.
It's addictive and fun as crushing your pimples, but with the addition of a Loop of Death when you die in the wrong spot - so it's
1/5
This one is like Enduro Racer when it was in the cradle, from the green monochrome to the way the road unwinds, from the style of the mountains on the horizon, to I-don't-know-what, there are similitarities that makes me wonder if the programmer is the same, and used this effort as the basis for the Activision conversion. Anyway, he surely had to repair it a bit.
After four games based on hypercoloured, huge, cartoonish background graphics, and scarce playability, Chris Kerry must have stopped and thought a bit about it, and the result was a much more somber and solid game, Metabolis. In true Speccy tradition, the background of the playing area this time is the usual black, and the use of colour is limited to the structures and the perimeters around the above mentioned playing area. Instead, he concentrated more on the gameplay, on the playability and on the collision detection - and the result was quite good. It's a[nother] flip-screen-maze-game-where-radioactive-stuff-created-mutants-and-you-must-find-the-items-to-solve-the-problem, it flows smoothly, and the graphics are nonetheless exquisite. It's a labyrinth of about 150 screens in which you can find your way because its areas are very [and beautifully] characterized. So, this time the graphics actually help to improve the playability. You are yourself a mutant, specifically you became a sort of bird, but, contrarily to the other humans, you retained your previous intelligence and conscience, so you're the only one that can make a change. By the way, your imperfect mutation caused you a heart condition, so you must be careful, because you can't sustain prolonged effort: so, like in Thanatos the following year, there's a beating heart in the lower right part of the screen, and you can check if it's beating too fast. While on the other side of the bottom of the screen a bird tells you how much energy you have left, by progressively showing his bones, going from the head to the paws. The energy is of course drained by various monsters eagerly following you in each screen, and it can be replenished by picking up drinks and food, but there are other fatal surprises waiting for you in this peculiar environment. The first thing to learn, if you want to last, is where to find your weapon, a boomerang [but it doesn't appear like that], then you'll have to found out how to return to your human shape, find a helping wizard, destroy everything, and blah blah. Overall, I think Metabolis is a real cutie. And a turning point, for our hero, Chris Kerry.
Purple flying saucers descend from space, one at the time, and you must shoot'em before they touch the bottom of the screen. After a while, there's a meteor attack [consisting of only one meteor], and if it touches the bottom of the screen, it creates a crack, which limits your movements, and makes it impossible to stop the flying saucers descending beyond the crack. All in basic. Masterpiece.
Wrist-slitting is a hilarious hobby compared to this.
Another action game requiring painstaking precision, and trying to push further the limits of unplayability.
This time you're a bee, in a brick walled room, you're in costant motion and you must pick up all the green things without splatting yourself against the walls or the obstacles.
It's all rather basic. The game doesn't manage successfully to being totally unplayable.
Another sublime masterpiece of crapness from Century City Software, but with a mildly interesting feature. Instead of having six distinct lives, you control six spacecrafts at once. Slightly confusing.
1,5/5
Halaga, 07 Feb 2015 (Rating: 2)
This actually doesn't look bad, it has a good overall presentation, and it's surely a challenge. The swarms of aliens whirl faster than a spit in a tornado [I thought the emulator was set wrong!], and their laser falls down quicker than the ruble these days. Could be almost good, but the difficulty is not well balanced.
An impossible battle against gravity and inertia.
It's hard to say no to drugs, when they constantly throw them at you as snowballs. Brilliant educational game.
Looks like a doped clone of one of those classic shoot'em up's. It's so dementedly frantic that I can barely understand what's going on. Your laser looks like a small penis.
Basic thing inspired by one of the open sequences of The Empire Strikes Back, where giant mechanized camels are attacking the rebels amidst a desert of snow. I died many times clashing with a giant mechanized ass.
Basic clone of Robotron 2084. Very Exciting.
1,5/5
Best basketball game on the Speccy, as far as I know. Lost my first match 43-4 or something. Luckily it was only a problem of default skill level. So, both beginners and veterans can play it and enjoy it.
And you can even change the colour of the pitch. Blood red, wow. Only one major flaw for me: there are no statistics at the end of a match. Aside that, very good.
Double section game with appealing presentation, but heavy flaws in the gameplay, that make it excessively difficult. The first section is a horizontal flying broomstick game, being the main character a witch [or hag, as the game and the instructions call her], in which you move across flip screens infested with bats, ghosts and other energy draining creatures [the measuring unit of you energy is "magic"]. When you see a key, you can land, but only on a small portion of the ground, at the center of the screen, while the keys are always at the extremities. We see the early symptoms of a not properly balanced difficulty in this first part of the game: while when you're flying you can at least try to spray the creatures with some killer magic, while you're on the ground you're totally helpess, and they can freely clash on you, diminishing your power, and, of course, you're even rather slow. Once you've found a key, and a same coloured door, you can make your first visit to the underworld, and that's the "second section", and this is where the tragedy of this game fully reveals: this part is one of the hardest and frustrating platformer that I've ever played. It's full of misconceived features [admitting they have been wittingly put in the game]. For example, totally silly rocky platforms with a sort of hallucinatory left side, which usually lets you pass through and fall. And, of course, even in this section you're totally vulnerable to the nasties touch. I've barely made any progress by using snapshots and repeating some passages again and again, so on a real Spectrum must be even more fun... [well, in fact I tried it as a kid, and deserted it very fast]. In short, it could have been much better. As it is, for me it's a 3/5.
This was a quite novel way to play an arcade/adventure with lots of windows opening to offer options to choose from, lots of description of items and characters, surreal humor included, various types of interaction with them [give object to, take object from], and various features and subtleties, for example the quantity and identity of items you can carry at a given time is correlated to their specific weight. The game expands on the previous Finders Keepers, by David Jones too [who's probably reading: hello], which was a platformer with a heavy swapping items element, and starred the same armoured guy, being the setting in a magic and a bit gonzo Middle Age, in an Ancient Time that is nonetheless less ancient than the Very Ancient Time. The problem is that your wizard friend has messed up a few magic spells and subsequently space-time dislocated various characters, including an alien, and so you have to take care of them and be sure to send them back unharmed to their original place and year. It feels bit a like a mix between Monty Python and Douglas Adams, so it's fairly intriguing. [and Scott Adams, being almost an adventure]. It's a good game. And it was a budget one too, wasn't it - one of the greatest value for money at the time. Pressing frantically the fire key so many times to go through all the menus to perform each action annoyed me a bit after a while, anyway.
And it's quite easy to die for exhaustion, so you must be careful in your movements. By the way, to me the knight walks like Charlie Brown but at Benny Hill speed. That's it, I'd say.
4/5
A sci fi adventure by Jack Lemmon, which this game confirms as probably my favourite adventure programmer, after having played his The Lost Tomb Of Ananka and Invaders From Planet X, both excellent.
And this one is good too, vaguely inspired by fifties sci fi literature and movies, like The Incredible Shrinking Man.
The starting puzzle can be very hard, but after that there's a good chunk of playable game. It's nice.
by Tom Prosser
Bubble Bus Software released three titles in 1985. All three were Ultimate inspired games. Two by Stephen J. Crow, Wizard's Lair and the celebrated Starquake, and the other one was Brainstorm by Tom Prosser.
Brainstorm is a mix between Jet Pac, Atic Atac and Underwurlde. It uses the flying jetpacked man from the first, the use of keys from the second, and the huge 2D maze with lateral view from the third, plus the need to find the right weapon to defeat each specific Guardian - Guardians which are preventing us from escaping. Graphics are neat, and playability is ok. It's not as smooth, responsive and well drawn as the Ultimate games, and multitudes of unpredictable weird creatures drain your energy very fast, still is not bad.
3,5/5
by Neil Talbot
An obscure adventure in which you take the role of one of the unlucky wives of duke Bluebeard.
You must escape his castle, wearing your cute brocade dress, before he comes back and kills you.
So don't relax too much while visiting the precious and comfortable rooms of your not so humble abode, or you'll rest in peace for the eternity.
The description are nice, the input is fast. The parser seems rather narrow, but the game seems playable enough.
Ok, I guess.
It's for Chuckie Egg 1 what Jet Set Willy is for Manic Miner, only more fun to play.
3,5/5
by Joan Domingo Ramirez
A game inspired by The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, and reproducing the tune, surely wins my sympathy, but it didn't convince me completely. Your submarine is very slow and it gets easily stuck in the background. You have to avoid the enemies, moving in fixed patterns, and get the chests. I don't know if there's something else going on. Graphics are okaysh.
2,5/5
by C. Malin, Scott Jones
Sci-fi text adventure, you're on a spaceship, looking for a planet gifted with a substance able to stop the plague that's spreading all over the earth.
The "examine" command is not very useful in this one, and I don't like that. I want descriptions.
Anyway, it's smooth and playable, apparently. It's ok.
by Denton Designs, F. David Thorpe
It's mainly a maze game, disguised as a platforms'n'ladders thing, you must get out of the sewers in time for your tv broadcast, and in order to do that you have to find the pieces of the exit door and the key to open it.
The sewers are a very cozy and colourful place, with lots of blue, red and purple walls, but you have stuff to do outside, so, first you should locate the trapdoor that leads you from the upper sewer to the lower sewer, and then the place where you have to compose your puzzle of pieces of a door. Now you can start to collect them, and bring them there, one by one.
Your task is made harder by the yellow Wellington boots that follow you everywhere and drain your energy, which can be temporarily stopped with your glue gun, by the intricacy of the maze of the sewers, with lots of confusing passages and doors, and, most of all, by the time limit, which makes quickness essential in order to solve the game, and to do that you have to learn how to exploit the illogical passages and doors in your favour. I was at first disoriented and bored by this game, and its apparently endless and fruitless running around, but when I casually entered the lower sewer and found the door, things have begun to make more sense, and I started to enjoy it. Backgrounds are very nice, although the sprites are terribly colour clashy and blurred. Playability is very good, you just have to understand what to do and how to do it.
Once you know this, you may find that the difficult level is slightly below average. But that's not a problem to me.
A cute early Ocean game that looks more like an early Gremlin Graphics game, with anthropomorphic animals and lots of colours.
4/5
It currently has a good average on WoS, and it's got a 8/10 in Your Sinclair [58% from Crash, anyway], but I think it's a pretty terrible maze game/dodge'em up.
1,5/5
by Timothy Closs
It's an early Bomb Jack clone, programmed by Timothy Closs of I-Ball fame.
Presentation is good, with a very nice beeper tune, colourful titles, and well-animated graphics, with relatively big sprites.
Anyway, the bigger the sprite the narrow the space, and this doesn't help in a game where manoeuvrability is essential. It's not that bad, anyway.
2,5/5
A noteworthy exercise in crapness. The graphics are almost cute, it's a sort of slow Atic Atac, in which
you snag on anything.
1,5/5
Excellent and shameless rip off of Atic Atac, probably its best clone. Delightful graphically and sonically, smooth and fast,
with myriads of secret passages and more or less useful objects, and plenty of tiny enemies swarming everywhere, well drawn and animated.
I don't care if it so derivative, it's a very good derivation.
4/5
It's a fast variation on the Defender theme, in which the people you must save are miners, and the game mainly plays in an underground environment, with very narrow passages, and elements that require perfect timing to be avoided. Each time you manage to save all the miners [I've never done it yet], you proceed to the next level, deeper in the ground, until you reach the I don't remember what and destroying it you free all the miners from slavery and whatever. So, as anticipated, is quite difficult, but it's got that famous one-more-go factor, somehow. Graphics are ok, although your sprite is flickering, and the flying aliens very tiny and colour clashy. I'm getting very slowly better at it. I still can't avoid certain obstacles. I'll trust they humanly overcomable and give the game a
3/5
by John F. Cain, Kevin A. Moughtin, Mark Alexander
When talking about obscure good games that slipped through the cracks, this is should be one of those mentioned, I discovered in the last two days. Because it's very good. A tv licence programmed by John F. Cain of Booty fame, and we can find its tradermark in the moving waters in the main screen, but it's not a platform game, it's a puzzle mixed with a maze game, and it could do even without the Thunderbirds imagery. The presentation is great, nice tune, well drawn and coloured intro scenes, very satisfying sound effect when you push a block of stone and make it fall. Because the main problem in the game is pushing green and cyan blocks in order to make your way through the labyrinth without getting stuck, blocking your way to your "partner". Yes, you have a "partner". In fact, you move two flying vehicles, and you can and must switch between them, because only working as a team you can proceed in the game: only your cyan vehicle can push the cyan blocks, and only your green vehicle can push the green one. The graphics are a good old stuff thing, the animation is smooth and there are no flickerings. It is mighty playable and addictive. One of the best of the year, probably. A nice discovery.
4/5 [or even 4,5/5]
It's a Manic Miner clone with rooms à la Jet Set Willy [in fact, in the archive it is listed as a MOD of the latter], who looked already rather dated and stale when it was released.
It's not unplayable, just lacking the surreality and addictiveness of its "inspiration".
2,5/5
Tapper, 16 Aug 2015 (Rating: 3)
Looks like a pretty decent conversion of a scarcely interesting coin op.
The gameplay is very simplistic and limited.
Like one of those early handheld electronic games.
3/5
Playable surreal fantasy, with some mistakes in the parser that make it hardly completable.
Playable sci fi adventure with very nice presentation and graphics.
by Mike Leaman, Stephen Cargill, Jack Wilkes, Mark Alexander
Martial arts game rising from the beat'em up craze started by Melbourne House in 1985 with The Way Of The Exploding Fist, Fighting Warrior and Rock'n'Wrestle, followed by System 3's International Karate and Imagine's Yie Are Kung Fu, the latter being a coin op conversion, and Shao Lin's Road being the conversion of its sequel, this time brought to us by The Edge, in one of its less edgy release.
So, being oriental stuff, the sprites are all yellow [in the first leve] and you must flying kicking or high kicking random people passing by and getting out of doors, distributed over three floors, among which you can move by jumping up and down. The aim is just to sweep'em all away. Then an oriental jingle will carry you to the next stage.
There are occasionl flying jars and flying pizzas or omelettes, or whatever those round things are supposed to be.
Sometimes a strange ball jumps out of some enemy and if you catch it with a kick, it can trasform in some magic that will simplify your task, like bidirectional fire, which of course won't last much, and then it'll be you and your feet vs. the world again. That said, the game is very playable and your character very responsive, although I have fatal troubles with the flying kicks, and in spite of or thanks to the simple gameplay and very limited moves, it can be fun for a while. Also, the two-channel tune in the title screen is cool, and there are nice jingles, and effective enough sound effects during the game. Your character cries on the floor, manga-style, when you die.
3,5/5
by James Closs
It was 1986, but still Jet Set Willy clones were popping out, from the radioactive undegrounds of budget labels. Consequently you have to collect the crystals avoiding the mutants, while exploring what's hiding under the earth surface, after a nuclear experiment gone wrong. Two features differentiate it from its source: the possibility of jumping on certain monsters, in a certain way, using them as trampolines to reach troublesome spots and platforms, and the fact that picking up the crystals may open walls and barriers, unblocking the way to new areas [like in Bug Byte's Antics]. The rest is almost exactly like a 1984 platform with pixel perfect requirements, almost UDG sprites, scarce animation, and buggy instances in which you die forever in the same screen, once fallen from a ledge.
So, it may be of interest to Jet Set Willy fans [which I've never been].
2,5/5
Hijack, 23 Nov 2015 (Rating: 4)
by David Shea, Mark Eyles, Nigel Brownjohn
This is a graphic adventure in which, as a prominent member of the Hijack Division, you have to defeat a terrorist group who hijacked a schoolbus. This does not contemp?late furious action sequences, but only walking around two dozens of offices, distributed over several storeys, giving orders to your employees, each with his or her specific role and job in the Division. To succeed you need to develop a strategy against the terrorists, and to implement it efficiently you'll have to develop or mantain a good relationship with the elements and sectors of your team, and with the President, the only character above you in the hierarchy.
?You need your team to be cohesive and efficient. If they're not loyal to you, your efforts won't work.
A good part of the game is controlled through icons and menus. There's an icon at the bottom left showing an interesting item you're passing by to, an icon at the bottom right showing what object you're carrying, windows that open when you examine one of these objects or documents, and even some menus with a Windows-like pointer. The heads of the characters are permanently displayed at the top of the screen in two rows, and become white when they're in the room. When this happens, you can push a key to move the selection arrow, until it's under the right head, and press the fire button: a menu appears, where you can select the kind of order you want to issue, which are specific to the individual and his task.
You can order your secretary to find an employee for you, order the military advisor to deploy troops, or the diplomat advisor to deploy diplomats, or the CIA guy to investigate the identity and the goals of the terrorist group, or even the FBI guy to interrogate your employees, and many other things.
The only character you can't command is the President, which you can only try to beg for financial, military or political support - which he will systematically deny - or a deadline extension, or the access to the helicopter that will carry you to the terrorist, for the final negotiation. These verbal exchanges are visualized by [blocky] balloons.
The content is mature, the gameplay is intriguing, but most of the time you just wander around the offices just waiting for something to happen.
4/5
Podder, 25 Nov 2015 (Rating: 3)
by Greg A. Holmes, John Holmes
Mr. Greg A. Holmes, taking a break from Gremlin Graphics, and Mr. John Holmes, taking a break from the pornographic industry, penned this universally panned budget game[*] under the label Central
Solutions.
[*] 5/10 from both Your Sinclair and Crash
But to say the truth, it's not that bad, it's a maze game with neat and colourful graphics, in which you are driving a tank picking up pieces of something spreaded through various flip-screen rooms teeming with other tanks and lethal crabs. You have some bullets too, but you'd better spare them for the most difficult times because they're counted, and, anyway, shooting the enemy is not always the best choice, because they reappear immediately, and you could be right over their reappearance spot. Playability is okayish, although you can die with irritating frequency, even for some debatable reasons, for example, you may be ahead of a tank following you, but making a 90° turn [into what may be your only escape route], it will reach you, touching you a corner pixel of your shape. Also, it's rather easy to fall into little rivers crossing the screens and die. So, be very attentive to where you put your pixels. Anyway, contrary to the esteemed magazines cited above, I don't consider this little game insufficient.
3/5
by Stephen N. Curtis, James Wilson
I used to have this one in a G.B. Max tape, the infamous italian pirate, with the title Krion and it was such a well done hack that not only, as usual, there were poor instructions accompanying the game, but the game itself crashed after five seconds into playing. Finally, now I can play it at ease, with proper instructions, and without fearing a crash, if not by my costantly crashing PC, of course.
This vertical shoot and dodge work comes from the mind who authored Nonterraqueous and Soul Of A Robot for Mastertronic, appreciable sci fi maze efforts, but for this sequel of the previous two [or anyway, WoS archive lists it as a third episode] Stephen N. Curtis lent his programming skills to the then newly born Codemasters. Is it really brilliant as it should? Well, for an economical[*] effort it's not bad at all, and, in fact, I thint it's pretty good, actually, notwithstanding the simplicity of the gameplay, the total lack of depthh or special features or variety - but not all games can be complex and fancy as Space Invaders, after all.
[*] by the way, so economical that they could afford only two enemies on screen simultaneously.
What's the trick? The trick is that once you learn how to play it, it can become quite fun and addictive, at least if you manage to not get blind because of the monochromy of the game, a game that asks you to be very attentive to the background appearance and conformation. In fact, you must learn to distinguish various square elements that can be just fatal barriers, or time shift things - which will annoyingly bring you back to the start - or more useful features like extra-lives [L], fuel [f], shields [arrow], acceleration [plus symbol], deceleration [minus]. The are different kinds of monochromy depending on your speed mode, which is determined by the squares mentioned above, while the border becomes red when the shields are - briefly - activated, which will allow you to fly through the droids, or spacecrafts, or whatever they are, without exploding. There isn't a tune or jingles, but I find the explosion sound effect quite satisfying. If you'd like some minutes of mindless distruction and fast-but-not-too-much action, Terra Cognita can be quite entertaining.
4/5
by Alistair Lock, Steven Allen
A sci fi text adventure in which you are an amnesiac secret agent lost in a spaceship of dangerous rebels orbiting around the earth. You must, of course, discover your mission and succeed in it.
The playability is pretty good, I managed to map all the three levels of the spacecraft, discover some useful items and solve a couple of puzzles, so I can say that the game is pleasant, although I didn't find it, until now, very engaging. All and all, it seems a nice a text adventure.
3,5/5
Zythum, 29 Nov 2015 (Rating: 4)
by David O'Connor, MB
You're an old time wizard wearing a funny tunic, which must cross a series of haunted landscapes displayed in a horizontal scrolling way. The main magic you must learn to handle are the classic SHOOT, DODGE and JUMP - although you can have the occasional chance to try "levitation", "immunity" and "invisibility", with the latter being of dubious usefulness, because you just can't see where you are and if you're a falling in a pit or in the quicksand, while, of course, the baddies seem always perfectly aware of your position.
Graphics are not totally terrible, though most of the sprites look silly and they're not really animated besides the wizard, which apparently can count upon a couple of frames. The sound department prides itself with a decent beeping tune and a very intriguing effect at the start. The gameplay is rather limited, and you must learn to control the height of your jump in order to obtain a non lethal trajectory that won't make you land on a gargoyle [first level] or a ghost [second level], because once you're actually jumping you can't change your manoeuvre. Anyway you can even carry five or six [magic] smart bombs, a feature that saves this game playability by giving you the chance to obliterate the wicked creatures reaching the spot where you're going to pose your feet, which would have otherwise meant an unavoidable death. So, there's nothing technical or creatively really interesting in this game.
But I personally find it rich in playability and addictiveness os it's a
4/5
Dandy, 30 Nov 2015 (Rating: 3)
by The RamJam Corporation (Simon Dunstan)
I sang in my mind The Kinks' omonimous song for all the time I've been playing Dandy, which luckily distracted me from the strident sound effects of the game - but it doesn't matter: a game awarded with a Your Sinclair Megagame, a Sinclair User Classic, a C+VG Hit! and with general very good ratings and reviews must be great! Well, not really. I think it's just good, and far from being the best Gauntlet inspired effort. It's playable as much as monotonous and lacking variety. Destroying a whole army of [creepy, well-animated, disquieting] spiders and, returning back to the same room, find it all again alive and ready to kill you is a bit tiring and demoralizing. Although, to be fair, there are a few spells scattered around which help to improve the flow of the action, and in some rooms you can destroy the lair of the spiders - chests full of bones - making them disappear forever. Still, I'm not captivated, engaged or intrigued. Nice and colourful backgrounds.
P.s. you can trade the treasures for energy.
Kirel, 06 Dec 2015 (Rating: 5)
by Siegried Kurtz
A leaping cute little thing solving puzzles in a 3D environment annoyed by silly aliens that enjoy sitting on his head, in a nutshell, that's what Kirel is. The aim is to pick up the bomb and get to the door to the next level before it explodes, so your mind has to race against time trying to find the best and shortest way to achieve your task. It's, in fact, as usual, easier to say it than to do it, and the screens are increasingly tricky, the 3D perspective will hide things from your eyes, but you can change it pressing 1, 2 or 3 and you must learn the nature and the use of the objects that you will find. For example, the aliens, which drain your energy when they climb on your head, can be defeated using no less than pieces of cake, you start with a good amount of them, but soon you will have to pick up more. But your main and fundamental skill is picking up slabs of the irregular and orographic "chessboard" you're moving on, and repositioning it elsewhere, in order to reach secluded spots, or reach some item. The break key will be very helpful too: it freezes the game and removes the obstacles that are hiding your sprite and/or important objects, so that you can understand where you are and where you must go. Another great feature I've discovered reading a review or two [there aren't instructions for [i]Kirel[/i] in the [b]WoS[/b] archive yet] is the possibility of building a bridge between two equally tall points by simply pressing [b]B[/b] [I've found the key at the first attempt, I can proudly claim], which can save a lot of time and the life of your character too. It's a really different isometric 3D game, with almost no animation, just puzzles in single screen levels and no exploration at all, and it's very original and addictive indeed: a fabulous and neglected little game from 1986.
4,5/5
by Paul Hargreaves
Tantalus is a colourful maze game in which you explore a huge set of alien infested flip-screens while desperately looking for a gameplay. Paul Hargreaves seems to be a great programmer, but a poor game designer. The movement of the sprites is amazingly smooth, the graphics are flashy and psychedelics, your manoeuvrability is excellent, everything looks good and works fine: it's like a beautiful and bright palace with nothing inside. The programmer worked on the size and on the extras of the game, producing a 1000 screens maze [or at least that's what we can read in the mags], five or six different kind shootings for you character, more than 40 different aliens moving in 16 different patterns, but forgot about the substance: so the dynamic of the gameplay is reduced to an endless wandering in very similar rooms, chased by aliens, in a map so huge that it's very rare to find the elements that would allow you to end the game [32 locks to be destroyed to reach and kill a hidden deviant]. In other words, it's almost like opening a series of boxes without ever finding a content. In fact, it's so dull that this review has become a whiny bore. So, anyway, thanks to the technical prowess in display, the smoothness of it all, and the superficial playability, overall it's a
3/5
by Colin Grunes, Stuart James Fotheringham, Steve Parys, Barry Leitch?
This is a typical case of as-a-budget-it-would-have-been-pretty-good. I.C.U.P.S., in fact, would have been a deluxe budget with its superb graphics, beautiful shadings and colours, perfectly drawn sprites, and very nice multi-channel music, but as a game, and moreover as a full price game, seems to be the scientific result of a Frankenstein operation: the union of two unfinished games in the attempt to create a whole one. The first is a sort of Spy Hunter set in space, you drive a spacecraft in a cosmic highway and you have to destroy or dodge other flying vehicles trying to crush you or shoot you. It's not bad. Once survived three sections of that, you gain access to the second, which is a very minor Nodes of Yesod style game [actually programmed by the same people of Odin Software], in which you, as a droid with vague insect-like appearance and motion, explore a starship walking and flying around flip-screens, in order to locate four bombs. There are 64 rooms only and they are all the same and slightly empty, although splendidy designed. It was quite easy finishing it, once discovered how to get the bombs. So, wonderful aesthetics thanks to Stuart James Fotheringham, but not much else - surely a disappointment for Odin fans, as Hypaball this same year but unlike Heartland.
3/5
Tujad, 13 Dec 2015 (Rating: 3)
by Orpheus Ltd (Andy Green, Jeff Philips, Stuart J. Ruecroft)
It's your run of the mill maze game with radioactive leaks. You're a walking and floating robot that must collect dozen of parts of a circuit that will help stop the leak, or something like that. You have a laser too, plus a very limited amount of grenades and a couple of other weapons, for the tougher droids. There are teleportation booths to reach new areas and try to complete the puzzle of circuit fragments. The game is very playable, graphics are nice, and your character is well animated. It's quite easy and not very challenging, so, lacking in variety too, can get boring very fast. It's a decent effort, anyway.
3/5
by David W. Harper
A four pocketed arcade/adventure by the author of Riddler's Den, in which you leap from room to room in the shape of a toad looking for a princess to have tadpoles with, and feeling like the charming prince you know you really are (in your dreams). Lots of items to be picked up and used in the right place and in the right way, a fastidious insect trying to drain your energy and appearing in every single screen, other quaint and lethal characters blocking various entrances or trying to steal from you: there's a lot of things to keep you occupied for a while, I even checked the animated walkthrough in the RZX Archive YT channel, and it's 37 minutes long. Only, I've no intentions to face the game again. It's frustrating and annoying. The worst feature is surely the triple exits idea: sometimes to access another room you have to choose one of three exits, two/thirds of which randomly hides lethal scorpions who will exterminate all your five lives. Not particularly enjoyable. You can, anyway, understand what's the safe exit by examining the environment: there's always a detail of the background, like che conformation of a rock, that enables you to identify the harmless passage.
Besides that, I don't think the collision detection is very good, and you often have to struggle to find the right position allowing you to perform a simple task like picking an object. The graphics are ok, although the animation is rather jerky and not very rich of frames. Every creatures seems to be pulsating as if affected by fits, spasms, retchings or some syndrome. The sound is a tendentially abominable amount of buzzes.
Although in 1986 it's got decent reviews in the mags, unluckily Toadrunner is nothing to write pond about.
2/5
by David M. Banner, Terry Greer
I've always found the apocalyptic situation inviting and desirable, especially the looting aspect of it: during the confusion and the chaos I could have assaulted a shop of Spectrum stuff. And After Shock would have been one of the games I'd grab. It's a catastrophist adventure game set in California - I think - where an earthquake, probably the Big One, has just hit. As if that wasn't enough, Fukushima-style, in the outskirts of your town there's a nuclear reactor too, damaged by the sismic event and hence ready to cause more destruction.
Accidentally, you're one of the engineers that designed the reactor, and so you take it on yourself to reach the place, repair the damage and avert the danger. Here's where the first problem arises, you're at your office, in a high building on fire, stairs blocked by the flames and out of order elevators. How are you going to get out? It's an intriguing start, as the whole concept and adventure. Unluckily, you're probably going to get already stuck here, the parser seems to be slightly limited on the synonyms side, while at the same time, it requires articulated sentences with prepositions and specific terms to get past some crucial points.
If you manage to get out of the building, anyway, you can wander among the ruins and visit the local zoo too, and find many items, some of which are just random objects littered around by the disaster, and not really helpful or necessary to solve the game. If you manage to go past the pile of rubble you'll even learn that the looter's life is not much fun, when you meet troops deployed to defend the rich block. And that if you meet a gang of looters you'd better make them think that you're one of them. So, it's an intriguing adventure, with nice and vaguely literary descriptions, splendid pictures [albeit rare], but a bit too much frustrating, for this reviewer.
3,5/5
by John Hopper
Let's entartain ourselves with this seasonal game, although the title gets me very confused about the season it's about.
Anyway, today is Christmas and this is the only official commercial release with a Christmas theme from 1986.
You're Santa Claus and you must deliver the presents. You start in your white grotto, as a funny shaped black sprite, you switch a lever, you pick up a gift, and you throw yourself onto some rooftops [no flying reindeers and sleigh, this time], where you turn white against the black night. Now you can wander in domestic environments searching for a sock to insert the gift in, avoiding dogs and objects, leaping all around, accompanied by an obsessive and clumsy jingle that stops only to make room for a sound effect or two. I delivered a present at the bottom of an occupied bed, and then I descended into the floor underneath because I wasn't able to go back to the rooftop, and from there to my grotto, which seems to be somewhere in the sky, in order to take another packet. Down there, Turned cyan against a blue background, I met an insomniac aunt or some acid spinster which killed me again and again - and that's how I spent my Christmas.
Whoever in 1986 received this remarkable budget game as a gift, must have passed a very memorable Christmas day, in a sense. But you're still in time to experience the thrill today. Play it now.
1,5/5
by P.A.W. Software (Tony Adams, Tony R. Porter)
As a 19th century scientist from a H. G. Wells novel, blending with a fantasy tale from Tolkien and such, you built a peculiar machine that somehow allows you to enter another dimension, where you ride through mazes of caves riddled with the most fantastic creatures, but not of the friendly kind. Anyway, your thirst of knowledge pushes you into exploring the caves and learn all their secrets - and you discover you can pick up coloured balls, mostly yellow or golden, which gives you some kind of energy. Some researchers think you simply turned into Pac Man. But there are no ghosts here, only Trolls, Rotoflies, Biter Birds and a HUGE DRAGON GUARDING THE EXIT OF THE CAVE. To defeat the latter, you have first to shoot some fireballs at the other creatures, until you have collected three jewels, which will disintegrate the invisible barrier protecting the dragon.Then you'll have to face the dragon in a furious duel. If you win, you'll reach the next level, more tortuous, more crowded and with new creatures. You ride your interdimensional machine from a subjective point of view, a panel with various indicators occupying the lowest quarter of the screen. Graphics are black and white, except for the fireballs. The sprites of the creatures are big and well drawn, a bit blocky but in a nice way, and the caverns flow smoothly around you. Playability is very high, and you'll need to draw or check a map to really find your way through the mazes without getting lost.
I don't find it much addictive, but overall is an excellent game, technically irreproachable.
Very nice three channel tune in the 128k version.
4/5
Loco, 29 Dec 2015 (Rating: 3)
by Richard Stevenson, Nigel Speight, David Wright
At first glance, Loco looks like another adaption of the Moon Patrol, that saw so many unofficial conversions on the Spectrum, but it's got its own specifc features and differences.
First of all, you control an old locomotive moving around along a close railway, and you must complete 5 "laps" to reach the next level. Furthermore, you can't accelerate or decelerate, but only change track, when there's a chance to do it [keys for up or down] - which will allow you to restore your fuel level, passing over certain spots of the track. These spots are invisibile on the main section of the screen, as the points where you can change track, for there is another section which shows the map of the railroad from above, and it even works as a radar. In fact, the problem in succeed in your taks is the presence of bombdropping planes and tracks running at full speed against you:
luckily you can defend yourself by blowing steam against the planes and their bombs, and shooting at the carts.
It may sounds simple, but checking at the same time the map/radar for fuel and enemies, the main section of the screen to shoot at the right time at simultaneous attacks coming from ahead and from above, and the side bar visualizing the fuel level, requires a certain coordination. It's a repetitive and simple game, but quite playable, and nicely humble - a limited but decent budget game from Alligata.
3/5
S.A.S. Operation Thunderflash! was a budget game released by Super Sparklers, a cyan hued 3d isometric action game with nice backgrounds that look like stolen from Imagine's Movie and the playability of a slaughterhouse. Once you move, there's little you can do aside being shot by one of the terrorists, although I managed to reach the door once or twice and see the second room [there are 50 of them]. It's that terrible. 1/5
Briefly tried The Greatest Show On Earth by Central Solutions, a circus game ridden with terrible mini games,
it's surely more colourful than Fiendish Freddy's Big Top o'Fun [Mindscape, 1990], but it's quite easy when the latter is almost totally monochrome.
0,5/5
Orbix the Terrorball, released by Streetwise and programmed by John Pragnell, owns a pretty good title, but it's not only that, it's actually a playable and good looking game. It's another 3D affair, but in scrolling fashion, reminding of Durell's Critical Mass and even Tranz Am by Ultimate. You have to wander across a wide area looking for cubes improving your radar scope, survivors and pieces of their spacecraft, while avoiding alien infrastructures and shooting droids which in turn drop spheres of energy. It belongs to the Bouncing Ball kind of games too, which makes it similar to Vortex's Revolution too [while the cubes and the survivors remind of another Costa Panayi's masterpiece, Cyclone]. It's nice, only rather repetitive and dull.
3/5
Ship, 23 Jan 2016 (Rating: 2)
Control your starship through what looks like a cosmic traffic jam. The space is very busy, you thought it was spacious, but it's rather narrow, really. So you shoot and shoot, to make it home in time for your favourite program on the telly. And they kill you and kill you. You die? They immediately kill you again, because when you reappear, they're two pixels away from you or so. To tell the truth, the instructions say that there's a space war happening, but I stick to my version.
Anyway, It's colourful and it's got a nice starfield, there's even a bit of playability if you manage to avoid the chain of death, but not much. Nice but very brief tune.
2/5
A-Maze, 23 Jan 2016 (Rating: 2)
A-Maze. In this a-mazing game you're a paintbrush trapped in a grid composed by dozens of squares, and you're chased by another something.
It's like a chess game without turns: you must wait, but you can move when sliding holes passes along the lines around you. You must reach the colour can at the other corner of the screen, and once you sweated all your way until there... you have to visit every single square of the grid in order to paint them all and finish the level. Which is very paintful, because this kind of gameplay, with the grid and the holes, makes it rather intricate, and it's easy to grow impatient - a painting game is usually something fast and frantic, and that's its most suitable shape [for example, An'F Software's Painter, released in 1983]. 2/5
Ok, you control a starship in a single screen environment, and you must, of course, collect the pieces of an automobile, falling from the sky, one by one, each time beaming the piece to the toolbox below, intelligently moving left and right all the time at ground level. At the same time there are a whole lotta nasties trying to make your job more difficult, including birds, nonetheless, but you can shoot them. I don't think there's much else to say. It looks terrible dated and the gameplay is simplistic and based on a silly premise, but 1986 blockbusters from big software houses like Ocean Software, namingly Knight Rider, Highlander or Miami Vice, which, though more modern on the graphics side, were less playable or fun. 2/5
Nightmare is just another Manic Miner clone, and one of the more unoriginal, besides being at least a couple of years late.
1,5/5
Wind Surfer is, suprisingly, a wind surfing game which I don't exactly understand how it works, besides the fact that you must avoid all the rocks, and there are more rocks in this sea than in any cave. Seems almost unplayable to me. 1/5
Captain Slog is a clone of Project Future which in turn is a clone of Atic Atac mixed with Robotron 2084, in short, a maze game with creepy creatures slowly walking toward you, and useful items spreaded around. It's not the most professional game released in 1986, in fact it's a bit rough, but it's fast and playable, with nice sound effects, and some fun can be squeezed out of it. As of now, it's got only 4.38 of average from 13 votes in the WoS archive, but I don't think it's that bad: as a crap game is a bit of a disappointment for me. 3/5
Holy crapness. Hercules really shows the muscles in the crap deparment - it's really got a powerful Crap Factor. It's a demented UDG platform whizzing from screen to screen with each of your deaths, plus a floor turning into flames after a few seconds from the start, so you can't stand still or touch the ground again if you don't want to die. Being Hercules you have to face your classic 12 labours, apparently each consisting of a single screen level in random order, so it's not one of those in which you repeat the same sequence ad nauseam trying to reach a new screen, and you don't know exactly what to expect next. Moreover, it's so fast, and you die so fast, that you can't even start to get bored, you just don't have the time. It's funny as running on frying pans! I don't know how to consider this game. Maybe it's pure genius. ?/5 between 2/5 and 4/5
Dekorating Blues has an intro on side A of the tape, and starts with a Fiona's sampled voice repeating the title with a Max Headroom stutter. After such a length and glorious presentation you'd expect something quite somethisticated but it's just a standard paint-the-labyrinth game with udg graphics, and a character erasing your work of art. You're left wondering what Fiona looks like. 2/5
Deathball 2000. Simulation of a deadly future sport, apparently rooted in cinematographic inspirations like Roller Ball and Deathrace 2000. It must be at least partially written in BASIC, and it's partially like a Football Manager for future sports: you can name your team, your players, and distribute limited amount of skills among them. You can play a one off game, a tournament or whatever. The players are cutely drawn, and the game is played in a sort of maze with subjective view, just like all that old stuff like 3D Monster Maze or Embassy Assault and all that kind. I still don't know what exactly I should think of it, because I've opened the instructions file from the archive, and they are almost all in ideograms. Anyway, it's slow, and looks like the boardgame version of the American Football. Exciting. ?/5
A space ostrich against flying saucers, in this Llamasoftesque horizontal shoot'em up. It's silly and very simplistic but not unplayable. It's got the better presentation among the Alpha-Omega games released in 1986. 2,5/5
Cyrox, 30 Jan 2016 (Rating: 1)
Cyrox is a rather terrible and rough, split screen maze/adventure with boring creatures to avoid and red crystals to be picked up. 1,5/5
Time Flight is a multi-directional shoot'em up based on colour clash and hard-to-see bullets. Pick the red letters and form the word "WARP?" to go to the next level. 2/5
by Mal Gilliot, Steve Evans
William Wobbler is a weird and cute platform-maze-arcade/adventure with big sprites and great quantities of colours, matched only by the marked presence of colour clash. A sort of Tyrannosaurus Rex In Strangeland, beginning with a fall through a trapdoor into this peculiar underworld dwelled by flying toads, killer snails, undefined creatures which can only be defeated with a love potion [or maybe they're bunnies] and more trapdoors and even more holes, and a long row of craters or hollow trunks, to jump into.
Apparently, you must collect a series of eggs, for whatever reason, and in order to do so you have to find keys and other items to gain access to all the portions of this vertical maze.
It's clearly flawed, starting with the fact that's it's a conversion from the Crappodore 64, or that the same key is used both for picking up items and for jumping, which causes you to leap around stupidly quite a bit, because you need a pixel perfect position to achieve the picking up, or even to climb up or down the lianas or whatever, or that it only takes one contact with one of the other characters to immediately die and have to restart it all from scratch. In spite of that, I found it quite enjoyable and funny, contrarily to the magazines and reviewers of the time, or even of this time, having a bad average vote in WoS too.
3,5/5 if not 4/5
edit:
no more than 3/5
[11/04/2019]
by Dinky Productions (David McGee, Neil Jones, Robin Hall)
Whoever you are, you come back from a hard day's work, and you decide to pass that hard day's night at the theater, only, you're so tired that you fall asleep, and when you wake up, you find yourself in the midst of the movie, inside of it, which, by the way, is a horror movie! In short, this is a single screen platform, with each level paraphrasing some cinematographic title, the first being "Raiders of the Lost Ork", and, as it happens in this genre, your aim is to collect all the flashing objects in the screen, which, in this case, are crosses, because, overall, you're deep in a vampire flick, and eventually you'll have to face the vampire itself, The Master. A nice touch, which slightly differetiate it from the other specimen of the genre, is that the item aren't takable all the time: they regularly burst into flames, making the contact deadly. The execution of the game is on the clumsy and flickery side, the humour silly, but insisting I found a playable little game, which I sinisterly played with the West of Memphis documentary in the background. It was a poor final release for Artic Computing, and rather dear under the price aspect [almost 6£], and even now that's it's free it's got a very low average vote in WoS [around 3.50/10]. I don't dislike it nonetheless. Some cute old style beeping in the presentation, composed by Bach.
3/5
by Steven Kendall
It's a fine sci fi text adventure beginning as a Knight Rider spoof and quickly becoming something else.
Quite recommended.
4/5
Defcom, 22 Feb 2016 (Rating: 2)
by Binary Design Ltd (Jas C. Brooke, Garry Hughes, Ste Pickford, David Whittaker)
Nice graphics, exquisite presentation, good shading, fast, nicely drawn and fastly animated sprites, super control panel cleverly appearing over the playing area, so you have more chances to hit the aliens, because it isn't so easy to strike them voluntarily. In fact, this game seems lacking a game. You must defend the earth, which you can see under you, destroying and destroying - and there's not much else. Not very intriguing, and no variety at all.
2/5
by David Edgar
It's a sci fi rescue-the-scientist text adventure that totally feels like a fantasy one, with underground caverns and magic rings. Moreover, the description are not much expanded and not very atmospheric, just like the watch-me-draw graphics and the yellow screen. And I don't see how can I use a rope to go up and down in various spots, without having a grappling or something.at one end. It's a short adventure too [but I can't say that because of my adventuring skills]. An average effort.
3/5
Sci fi text adventure in which after a very long intergalactig premise that I don't remember, you find yourself entering this Futurezoo, where animals from other planets are showed, looking for a very important artifact called The Something of Sarissa or something, which would pevent a cosmic war between the earthlings and the extra-foreigners. That said, descriptions are ok, but the interactivity with the environment is very limited, and all you obtain is a series of "you can't do that" or "what the duck are you trying to do?", the command "examine" doesn't seem to be contemplated, and so the depth of each location is non existant. Therefore, is rather boring.
2/5
by Beam Software (Greg Holland)
Bazooka Bill must be one of the poorest Melbourne House's release ever, worse than Inspector Gadget. It's a transparent sprites ridden beat'em up/shoot'em up, with multiple weapons and whole armies shooting unavoidable bullets at you. This must be the reason why your energy disappears so quickly – it's a Green Beret that Jonathan Smith could have programmed blindfolded and using his feet. The playing area is organized in split screens, but unlesse you climb the ladders, when you get out you re-enter at the other side. Once you learn that this is the trick, after some screens you start running around even using the ladders. Most confusing.
1,5/5
by Tigress Marketing Ltd
This game was always a mystery to me, I never knew how to play it, and 30 years later the mystery is finally solved: Deactivators is a ingenious, original and addictive puzzle game. You control several droids inside a building, and you must make them interact with each other in order to free the building from all the bombs, throwing them out of it through a specific door. You'll need circuits to apply to the central computer and make all the teleports work, or useful windows appear between the rooms, which will allow the droids to fling objects at each other. There are enemy droids too, which will chase you and kill you with a simple touch, but they can eventually be got rid of. The chequered floors and the droids are simple and nice, you can check all the rooms of the building choosing an option from a window with icons, or you can see the rooms where your robots are, choose which one to control, and choose to throw a bomb or a circuit, in case you're carrying something. In this case another window will show a moving segment, and its position when you press the fire key will determine the diagonal of your throw. Of course, it's not the case to feel too much at ease casting bombs around, you must be careful. Surely one of the most interesting releases of 1986.
4,5/5
by Greg A. Homes, John Holmes
Can a clone be better than the originale? Absolutely yes! Is this game an example of that?
Absolutely not! A Trick of the Tale is your run-of-the-mill Manic Miner copycat, with even the red platforms recalling the first screen of the original, and without any noticeable improvement. It's a little bit difficult too.
Sound is acceptable, and the graphics have cute little sprites. It's better than Mastertronics's Chiller, that's for sure. It's been programmed by Greg A. Holmes, the guy behind some of the classics from Gremlin Graphics [Jack The Nipper, Avenger, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Footballer of the Year], and it's one of the two games he released through the budget software house Central Solutions, the other being the [better] Podder. Anyway, even this one is not that bad, and it was surely worth its £0.99.
2,5/5
by Shaun Hollingworth, Chris Kerry, Peter M. Harrap, Marco Duroe
It's an original platform game, because a top view platform isn't something common, or it wasn't in 1986, or maybe Bounder was really the first one, though it wasn't certainly the first ball game: in 1986 it looks like it was a mania. One of the differences with the other platforms, in this case, is that you must coordinate your movements with the rhythm of your automatic bouncing, which you can't stop. It's feriociously hard but controversely addictive. You bounce your tennis ball, or the tennis ball that is you, upon square platforms trying not to make it fall below, because if you fall too many times, you have no balls. There are helpful platforms that will make you jump longer, but even fatal nasties moving in loops. Once you finish the course, a differently coloured monochrome level awaits you, with a slightly different scenario. It's the usual professional, appealing and colourfully presented effort from Gremlin Graphics.
4/5
by Richard Leinfellner, Steve Brown, Richard Joseph
My last review was Bounder, a top view platformer starring a bouncing ball, and this is another bouncing ball game, only it's disguised as a bouncing pumpkin game, and it's in a more common side view approach.
It's got an unanimous 9/10 from the three major Speccy mags at the time, and you can't see why, it's pretty well done, well presented, with a halloweenish tune and well drawn, animated and colourful graphics. Its prequel was about an evil witch defeating evil pumpkins or something like that, and its difficulty was pretty impossible, but Cauldron II reverses the situation: this time you're the perpetually bouncy pumpkin trying to destroy the witch, and the difficulty, albeit still very high, is more properly adjusted. The pumpkin is, anyway, very hard to control, and, most of the time, you find yourself going to places you didn't mean to go to. Also, as a consequence, the nasties are pretty much unavoidable, although you can help yourself with a bit of shooting magic that can be found scattered through the castle. This castle seems to be a large playing area to explore and it needs to be mapped [well, no need to, really, there are probably plenty of maps already, if you're lazy], so that you can orient yourself and locate a handful of useful objects, that will enable you to defeat the witch, which you can find sleeping in her bed, that sleeping ugly. There are tall skeletons marching forward and backward across the rooms, and big spiders following you, just a bit less horryfing than those in Wriggler. So, very difficult to get into and to control, but pretty smooth and pretty good.
4/5
by Michael Smith, John Dilley, Loon, Wally
A game from Americana Software, the budget label of U.S. Gold, whose average game wasn't exactly very good. This one is an exception, because it's decent – dated, especially graphically, and with an explorative gameplay, a mix between Jet Set Willy and Atic Atac, without jumping and keys, but with the aim of collecting all the 1£ coins scattered through the playing area, composed by dozens of flip screens, starting from a bedroom, presumably yours, and passing through any kind of places, including a hedge maze. Simple but pleasant. 3/5
P.s. Now that I've read the instructions I know that you need the money to buy a new Spectrum because you broke the old one, and if your parents find out, your life is over. There are 200 rooms, and once you collect enough money [64£] you can purchase the new Spectrum at the shop and go back home.
by David J. Anderson, R.C.D., Ronnie Fowles
Although under certain aspect it's a terrible soccer game, it's surely not as bad as I remembered, and it must be recognized that for the time it was pretty advanced and could pride features that even the illustrious Match Day series didn't have. You can do a lot of foul play and, consequently, there are free kicks and penalties too. The ball doesn't glue to your feet, but you must costantly hit it again at each pace of your run, just like in Kick Off, and in reality too. That said, the game tends to be exasperating, in its slowness and controlling difficulty, it's very hard to keep the ball and run with it, or even passing it, let alone building a coherent team action. There's a merciless acceleration routine that tendentially shifts your players into turtles and snails when you make them change direction. So, it's a bit for sadomasochistic Spectrum soccer games fans. But you can squeeze some enjoyment out of it, if you're ready to sweat as much as in a real game.
3/5
by Andrew Rogers, Simon Jay
It might look cute and easy, something apt for smaller children, but that's a tough game, a maze and platform one, in which you control a hedgehog in the noble search for something to eat. It seemed too frustrating to be playable, at first, but once you learn to accept that you must deal with the clockwork precision required to go past the various deadly threats and their timings, you can start to enjoy a pretty decent game with a very nicely drawn main character, albeit a bit flickering. And anyway you have 18 lives to waste. Nice additional touches too, just try to drink one of those underground cocktails and see if your directional sense is still the same. For a budget game, this must have been a pretty good bargain at the time.
3/5
by Reptile Industries Ltd (David McGee, John Robinson)
You're in a future dystopic society, which is crumbling after clashes and revolutions unleashed by an oil crisis, and the streets are not so safe anymore, but you must deliver the post, no matter what.
There are many spiteful persons and prowlers yielding clubs waiting only for you to leave your van and smash your teeth. In short, we're in the present world.
Fumbling with the keys, or just deciding to read the instructions, you'll discover how to get in your bright red van, to pick up objects and do everything you need to do. That purple bomb lying on the road may result quite helpful to start your adventure in the letter delivering sector. While walking near the van and pressing the fire key, some icons will appear in the lower part of the screen, letting you chose to climb in or else. While you're in, you can select the BOV icon, which enables you to check what items you picked up and store them in the Back Of the Van, or activate them, making new icons appear. They can be bags of letters, or WEAPONS or a SUPER ENGINE to make you go faster, and you really need that if you don't want to die of boredom, because the van normally procedes at man's speed. Remember that the postboxes are very solid and you may need something very strong to open them. Once you gather some sacks, you can drop them at the Sorting Office, and pick up the letters to be delivered at the addresses that will be highlighted at the bottomest of your informative panel.
To say the truth, the most dangerous thing in the game doesn't seem to be the thugs populating the streets, but the policemen, which are quite stupidly inclined to walk in front of your van and be killed. Your aboard computer, whose name is S.K.I.T. and which calls you Michael, and I bet you resemble a certain David Hasselhoff], will then communicate that "you've killed an innocent man", a message that strangely don't appear when you run over ordinary citizens, so the philosophy of the game seems to be that all are probably guilty until the contrary is proven, and only the policemen are genuinely innocent. Which doesn't make their life particulary valuable nonetheless, because when you kill one, you are punished with just a 4 points penalty on your driving licence, but these are hard times, so cops death must be common and expected.
But you accumulate 12 points penalty on your driving licence and your career is over.
Of course, as in every postal service vehicle, you can activate a turret on your van and shoot the passersby.
3,5/5
by Steve Evans
This seems to be a sequel of no game [although there is a Missing In Action titled Who Dares Wins released in 1983 by the prestigious East Midlands Software], but it surely looks a lot like a "sequel" to Commando, or, using a more apt definition, a "shameless clone". In fact, there's not much to be said about it, the gameplay is identical, you're a soldier furiously shooting your way vertically casting the occasional granade while swarms of bullets are addressed to you from a whole army or two. There is no scrolling, anyway, but only flip screens. The graphics are similar too, only more colourful, and with semi-destroyed barracks reminding of Ocean's Rambo. And with a bit more flickering. The tune and the presentation are ok, and if you're not tired of mindless destruction, but your Commando and your Ikari Warriors are worn out by now, this is a fun and playable alternative.
4/5
by James P.H. Day
Cliff Hanger is not the Speccy version of the Stallone movie, but it's a Road Runner kind of concept disguised as a Western game. Just as Wile E. Coyote, your goal is, for example, to roll a rock on a passing cow boy, which, of course, takes the role of Beep Beep the ostrich, and each level is a variation, and even a complication, on this gameplay. The mechanism is simple and repetitive, but, for this same reason, it can hook you for a while, in spite of the rudimentary graphics. It was a full price release that desperately needed to be cheaper, à la Mastetronics, in which case would have been a good buy, as it's not lacking in the playability department.
3/5
by Jonathan M. Smith, Ronnie Fowles, Martin Galway
It's a Jonathan Smith game, so it's very professional, with lots of jingles, a drumming tune and, of course, ducks. It's technically brilliant, with superbbly smooth movements performed by the enemy aircraft, with are varied in shape and pattern. It's also very challenging, because are many things to avoid and to shoot at in the screen at the same time, and the action is so furious that I usually end up with a sore wrist. Anyway, there are power up's/new components augmenting the structure of your ship, although they are very easily lost. A defect: there are very few restart spots when you lose a life, so you die you must repeat the same sections all over again.
W.A.R., 10 Jun 2016 (Rating: 3)
by Creative Reality (Jason Austin, Dave Dew, Mark A. Jones)
It's characterized by a very small playing area and by alien-looking and slightly alienating font in the option and information screens. The graphics are nicely drawn, with good shadings, but it's all white, grey and black, and you have to force your eyes to tell the sprites from the background, and the enemies being very fast, the first impact with W.A.R. is of unplayability. Eventually, getting deeper in it, an enjoyable blaster can be found, with a precise collision detection, and a spendable score: when you lose a life, or you finish a section, you can use it to buy useful power-up's or more lives - which improves the game quite a bit. Not bad.
by Fast-As-You-Like (John Pickford, Ste Pickford, David Whittaker)
Annoying big yellow sprites and items against a black star field, and the wit seems confined to the title: you just seem to fly endlessly among space donuts and cosmic cookies firing at the nasties, improbable magnets with eyes, with not much satisfaction and absence of variety. If there's anything else to it, I've missed it.
Note:
zx1 in the WoS forum told me: "Lightfarce was a 'hidden' game in Zub. You could load it by typing in a piece of BASIC before starting the tape."
by Denton Designs (Simon Butler)
The millionth TV or movie licence of the year for Ocean, and, although mediocre, it still wasn't one of the worst. After all there was Denton Designs behind it, specifically Simon Butler: people who knew what "quality" meant. Anyway, the game is rather dull, the gameplay is based on exploration of a samey metal environment made of platforms and ramps while you control one of the characters of the cartoon, cutely small and detailed sprites that can be recognized as Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and the rest of the gang, which you can choose. The animation is appreciable, and the main feature of the robots is mantained: you can actually transform yourself into a vehicle (and viceversa), and the process resembles very closely the original one - once you are moving on your wheels, you can go up the ramps, but, anyway, when you're a robot you can fly. So, while shooting and keeping at bay the baddies [recognizable too], you must look for some objects that look like buttons, and bring them where your Transformer logo should be, each "button" adding a fraction of it to the frame. Once it's complete, you won. Not very exciting.
2,5/5
by Sensible Software
Mystery solved! I always wondered about Twister and its intimate nature in the great scheme of things.
In other words, I never understood how it worked, or I never understood that I didn't understand how it worked.
It just went on and on without any progress or development, the same platforms, under the same green demons, picking up the same whatever's. Isn't it incredible what instructions can do? The game actually changes!
Other levels! Other stuff! First of all, I just had to STOP picking up anything. For example, the bombs drain your energy. But that was not a problem really, because it didn't kill me, I could go on for hours, thanks to the little shields with the "T" on them, which gave me back some energy [the red bar in the lower right of the screen]. But what about the magnets, those little bastards? They were the culprits. To gain access to the next level I had to pick up the four symbols of some mystical deck of cards, which coincidentally are the same as the more prosaic deck of cards we use for earthly entertainments: heart, flower, and the other two, whose english name I don't remember right now. The problem was that insisting on taking the magnets magnetized those symbols away from me, preventing me from being promoted to the next level. Learned the lesson? DON'T PICK UP THE MAGNETS!
So, Twister is a weird shoot'em up with a view from behind your character, and lots of green monsters and green busty women, but don't get too excited because of course they want to kill you, just like in real life. Moreover, you're fighting in your subconscious and it shows. In the second level you run on an ordinary grid lost in your head or even upside down, on a sort of ceiling, or mirror grid, and changing fast between the two can result quite useful in avoiding the nasties and take the items you need. So, not that bad, after all. Ok?
3,5/5
by Paul Houbart, Simon Butler, Dawn Drake, Noel Hines
I didn't have bad memories about this game, in spite of it being universally panned, because I didn't dislike it at that time. Of course, I was wrong. I've tried it again today and the collision detection is awful. The backgrounds are well drawn and nicely coloured though.
2/5
by Soft Design (Steve Howard, Wayne Blake, Paul Smith)
Another one I had slightly better memories compared to how it really is. You're an overweight mermaid running after the slender scuba diver that stole your heart, in a clearly unvoluntarily way, or I guess he wouldn't run from you, as we see him do at the start of each game. It's a maze/adventure type, and I'd like to appreciate it again, but it's really too hard, and the mermaid is of no easy manoeuvrability. After Prodigy another 1986 Electric Dreams game that could have been good, but it's ruined by its difficulty. And I still have to review Xarq.
2,5/5
by Nigel Edwards
Rudimentary graphics but good playability for this "get out of the room" game in which you have to understand the right order of actions to undertake to enter the next screen, using coloured cards to open doors of the correspondent colours, buttons to lift barriers, and such, with the goal of retrieving the pieces of some sovietic weapon or aircraft, I don't know, which will help you to defeat Communism forever, and let capitalism destroy planet earth.
3/5
by Nigel Edwards
It's a platform game in a split screen environment, and mechanics similar to Frank N Stein and Booty.
The graphics were rated for 1986, and feels more like a 1984 game, just like the simple and logical gameplay, but it's nonetheless very playable and a good buy for a budget.
3,25/5
by Paragon Programming Ltd (Scott Spanburg)
One of the first features I observe are the sketchy little sprites with a peculiar animation, that remind of Bruce Lee and Zorro, not coincidentally both from U.S. Gold as this movie licence, and, also, the gameplay seems to have something to do with the latter, although without the sword. It's a single screen affair, and you must escape from each screen controlling a couple of Goonies, which must help each other in order to succeed in going past all the trap doors, perils and dangers, using their [your] intelligence and activating secret passages, printing countefeit money, avoiding members of the Fratelli's family, some of them armed etc. etc. I think you can even play with a friend controlling a Goonie each simultaneously. It seems ok.
3,5/5
p.s. although the music is terrible.
by Keith Burkhill, Jon Harrison
Part of the killer batch of coin op conversions that Elite hurled on the market between 1985 and 1986, Space Harrier must have been particulary difficult to convert, considering it even existed as a full motion cockpit, which you could only emulate by swinging and swaying on your chair. But not only for that: what you have here is a view-from-behind shoot'em up, with lots of sprites and chequered floors to be stuffed in a colour clashing home computer. The result? You don't see a ducking thing! All the sprites are of course transparent, and it's a chaos, especially when you fly or run on the above mentioned chequered floors. It's a wonderful presbyopia experience! Anyway, it's fast and furious and quite entertaining, especially when the enemies shoot you with giant zucchini slices.
Visibility aside, I think it's a pretty ace conversion, especially looking at the smoothness and speed of the sprites, their perspective movement and the "movement of the screen" when you fly higher or lower yourself.
3,75/5
V, 27 Jun 2016 (Rating: 2)
by Kaos, Softstone Ltd (Gary Knight, Nick Bruty, F. David Thorpe)
This one received good reviews, but I wonder why. It's true that I haven't really played it, it's also true that the game doesn't exactly beg you to, with his boring long corridors, confusionary backgrounds [all the same in the whole map], very mild shooting and jumping sequences, lots of uncomprehensible alien codes and font, and not, absolutely not a single antropomorphic reptile to be seen anywhere at all. Visitorsless would have been a more apt title. It's in the mediocre range of the Ocean Software tie in's of the year, along with Transformers, better than the horrible Miami Vice, Knight Rider, Highlander etc., but far from the masterpieces too, and I'm talking about The Great Escape and Batman.
2,5/5
It starts with appalling graphics, but we know that graphics are not everything and can hide a greatly playable game, so we go on and play Dr Maddo and we find that it's appallingly unplayable too. There are jerkily animated gorillas on the top of the screen throwing lethal white dots at you, maybe the most stylized possible way to depict cocoanuts, you are this barely human sketch of gametic matter, tormented by a fly or butterfly constantly entering the screen from the right side, while you shoot dementedly at a sort of door with an arrow drawn on it, that you must destroy pixel by pixel, dozens of them, in order to get out of this nightmare. Of course I KNOW what else awaits me through that door: more rooms with more doors to be destroyed pixel by pixel while you're harassed by more despicable creatures. I gave up before I could get out of the first room. There's only one thing this game is good at: being bad.
1/5
p.s. Ok, the loading screen is nice in a psychedelic/warholian way:
"I'm learning to fly / but I ain't got no wings" as Tom Petty used to sing. How do you solve this problem? Mystically, training your mind, spirit and body to levitate without any anatomic upgrade on your back. How do you obtain a game from this concept? Easy. You put together 10 mini-games based on very simple gameplay mechanisms - observation, and quick reaction - and you're done. It's like Gremlin/Dinamic's West Bank, but without shooting: in fact, in various of these mini-games you just have to press a key, for example from 1 to 5, corresponding to the right answer, which it's not very different to "the baddie is in the first door, so I press 1". Overall, there's more variety in this one than in West Bank, because you can choose between 10 small games in the order of your choice, but it's not as much addictive. The score sequence, where after each event the game shows you how much you can levitate after your performance, is not bad. The whole program is not bad, and it's even peculiar, but it's just not that engaging.
2,75/5
Adventure game by Peter Torrance of Seabase Delta fame, written with GAC.
You're a secret agent trying to take possession of dangerous plans that could take Great Britain out of the European Community. Will you make it in time? Well, looks like you didn't, but, nevermind, you can play this game all the same, and that's what matters. How is it? It's nice, quite playable, it starts clamorously well with you inside a coffin, and it could even end there, but luckily you can get out alive from your death. The early puzzles are simple enough to let you have some fun and become familiar with Spytrek, and it's one of those adventures in which you must examine everything, and rightly so - but not only that, remember to OPEN anything too, just to be sure. In fact, my first stop was just because... Well, I won't spoil you that. The graphics are simple but nice vignettes, and the parser accepts more complex sentences that your average verb-noun. All and all, an enjoyable effort.
3,75/5
Tremor, 02 Jul 2016 (Rating: 4)
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
As a journalist, you must have stepped on somebody's toes with your articles, because, it seems, a powerful figure has decided to punish you. And now you're trapped in a luxurious mansion that it's going to explode in a few hours, with you inside, if you don't find a way to survive, doors and windows being, of course, barred or unopenable. This is the premise of Countdown, a verb-noun text adventure sold at 0.99£, but that was, and still is, quite enjoyable. The game surely lets you play and explore the ample building, which can of course hide some surprises as hidden passages, trapdoors etc., without indulging in the sudden death syndrome. I've solved just the 28% of it, but what I've seen so far is quite good, the graphics are not totally crappy, and the color of the screen and the border changes nicely according to the environment.
3,75/5
by FEBAradio
Ok, you're inside an unknown building and you must discover your mission. The screen is black, there's no description, and you're being asked what to do. You try "I" for "Inventory" but the game tells you, while a brief jingle plays [dee-doo-dee-doo-dee], that you have to use two words, or else it won't accept the command. You try to look around, and the command is accepted while a different jingle is heard, but it's useless. "Examine room" [tee-tee-tee!] "I am afraid I cannot examine room" "examine building" [tee-tee-tee!] "you will have to explore" "explore building" [tee-tee-tee!] "where shall I go to explore?" "explore west" [tee-tee-tee!] "where shall I go to explore?" "WEST" [dee-doo-dee-doo-dee] "PLEASE ENTER TWO WORD COMMANDS". Then I read the very concise instructions included in WoS, and a sentence particularly catches my eye:
"The game is a fascinating and frustrating way of finding out more about the work of FEBA Radio. Clear on-screen instructions are given for saving or loading a partly-completed game. Everything else you discover for yourself!"
I try again.
"Go east,north,sout" "YOU CAN'T" [doo-bee-doo-bee-deeee!] "OK, PRAY LORD" "It is too noisy around here for serious prayer" [dooobbeedooobeeteeedeeee!] "look up" "I see a ceiling" "look down" "I see a tiled floor" "look east!" "I cannot look east" [doo-be-doo-be] "look ahead?" "ahead - I see a corridor" - bingo! - "go ahead" "ok, there's a door on the left" "open door" "i'm not near enough" "go left" "you can't go left" "turn left?" "I have turned left" "open door!" "HOW, PRECISELY?" [too-doo-doo-dobedobe!] "with hands?" "not funny" "pull handle?" "no" "push door?" "THE DOOR IS LOCKED" "couldn't you tell me before?" "he he he" "Jesus, give me strength" "you're finally learning, young Christian. And haven't you read those exciting posters about Christian persecution and broadcasting the almighty word of the Lord across the Far East?" "It's a blast, really".
Then, in spite of being exhausted for the draining strain of turning around and walking down a corridor and reading posters, an illumination came to me! Those words! Those other words in the instructions! How could I not notice them? Now I know what the solution is!
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BREAK INTO THE PROGRAM AS IT WILL "SELF-DESTRUCT" - LOSING THE CURRENT GAME AND REQUIRING YOU TO RE-LOAD THE PROGRAM.
BREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAKBREAK
5/5
Sunrise Over Bethselamine is the lowest ranked Speccy text adventure after Secret Mission Radio, along with other two, and that's how I'm choosing the games these days. Once it's been loaded, a blue screen with silly cartoon balloons explain the context of the story, which essentially is that Bethselamine is a minining planet, whose land is exposed to the sun every twenty-years, and in this occasion a big festival is staged, and people from all over the galaxy come to attend the spetacle of the sun rising over Bethselamine. This time apparently something wrong happened, and you just landed there to discover what, and the first thing you should do is find your friend Steve something, which is also the organizer of the festival.
So, this is a basic effort, with a nice modified font, with a small drawing of your character at the top of the screen, and eventually of other characters present in the location you're in. One is the demented Dave the Droid, who just follows you everywhere spitting out nonsenses. Anyway, in spite of being in basic, it's sufficiently quick
in reacting to your commands, although there's not much to examine [you can examine only items you've already collected], and the vocabulary seems pretty limited. Also, while correcting a command, you should pay attention and not deleting the quotation marks that must frame your sentence, or it won't be accepted, which is rather clumsy. Besides that, I was beginning to enjoy the little puzzles and shooting bastards, when some bugs popped out spoiling the fun. For example, I had picked up, among other items, a laser glass cutter and an alien identification card. When the time has come for me to use my wonderful laser cutting device, the game insisted that I was not carrying it. I checked the inventory, and, in fact, it wasn't there, but, to make up for it, there were TWO identification cards. I restarted. This time I was able to use the laser glass cutter where I wanted, and I even left the alien identification card somewhere else, just to be sure, then I found a new object, a "comlink", picked it up and brought it somewhere else. When I tried to use it, pressing its black button, the game told me I didn't have it, just like with the glass cutter before. But, even more paradoxically, this time the item was actually still present in the inventory.
So I've given up. There's a nice little adventure, though, somewhere under those bugs.
2/5
by Steve Marsden, Steve Cooke
Preliminary observations.
The C+VG reviewer at the time complained that City Slicker was in poor taste, because real terrorist attacks occurred in London with lethal consequences, so the premise - bombs ready to blow up Westminster - should have been avoided - only, I suppose he was referring to some IRA deeds, while here we're talking about Abru Cadabbra being the baddie, somewhere defined as Arabus Terroristicus, so what better time to review it again than now. It's a mix between Dynamite Dan and the 2D arcade/adventure tradition that was born with PIjamarama.
The mags.
I thought it wasn't well received, because the WoS voting average is 5.3, but it really got good reviews from Your Sinclair [8/10], Sinclair User [4/5] and even from C+VG, in spite of the above-mentioned criticism, while Crash people were a bit annoyed by it, and defined it dated, another after-the-time-limit Jet Set Willy derived game, programmed by authors who already abundantly exploited that lode [Technician Ted, Costa Capers] - although they couldn't deny it had its merits and allowed it an overall of 65%.
Personal reminiscing.
Personally I prefer it over their previous efforts. I was attracted by it since I saw those big noses challeging each other on the cover of the 10 Great Games 3 compilation, wondering what could it be all about. When I finally put my hands over it [over an italian pirated version], or, better, over the keys while loaded on my Spectrum, I found it strangely fascinating. The big noses were preserved in the cartoonish and ridiculous sprites and I even managed to cling onto a platform with mine, there were plenty of wonderfully crapping pigeons and the guards had something diabolical in their going up and down, left and right firmly holding their spears or whatever they are, and resembled little devils with a fork, in my view. It was terribly difficult to wander around without being thrown back or killed, and because, as your energy was drained out, you couldn't jump as high as at the start, and so you couldn't reach most of the platforms anymore. What was hiding inside this mysterious game?
The game.
Well, unluckily now I've pratically vivisected it, and the poetry is all gone, but what remains is nonetheless a pretty decent game. It's even got its personality, it's surely not a simple clone of an abused formula: besides the guards and the objects with repetitive movement patterns, there's Abru Cadabbra, whose touch is lethal, who can follow you everywhere, even when you take the tube to some other part of London, because, yes, you can [and have to] even take the tube and wait to arrive to the desired destination, as Westminster, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, or suburbia. And if he touches you the game is over, so you'd better run. Then there's the ugly Ed Butt, which moves with a certain randomness, he's innocuous, he's just a bit of a kleptomaniac and tends to pick up the objects he finds scattered around, including the useful ones, so you must anticipate him, or PICK HIM up [after all, with such a name, and face, he should be accustomed to being picked on], then let him fall from a certain height, and he should drop the items he's carrying [or so they say: I never succeeded in obtaining any]. And this game has even an AIM, as incredible as it sounds! But it seems I was forgetting about it: as previously stated, there are bombs at Westminster placed by your old friend Abru, and you must build a Bomb Defusing Unit [B.D.U.], and that's the reason for your running around and collecting items and find their use, to obtain the parts of the B.D.U., assemble them in your house, and then bring your creation to Westminster. Since my childhood, or teenage years, I improved the mobility of the main character finding out, thanks to a hint sheet called instructions, that you have prep pills with you and you can use them [pause the game with "A", then press the pick up key and ENTER simultaneously] to replenish your energy and jumping high again. Moreover, there are food and drinks often appearing who can serve the same end.
You can carry six items at once, and choose one by pausing and using left/right. I was not doing much, in spite of having fun cheating, so I finally watched the RZX solution, and I would have never been able to solve the game playing it for all my life, it's not overcomplicated, it's beyond overcomplicated, too many items, too many things to try before discovering their use, too hard doing all this while jumping this and that and avoiding Abru, and how could I know that you can extinguish the candles and obtaining doors and guard freezings and such. And if you give seeds to a specific pigeon, there, you obtain a LADDER, of course! With so many pigeons how much time would have taken me to discover what packet of seeds goes to what pigeon? Or maybe whatever seed packet works, which would make sense. Whatever. Probably nobody ever solved the game without looking at the code, as the RZX guys in fact did. And so I only got to see the nice use of certain objects, and how they move by themselves when you drop them, and how the assembling animation is nice, and how the B.D.U. is a cute little thing with wheel, and how the defusing animation looks good, through the RZX video.
In short, the game is ok, but too hard.
3,75/10
p.s. the sound effects are nice too.
It's the end of the world AGAIN. Anyhow, that's how I like my adventure games. This is a well presented one, with a nice white and cyan font on a black background. The descriptions are above average, and there are sudden changes of scenarios, so it's good for those affected with deficit disorder syndrome. The content is pretty lunatic too, and at a certain point I found myself mutated into a parrot, and closed in a cage. I wasn't able to get out. I splashed my water around in protest. I try hard to pretend to be dead, so they would have opened the cage to check, and I would have flown away. Then I looked a the solution for this specific puzzle and I got angry because it didn't came to me, so I stopped.
Ok: elegant and weird.
As sometimes happens, the planet earth has been destroyed by some mad scientist, so you have to go back
to yesterday thanks to a time machine and try to save the world. It's very fast in responding and writing the new locations, but of course it slows down when there are quilled pictures to draw, which anyway are colourful and decent enough. It's also very fast to play, there doesn't seem much to examine and it's easy to find a useful item, for example, a location away from where it must be used. It's certainly playable. You can choose between too fonts.
Ok: basic, fast and easy.
The janitor of London's biggest store Harridge has gone mad because he feels underrated and consequently placed bombs in the store, and you must enter, find'em and defuse them. It's a colourful adventure with sound effects, and lots of locations, which are mostly empty, or better, full of items that you can't examine. So it's a bit of a let down, at least under this aspect. By the way, the janitor is still in the store and wanders around with a pistol, and if he finds you, he'll submit you to a quiz. If you fail, say goodbye to the cruel world. I've found a lot of items, but their use is still a mystery to me, aside for the oil can. So, I don't know exactly what to think.
So-so: a bit empty and it puzzles me too much. Nice presentation.
SHOOT AT ANYTHING THAT MOVES AND DO IT VERY FAST is the deep philosophy that permeates this Spanish offer, where you must search and destroy five mafia bosses inside a city so violent that the sidewalks are completely blood red, so violent that the white sprites on red background can almost kill your eyes.
So violent that the bullets kill you EVEN if you're not in their trajectory, just the optic illusion of them passing through your sprite is lethal! It's really not a very friendly neighborhood, in fact not only the neighbors haven't the slightest intention of lending you some sugar, but they throw flower vases at you from the windows, or maybe it's just a welcome ritual, after all flowers are a good sign. Anyway, it's just shooting and running searching around, not forgetting to pick up the bullet boxes left by the dead and, again, TO DO IT VERY FAST. For a few minutes of mindless destruction [mainly the destruction of your character, that is, and it usually happens, of course, VERY FAST: you can die 45 times in a row in a few seconds, even because you reappear very near to the nasties].
2,75/5
Atmospheric post-apocalyptic scenario, windy and deserted, for an adventure which prides itself with three possible routes to be solved, three quests among which you'll have to choose during a certain encounter. It's quite well done, with above average description. Pretty good, although I didn't play it much.
3,5/5
In this text adventure you're asleep and in your dream you must find an alarm clock to finally wake up.
The early part is quite amusing, in Alice In Wonderland style, the next location could indifferently be a giant bedroom, outer space with an alien, under a Roman arch with a gladiator, in the sewers after having flushed yourself, paradise and more. Then it becomes to work more like a regular text adventure, with a cave section, then a pirate ship part, crowded with a noisy crew including a sailor who yells "hello sailor!" to you and who is constantly smiling a you, then an imposing mansion. It's rather lenghty. I've liked the earliest and most surreal part, but then I've lost interest.
3/5
It's pratically Jet Set Willy on amphetamines and it's great fun.
4/5
by Stefan F. Ufnowski
Ok, it's from an Isaac Asimov's story and our encyclopedic Grussu doesn't approve that this text adventure starts with an imminent death problem, but I don't mind, it's an easy problem, and, anyway, I'm here just for the fantastic symmetrical colourful pictures that accompany each location. The game seems playable, though, at least if you heard about "acid sticky tapes" or else you're stuck.
4/5
Pretty bad Atic Atac and Wizard's Lair clone, relatively slow and confused.
1,5/5
S.O.S., 11 Sep 2016 (Rating: 3)
by Geoff Foley
Ok, you're a little cute robot crashed in a small 3d isometric world of cannibal robots that are licking their metal moustaches thinking about you, and you must find a radio to tell your friends where they can collect you. You need items to go past certain barriers, and most of all a lamp, because nights are very very dark, the routes very very narrow, the water very very lethal, and the nasties very very near. It's not bad.
3,25/5
by Dominic Robinson, Stephen J. Crow
Well, I must say that especially after playing lots of mediocre or straight crappy games, the technical prowess
and the sheer professionalism of Uridium is astounding, both playability and graphics being absolutely
smooth, slick, fast and enjoyable. The monochrome sci fi approach is very atmospheric and definitely superior
to the anti-climatic bland and ill-conceived colour combinations of the original C64 version. Tune and sound effects
are cute, and the loading screen is an aesthetic delight.
4,5/5
by Rod Pike, Ian Ellery
Played it at 3 a.m. tonight and it was a riot enriched with a variety of nightmares determined by the
different food you can eat before going to bed, and I'm talking about the game, not my kitchen, my belly and
my sleep: in fact, the game scientifically confirms the relationship between digestion and dreamlike production.
Anyway, I never played it before, and I am quite pleased with it, that synomym of "text adventure", the more sophisticated "interactive fiction" is very suitable to Rod Pike's Dracula, as it feels like being in the book, because of the excellent lenghty descriptions that sometimes leaves you in the role of reader while the adventure goes on. Nonetheless, it's interactivity is pretty good too, and before doing some really adventurous thing [and I didn't really get there yet], you must humbly learn to do the simplest things, the ones required when a coachman carries you to a destination, those you do when you check in an inn etc.
Oh, very small but cute graphics too, here and there. Anyway, the first part was a lot of fun, easy just like I like it, in the second I immediately got stucked, of course - which doesn't detract much from one of the best adventure games of the year. Atmospheric and addictive.
4,25/5
by Realtime Games Software Ltd (Ian Oliver, Graeme Baird, David Lowe)
A massive vector graphics megahit from the starstriking geniuses of Realtime Games, with impressive
animations, smoothness and great playability. A supergiant, iperhuge, macrosuccess, in terms of masterpiecing.
4,25/5
by Bo Jangeborg, Niclas Osterlin
One year after the first episode, Fairlight II was released, as a more outdoorish adventure, with trees, wolves, a galleon and not much new offer, it was basically a riproposition of the first game with minor changes - but in spite
of that it was probably still the 3d isometric adventure with most features, and you character walking,
jumping, fighting, picking, dropping, farting and smirking. At the centre of it there's loopy maze that can cause you
a really bad headache, because it's got lots of doors bringing you back to previously visited rooms. Anyway, there's lot of stuff to explore and to do, a three channel tune, and in spite of its similarity with the first one, it was and it is still very good. I surely enjoyed it when I snapshotted it until the end, a couple of years ago.
4/5
by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson
Just like Fairlight: Trail of Darkness, this was another sequel of a classic released in 1985, and another one that didn't differ very much from the original, if not even less. Strangely, though, this is not from goold ol' Costa Panayi, who was the sole responsible for Vortex Software output up to this point, but he lent Highway Encounter engine to Mark Haigh-Hutchinson [who later programmed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, among other things], who anyway applied some minor changes to make it slightly faster and more playable: now the detonator can be moved diagonally from the center of the highway, and you haven't a queu of robots ready to substitute you when you die, but limited energy drained by aliens or even by touching the sides of the road, which previously were safe. As for Fairlight II, its similitarity with the source doesn't stop it from being very good.
4/5
by Raffaele Cecco, Chris Hinsley, Nick Jones
You're a ball, for a change, precisely a sort of balloon, and as every respected balloon, you must
clean your environment of Radioactive Canisters using Disposal Chutes, and finding a Pass to reach the next level.
The problem is that these items are not readily available and to get hold of them you must solve some puzzles, using other objects you find scattered around - and, of course, shooting or avoiding various nasties.
In short, it's a colorful and unusual 2D arcade/adventure with flip-screens, and nice sound too, one of the first efforts of the renowned Raffaele Cecco, the first that sees his style emerging, after Cop-Out, who was a just coin op conversion, and not one of the better. He's helped by his partner of many games Nick Jones and by veteran Chris "Wally Week" Hinsley. Once you understand what you have to do, is very playable. As per usual with Cecco's games, the sound is good too. Quite appreciable.
4/5
Thrust, 19 Sep 2016 (Rating: 4)
by David Lowe, Simon Clarke
Dynamically, Thrust works like an Asteroids with gravity, and gravity is your main enemy in the game, in spite of the presence of turrets shooting at you. The worst problem, in fact, at least in the early levels, is just to control your triangular spacecraft without having it crashed against the ground, or the objects standing on it. These are the abovementioned turrets, power plants making them work, fuel tanks for your old and consuming spacewreck, and the Klystron Pods: to stole the latter is your aim [for the resistance, against the Empire etc. etc.]. After several decerebrated attempts I learnt from the usual "hints & tips" that other people call "instructions" that you're supposed to tow it away with a tractor beam that becomes a tow-bar, making you look like a sperm with his new shining tail/flagellum, just don't wag it too much, because if it hits something, you'll disintegrate too. A gameplay of this kind could have destroyed the game with frustration, because it needs great patience and precision, and I saw other games with similar sequences that were completely unplayable, but Thrust miraculously manages to pull it off very well, and, what's more, it was a budget game, so it was an absolute bargain.
3,75/5 [could become a 4/5]
by Carlos Granados Martinez, Paco Menendez, Fernando Rada Briega, Camilo Cela Elizagarate, Juan Delcan
As we know, this is the renowned follow-up to the classic Fred, maze-platform game and in this sequel morphed into an arcade/adventure, a very colourful one, with several objects, puzzles and secret passages. So, I admit it's very nice to look at, but, personally, I have never really enjoyed it, although I tried. When I was a kid, I always stuck in the cave with that red-nosed naked man, or, even, I wasn't able to reach
the cloud from the balcony, above the moat. I haven't learned how to make that long jump while swinging on a rope, so, my ineptitude at Sir Fred was due to myself, and to the lack of instructions, nonetheless... I find Fred rather hard to control, and the inertia and acceleration subtleties don't help - although they're certainly very useful to bang against trees, walls and stuff. So I can say I really like it. Tehcnically good and with nice graphics, anyway. I absolutely prefer the original.
[no more than] 3,5/5
by John Gibson, Karen Davies
Galivan is the conversion of a multi-directional Japanese coin op, fast and looking like a manga and with continuous music and sounds. Once loaded the Speccy version, you're welcomed by a grumbling tune that somebody on YT described in this way: "The title music sounds like it's trying to poop, but having a rough time of it!"?. The game begins and you find yourself in something much more weird and psychedelic than the arcade it is based on. And much more shaking and flickering, scrolling-wise. When you descend a slope or stairs it looks like an earthquake is going on. The sound is a costant droning trying to hypnotize you. Small waves of alien spacecrafts swirl around you stupidly. Grapes of multi-coloured spheres wait on a cyan background. You punch some bad humanoid until his head jumps to the ground turning red. You wander and wander through different sections, finding routes that lead you deeper and deeper, without being able to die. Everyone smiles as you past by the flowers that grow so incredibly high. Eventually, you find the end of the level monster, that owns a couple of heads and arms more than the law should allow. The other levels are pretty much th e same, while the monster is always identical. It's playable and strange, it's got its own atmosphere and pace compared to the original coin-op [judging by the video I saw], but it's even repetitive, not easily controllable and not so terribly challenging.
3,25/5
by Taskset Ltd
You must build your own house, rock by rock, and conquer Wilma's heart. Played repeatedly like a demented
for almost an hour straight, and didn't squeeze much enjoyment out of it - I just wanted my house built. It's not that bad, though. Especially if you discover, and I didn't, how to diagonally visit new locations, like the drive in, the bowling, and if you find your stony car.
3/5
Cagara, 22 Sep 2016 (Rating: 1)
by Ste L. Cork, Sam Garforth, ROB
The word "Cagara" sounds very similar to an italian verb which vulgarly designates the act of defecating.
Which makes it a really suitable title for this game.
1,5/5
The game that confuses being a representation of horror witih being a horror.
1/5
This stuff was a commercial game in 1986? You have to see it to believe it... Even at 1.99£ it was still a theft.
1/5
by Dave Watson, Richard Wright
Graphics and gameplay coming right out of 1983, this game would have been a masterpiece if released in 1981.
Move through a maze collecting 46 keys and avoiding the Fixed Pattern Squads. It's not completely unplayable
and the look ins between cute and anonymous, anyway rather basic. A couple of effective sound effects that
seem something already heard lots of times.
2/5
by Antony R. Lill, Gary Knight, F. David Thorpe
Never gave a damn to Knight Rider nor Street Hawk, which seemed to keep my best friend glued to the tv. Anyway, if in Italy Knight Rider was known as Supercar, this game should be renamed Superbore.
It's composed by two sections, the first being a mix between driving and yawning, the second a top view, single screen sleepwalk from a side to the other of a building packed with bad people, like Oswald, or the guy who wanted to impress Jodie Foster, or most probably Hillary Clinton. You're gonna need several cups of coffee to stay awake. But there is a good rendition of the Knight Rider theme, and a okaysh loading screen, with an extremely tanned David Hasselhoff - maybe he was preparing for Baywatch. And how I would have preferred a Baywatch game.
1/5
by Canvas (Roy Gibson, Simon Butler, Steve Cain, Martin Calvert)
Horribly blocky sprites, non existant sound, almost empty background, and a whole movie reduced
to a solo beat'em up that could be whatever sword fight from anything. The fight itself is hard and boring,
you don't even clearly understand what you're doing. It's a game that makes you want to cut off your head,
especially if you spent money on it. Roger Taylor in original soundtrack recorded by the Queen for the movie sang a tune titled "Don't Lose Your Head", and I think he played this game too and he was trying to resist to do hara-kiri. Anyway, never thought much of the movie too, even as a kid. Hey, the loading screen is very well done and drawn. Surely worth 7.95 £!
1/5
by Canvas (James Cornelius Bowman, Dawn Drake, Simon Butler)
I was eager to play this game, when I was a kid, because of a sort of review of the Amstrad version that I read somewhere, listing in a detailed way all its fantastic features, including the ability of shooting from the window of the car, while moving, choosing the direction too, or parking near almost any building and enter, and maybe find some big fat drug trafficker and engaging in a shoot out, and arrest him with the drug. Exciting! I tried so hard to appreciate Miami Vice, at the time, struggling to find the game described in that review, only to crash and crash and crash again against other vehicles and building, and whatever. It was, and still is, extremely difficult just to drive around, let alone doing all the rest. And anyway, when I finally managed to enter some building, it was completely void, they were ALWAYS empty, without anyone around, the major presence was that of an EXTREME COLOUR CLASH, which was not the kind of clash I had in mind. The driving around with view from above could have been nice - now I see that the gameplay is almost identical to Give My Regards To Broad Street, that I really played only last year. So, I give it 2/5 because of the game I thought it was more thant for what it is, or it would be a 1,5/5... Let's hope the Amstrad version is really better... Never watched the tv serial. It was something more for grown-up's, it seemed to me. I liked the A-Team.
by Chris Hinsley, Nick Jones
This is a lesser known Chris "Wally Week" Hinsley creation, which seems rather forgotten: personally I prefer it over the Pijamarama series. It's a sort of a platformer in which you control a spring, more precisely something that looks like a slinky - one of those things very good at descending stairs on their own. This already was a breath of fresh air in 1986, when the world seemed to be completely invaded by balls, just take a look at some of the titles released that year: Bounder, Revolution, Marble Madness, Bobby Bearing, Spindizzy and Lord knows how many others. So, we have an original main character that moves in a very funny way, and in a way that determines a slightly different gameplay - and each of his steps is accompanied by a great sound effect, one that I really like. Anyway, it's a pretty hard game, and timing is all - you're going to sweat your way out of every single room. Luckily you're going to find bullets on the very first screen, which will be quite handy, although the nasties reappear after a while, and other elliptical coloured objects which will temporarily allow you to jump higher or move faster. Graphics are really nice, with the usual unashamed colour clash that we see in the Wally Week games too, but this time less evident because the background is mostly black. Cute beeping tune, and nice loading screen too. We played Frost Byte about ten years ago here in the WoS forum when there was a thing called ZX Games Club, and I like it so much that I snapshotted it until the end. Pretty good, in my opinion.
4/5
by Raffaele Cecco
This was the second Raffaele Cecco's game to be published, after Equinox, and about which the programmer himself said: "I agreed to do it for Mikro-Gen after I stopped being employed full-time with them. It really was not too good, I did it especially for the money, if I'm honest. It was based on a game I saw in an arcade." - but I say that it can be "not that good", but it's not even that bad. It's a sort of point and shoot game like Cabal, the arcade game that Ocean will convert for the Spectrum in 1989, only in an urban environment, and with lots of birds. There's a constant hail of bullets and explosive bullets from figures peeping briefly from the windows and from behind secluded spots, and it's really difficult to manage to hit them and to avoid their shooting at the same time - you must stay constantly concentrated, and have an eye for every moving pixel in the screen. Luckily it's not completely impossible and there's quite a bit of enjoyment obtainable from the game. The presentation is very good, as you would expect from Cecco, with a very nice rendition of the classic ragtime "The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin, famous for having been used in The Sting movie, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, in the seventies. So, it's ok, just don't expect variety or depth, or a long-lasting appeal.
3,5/5
Weird 3d isometric stuff that I've never really understood.
3/5
Weird 3d isometric stuff that I've never really understood.
3/5
This is the 128k version of Sweevo's World, with about 50 screens added, but retaining the [quite good] 48k music.
by Icon Design
Simple top-view maze/shoot'em up in which you have to sweep away all the robots occupying the various levels of a spaceship. It's ok, but not so much ok, characterized by slow movements and narrow spaces that will likely you have trapped and shot by unavoidable bullets.
It's pretty hard. It was a full price game, but commercially it only made sense as a budget release.
3/5
by Choice Software Ltd
Spent a lot of time playing this at the time, but compared to the coeval Leader Board it completely disappears, or it just appears clumsy.
2,75/5
by Icon Design Ltd (Roger Womack)
I actually enjoy playing this sometimes, it's maybe the only football game in which you only control the goalkeeper
and nobody else, and it's satisfyting when you manage to neutralize a shot - and, above all, it displays the most hilariously absurd trajectories that a ball ever performed in a computer game or anywhere else.
2,5/5
by Choice Software Ltd
Playable, but very easy and not at all exciting tennis game. You can play doubles with a friend against the computer.
2,75/5
by Keith A. Purkiss, Dawn Drake, Simon Butler
It's a collection of mini-games in the context of a demented Games Without Frontiers kind of competition, with various European countries as partecipants. Generally panned, it's in fact extremely silly and flimsy, with challenges as Flying Fans, in which you have to catch with a tray pies that are literally catapulted from behind a wall, Bronto Bash, in which you have to bash brontosaurus peeping their head out of lined holes, another one in which you have to zipline from a transatlantic jumping inside a rubber ring, and other nonsense. Only, I think they're sufficiently fun. The only game I don't really like it's the Obstacle Race. So, if you're up to some really stupid entertainment, this one may be for you.
3/5
by Simon Ffinch
"Wouldn't it be cool if Dun Darach was just a beat'em up with women fighting other slightly dressed women using just cudgels? That would be awesome, man!". There are four fighting moves, so you can resist for a couple of minutes before resetting.
1,75/5
by Jose Carlos Arboiro Pinel
In the dictionary, near the term "impossibile", you can find a picture of Ramon Rodriguez. Nice graphics and music but RR is a ludicrously hard platformer.
2/5
Appendix, my detailed account of my attempt at playing Ramon Rodriguez:
I was able to enter two more rooms to the left of the start. I sweated a lot in the first screen to the left, it seemed an impossible task to go past the "keyboard snake", and I couldn't believe my eyes when I actually managed to jump it, so I happily ran to the next screen, when I was IMMEDIATELY pierced to death by a series of descending spears. I looked like the guy that tries escorts Indiana Jones inside the temple at the start or Riders Of The Lost Ark, and then tries to run away with the idol, and gets drilled by multiple arrows and stuff.
Not much more luck I had going the opposite route: to the right of the start screen the floor started to crumble and I fell in the location beneath where I was burned alive by the torches before I even touched the floor. The torches are placed so near to each other that there is NO WAY that our Rodriguez can fall between two of them, in spite of the fact that you can control the direction of your falling.
It's not just that the main character smoked something, probably the programmer did too and the result is a hallucination itself.
by Clive Brooker, Ray Owen
It's a pretty weird game, more weird than pretty, if you ask me. It's very neatly done, but I don't find it addictive at all. It's a sort of maze game, or, as Sinclair User described it, a "pick up and doge game", in fact, hovering all around, you have to take some effigies to devotional chambers to please some gods, which will reward you with powers that will allow you to dig through yellow slabs and cyan bricks looking for three crystals, which will enable you to go home, eat your supper and go to sleep. The problem is that the mazes are full of hard-to-avoid robot-looking demons which can steal the effigy you're carrying, forcing you to go back, pick it up again, and go through the same corridors again. Not an electryfing gameplay, from my point of view.
3/5
by Martin Sherlock
Decent and very quiet arcade/adventure in the mould of Pijamarama, including its glorious colour clash. Lots of objects.
3/5
Tarzan, 27 Sep 2016 (Rating: 3)
by Creative Reality (Jason Austin, Dave Dew, Rob Hubbard)
In this arcade/adventure/maze game you control a slightly leaning Tarzan, through an all yellow labyrinthine jungle - where you never seem to change location, which is not very good for orientation. Moreover, the monochromatic persistency of the same colour doesn't help to improve the tendential dullness of the game, although the view of the scene is quite original and cinematographic, from behind some vegetation framing the playing area. Your character is agile and fast, but finds a disagreeable hitch in the relatively black interlude featured between a location and another. In the confusing maze of the jungle you're going to meet some not so friendly guests, like wild felines jumping on you, and, even worse, some natives, able to drain your energy like thirsty vampires - a well delivered punch [more than one, to tell the truth] might come in handy in this case, or maybe it would smarter to jump over them [almost over]. Various items can help your quest, personally I only found a torch and a rope [to swing over long pits], but what's your quest? I forgot: you must find seven gemstones which will enable you to save Jane. I only found one, and I must say that, although overall the game is not bad, I didn't feel very compelled to find the other six. Sorry Jane.
2,75/5
by Paul Ranson, Peter J. Ranson, Ray Owen
A rare volleyball game, a sport not much practiced on Spectrum's screens, and not a very good one.
The teams are made of two players each, which is more like beach volley, and controlling them is
too arduous to really be fun. You have the usual directional keys and fire, plus two other keys to select
the player you want to move - and they don't even respond very readily. To hit the ball while you are receiving, you must place yourself in the right spot, where a sort of crosshair signals the ball destination, keep fire pressed and move the crosshair where you want to send it. It's a chore. I got bored before really being able to do something.
2/5
by Giga Games (Ian Morrison, Alan Laird, F. David Thorpe)
It's a nice and playable driving game, one of the best released for the Spectrum up to 1986, but from the following year it's been vastly surpassed by Enduro Racer, WEC Le Mans, Power Drift, Chase HQ etc.
One of its limits it's that there are no opponents, just obstacles and rough routes. Or I didnt' see them, anyway.
3,5/5
by Sentient Software Ltd (John Mullins, Clive Paul), Sheik.
A diligent official conversion[*] of the famous coin-op, although Mario's sprites could have been done better, and so the girl, which is a bunch of yellow matchsticks tied together. Nice sound in the 128k version. Anyway, I never thought of Donkey Kong as an irresistible concept or gameplay.
3,25/5
by Software Conversions
You're a wizard defending your own castle from dragons that look like dinosaurs. You shoot at them from the top of the walls, moving a crosshair a pressing fire. If they manage to enter the castle, they'll kidnap your favourite witch, although the instructions say it's a simple apprentice: now you can go out, and there's a change of perspective and gameplay, you must retrieve your friend or whoever he/she is, avoiding the dragonsaurus or shooting at them, and theorically you can even pick up some gold. Going to the top of one of the towers should replenish your energy. Nice small graphics, nice beeper tune, and sufficiently playable:it's a bit ruined by the difficulty and imprecision in controlling your character. Anyway, It wasn't bad for 2.99£, and overall it's still ok.
3/5
Zub, 29 Sep 2016 (Rating: 3)
by Binary Design Ltd (John Pickford, Ste Pickford, David Whittaker)
It's a slightly different platformer, but with simple gameplay nonetheless, it's got a sophisticated look,
and appealing graphics. You must move the platforms horizontally with your character, trying to reach the exit, un in the sky, while the screen scrolls vertically. At the same time you must shoot at the flying creatures disturbing you and trying to make you fall, but you can't destroy them, just push them away for some seconds. It's appreaciable, especially, at the time, as a budget [2.99£].
3,5/5
by Barry Jones
With its fascinating 1984's budget release look, trite petulant sound effects, debatable gameplay and playability and oh so slow game over sequence, Clive In Exile will conquer you! Miss it at your own risk of safety and relief! Successful just as the C5 you drive through the game.
1,25/5
by James Software
Well, I don't understand how Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 can have an average of only 4.05/10 [from 23 votes] on WoS while at the same time Kung-Fu Master has 5.90/10 [from 48 votes], the earlier is much more playable, funny and varied than the crappier latter. Truth is I might be influenced by my liking of YAKF2 since childhood, that ingenious and impressionable period, but the same can probably be said of the Kung-Fu Master voters. In fact, I've just tried again Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 and still I find it overall decent and playable, with funny opponents, for example the first being a sort of chinese using his wavy ponytail as a whip. It's a bit clumsy and not very responsive, but I won't give it less than
3/5
by Design Design Software
Based on a sci fi comic book I know nothing about, Rogue Trooper was criticized for being too easy. Personally I don't care much about it, because I find it's a pleasant kind of easyness. You must find 8 tapes littered around the playing area and then get into a shuttle, or something like that. You can see the area in your immediate vicinity thanks to a map on the higher left of the screen, while you walk in a 3d isometric space, but one different from the usual Knightloresque type, it's a flip screen thing with a certain continuity, although with no scrolling, where you can be followed by the enemies and the locations don't seem isolated among them. The graphics style is completely different too, and it's pretty cool, with nice design and animation. You have the company of your old buddies, shouting nonsense at the top of the screen [you're carrying their "bio-chipped personalities" with you, I'm told], and you will ecounter shooting blokes that seem to have come out of Star Wars, radioactive areas, ammos, useless plucked chickens left on the ground [..., medical kits and whatever. It's extremely playable, and hence, as stated, very easy, but pretty good nonetheless, so...
3,75/5
It features one of the worst loading screens of the year, if not of all time.
by Bernie Duggs [that's what the game says] / Doug Burns, Paul Salmon [that's what WoS says]
It's a future sport kind of game, with two teams trying to score more points than other flinging a ball in a hole moving up and down along a suspended pole, while the players float around it. A sort of Space Handball. In fact you can even choose the components of your team, and they definitely look like aliens. Each player has his own skills, but to say the truth I didn't notice any difference while playing. The graphics and animation are neat, as you would expect from Odin, but there's not much to see. The game is playable, but there's not much to be played, and even less team play - which would have made it a bit more interesting. So, not much going on, and it costed 9.99 freaking pounds. It should have been a 1.99£ budget release at most. Great two channel tune, anyway. Listen to those percussions.
2,5/5
by Beechnut (Chris Fayers)
Another unbelievable piece of junk - I mean, software. Or did I mean, junkware? First of all, don't select the cursor keys, because you'll have the right at the left of the left or vice versa, and it will add to the sheer chaos that the game already is. But even if you choose the normal keyboard option, the keys layout won't be of much help, because the horizontal movement keys are arranged vertically. But, what about the game? Well, it's supposed to be a vector graphics cockpit shoot'em up, but you can't see much because the playing area is almost constantly flashing, and you don't even understand if your keys are working nor where exactly you're shooting because there's no cross hair, and so you face waves of alien spacecrafts without knowing if you're destroying them by fire or by constantly crashing against them, which is the most probable cause, because soon your spaceship will show damage, a letter will appear in an icon, and if you're fast enough to push the relative key, you'll make it to the repair sequence, in which an intact circuit is shown for three seconds, and then you have fifty seconds to mend the broken one, making it appear as you saw it in those first three seconds. Lots of strange drugs at the Martech Games headquarters around this time, I can't see other plausible explanations.
1,5/5
It should have been clear by the loading screen what I was going into.
by Barry Jones
Barry Jones is the Ed Wood of Spectrum games programming, enthusiastically creative and prolific
as much as inescapably amateurish and disastrous, or this is how I imagine he was - which makes it
a very likeable character, but which doesn't make his games much more playable...
1,25/5
by Gary Michael Ritchie, Graham Nunn
This indoor soccer game is so unbelievably well equipped in the crapness department that it's almost hilarious
to play, and it must be especially in two players mode with a friend, although he or she won't probably be your friend much longer if you subject him or her to playing this. By the way, the computer just scored a goal shooting to the side of my goal post. Moreover, the players have a strange illness that makes them run diagonally only. Nicely sampled "goal!", nonetheless.
5/5
by Essential Consultants Ltd
This should be a no brainer in terms of evalution or, better, of tearing to shreds, having only 3.17 of average score from 12 voters, in WoS, but somehow, being doomdebased, I find appeal in the small weird sprites of this little sci fi maze game with unhealthily garish backgrounds, in spite of it looking like the dangerous fruit of a radioactive programmer, who gifted it with a damaged gameplay.
3/5
by Barry Jones
There's a sort of aircraft or spacecraft trapped in a cage, inside of which it moves bouncing against the walls,
and you must help it find the exit, by simply moving youself, whatever you are, in the trajectory of the flying vehicle,
causing it to change direction. You can only move horizontally along the same stripe of screen.
I've lost interest very quickly.
1,75/5
by David Edgar
A decent fantasy text only adventure, with simple descriptions and puzzles, clear font and colours and a dragon to be defeated. It's unpretentious but playable.
3/5
by Shaun Hollingworth, Peter M. Harrap, Chris Kerry, Greg A. Holmes, Steve Kerry, Ben Daglish, Colin Dooley
It's a brilliant variation on the Gauntlet concept, on the beat'em up side, with lots of chests, shurikens, and ugly enemies distributed over six floors, You have to be very careful how you use your keys, because it's very easy to get stuck. It mixes a fast and irreproachable scrolling with flip screens, graphics are well drawn, sound effects and tune are very nice and atmospheric, completing the excellent playability.
4,25/5
by Paul Hodgson, Andy Walker, Michael Davies, Nicole Baikaloff
I really wanted to like this game, and feed the delusion of having a laser game running on my Spectrum - and the graphics are quite good - but it's really too hard. You're welcomed by a series of little clouds violently blowing on you while you're desperately clinging to a floating platform, and being the space on rather narrow, your reactions must be very, very fast, in order for you to run against the wind in time to not be pushed off of it. I remember I managed to finish the level a couple of times when I was a kid, after dozens of attempts, because I wanted to reach the levels with the big sprites and wide backgrounds - and, of course, once I arrived there, I lost my couple of lives left in a very brief time: in fact, in the big sprites levels you must discover the preordained moves to be performed in the right sequence in order to progress to the next stage, and this process implies that it's high probable that you're going to die trying to learn each new correct move - which is very little substantial playing. Anyway, it doesn't matter: I'm not even able to pass that windy first level anymore.
2,5/5
by Syrox (Dominic Wood)
I've insisted a bit with this one, although it didn't seem anything special to me, because all the reviews of the time say it's a good / good enough game, none of them considers it insufficient, and one of the reviewers even says that Mantronix is a good surrogate waiting for Ultimate to release some good game again, because the most recent ones weren't. The Ultimate reference is not accidental: Mantronix is clearly inspired by them - it's a 3d isometric affair with a gameplay reminiscent of Gunfright and Nightshade, you must find four alien bandits and kill them, while avoiding other nasties and picking up various stuff. Now, I understand that from a certain point on Ultimate games were disappointing, but that was also due to the very high standard people expected from them - in fact, I think that in perspective both Gunfright and Nightshade are overall more enjoyable games than Mantronix, besides being technically and aesthetically totally out of reach for this Probe's release. The environment is very samey, a series of squares, some working as conveyor belt, with a decorative object in the middle, which doesn't tempt you to explore further and map the game [in fact, I don't see any map listed in the archive], aliens that follow you through the squares, each with his peculiar pattern and method to cheat you, sometimes almost unavoidable or really shootable, and a flip-screen technique that may confuse a bit. Not very interesting, not addictive, very derivative.
2,5/5
by Michael I. Barnard, Steven Bough, ROB
One of those games in which you must rescue people with your chopper, this time in side view scrolling, wit cannons shooting at you from the ground, and a nice starfield.
Mostly, I've bombed the people I should have saved or or I've directly crashed against them.
I don't think they'll renew my contract.
2,25/5
Batman, 10 Oct 2016 (Rating: 4)
by Jon Ritman, Bernie Drummond, Mark Serlin, F. David Thorpe
The feeling is that Ocean policy was to stick a tie-in licence on anything produced for them, because this cute Batman doesn't seem to have anything to do with any known Batman, be it the comic book one, the tv serial one or whatever. It's just that they had to sell a new game. Anyway, whoever's idea was to make it a Batman game [could have been Ritman himself as fars as I know], as we know it is an excellent 3d isometric game, renewing the Ultimate tradition with something smoother and slicker, and, in fact, cutier.
4/5
by Jeffery Bond
Looks like a neat 3d isometric arcade/adventure. I just don't know what to do with the items.
3/5
by Tim Stamper, Chris Stamper
Filmation technical prowess and lot of running around, but overall slim gameplay.
3,5/5
by Canvas (Roy Gibson, Chris Pink, Ian Weatherburn, Simon Butler)
I think it's fab.
4,75/5
by Emilio Pablo Salgueiro Torrado, Santiago Morga B., Snatcho
Typical AbuSimbelProfanation-like hard Spanish platformer, rather mistreated by the English magazines, fed up with old style platform games, but which it's pretty decent, and it costed little too.
3,25/5
by William Tang, Andrew Pierson, Frank Oldham
You control Asterix, constantly followed everywhere by his outsized friend Obelix, and you must retrieve the five pieces of the magic cauldron littered among forests, villages and roman camps. You're going to need mapping, and fighting romans and even wild boars, of which Obelix is particularly avid. The background graphics are simply beautiful, in a full-bright cartoonish way, although they took a while to drawn, almost like in homemade adventure game. The game is playable enough, but you can get stuck between the scenery and Obelix, without being able to wiggle out of them [press R to abort the game]. No sound. Overall, I don't think it's bad.
3/5
by Software Creations (Steven Tatlock, John P. Tatlock, Tim Follin)
A budget game renowned for its music, constituted by multi-load mini-games that seem rather
simplistic to me.
2,5/5
Movie, 19 Oct 2016 (Rating: 5)
by Dusko Dimitrijevic, Dragoljub Andjelkovic, F. David Thorpe
In Imagine's Movie you control a Philip Marlowesque detective through a series of classic split screens, using not only directional controls but also a series of icons, and with the possibility of talking through comic strip balloons, trying to interact with other talking characters - featuring twin blondes with opposite intentions, which you'll have to tell to solve your case. In truth, the game being nonetheless fascinating and absorbing, the talking feature is very limited, being useful only in three or four occasions - but it was pretty fun pretending, or trying to, to talk with other sprites. Other actions you can perform are punching, shooting, once found revolver and bullets, and flinging objects across the room, mostly useful to throw bombs against gangsters. The game becomes surreal with sitting dogs jumping around, lethal balls rolling through the locations and moving armours.
4,75/5
by Keith Burkhill, Nigel Alderton
Another entertaining coin op conversion from Elite.
3,75/5
by Robert Figgins, Trevor Figgins
I've always thought that it looks fantastic [although all samey], but the gameplay is a bit lukewarm.
Also, it's boring having to push back the other balls. A bit of a chore. My feeling is that it's been a little overrated.
3,5/5
by Paul Shirley, Phil Churchyard
It's a great piece of software, a challenging 3d isometric specimen that requires quickness, wit, precision and mapping. It's frustrating and addictive, and the strange abstract world you're in is fascinating and cold, populated by objects only, you included, with your thrice identity of ball/gyroscope/andIdon'trememberwhatelse. Go past certain borders and you'll fall in the void, with a smooth and great animation, just like in Vortex's Revolution. This latter game, Spindizzy itself, Bobby Bearing, Marble Madness, Gyroscope seem all linked to each other somehow. A remarkable creation.
4,25/5
by Chris Stangroom, Dan Malone, Richard Joseph
It always reminded of me of Thanatos somehow: with its remarkable graphics, but slightly slow gameplay -
it's more laborious than fun trying to find your vertical way through the foliage, falling down, having to climb up again, finding the little components of the armour that allow it to move, fly, shoot etc., although it's is quite satisfactory when you finally are able to do those things. Then it slows down again, because the upper environment is very busy and requires great precision, and the radioactivity looms over. Still, it's pretty good stuff.
3,75/5
by Damir Muraja, Robert Zeljko, Branko Calovic
Absolutely the best in its genre. It fears no competition.
3/5
Xarq, 19 Oct 2016 (Rating: 2)
by The RamJam Corporation (Tony Barber, Simon Dunstan, Nick Cooke)
It's Ariolasoft's Panzadrome sequel and it show, the difference is that in Panzadrome you were a little tank on an island, while in Xarq you're a water vehicle trying to destroy or penetrate the defense of an island. Also, the're a software house change, being released through Electric Dreams, and as most of Electric Dreams games of 1986 [except for Spindizzy] Xarq doesn't succeed. It's too hard, quite a disappointment for a Panzadrome fan as this reviewer.
2,5/5
by Stewart Green
A very simple and basic Space Invaders/Galaxians/whatever clone, sufficiently playable to keep you entertained for some minutes sometimes.
3/5
by Snatcho, Ignacio Bergareche
I'm against it, sorry.
1/5
by Tom Prosser
An okaysh, colourful, and easily boring clone of Starquake released by the same software house.
Endless wandering.
3/5
by Mr. Chip Software (Shaun Hollingworth, Peter M. Harrap, Chris Kerry, Steve Kerry, Terry Lloyd)
Control a soccer ball through a space track suspended among the stars, view from behind. The track is mainly formed by rectangles, which may have additional features, like jumping, slowing, accelerating, so you must choose your route carefully, even considering that there are are lots of missing rectangles, and sometimes the path is totally broken.
It's fun.
3,5/5
by David Perry, Nick Jones, Neil Strudwick
A vertical shoot'em up with neat graphics, but rather laborious to play.
3/5
by Gargoyle Games (Greg Follis, Roy Carter)
Should have been an astounding cartoonish game, but it turned out a very simple arcade game,
a frantic platformer with lots of jumping and stairs. Anyway, its spasmodic action can become addictive.
3,75/5
by Paul Hibbard, Simon Jay, David Lowe, Timedata Ltd
One of the most mysterious, fascinating and swear inducing 3d isometric game.
It's not your usual arcade/adventure it's more a platform/puzzle. And it's terribly hard.
3,5/5
by Chris Hinsley
A space cockpit game based on a cartoon that I used to watch, but, in spite of the good reviews, seems
rather crappy to me.
2/5
It's one of those game whose ultimate ancestor is Pong, in this case mixed with Asteroids, and seen through the lenses of a space sport concept. It's brilliantly done, but I can't see a long lasting interest, at least, if you don't have some other human to play it with.
3,25/5
Roboto, 20 Oct 2016 (Rating: 3)
by Eugene B. Smith
Sort of little sci fi maze/dodge/shoot game with cute lilliputian graphics, but rather hard.
3/5
by Sean Pearce
I'm not sure about this baseball game, it sure has a great presentation and even a management part,
but in thirty years I've never, NEVER been able to hit a ball. Is it me or the game?
3/5
by Software Foundation (A.K. Fox)
This arcade/adventure was universally panned, I think, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, in spite of being
a bit rough compared to 1986's standars. Anyway, it has a nice slightly surreal and cartoonish atmosphere, it lets you enter the game with a couple of simple puzzles, and, not knowing Dr Who, at the time I thought that traveling by wardrobe was quaintly interesting. It's ok.
3,75/5
by Costa Panayi (Vortex Software)
It's ball-themed puzzle game by Costa Panayi, in the visual and audio style of Highway Encounter, only placed on a series of square platform floating in the void. It's not easy as previous Panayi games - the already mentioned Highway Encounter and Cyclone - it's very hard, at least for me, and, in fact, I'm not able to to much - the truth is I mainly like it for the style, more than for its playability.
3,75/5
by Ivan Horn, Andrew P. Deakin, M.B.D.
Hey, that's a fine arcade/adventure, very playable and entertaining.
The best and more creative work by the Horn-Deakin team was done before their joining Ocean, it seems, and it was a budget game.
4/5
by Binary Design Ltd (John Pickford, Paul Ranson, Ste Pickford, Pete Harrison, David Whittaker)
I played this nice game a lot back at the time, but I never accomplished much, aside being drained of all my energy by the defense posts protecting the military base or whatever it is, at the centre of the small island. I did many tours of the island, anyway. It's an original concept, particularly the transformation of your motorbike in a glider when you descend a sufficiently high slope, which should enable you to bomb the base. Of course, I was never able to destroy anything, except myself.
3,5/5
by Paul Hargraves
I can't see any substantial difference with Tantalus.
It's a slight variation on it by the same author and it's got the same merits and flaws.
3/5
by Graham Stafford (Design Design Software)
This is a cool 3d isometric arcade/adventure with an eerie atmosphere and long fangs
waiting in the darkness, plus one of the most agonizing in-game music ever [it can be turned off]. It's pretty good. Very nice and detailed graphics, explorative gameplay, fleets of bats sucking your blood like no other bats before or since, a never ending, anguishing descent through a spiral staircase into the catacombs of the castle [that's if you find a light and the passage]. Played it again tonight, I had forgotten how good it was. And it's got three sections. Creepy.
4,25/5
by Rod Bowkett
A great and colourful platform/maze game full of funny jingles and sound effects that accompany a delirious gameplay filled with demented and cute nasties [like a hamster or mouse in a ball] almost impossible to avoid, but luckily lots of snacks are littered around to replenish your energy, from ice cream to cherries, from tea to beer. Your aim is to find a vinyl, play it on the local juke box, then find an engine and some fuel, go back to your dirigible and fly to the next island, which sounds simpler than it is, of course. Dr Blitzen from the first chapter is still around and trying to hypnotize you all the time, which means that you lose the control of the hero, which will walk like a zombie for some seconds, risking to fall in the waters that could be in the proximity. Find some goggles and they'll protect you from dr Blitzen mesmerizing rays. By the way, at the time I thought dr Blitzen was a sadistic girl with curly blonde hair. And there other items as well, a not better identified thing that allows you to find useful shortcuts, for example, and other stuff whose use still I don't understand. I suppose I'll have to read the instructions sooner or later. It's fun, playable, watchable, listenable, far better than the first episode, and each island is prettily characterized.
4,6/5
by Graham Stafford, David Fish
This is a relatively obscure and neglected 3d isometric game, with objects to be used to reach out of reach exits, and other items to collected in order to finish the game, à la Knight Lore and Batman. The plot is a complex sci fi saga, with intergalactic wars and such but it all goes down to you as last hope, the only human remained in a very sensitive base where the pieces of the weapon to defeat the aliens are, and they must not fall into the wrong green hands. Enemy's robots have entered the base and they are swarming everywhere. Of course you must find all the pieces and teleport them somewhere. It's the game Graham Stafford programmed before the more known Nosferatu the Vampyre, and though it's not at the same level, it's still very good and greaty playable. By the way the inlay is misleading, there are no lasers, shootings or fights.
4/5
by Xcel (Stuart P. Middleton, Ray Tredoux, Chris Harvey, Dave Stevenson, Lee Stevenson)
It's a neat little arcade/adventure in 2d, with lots of objects to pick up and use, three levels and some nice touches,
for example, in the first level you must find a way to start your small spacecraft and reach space base which is level 2,
and you're done, you actually see yourself flying to your next destination. It's well done, and a real bargain, being a budget, but personally it didn't grab me. Maybe because I'm so inept that I wasn't able to solve a single puzzle on my own.
3,25/5
by Ian Wright
King's Keep it's a 2d arcade adventure with strong platform elements, menus à la Knight Tyme, and messages appearing in a black space at the bottom of the screen, a bit like in a text adventure. Graphics are nice but unimpressive, playability is very good, and there are lots of items and characters to interact with. At 1.99£ it was a sheer bargain from Firebird.
3,5/5
by Ian Wright, Philip Greenwood [1], Simon Clarke
A headache inducing beat'em up whose characterizing feature is that the screen upside down from time to time turn, almost completely disorienting you. Anyway, it's a scarcely playable poor man's Shao-Lin's Road. Pity on the man who plays it, in fact.
2/5
by Ionis Software International, D&K Softwaredevelopments (Roger Danison, Jerry Astley)
Cartoonish but infuriating platformer.
2,75/5
by Mark Goodall, Keith Prosser
I have always been scarcely attracted by this game, once started playing, because it's rather difficult to get into, and your die very easily. Insisting a bit, I've found a fascinating game of which I've only scratched the surface until now.
It's a scrolling 3d isometric arcade/adventure in which you control 4 characters, individually or as a group [you can choose a leader, and the other will follow him or she], which are a professor, a delicate damsel, an adventurer and a small dog.
You enter an ancient south american maze to rescue a lost archeologist, while followed by headless zombies, giant scorpions and floating skulls. The use of items and relics will allow you to proceed in the game and open new areas of the maze. Collaboration among the characters is required, a bit as in Strike Force Cobra, I suppose. It's pretty good.
4/5
by Peter Carmpouloni, George Carmpouloni
A game with subjective view and cardinal points, like Lords Of Midnight[*], placed in an environment with trees of not particularly plausible colours, houses, mazes, temples. You broke your time machine and you must find the necessary fuel and the time machine itself to go back. You can search the houses and interact with some characters. It's got bad reviews and ratings, and doesn't seem bad, but not even very exciting. In fact, Explorer by Electric Dreams, release in the same year, implemented a similar approach in a jungle, with more credible graphics. If somebody wants to try it, I've linked the Crash review at the bottom of the post, which gives you the keys for the game and tells you what you're supposed to do and why. There are no instructions in the WoS archive.
2,5/5
[*] "To put it bluntly this game is like a cut down version of Lords of Midnight without all the interesting bits."
[Derek Brewester, Crash review]
http://www.zxspectrumreviews.co.uk/Review.aspx?rid=6005&gid=5875
Your average tomato smashing 3d isometric game.
3/5
Aliens, 08 Nov 2016 (Rating: 4)
by Software Studios (Mevlut Dinc, Mark Eyles), Pennsoft, Soft Machine, Focus Creative Enterprises Ltd
Yeah, it's the game from the second chapter of the Alien franchise, the one directed by James Cameron, and it appears on our monitors in the guise of a subjective view shoot'em up, I think it would be called "survival horror" nowadays, am I wrong? You control the six members of the extermination team sent to kill the aliens infesting a remote base on a blunt planetoids somewhere over the rainbow, AND THEY ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. Which is quite normal in a videogame as only a very low percentage of attempts end with a successful result. But I think you know. Anyway, the game is very tense and immersive, despite being very samey graphically and gameplay wise. So, it's ok.
4/5
by The Shaw Brothers (Graham D. Shaw)
A game that will allow you to perfect your art of dying, because there's not much else you will be able to do.
1,75/5
CORE, 08 Nov 2016 (Rating: 3)
A bit dull but decent 2d arcade adventure.
by Adventuresoft UK Ltd (Stefan F. Ufnowski)
It's a good sci fi adventure, with the usual rebels fighting against your average empire, typical nice symmetrical graphics by the people of Adventuresoft, essential descriptions, and lots to do: the RZX video of the solution lasts more than an hour. The game didn't interest me much, though.
3,5/5
Multi-directionality in space, while swarms of kamikaze spacecrafts crash against you and you can't do anything about because for mysterious reasons you don't seem to be equipped with a spacegun, but you surely have lots of spacebombs and you can drop them on the space platforms hung in the middle of space, which are supposed to be the mothership and boom bang kaboom you can blow it up square by square until you're unto the next level with a different shade of monochromacy. It's smooth! It's fast! And it doesn't go anywhere!
2,5/5
Trap, 01 Dec 2016 (Rating: 2)
The "T" of the title should be replace with a big "C".
2/5
Smashout! ! [Pirate Software]
A simple Breakout clone with a not very fast paddle.
2,5/5
?Metaldrone [Sparklers]
A cutish military droid in a lethal training course, with lots of weapons and creepy enemies. Pick up the disk, the missile, shoot at the exit. Next course.
Jerky animation, and annoying die-and-learn gameplay from the second level.
2,5/5
Heist 2012 [Firebird Software]
2012 is probably the number of Jet Set Willy clones and mods produced in Speccy history, and, alas, this is one of them, with each room having a name, hundreds of platforms, and dozens of lethal silly creatures going back and forth. No flashing objects to pick up though, and you have the "hack" command, but I couldn't hack any of the computers I've found. What the hack? The main sprite is very well animated, while the option screen tune is a terrible attempt at making a funnily strident theme à la Manic Miner, but it's just a earhurting mess. Hateful.
?2/5
Bi-Horizontal Space Shooter placed in a series of monochrome worlds where it's almost impossible telling bullets and aliens
from the background. Watch your back: some of the nasties look like suppositories. Collect coins
left by the destroyed aliens in order to gain power up's. Bonus interlude among the levels.
2,5/5
128k version has improved sound.
For robopsychiatric reasons you're a nihilistic droid and you have decided to kill every other droid in your a-maze-ing spaceship with view from above, so first things first, you look for a weapon, which you can swap for a more powerful one later, and you start your droidocidal spree, in this greysh metal environment, trying to save your energy until a replenishing station [invented name] comes to fruition and using teleports and other stuff to access all the corners of the spaceship. Looks a bit like Commodore 64's Paradroid. At first glance it seems decently made but irremediably boring and slow- overall it's not that bad. For a couple of minutes.
3/5
The main sprite is cute, it resembles the star of Abu Simbel Profanation, and in fact it's the typically impossible platform game, a further development in the genre: meaning that this time it's terribly hard even only succeeding in jumping laterally. I can imagine the promotional material for this game. Starbyte - the challenge: will you be able to jump sideways? ?An eloquent experiment in crapness.
1,5/5
It starts with a cool loading screen and an ace tune and ends up with a headache.
It's a slow to midtempo vertical space shoot'em up, with yellow sprites on yellow background and yellow bullets to complete the colourful menu. It's got the bad habit of killing you again when you are just reappeared after the last death, because the game forgets that there are still ricocheting bullets flying around, or just some very near nasty ready to destroy you immediately once more. Also, not seldom it becomes impossible to avoid the bullets. Moreover, your laser is slow, and you can shoot again only after a brief but tragic moment. That said, it's not horrible, it's got its share of playability, graphics are well drawn, and it surely can help you in your quest for blindness.
3/5
The universe needs you again, because the aliens are at it again, whatever it is, and so you must roam among and along all these black and white corridors and place a bomb at the center of this extra-terrestrial structure, shooting at those nasty creatures, which look just like robots, and shoot back, but you'll never be able to succeed in your task, because you'll get bored much sooner, or just your wrist's going to start to ache for all the fire key pushing, or you'll lose all your lives, or you'll lose all your patience. The tune in the option screen is ok.
2,5/5
genre: maze/shooter.
graphics: black & white and clumsy.
sound: nice tune.
playability: ok.
longevity: short.
original price: full.
The main character runs or, better, limps through the scrolling environment as he's desperately looking for a bathroom or ready to puke anywhere, while controls are rather unresponsive, making "Moderately Rapid Fire" a more suitable title for the game. Baddie come out from both direction, and it's almost pleasant shooting them down, but it drags on for too long before something changes. Then faster and thicker small exploding spheres fly towards you at different heights, and here's where you really need the famous Rapid Fire, but, as said, controls aren't smooth enough to make it a satisfying enough experience. Another couple of things: the more you shoot, the more your gun, as pictured in the panel at the bottom of the screen, becomes red, and if you exaggerate you'll probably have to let it cool down. And when an enemy reaches you, it creepily looks like he's draining all your blood by posing a hand on your neck, as, in the panel, the red inside a container leaks out - moreover, I wasn't able to free myself from that hold and I died.
We're definitely in Crap Territory.
1,5/5
Rubicon [Bug Byte Software]
Short story shorter: your sprite is so big that can't avoid the passing objects. Thud, thud, thud. Sometimes you decide to slide down a tube or ascend a sort of elevator. Then thud, thud, thud.
1,5/5
Antares [Dro Soft]
It's a sort of Uridium-inspired horizontal shoot'em up, but the gameplay is in Spanish. The typical 1987's blindness syndrome affects this game too.
2/5
Dawnssley [Top Ten Software]
It's an abysmal attempt to merge Atic Atac and Gauntlet, and in fact one of the main sprites looks like Sabreman after bein stamped over by, let's say, the Stamper brothers.
The rest is ugly as a kid's drawings "enhanced" with a paralytic animation. Two players mode for those who like to suffer with a friend.
1,5/5
Holiday In Sumaria [Pirate Software]
Another "do the Ultimate" game, with decent graphics and animation, which slows terribly when other characters appear, totally uninteresting rooms, and hard-to-avoid nasties.
1,5/5
The Last Frontier [Gadtek Software]
Top view split-screen game with nice, well defined graphics and colourful backgrounds [excluding the almost totally candid starting location], plays smoothly, it's based on exploring and maybe a bit of arcade/adventuring. It's got an average vote of about 4.25 in the WoS archive, personally I think it's probably decent, but instructions are lacking.
There are streets and cars littered around, you should be able to drive around after collecting some fuel, but I didn't reach that point. You can even choose among three icons, and I chose the "Zzzzz" one. And I couldn't wake up anymore. Nice sounds.
2,75/5
Galletron [Bulldog Software]
A nightmare in cyan and black, this is a split screen shoot'em up with faux 3d graphics, and nothing intriguing.
1,75/5
Gateway To Hell [Summit]
Amateurish attempt at the isometric 3d arcade/adventure lode, with a couple of nice sprites and a gameplay already played thousand of times, only, this time, is below average. Produced with CRL's 3d Game Maker.
1,75/5
Disposable Heroes [The Power House]
a.k.a.
The Invasion of the Mega Garbage Beings
delivers all that its two titles promise.
1,5/5
The Bow [The Power House]
The keys layout is clumsy, that's my main observation about the game.
You must shoot your arrows at an eagle threatening the life of some important guy passing through various screens and you do it by moving a crosshair and pressing fire.
Not very exciting.
1,75/5
Muggins the Spaceman [Firebird Software]
An arcade/adventure which seems vaguely interesting, and looks uncannily similar to Spy vs. Spy, but as if the graphics had been done by a clumsy Lego designer, so much that when you find a new item, to know what it is you need a terminal called "object identifier". There seems to be lot of things to do, but it didn't beg you to go deeper.
2,5/5
The Centurions [Reaktor]
A top view multi-directional mess of colours clashing against each other of a shoot'em up.
2/5
Eagle, 22 Dec 2016 (Rating: 1)
Starts as a bidirectional vertical shooter in which you destroy structures at ground level, after some time you gain access to a second level, where I wasn't able to undestand the goal, nor I was much interested to, even the early leverl is not exactly very good, in the first place.
1,5/5
Everything is grey, there are balls everywhere, and now you're dead.
1/5
A side view flip screen thing set in some space station where you must quench your furious thirst of revenge, but you'll die miserably in a few seconds. A great revenge, really.
1/5
A mediocre Breakout clone that it's actually above average for Dro Soft.
SQIJ!, 02 Jan 2017 (Rating: 1)
SQJI! [The Power House]
It could run for the title of worst game of the year [or ever] even only for the absurd and unpronounceable title, but there's more, much more to it.
First all, the very articulated option screen has actually got only one option, which is "start game". Once you start, you see your sprite, a giant white bird occupying a great deal of the playing area, surrounded by two supposedly lethal platform or blocks going up and down. But you're not going to discover what they are. You can't move. I checked the instructions, found the control keys, pressed them, and nothing happened. Then I pressed every single other key and, still, nothing happened. Eventually I discovered [reading other people's experiences with SQJI] that the only way to make the game work was and is breaking into the program, and insert some command lines, then start it again: The Power House released an almost totally not working game and even wanted you to pay for it: extraordinaire. Or maybe it was just an ingenious way to stimulate the kids to really use their brain and learn to program, in order to correct the game and play it. By the way, those who really played it say that, anyway, is still totally crap.
1/5
Slingshot [The Power House]
Better renamed Crapshot, it's a cockpit space shoot'em up, with a grid, and planets that roll against you from the bottom of the universe looking like balls of multi-coloured excrements, and, what's worse, you probably won't be able to stop them.
1,5/5
Hypertron [Scorpio Gamesworld]
It's a rehash and re-release under new particulars, a false name and a plastic surgery that left it exactly as ugly as it was, of a game from 1985 titled The Valley Of The Dead, by the prolifically demented programmer Barry Jones, which in some 1986's review I baptised "the Ed Wood of Spectrum games". The game, as I remember it, is so hard that you may want to bite your head off.
1/5
Call Me Psycho [Pirate Software]
A shoot-at-everything game with cartoonish graphics and horizontal movement, a little bit like Cobra, only dull and uninteresting.
1,5/5
Los Angeles SWAT [Entertainment USA]
Another slaughtergame, this time with a vertical movement along the streets of a crime-ridden town, where lots of jerky and repellent urban thugs kindly approach you to kill you, but - be careful - don't shoot at the grannies! It's a game about degradation and decadence: and it shows under every aspect, including graphics, sound and gameplay.
1,75/5
Pneumatic Hammers [Firebird Software]
Totally incomprehensible crap.
?1,5/5
Uchi Mata [Martech Games]
Uchi Mata is a martial art game, specifically devoted to Judo, in which the only thing you can do is being knocked over on the floor, and watching the scene with a sense of total powerlessness. These are the preserved fond memories of the game I retained, which stop me from playing it again. But I am not alone, the game's got an extremely low voting average, so at least it's not just me being inept as usual.
1/5
Ricochet [Firebird Software]
1987 is a year filled with Breakout clones, although in this specific instance there's a clear Arkanoid influence too. You start with two balls at the same time, but you don't die each time you miss the remaining ball, apparently - it's not clear to me when it is lethal and when it's not. Also, you can move your paddle up and down, and catch the power up's that hover mid-screen. It's decently presented and it's not unplayable.
2,75/5
Implosion [Cascade]
We're moving unto more professional stuff, and the good presentation of this game demonstrates it. Graphics are monochrome but well drawn, and animation is not bad, except for the diagonal scrolling. You move over a sort of space grid, and you can dive under it when you want to avoid a clash or when you see items that can replenish your laser, or such. Your aim is to destroy the various formations of small alien spacecrafts, moving through a multi-directional environment and using a radar. When all the aliens have been defeated, their planet explodes and you are unto the next level.
2,75/5
Knuckle Busters [Melbourne House]
When I first heard about this game I hoped it was a conversion of the Knuckle Joe coin op, but it isn't, although it has a couple of things in common: platforms and beatings. You're escaping from prison to avoid a lobotomy in some futuristic dystopia, dressed up as an American Football player, and you must punch and kick your way through about five zones, to get out of the city, which is about to explode, because, of course, you even meddled with the Central Computer.
There are demented guards running back and forth, and you can face them or try to avoid them, anyway if you fight them you only have two moves, a kick and a punch, which is rather disappointing coming from the beat'em up masters of Mebourne House. There are other features: your opponents may have useful keys, crates and barrels that can be destroyed revealing some food replenishing your energy (or a booby trap), and many many doors, complicating your route to freedom. It's a bit hard, repetitive and the fighting sequences are not great fun.
Nice presentation and music, though.
2,5/5
Challenge of the Gobots [Reaktor]
Reaktor secured the rights for the game version of the universally unknown Gobots cartoon and made an impressive bi-directional horizontal shoot'em up, but it seems more like a crash test dummy simulator, with you crashing costantly against the background or the enemies.
1,5/5
Trans-Atlantic Balloon Challenge [Virgin Games]
Richard Branson's favourite videogame.
1,5/5
Sir Loin [Firebird Software]
Drab looking 2d arcade/adventure in which you have to satisfy the king's requests. Nice tune, but the game is far from being a masterpiece.
2/5
Apache Raid! [Pirate Software]
Colourful, but very basic looking maze game, with lots of arrow shooting and cow boys, while you're impersonating a native american. It's cute, but seems rather limited, and the aim is not clear, being the instructions missing.
2/5
Knight Ghost [Juliet Software]
Spanish game in which the main character is theorically supposed to be the ghost of a knight, but looks more like a phallic creature.
2/5
Odd Ball [The Power House]
You control a tennis ball along platforms and jumpng on springboard, there's a little cube you can push around, but the aim is not clear. Lots of deadly situations, to make up for it.
2/5
Metalyx [Alternative Software]
Basically, an Asteroids clone with a metal platform under it.
2/5
Death Before Dishonour [Alternative Software]
An horizontal jet pack shoot'em up like Sidewize or Forgotten Worlds or Zybex, but worse. The title may be an idea the author had before the release of the game
2/5
Kickboxing [Firebird Software]
Martial arts and Firebird just don't seem to get along, and after Ninja Master and Oriental Hero this is further confirmation. One on one kickboxing in a park,
fussy and confusionary, it's hard to tell what's going on but it's very easy to quit playing.
1/5
Jackle & Wide [Bulldog Software]
An underwhelming but almost decent arcade/adventure in two sections, a top view one in a bike, where you can collect various items, and an underground one, side view - where you can appreciate how wide Mr Wide is.
2/5
Swat!, 02 Jan 2017 (Rating: 1)
Swat! [The Power House]
Another "time machine" game, meaning that it looks and plays like it was made in 1983, and it was not even among the good ones. You're a bee in costant motion and you must avoid hedges, insects and stuff, while traveling through a flip screen maze.
1/5
Eastenders [Macsen]
Eastenders is a famous British tv thing, and I don't know what it is about, but judging from this tie in game, it must be something between a Luis Bunuel movie and a bad LSD trip. Your sprite moves in a room filled with what look like displays, screens and such, each with its own colour, and he can enter into them: inside of them strange single screen mini-games await the poor player, which in one sees a giant table covered with any kind of food, in another he becomes a pair of flying scissors cutting roses, whose thorns begin to sway disquietingly, in another there are a maze and a phone, in the next glasses and bottles, and you just move a hand or glove, a pointless pointer, without, in my case, being able to do anything. It's rather perplexing, really, even more than the Frankie Goes To Hollywood tie in, and that's something.
1/5
Skuldugery [K'Soft]
From the masters at K'Soft another absurd game. Your big-nosed sprite moves among lots of skulls, all by itself, automatically dying against one of them. I've tried to change direction and finally was able to, with quite some difficulty, and Big Nose got out of the screen without the screen following him - no scrolling! So I've found a couple of keys that actually allow you to scroll around, and followed my sprite, and attempted again at domesticating it, taming it - but it was too difficult and nerve wrecking making him go in the direction I wanted him to go, so I've finally given up, whatever the aim of this game was.
1/5
Dervish [The Power House]
A sort of Firebird's Druid only translated from Celtic to Middle-Eastern culture, and a
nasty nasty game that would be a catastrophic weapon in the hands of Isis.
1,75/5
Oriental Hero [Firebird Software]
The sequel of the dreadful Ninja Master, it keeps all the fantastic features of the original and push'em even further: superfast weapons fly at full speed against you and before you can even blink an eye you're dead. The variation is a practical joke from a demon jumping suddenly out of nowhere from behind you.
A pure masochistic experience.
1,5/5
I think this is multiload stuff, anyway it certainly is a multi-Arnold thing, because each time you start a game you must watch a bunch of Schwarzneggers jumping down the helicopter and exit to the right, one by one, which is rather annoying, even because this sequence lasts more than my average attempt at the game. The presentation is ok, it's what you expect from a big software house, with a nice digitalized loading screen, a brief but big intro sequence, well drawn graphics [except for the baddies] and good animation, although all immersed in a weedy greenish monochrome [except when the Predator is targeting you, and you see the world through purple tinted glass]. The problem is that it's not the most playable game in the world, responsiveness is limited and difficulty is high. You won't survive long.
2,5/5
This is a bad game, but being licensed from a bad movie, it can be said that it's a fair adaptation. The movie was rather perplexing, and it's been buried under thousands of other films since then, I think the last time I've seen it was on tv was lustrums ago. That said the game seems a mix between Spy vs Spy II: The Island Capers and Willow Pattern with the addition a of a beak and lots of feathers. You have to save the world or something, exploring an island and finding things and probably defeating some evil guy somewhere, anyway I've found myself passing the time running-up to jump over quicksands and honking for the frustration while failing, which was no fun.
2/5
Arcade coin op conversion, it's a horizontal shoot'em up in which you are a cop who must stop the greatest escape ever killing a multitude of convicts running with a ball still chained to their feet and shooting like traumatic shock disorder affected Vietnam veterans. The best part of the game is the sampled voice when the loading finishes, from there on it just gets worser and worser (although the pumping music is not bad). It jus takes a handful of seconds to die, and to understand that maybe this is not one of 1987's pinnacles.
1,5/5
Big Boredom in Little China! It's surprising how much boredom can such a small place contain. Another macho icon, Kurt Russell, finds its way to the Spectrum and I bet he'd rather not have found it, and me too, because, as much as I'd like beating Chinese people [it's a long and very sad story], the game is terrible, dull, uninteresting in spite of the choice among three fighters with different moves, the sprites look anonymous, the backgrounds faceless, and the monochrome is yellow based, which is probably the right colour for an oriental themed beat'em up, but it's perfect to make your pupils bleed too.
1,5/5
There aren't many licences able to compete with the sheer ugliness of Masters of the Universe. Even Ocean's Highlander was substantially just a very poor and unplayable game, almost a non-game, but this is an interactive nightmare. Sprites are constantly surrounded by a black clash-avoiding rectangle and move in a very suffering way as if they were drowning in an aquarium through a jerky scrolling, while everything around is surrealistically silent, even when you penetrate the castle and there are enemies everywhere, some of them shooting at you. The jumping/platform aspect is terribly clumsy, as collision detection in general, as EVERYTHING else in general, including the multi-coloured sprites attempt.
One of the biggest ideas behind the game is probably U.S. Gold handing the adaptation task to Adventuresoft UK, specialized in text adventures: pure genius.
1,5/5
Keep clean a natural park by picking up stuff littered around, you can use a boat and walk on the bank, of course you must avoid obstacles and animals, and once you have picked up a certain amount of objects you are unto the next, harder level. A simple concept, but it's not badly executed.
2,75/5
Mayhem, 08 Jan 2017 (Rating: 2)
Shoot the droids and try to defuse the bomb aboard a spaceship. It's a maze game with transparent sprites on chequered floor which means that confusion will be your epitaph. There are on screen instructions scrolling very jerkily and with so giant letters that they result unreadable.
It's got a nice presentation and a simple but atmospheric graphics style, but it doesn't work. Explore the theatre and find the keys to finally save your girlfriend, while bouncing skulls hit you and angry little clouds char?ge against you, and, mostly, you can't avoid them, and your revolver is always shooting at the wrong height.
1,75/5
A 3d isometric game made with CRL's 3d Game Maker, including nasties that look like heaps of junk. I think that nothing decent ever came out of the 3d Game Maker.
1,5/5
Get stuck on rocks, docks and buoys while trying to ride the rapids, in a cyan and blue world.
2/5
A poor mini-Super Sprint type game.
1,5/5
It's Uridium turned 90 degrees , filled with extremely garish colours and with graphics vaguely reminiscent of Lightforce, plus, as a final touch, one of the jerkiest scrolling ever. You must destroy structures on some space platforms, while enemies shoot at you and, here and there, displays tell you how many seconds remain. It's not that bad.
3/5
Some kind of Phoenix, or/and other old school stuff, with a modernized look, a straightforward shoot'em up that's actually good fun for some minutes.
2,75/5
Another droids +maze game vaguely reminiscent of C64's Paradroid, although in this case you must get out of a labyrinth passing through a series of numbered gates, or something like that. The graphics are neat and well animated, there's a good tune, but the gameplay is easily boring, not intriguing enough.
2,5/5
An horizontal helicopter shoot'em up, looks ok, it's playable, but it's not challenging or intriguing.
2/5
It's a budget licence structured in three parts: one of 2d exploration in the jungle, the second is a beat'em up, the third is a shoot'em up with cockpit/subjective view. They're all mediocre at best.
2/5
It's a basic shoot'em up mixing very mossy stuff like Space Invaders and Centipede, but it's well done, the alien movements are very smooth, frenetic and unexpected, the explosion sound effect is ok. It hasn't got much to offer, but it's nice.
3/5
by Colin Ajayi-Obe
They Call Me Trooper, a full price game from CRL for the Spectrum 128k only, looks like a mix between Lode Runner and Fred, but its gameplay is more varied.
It's got a miserable average vote of just 4.8/10 in WoS, but I think it's pretty good, and I suspect the low votes come from the fact that most of the players hasn't been able to climb out of the starting point... as I haven't been able myself before taking a look at the instructions. There are lots of (redefinable) keys to use and many actions you can perform, so you have to study a bit (not much, anyway) before going into full action.
When a red slab height is half your character you only need to walk against it for your sprite to climb it automatically, but when it's high as you, you must jump and then give the lateral direction with the right timing, in order to climb. When there's a whole wall to be climbed, you can't rely on just your arms and legs, you need a rope with a hook - and once you have it you must select it, and keep pressed fire until you think it's enough to throw it over the wall, then go up and once reached the edge, climb laterally, or you're going to fall. Additionally, the rope can also be used to climb down.
You can even find a revolver and shoot, while you'll have to use your naked hands when you meet a green enemy: in this case, the display of the action changes, a bit like in Asterix and the Magic Cauldron: now the game zooms on you and your opponent, and a decent beat'em up mini-section starts, where you can use three kind of kicks and a punch, and bars in the lower part of the screen show your energy and the intensity of your hits - in fact, you must be aware of the dynamic of your fighting, and learn that if you try too hard, the power of your attempts will decrease: you must dose your power, and sometimes pause to concentrate it.
As you continue to explore the red caves, adorned with sinister sculptures and figures, you'll find frantic and creepy yellow creatures draining your energy and shooting at you. The aim, by the way, is to collect the various parts of a spaceship, scattered around this red planet, each piece will allow you to access the next section.
3,5/5
Single screen platformer starring a sort of demented but disarmed cartoonish Rambo wannabe, who must free caged bearded guys guarded by frenzied robots running everywhere - getting out of the screen in the lower part and re-entering from the higher - which you can keep at bay using your muscles. That said, when you jump your sprite performs a somersault that makes it harder to understand where you'll land and if a robot will be there or not - which is a bit annoying, although probably the game would have been too easy using ordinary vertical jumps. Nothing special, especially if you're not into saving bearded men.
2,5/5
As a kid, playing a hacked version of this game, I thought it is was a new, although effortless, product by Costa Panayi: it's got his trademark sound effects and 3d graphics - but in spite of this, it is not - it's a rip off of his style, for a budget game with very limited gameplay, released by U.S. Gold budget label. You move your spacecraft hovering above yellow hexagonal platform, trying to clash against little spheres in order to destroy them and gain more time to, I think, finish the course. If it's just that, it's not a very rich game. It's not unplayable though, and the superficial Panayian elements are quite appealing.
2,75/5
"Dralon Sladdomnac Fast Food Emperor of Grebignurk is about to add a new item to his menu - the Earthlingburger": this strange specimen of a game is about aliens eager to make hamburgers out of humans, which may sounds slightly weird, but after all it's a plot conceived by Brian Bloodaxe author Charles Bystram, who after his most known title disappeared for a couple of years, reappearing in 1987 with a couple of peculiar 3d isometric games, Cannibals, of course, being one of the two. The playing area is relatively tiny and it's mostly in the upper half of the screen, your sprite looks like a unexpressive moving puppet, while the alien droids/monsters are a bit more cute or well drawn. The sound effects are "enhanced" by big onomatopoeic writings scrolling in capital letters, and other types of communications may appear in the same fashion, in fact, by the way, you can turn toward a character or monster and press "s" to listen to whatever they may have to say. You can pick up objects, use them, shoot, activate and deactivate stuff by pushing/pressing consoles or electronic panels. There are a lot of energy draining beams and lethal shooting cubes - it's a pretty insidious game, hard to explore - usually you don't see many rooms before dying, occurrence which will trigger a magnified image of your own death, for you delight. Although very far from the best examples of 3d isometric arcade/adventures, it's interesting in its weirdness and it seems to have some nice features. It's also rather hard.
2,75/5
It's a bi-directional Zaxxon, with a very marked penchant for disguise or hide'n'seek, in fact the sprites, and yours in particular, tend to completely disappear into the monochrome mess, causing interstellar disasters. Mixing the smooth movements of Leviathan with the more colourful approach of U.S. Gold conversion of Zaxxon would have resulted in a potentially nice space 3d shoot'em up, but as it is it's a bit of an unplayable mess. Quite nice music in the 128k version.
A variation on the Tempest/Asteroids themes: this time your lasership is fixed at the centre of a circular area, and enemy spacecraft go around along its perimeter. When missing the target, your laser leaves "stains" that if shot again send back the laser to you, determing damage. I didn't understand how the passing unto the next level works, anyway the gameplay seems to be pratically identical and repetitive. It's playable, nonetheless, and it has that mesmerizing mechanism that potentially can hypnotize you for a while, in spite of the total simplicity - which includes the basic appearence. But not the music: it's got a great two channel beeper tune in the option screen [remember to choose an option, or it gets stuck on the first weird notes].
2,75/5
The official conversion of the great Lazer Tag toy, that was a craze at the end of the eighties! Although I've never seen anybody playing Lazer Tag out of the television commercials. Anyway, they obtained, obviously, a shoot'em up from it, a bloodless one, in which you play inside an arena and try to shoot your many opponents before they shoot you, and that's it. It's another typical total monochrome product from 1987, but the movements are smooth and the controls absolutely responsive, such that it's a joy moving your sprite around beaming your laser everywhere [but beware of the ricochets]. Of course the gameplay is totally devoid of any depth, but it's not unpleasant for a Go! or two.
2,75/5
Plot of the episode: Inspector Gadget runs but doesn't go anywhere.
2,5/5
A clumsy attempt at mixing multichoice adventures and beat'em up's. The fight sequences look like a clash between cavemen in the void.
2/5
A fast split-screen platformer with colourful backgrounds and confused action that didn't convince me completely.
2,5/5
Red L.E.D. is partly a mix between Marble Madness and Spindizzy. Choose an hexagon in the grid map, and try to conquer it by collecting the four energy thingies and then finding the exit - I think you have to conquer enough world to make a line of hexagons across the grid. The worlds are squared 3d environments full of slopes, hills, holes and edges suspended over a lethal void - and you must move very carefully across them, controlling your inertia. You have three life, and each life is a different robot. The worlds are swarming with aggressive enemies, but you can shoot them. The sprites are not great, but, all in all, it's a playable enough game, and that's what counts.
3/5
Falcon looks like a Dan Dare clone with some bad choice of colours, clumsy animation and awkward action - but in its favour features a time machine that allows you to choose a chronological destination in your order of preference, and it even includes a terminal with lots of information, so much that my available time lethally ended while I was using it. It's based on a book and it seems to have interesting stuff going on in spite of the execution not being exactly exceptional. I confess I didn't read the instructions.
2,75/5
Another maze, another droid - a recurring pattern in 1987. That's not a bad one, anyway, it ends up being a sort of space western, as you can shoot in 8 directions, and not only along the narrow corridors, but even through all the environment [through the walls, apparently] - and, of couse, your enemies can do the same. The goal is collecting bombs, reach the reactors, and make them explode - but you will only able to do it if you succeed in a triple reflex test.
3/5
Z, 17 Jan 2017 (Rating: 2)
A multidirectional shoot'em up that seems to move repeatedly over the same background, not unplayable, but dull and boring, as its smooth but monochrome graphics. I don't know what the aim is, instructions are lacking.
1,75/5
Horizontal shoot'em up with a very nice parallax effect and not much else, its playability is sheer easyness, which - coupled with repetitiveness - doesn't make it very interesting to play.
2,5/5
You're a robot ball devoted to electric toaster repairing, but this time it's your spaceship that's broken. Will you be able to mend it? Considering that you're even armless? Exactly, the answer is no. The ball moves elegantly in the vaguely abstract environment, but it's very hard to control, and ultimately I wasn't able to do anything.
2/5
A slower Gauntlet clone with the usual amount of treasures, keys and nasties, whith this time are harder to manage because your character seems to have a rather bad aim. You can load three different mazes, and they all need urgent mapping. Decent value for a budget, I didn't like it, though.
2,5/5
From the instructions: "You certainly will be Ball crazy by the end of this game, not to mention obsessed and slightly demented!". Single screen arcade in which you must turn all the platforms into the colour indicated until three layers are done and you can go forward to the slightly differently appearing next level. It's not terrible, but sometimes the Chasers seem impossible to avoid, the playing area is rather narrow and the gameplay limited. As a budget it wasn't a totally bad purchase, though.
2,5/5
Toilets around the universe are somehow out of order and the summer season is coming - this means trouble! Shhhheer trouble! As a bouncing ball you must bounce around platforms until you stumble on some sleeping attendants of the space lavatories, which you can wake up solving an anagram. The graphics are ok, and the rest less so.
2,5/5
Smooth vector graphics shoot'em up. Instructions are missing.
2,5/5
I definitely don't understand what's going on.
?/5
Limited, if not basic, Spaghetti western shoot'em up. You can enter the saloon if you're thirsty.
2/5
Simple vertical shoot'em up with nice graphics, animation and use of colour.
2,75/5
Walking and flying [by jet pack] space horizontal shoot'em up, with fast dynamics, smooth movements and blindness syndrome caused by colour choices. It's a very simple gameplay, but not unpleasant. Remarkable loading screen.
2,75/5
You start with an ominous Kosmic Kanga-like jumping, but likely you can learn how to tame it and move in more sensible ways. The graphics are more well drawn and chromatically sober than in the similar Mission Jupiter, and once you learn how to control your G-Man properly, it's not terrible - although it's not the most smooth gameplay. Sometimes it feels a bit like the jet pack version of Scrambler. Cool sounding tune with drums, sort of. Cool jingle when you die too. Who wouldn't want a cool jingle when dying?
3/5
[Imagine Software]
by Gary Knight, Simon Butler
This conversion of a Taito coin op by Imagine is copyrighted 1986, but its first review was in February 1987 - how should I consider it? Anyway, it wasn't well received, shot down by Sinclair User and Crash, with a decent review from YS only, now it's got about 5.5/10 in WoS. Personally, I've always thought it's good fun, a playable platform with shuriken shooting galore and some healthy beating here and there.
In the first level, your "bae", as they say these days, is kidnapped in the wood, and you're chased by couples of high leaping ninjas, and the nice thing is that your sprite's movements are quite ductiles, and you can even turn while jumping, face the opposite direction and shoot, just like in some old Japanese cartoon. Another nice thing is how high you can jump and climb, reaching the top of the trees. At the end of the level there's a not very sympathetic fire spitting bloke.
In the second level you move along the walls of the castle or palace of your girlfriend's kidnapper, even proceeding underwater while breathing through a bamboo cane or something.
Third level, upward jumping all the way. While in the fourth you have a lot of stairs to climb. The game seems a bit short and not exactly very hard, but the dynamism of your character and the slight differences among the levels make it entertaining enough. Cool sounding music too.
3,5/5
Martianoids [Ultimate Play The Game]
Fight for your electronic brain! It's been invaded by alien bugs who are trying to destroy it. It's one of those underwhelming Ultimate latest releases, although in my opinion it's not that bad. It's like a scrolling 3d isometric Pssst.
2,75/5
The twenties cinematographic aesthetics are nice, as the central idea of shooting a movie with Charlie Chaplin and then editing it, showing it to the public and waiting for the critics' reaction, but: the action part where you should make the stunts is disappointingly limited, you are just able to wander around, punch somebody, climb some stairs - and in the "cutting room" you can only re-watch what you shoot, at normal or faster speed, and decide if you need to reshoot it or not - no actual editing.
2/5
You are trying to destroy an evil corporation, by entering fifteen test zones each containing a different strain of mutants, used for weapon research, costantly moving and spawning around you - in a very lethal way. An interesting but unplayable concept.
2/5
This time Athena is honest from the start: even the loading screen is deep in a sea of monochrome, so you know that the game will be too, this time in bright green that slowly consumes your eyes, while the relatively slow paced autoscroll moves on, flickering a bit, and the playable but bland and easy action goes on. Not much of interest happening here, until the dragon monster at the end of the level, which tries to surprise you with its twitchy, deceptive and sudden moves. As a budget it wouldn't have been a terrible purchase.
2,75/5
A multi-level fuck'em up, which you can play simultaneously with other 37 players, filled with jet packs, shootings, bonuses, interdimensional doors and whatever, so easy that I managed to finish it when I was a kid, and I was - and still am - the worst videogame player in the universe.
2/5
A satirical arcade-adventure about the English elections, where you can even pick "sincerity" up as an item - and if you take too much of it, you'll probably smash the system.
2,5/5
You're so busy trying to understand which of the four weapons to use that you don't realize you're already dead.
2/5
Salamander is a challenge between difficulty and obstinacy.
After having accumulated lots of power up's with ease, the real game starts when you penetrate an organic space environment, riddled with swinging paws suddenly emerging from what look like walls made out of pinky gums. Learn to position yourself in order to strike the weak spots that each swinging paw has and shows, and you'll be able to get past this section with frequent success.
The next bit of space cavern is little more engaging. The passages become terribly narrow and you're at the mercy of strange protruding entities, shooting strange organic bullets at different speed, in an irregular way - which means you need to improve your reflexes, your technique... and your luck. This point is the first big obstacle. It took me dozens and dozens of attempts, before being able to get past it, and some other dozens before being able to get past it with a certain frequency - only to find myself back into the gummy environment, this time offering giant fangs moving in and out of the superior and inferior walls, creating another very-hard-to-pass moment. After a while, obstinacy lost its belligerence, and difficulty won. But maybe if you insist...
3,5/5
Sidewize is a super-smooth horizontal shoot'em up set in space, starring a man with a jetpack who faces swarm after swarm of hyperfast enemies. His aim is apparently to conquer five different worlds, characterized by a progressive difficulty level and, of course, by a different hue of monochrome for each one of them - anyway, you can choose to play the levels in the order you prefer.
As hinted before, the movement is very smooth and fast, and I can add that the graphics are very well drawn and animated too, with nice touches as the recoil each time you shoot - after all, although a Firebird Software release, we're talking about the artistry of the Odin people - who are actual authors of the game. There's only one defect, and it's when you finally reach the ground of a planet: while in the space sections there are no backgrounds besides a pleasant star field, in the monochrome planet environment, vegetation and such tend to hide the sprites and the bullets. Nonetheless, overall action and playability are very good and enjoyable, with added power up's which strenghten your fire and speed up your character. Cherry on top, even the tune and the jingles are great, both as compositions and soundwise, completing the exquisite presentation of Sidewize - which, as far as I'm concerned, in the 1987's horizontal shoot'em up category, it's second only to Zynaps.
4/5
Athena, 14 Apr 2017 (Rating: 2)
Athena must be the sluggish goddess around. Slow and unresponsive, while being hit from every side, left, right, up and down - without her being able to do much about it. She must be feeling the gravity very much, because she can't jump very high - and even if she finds a pair of magic sandals, she's going to lose them very soon along with the lives she loses every ten seconds. It's a massacre. Luckily, Zeus or somebody gave her the chance to continue her adventure, if you decide so, and you decide it in 9 seconds - so she can be slaughtered for some more minutes.
Zeus has a perverse sense of humour.
Not even the weapons she eventually pick ups up by killing one of the everpresent nasties is of much help. Some of them even completely misses the target, at least if it is too near. In fact, the only real target is Athena herself - as most of the creatures can't be avoided. Those tiny things crawling from out the trees and biting her toes are the worst. Little bastards. Anyway, exploring the monochrome cyan forest she finally found a sort of wild monster running back and forth and she actually defeated it, using the kamikaze tactic, more than her strength, really. After multiple, uncountable deaths, it eventually gave up - and she was ready for the second level, a yellow place that reminded me of Renegade III: The Final Chapter. After all, the programmers are the same: the Deakin/Horn dynamic duo, and this is no Operation Wolf.
I'm not sure, but I think that Psycho Soldier - Athena sequel - received worse reviews - but, really, at least it's playable.
2,5/5
1987's is the year in which Dominic Robinson programmed his magnum opus, which it's of course Zynaps, but he even found the time to create this brilliant little game for Hewson's budget label, Rack-It.
In spite of the title, this game is not apologetic toward anarchy, au contraire, you must stop the anarchic rebels by penetrating their premises and destroying their ammunitions, while dodging their robots.
It's a top view tank game, reminding of the great Panzadrome [Ariolasoft, 1985], or a minor title as Podder [Central Solutions, 1986], in which the ammunitions are represented by square blocks you can shoot and destroy, while the robots can only be temporarily freezed.
But you can't destroy a block of ammunitions while standing near it, you have to stay at least a square away - this means that it's not always perfectly clear where to start from: you must observe and find the right path to destroy an entire agglomeration of them. This adds a slight puzzle element. You have a limited time, and once you've finished to destroy the ammunitions, the screen flashes and you must find the "exit" square.
The gameplay is very simple, but it's implemented in a fast, colourful way, with very nice sound effects and tunes - so, overall, a bit limited, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.
3,5/5
Chain Reaction is a 3d action game, with slightly more coloured backgrounds than your usual isometric specimen, vaguely similar to Strike Force Cobra [Phirana, 1986], plus a black main sprite. It's not a 3d platform like Head Over Heels [Ocean Software, 1987], and neither an arcade/adventure like Fairlight [The Edge, 1985]: your aim wandering among the rooms, find the small radioactive cylinders littered around, and dispose of them letting them fall into the circular hole at the center of the structure: the cylinders, though, are distributed over several levels, and you must use elevators to move among them - the disposal operation, anyway, it's only possible at the first level - to complicate things you have three kinds of shooting guardian robots, and the obvious time limit.
You have unlimited bullets to wipe off the robots, though, and a jetpack if you want to try to hover over them, or over holes in the floor from the second level up [which are anyway very useful when you need to reach the disposal hole in the first floor very quickly]. Some of the robots are a sort of small flying pyramids with antennas, so it's particulary difficult to fly over them, although sometimes you'll find yourself standing over them. Each time the robots hit you with their bullets, the "Rad" bar decreases, so you must be careful - because you've only got one life. Anyway, luckily for you, there are anti-radioactive showers here and there, which will clean you from the radiations and restore your health.
I think it's playable, it looks good and can become quite addictive . An obscure but good game.
4/5
Side view platform-shoot'em up. It's like a flying aliens filled course, and each time you die you have to repeat it from the start. There are power up's to help you, like a very well welcomed tri-directional shooting, or a jetpack, or a shield or "poison" which is another word for "smart bomb". The graphics are monochrome, but clear. The main character looks a bit funny to me. Very nice tune. It's an OK game, playable, but without any outstanding ideas or features.
3/5
It actually delivers what the title promises, lots of frantic action, in the shape of a top view horizontal shoot'em up - in which your "aircraft" is a magic carpet nonetheless. Graphics are colourful and feature some nice monsters. It's a very apt game for players affected by attention deficit disorder. It's a fun, depthless game - with a strange bonus section I didn't understand very well. Weird whistley sounds in the main screen, and acceptable effects in the game.
3,5/5
A futuristic fight between bikers along a semi-devastated road, filled with damaging objects and walls. It's playable but a bit dull. It doesn't seem to have much going for it, variety is lacking and the graphics are slightly drab. It was a full price game, and there's not much to justify it. 128k version has improved sound including an in-game tune.
2,75/5
I don't like much playing it, but I like very much the style.
Great presentation, but volatile gameplay.
Gryzor, 29 Apr 2017 (Rating: 4)
Pretty cool multi-level shoot'em up, with various approaches used, playability and very good 128k music.
Thing Bounces Back [Gremlin Graphics]
by Chris Kerry, Colin Dooley, Shaun Hollingworth, Peter M. Harrap, Greg A. Holmes, Steve Kerry, Marco Duroe, Ben Daglish
A frantic hyperplatformer, superbly done, with superfast scrolling and movements, smooth animation, coloured graphics and a very nice tune. It's even playable, although a bit repetitive and you can easily get stuck. Jump around a big area full of platforms and tubes looking for four objects that you need to stop the evil toys producing factory. Technically excellent cute stuff, programmed by 45 programmers and a half, Your Sinclair Megame, sequel of a game never appeared on the Spectrum.
3,5/5
I, Ball II [Firebird Software]
by Timothy Closs
A good budget game which transforms the original I, Ball from a shooter to a platformer.
[but you still can shoot].
3/5
MASK, 30 Apr 2017 (Rating: 3)
Mask [Gremlin Graphics]
by Stuart Gregg, Tony R. Porter, Kevin Bulmer, Ben Daglish
Technically very well done multi-directional shoot'em up, in which you must rescue your friends, and in order to do that you have to find keys, find masks, activate your scanner, which will finally guide you to your pal, buddy, homie.
So, there's an attentive search involved, while you're buggered by tanks, jets and bombing helicopters in the first level, dinosaurs of various kind in the second level, including pterodactyls as substitutes for the helicopters, using eggs instead of bombs, I suppose, which don't seem to be any less lethal. You also have to take care of your vehicle, of course, and use time bombs to open new adventurous paths, or pushing boulders, or whatever.
I didn't find it addictive, and your car is hard to control - although, overall, it's a playable game, with various nice touches. I think it was a Sinclair User classic. Not a classic of mine.
3,5/5
Tank, 30 Apr 2017 (Rating: 2)
Tank [Ocean Software]
The horrible loading screen makes you suspicious, and your concerns are well-founded.
It's a uninteresting multi-directional shoot'em up with ugly graphics and annoying flickering animation where you drive your tank against soldiers and other tanks. The turret can be indipendently moved around.
2,5/5
Xanthius [Players Premiere]
Ok, a planetoid named Xanthius was chosen for human colonization, so hordes of robots were sent there to build some machinery to change the atmosphere into something more breathable by human lungs, and to wipe away all the corrosive gases in the air - but something went wrong, and, of course, you're the robot they've sent up there to see what happened and to mend what's broken. There are 8 Atmosphere Processing stations to repair, and when one shuts down completely the air around it begins to become heavy and to corrode your robot. You can charge and discharge each station, and their level can be constantly seen on the upper screen, and order some spare parts from a terminal.
In short, maze-platformer with neat, elegant and colourful graphics, but affected by the Wander Around Boringly syndrome while you explore the maze to succeed in your unexciting mission
2,5/5
Action Force [Virgin Games]
by Gang of Five (Martin Wheeler, Link Tomlin, Sam Garforth)
In this game you're a flying guy, with a helicopterpack on your back or something like that, who must babysitting a jeep through a war torn island, building bridges and destroying walls to allow it to proceed further, while avoiding missiles and air mines - and, while you're there, trying not to fall on the ground because you're out of fuel.
The game, at least at the start, is rather hard, it's difficult to control your character and place it exactly where you want, because you need a very delicate touch to stop him where you want, and you need to be precise to pick up the floating platforms and such. And then, once you're over the platform, even the picking up results in a unnerving flying up and down until it actually disappears, meaning that you're carrying it. Etc. etc.
The game received wildly different reviews, with Crash bashing it, Your Sinclair conceding a slightly better 5/10, and Sinclair User celebrating it as SU classic. I found it frustrating, but masochistically addictive - and when I got past the initial difficulty, I've actually reached the fourth or fifth level without strain. It even looks good, with colourful and detailed graphics.
3/5
Dynatron Mission [Mastertronic]
One of the thousands of flip-screen exploration games, with colourful but unexceptional graphics - and your sprite jumping with his arms lifted up as asking for mercy - which is not a good omen. The fire button helps you to jump higher and longer and to move faster, but you should not strain your heart too much, anyway, there's a ECG in the upper screen to remind you. There are multiple leves, in which you must find the usual SOMETHING, and you must get out of the area as soon as you find it, because a time bomb will automatically start its countdown.
Between hard and boring, if you ask me.
2,5/5
The Living Daylights [Domark]
Shoot'em up in which you control James Bond and make him run through the landscape, while at the same time moving a crosshair to shoot almost invisible enemies hiding behind rocks. The result? I just keep tripping on small stones, getting riddled with bullets, and I was never able once to get past the first level in 30 years, but it doesn't matter because the rest of the levels are just like the first.
1/5
Masters of the Universe - The Movie [Gremlin Graphics]
Typical running-around-and-getting-nowhere kind of game.
2,5/5
Street Hassle [Melbourne House]
by Beam Software
A humorous beat'em up in which you're a hunk in shorts, attacked by vicious grannies, violent grandads, riotous baboons and lethal doggies while walking down the street. Big funny sprites, and a couple of hilarious moves. Beware of the bananas.
4/5
Scumball [Bulldog Software]
by Peter Gough (Software Creations)
An Ultimatesque budget game in the mould of Atic Atac, Underwurlde, and the celebrated Bubblebus Software clone, Starquake. So, lots of flip-screens to explore, a map to be made, and items to be found [grenades], but the fact is that your cute big-eyed robot is very quick and agile, and it's a pleasure even only whizzing around the rooms shooting at anything, smoothly moving through colourful and pleasant sewers, although I can't guarantee about the smell.
3,75/5
Rygar, 05 May 2017 (Rating: 3)
Rygar [U.S. Gold]
by Antony R. Lil (Probe Software)
You're a tiny, badly drawn guy equipped with a razor blade yo-yo. You slaughter monsters. You jump. You run.
You have a time limit. It's not that horrible.
3,5/5
Trantor - The Last Stormtrooper [Go!]
by Probe Software Ltd (David Quinn, Nick Bruty, Alan Tomkins, David Whittaker)
You're a sprite busy being very big, somewhere in space.
3/5
Hysteria [Software Projects]
by Special FX Software Ltd (Jonathan M. Smith, Karen Davies, Tony Pomfret, Stephen Wahid)
Jonathan Smith returns with a less funny version of Cobra that nonetheless has what Cobra was missing:
a decent end-of-level boss.
3,5/5
Lately I've re-played a good old slaughterer that I used to like or not to dislike, like Nemesis The Warlock [Martech], with its single screen levels, full of platforms and the corpses of your enemis that merrily pile up: and the heart squeezing hand signaling your death, which horrified me a bit when I was a kid.
4/5
Also, from 1987 we have Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior, released by Palace Software, I didn't play it again, but I did play it a lot - in fact, I won the first spot in a Speccy Tour with it - the only game I was good at. Yes, I'm good at headchopping.
Cute medieval tune, also [and great graphics].
4/5
today I've re-played another[*] forgotten Durell Software jewel, Sigma Seven, with its colourful Zaxxon perspective, and three levels based on variety: the first being a space shoot'em up, the second a sort of Pac Man where you drive a tank through a labyrinth and you can also shoot, and the third... Well, I don't remember the third. I think it's enjoyable and probably underrated.
4/5
[*]The other was Chain Reaction, some weeks ago.
A pretty good destroy-them-all-and-squash-them-up with platforms, elevators and ladders through a series of flip screens inhabitated by futuristic and slimy monsters, all in glorious Colourclashoscope. You gotta love those titties.
3,75/5
Outrun [U.S. Gold]
by Probe Software Ltd (Ian Morrison, Alan Laird, Jas C. Brooke, Nick Bruty)
Decent as much as unexciting conversion of a coin op I maybe played once.
There were definitely better "racing" games released in 1987.
3/5
Short Circuit [Ocean Software]
by Paul Owens, Ronnie Fowles, Simon Golding
Game from that robot movie they don't broadcast anymore, with a good enough first part, a good looking arcade/adventure, and a bad second part, an arcade section.
3,5/5
Strike Force SAS [Mikro-Gen]
by Stuart Hibbert, Nigel, Nick Jones
Ok, you have various missions concerning terrorists, hostages and stuff and an ample use of bullets and grenades - possibly not against the hostages you have to save.
A bit on the ugly side. The colour clash is surely the most terroristic thing on this game, while the price was clearly a theft.
2,5/5
El Cid, 13 May 2017 (Rating: 4)
El Cid [Dro Soft]
by Manuel Orcera Valero, Francis Moragrega
Bought the Mastertronic flippy/flippy tape at the time, or whatever name they gave to those Spectrum/Amstrad CPC cassettes, liked it enough to make a map. Tried it again recently, and, sorry, I still like it.
3,75/5
Super Hang-On [Electric Dreams]
by Software Studios (Chris Wood, ZZKJ, Mevlut Dinc)
Better than Out Run, not as good as Enduro Racer. Poor crash sequence.
3,5/5
Grand Prix Simulator (Code Masters)
by The Oliver Twins, James Wilson, Nigel Fletcher, Serge Dosang, Mervin James, David Whittaker
Good Super Sprint clone, with only two cars and harder to control.
3/5
Super Sprint (Electric Dreams)
by Software Studios, Catalyst Coders (Tony Mack, Mark A. Jones)
Top view racing game with miniature machines racing on a single screen track. It's nice.
3,5/5
Professional Ski Simulator (Code Masters)
by The Oliver Twins, James Wilson, Jon Paul Eldridge
A 3d depiction of a skiing competition with two competitors, that, of course, can even be played by 2 players simultaneously. Ok graphics, nice music and decent playability - in spite of the peculiar feature of the scrolling following your opponent, leaving you out of the screen if you're not fast enough - if this happens you must try to go on using a map on the right as reference. It's not bad.
3/5
BMX Simulator (Code Masters)
by Tim Miller, James Wilson, David Whittaker
I was a BMX kid living in BMX years, so I was naturally attracted by this game - but it was a bit of a frustrating experience, because I used to get caught on the items delimiting the track, and it was rather easy to go out of it. And your opponent can run over you making you fall, just when you were restarting after a stop.
Trying it now... it still results a painful experience. By the same team behind ATV Simulator but definitely inferior.
It can be played by 2 players simultaneously. Lots of cool jingles, nice graphics, and seals.
2,5/5
ATV Simulator (Code Masters)
by Tim Miller, James Wilson, David Whittaker
I've always liked to play this simple but greatly playable and entertaining little game, and it had a revival about ten years ago when I used to play it with my 20 year younger cousins. It can be played by 2 players simultaneously. Lots of cool jingles, nice graphics, and seals.
4/5
Xecutor [ACE Software]
by Cybadyne (Christian F. Urquhart, Mike Smith)
A sort of slightly harder vertical Zynaps, delightfully drawn and coloured, with nice music.
Unluckily, it's affected by the restart-over-a-bullet syndrome, although it doesn't happen very often. Interesting end-of-level boss. It's very nice.
4/5
Slap Fight [Imagine Software]
by Probe Software Ltd (Nick Bruty)
Vertical shoot'em up ruined by semi-invisible bullets.
2,5/5.
Well, I've been too tough with Slap Fight, in spite of all its flaws, it still deserves a 3/5.
Xevious [U.S. Gold]
by Probe Software (Nick Bruty)
This is another vertical shooter converted from a coin op by Nick Bruty, the same programmer of Slap Fight - but it doesn't show. The graphics are gre5enish, but at least you can see the bullets clearly, and the it's far easier than Slap Fight. There are no power up's and it's not particularly exciting. Still, it's decent enough. The sound effects and jingles reminds of 1942, converted by Dominic Wood. Very nice loading screen.
3/5
Well, pretty ace, isn't it.
3,75/5
The Mystery of Arkham Manor [Melbourne House]
"A s l o w b u t c o u r a g e o u s a t t e m p t." (H.P. Lovecraft)
3,5/5
Mountie Mick's Death Ride [Reaktor]
by Timedata Ltd, WE M.U.S.I.C. (Ben Daglish)
A bunch of Lego men running, jumping and shooting on a train.
It's not that bad.
3/5
p.s. best looking version, compared to C64 and CPC.
Two loads or so, the first level being a horizontal scrolling mix of shooting, beating and jumping on some alien surface, and the the second a sort of vastly improved version of Ocean's V. It's ok, a bit on the dull side, though.
3,25/5
You may have heard about this one.
4,75/5
I DON'T KNOW, I find this sequel rather unplayable.
The vote is okays only because I watched the whole walkthrough and I was impressed.
2,75/5
I used to have some fun with this one: the mini-games aren't horribly hard as in the first chapter.
3/5
Exolon, 03 Jun 2017 (Rating: 4)
Looks fantastic and it's great, it doesn't grab me much, though.
4/5
Another coin op conversion, I think, you're a firefighter climbing buildings and saving women and puppies while avoiding the fire. It's okaysh, but the gameplay is limited, the action repetitive and the controls could be more responsive. Would have been a good budget game, but it was full price.
3/5
Far better than Super Hang-On and one of the best racing games.
4,25/5
I was never able to do solve any puzzles (which are a very small part of the game, anyway), but it's a very neat, cute and playable platformer with a huge map. Nice jingles and music too.
4,25/5
Although the loading screen is a bit ugly.
There's something diabolical in this game.
3,5/5
It's well done, although the olympics kind of game is not a genre I like very much.
3,25/5
Feud, 05 Jun 2017 (Rating: 4)
This was pretty good stuff at very little cost.
3,75/5
Neat, colourful 2D arcade/adventure with lots of items, nice touches and that was an exceptional value for money.
I doubt Atlantis ever released something better than this.
3,75/5
Crappish western beat'em up over a train with ridiculous collision detection and sprite masking.
2,5/5
I was excited back in the eighties when I first saw this american football game with SUBJECTIVE VIEW reviewed in the italian ZZap! for the ATARI ST version, but with the specification that it was available for the Spectrum too, among various formats - so I've finally tried it with the emulation and...
2/5
Beautifully coloured graphics, the sprites too, and pratically without colour clash - in this sword game, but not much of a gameplay, and the way your arm lower the shield makes you character look grotesque or one of the Fantastic Four.
2,5/5
Goody, 07 Jun 2017 (Rating: 3)
It's an interesting platform-adventure, where you need to commit a great robbery at the local bank in order to settle down for life. You need to find money, buy the right tools, which you will have to use in the right orde to penetrate the bank - and to reach the bank you need to cross the town, avoid the ubiquitous policeman, beware of helicopters dropping bomb which - once reached the ground - bolt horizontally towards you, dodging lethal tears that moon drips down and many other things. And you must be very good at jumping.
It's a hard game - after all, there's a reason if they gave you 13 lives or so. Graphics are ok. Your sprite is very fast, 128k sound effects and tune are good.
3,25/5
Pretty good very adventurous game, in which you move through the jungle and other impervious environments equipped with hand granades, boomerangs, arrows and a pole to pole vaulting over traps, insidious screens or land on otherwise unreachable spots - while dodging or killing the most deadly fauna and flora - and all this only to save a silly chap. Anyway, a bit too hard for my taste.
3,75/5
It's technically great, but the gameplay is a bit painful, is very playable,
but at the same time I don't find the need of absolute attention and meticulousness so enjoyable.
3,5/5
An old style 3d Isometric game with a difference: your aim is to squash all the bugs infesting a manor, and one of the best way to do it is by letting fat women fall over them from the ceiling.
3,5/5
In a sense, this is the Leader Board of the bowling games. But who cares about bowling?
3/5
Strange and insidious game filled with spells and minuscule sprites. Your energy drains pretty fast.
3/5
Nice 3D isometric skateboard game. With lethal bees chasing you.
3,75/5
It's Boulder Dash again, the conversion of some arcade version - but what's the use, the old Boulder Dash games are far better.
3/5
A slow and clumsy futuristic Ikari Warriors.
2,75/5
Slow and hard to control. Ultimate's sad end.
2,75/5
Dizzy, 09 Jun 2017 (Rating: 4)
I'm not one of those guys that gets all excited for an egg - but undoubtedly Dizzy to the yolk, I mean, ilk of the excellently done games, with very good graphics, sounds and playability.
4/5
A weird game, after it's by Denton Designs, I'm not sure I've ever really understood.
It's another one listed as 1987 but with a 1986 appearing on the loading screen.
2,75/5
Arcade/Adventure where you have to reconstruct your hubby, Frankenstein.
Highly monochrome, but atmospheric enough, in spite of your sprite looking like a sausage with limbs and head. Too easy to die if you aren't using the right key on the right door: once the skeletons or the ghost corner you, it seems almost impossible to get away. But it's not bad.
3,5/5
Cute side view maze game withtout surprises, but nonetheless pleasant to play. Find eight can of fuels and destroy four switches in order to get away from a dangeorus planet by shuttle.
3,5/5
French software! It's a subjective shoot'em up, you move a crosshair across a multi-screen area, following some usual arrows, trying to locate the gangster peeping from a window of the building, or from the roof, or ducked on the pavement outside, or climbing the external stairs, you have about 4 seconds to find him, before he shoots you. More realistically than in the other games of this sub-genre, your aim is not completely steady after shooting, your slightly shake and you have to readjust slightly. It's ok, I guess and it doesn't even look bad [too much white space, though].
3/5
Duet, 14 Jun 2017 (Rating: 3)
Superficially a sequel of Commando for two simultaneous players, substantially a Gauntlet clone, with small, ugly, sketchy sprites and graphics - but not unplayable. Released in the 6-Hit-Pak compilation along Great Gurianos and others.
2,75/5
It's a colourful maze game in which you control what seems to be the renowned Alien giving the title to the famous Ridley Scott movie, you penetrate a spaceship and you must spit ten pods in the incubatoers scattered around, in order to secure the continuation of your species. You can move between different zones of the spaceship using "elevators" in which you are atomized or so, or - another reference to the movie - through vent ducts. There are lots of different enemies, very hard to avoid, and to replenish your energy you can gruesomely eat what seem to be babies walking around, but are described as "little engineers". Another cute animation is your end, a sequence where your head jumps off the rest of the body and bounces away. Very nice backgrounds but the transparent sprites really tend to mix with them confusingly. It's not bad, but the gameplay is not so irresistible.
3/5
Multi-directional shoot'em up, a late conversion of an early coin op from 1981 - you must destroy the space stations inside a delimited area, while avoiding asteroids and other obstacles, and being chased by formations of enemy spacecrafts - there are power up's and other stuff around. It's ok.
3,5/5
A mix between Vortex's Revolution and Kirel, only, this time you're a spring, and you must touch all the squares with a rotating circle in them, and then go to the exit square - all this avoiding the nasties and treading carefully through these space floating platforms, littered with traps. Hard but valuable budget game.
3,25/5
Gauntlet is one of the best Gauntlet clones of the year!
4/5
It's like, I don't know, Game Over for girls - because it looks and it's a typical
spanish product, but - strangely - is easy, comparatively VERY easy, and I must be a girl, because I like it, even more than the original Game Over. It starts flying in space, a horizontal shoot'em up with beautifully coloured explosions, and ends up on the surface of a planet, and in between there are enemis of all kind, colour and shape. It's great fun.
Biggest breast ever on the loading screen.
4/5
Are you skillful enough to control up to three characters simultaneously through bullets and bombs galore? Well, I'm not. The concept was original, something usually implemented in arcade/adventure's not in action games, graphics are nice, playability is not bad - but it's not for me.
3,25/5
Druid goes monochrome! Unluckily. But the game is still good, there are bidirectional portals towards different zones, and there seems to be more stuff, more spells - but even a more complicated control system, with lots of keys.
3,5/5
Fairy-tale isometric 3D arcade/adventure nicely drawn, with lots of icons, but very slow.
3/5
Mediocre Firelord clone which can pride itself with a very good average vote in the archive. I don't know why.
2,5/5
XOR, 20 Jun 2017 (Rating: 4)
This maze/puzzle game is an ingenious and addictive riot full of shields, masks, fish and ducks.
4/5
A fun conversion, although the bubble spitting dragons look rather sad.
4/5
Somebody stole your motorbike and its pieces are now all over town, you must find them and buy two tickets in order to collect your girlfriend and take her to a concert. The town is riddled with gangs and other characters, with which you can graciously talk, or graciously fight, entering a fast beat'em up sequence. Original game, in content, presentation and gameplay.
3,75/5
You're a guy with a great amount of debts to pay, no money and no work - when you're informed that you're the sole heir of a rich aunt, which will leave her fortune to you if you "repeat her achievement of the thirties". So you try to get out of your building without your creditors noticing and earn your million dollars. It's in subjective view, point and click, and it looks quite cute too.
3,75/5
Professional and polished spanish vertical space shooter, with long range shooting and short range crosshair,
to destroy stuff on the lower platforms and such.
Contrarirly to the common control system in this kind of games,
you don't simply move laterally, but you actually face left and right when pressing the related keys - and the same thing happens for the "down" command: you don't just go back, towards the bottom of the screen while the scrolling proceeds, but you actually face down: it's a nice thing that while facing down, your short range laser stilll shoots upward, allowing you to destroy dangerous structures while at the same time running away from it and its weapons.
So, lots of nice things in this game, but even a lot of YELLOW, and, specifically, of YELLOW ON YELLOW, which doesn't help avoiding lethal stuff: especially when there's a big deal of action going on: with deadly structures on the platforms, bullets, flying things that chase you all over the screen. In fact, a good amount of the times I'm not ever sure of what exactly has killed me.
So, it's a nice vertical shooter with a bit of a monochrome blindness problem.
3,25/5
Brick throwing on moving pavements. Faster Than Light arcade games are mabye slightly underrated.
3,75/5
Decent horizontal space shoot'em up with power up's, especially for a budget release.
3/5
I've always liked it.
3,75/5
Another great Leader Board game. Too many trees though.
It's like the first capter, only everything is bigger, the enemis swallowed lots of vitamins and became giants,
and the dogs grew too. The map is wider, you can fall through screens and screen, or lose yourself in a system of tunnels. It's maybe slightly more difficult, and there aren't so many differences, aside that you became a woman, but it's still pretty good.
4/5
Slightly debatable collision detection, thugs appearing out of nowhere, high difficulty and easy deaths make Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a rather flawed conversion that could have been very good. In fact, I don't dislike it, in spite of all the defects.
3,25/5
Jackal, 14 Jul 2017 (Rating: 3)
It's Commando on a jeep, and with a bit of lateral scrolling, but not as good. Still, it's not unplayable.
3/5
I never understood much about this game when I was a kid, and probably that's why I used to return to it.
"Wibstars is about the successful operation of a computer goods distribution company" say the instructions - and it's structured in three or four not very interesting mini-games. It looks cute, but there's not enough gameplay.
2,5/5
Flunky, 02 Aug 2017 (Rating: 4)
Very good arcade/adventure by the legendary Don Priestley, taking the mick out of the British Royal Family, with the usual stunning cartoonish graphics.
4/5
Octan, 02 Aug 2017 (Rating: 3)
Pretty decent vertical space shoot'em up for a very good price.
3,25/5
Simple and playable droid extermination game, with top view and, of course, 5 levels to clean up and lifts to move among them.
3/5
I'd like to like it but there are a few unnerving things that spoil it: apparently there are seeds that simply don't want to be picked up, the sprites are well drawn and the background nicely coloured but there are bad instances of colour clash, and when the path is narrow and twisted it's too boringly laborious to go through it. The option screen tune is a nice rendition of the Flight of the Bumblebee, and you can squeeze a couple of minutes of entertainment from the game, still it irritates me.
2,75/5
Seems a decent arcade/adventure set in space, although I'm not able to do much
3/5
A sort of galactic garderning game, in the shape of a bidirectional horizontal shoot'em up, and the need to
obtain a week killer to proceed to exterminate that undesirable stuff that spoils your space crops.
3/5
It seems better than the first episode, which I found a rather poor ensemble of mini-games.
The graphics are great, and the game is an horizontal jet pack affair which starts off rather harshly,
but you learn to do better.
3/5
A demented beat'em up which sees you confronting cartoonish anthropomorphic animals.
3/5
It's an arcade/adventure, the arcade part being similar to a Rygar happening in a limited but bidirectional area, and it even looks and feels similar - only better - because probably the programmers are the same, I didn't check, but they're both Go! products. The "adventure" part is very simplistic but it's a nice addition.
3,25/5
A multi-screen which technically looks very dated, and with a ripetitive and depthless gameplay, but strangely it's effectively creepy to me, in spite of all the evident flaws and limitations. The aim seems to be stealing the eggs from some insects of variable size, moving at full speed through a series of ugly caverns. The only other game that conveyed such a creepiness to me is Wriggler, thanks to its tantalizingly disquieting spiders. In this game spiders AND scorpions, are surely not missing.
2,75/5
Ninja, 08 Aug 2017 (Rating: 3)
A beat'em up with a good amount of moves, nice and colourful and decorative backgrounds on the upper side of the screen which allows the sprites to avoid the colour clash. You can even pick up and use shurikens, swords and stuff. You move through a bidirectional environment closed in a loop. It's very easy, in a pleasant way, but after I've defeated the opponents in every screen, they were left empty and I didn't know what else to do nor I've found some exit or some passage. So, I'm not sure about this game. The ninja walks in a silly way, though.
?/5 probably 3/5
It reminds of Camelot Warriors, it's got nice, colourful touches, but the animation is stiff and incomplete. Also, it's hard.
2,5/5
I don't like it, it's too hard.
This is a vertical shoot'em up with a very very nice presentation with very pleasant music and effects, nice black and white graphics, detailed and well drawn, and strange enemis flying towards your spacecraft, like lightbulbs, inkspots and stuff like that. You have short range fire too, when your crosshair is over a structure on the ground, like, of course, big smileys and such. Not bad at all, not even greath tough.
3,5/5
This is pratically an enhanced version of Zythum, with colours and with adventure elements, but the way your character moves and jumps, the way you control him, the style of the backgrounds and of the sprites are the same - although, luckily, the creatures lost their stiffness and acquired some frames of animation - the programmer is, in fact, the same, a David O'Connor (or O'Conner, which is how he signed in the Zythym loading screen?) that followed these games with nonethless that Rainbow Islands and Soldier Of Fortune. I think Outcast wasn't very well received at the time, but it seems pretty decent to me (in fact, it's got an excellent average vote in the WoS archive).
3,25/5
Supersmooth, cute and beautifully animated, but it doesn't grab me much.
3,5/5
A silly game about running after babies trying to kill themselves.
2,75/5
Shadow Skimmer is a flipper game in the guise of a space maze game. You're in a big spaceship and control a peculiar craft through various flip screens, and you can flip your vehicle too, a change that allows you to go under certain passages, or just move faster through certain dangerous zones. In fact, you can meet swarms of ferocious enemies coming out of green tubes and shooting madly. When your vehicle is hit or bump into the enemies, it just go crazy - bouncing against everything at mad speed until you manage to take control again (or die). That's why it's a flipper game. Another interesting feature are the hatches, in which you can enter by pressing fire once over them: they lead you into the dark and tranquil belly of the spaceship, where there are no enemies and you can find other hatches to reach other zones. You can also find objects that must be destroyed in order to make disappear obstacles elsewhere, an operation that will allow you to go further.
Your aim is to reach the In the third and final sector, where "you will find the entry-way to the mothership and your final goal."
Shadow Skimmer has wonderfully smooth and coloured graphics, nice music - but it's also rather difficult. Your losing control is a nice effect, but it doesn't help much playbility: in fact, you're going to lose your three lives [or shields, as the instructions call them] very fast and your laser won't be of much help.
3,25/5
Nice bicycle race game.
3,5/5
Read The Sentinel instructions and finally learnt to play it after 30 years. But I'm still totally crap at it, and, anyway, it's so slow, especially when you try to do something while the sentinel is sucking all your energy off.
A decent but not memorable text adventure.
Nice whodunit kind of adventure.
You have to beg your sprite to move before it actually does it.
2,5/5
Tuareg, 12 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Nice setting and graphics but you don't seem to be going anywhere.
2,5/5
------------------------------------------
by Carlos Arias, Kantxo Design, ACE, Gominolas
A semi-naked princess has been kidnapped in Marrakesh and you must rescue her, probably to remove the "semi" before the "naked". You have to wander through the city, enter houses and buildings looking for her, or buying weapons and such, while foes and citizens move around you. Some will try to kill you, while from other you can gather indications or energy. The game looks and sounds good but the gameplay is rather dull.
2,75/5
1943, 12 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Pale and too easy sequel to 1942.
2,5/5
Nothing really new, it's just that now it's a menage a trois.
Nice'n'easy adventure/platform game.
Colourful and relatively smooth, but that giant bat and those green barriers are an excessive nuisance.
3,5/5
The impossible sequel to the excellent Sidewize.
2,5/5
Another Jet Set Willy only with a dancing title and with a star sporting a bouncing belly.
2,5/5
A decent 3D isometric arcade/adventure at budget price.
3,5/5
One of the slowet arcade/adventure-platform games ever.
2,5/5
It's always nice when foxes shoot back. Good animation, not a great game though.
3/5
This was a pretty neat effort in the very crowded samurai rabbit genre.
4/5
Advanced police patrolling techniques: bounce around riding a ball and catch the thieves.
1,5/5
Vixen, 13 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
It's mostly about the curves of the sampled model (see how she struts), but it's actually a playable game.
Yeti, 13 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
A sort of poor man's Exolon, but it's decent and it looks good enough.
3/5
It seems pretty good, but I just can't get out of that jungle.
3,5/5
It's a pretty good alien destroying game. Ugly worms from outer space to be chased inside a spacecraft, spacestation, or something. It's very playable.
3,75/5
by Pamela Roberts, Jack Wilkes, Mike Marchant, NT
You wander around a spaceship or futuristic laboratory or something, shooting at big alien worms and trying to save your "comrades" (you must be a communist) - and when you collected 10 of them, a door opens and you enter a black room where a worse and bigger alien, a sort of big pie with a yellow head over it, attacks you, firing crawling stuff that chases you around the screen. So, it's fun. The graphics are cute, though the scrolling is not that splendid, and playability is high. It's equal opportunity game as Ant Attack, where you can choose to control a boy or a girl. And it lookes like the programmer is a female, or at least one of them - a Pamela Roberts. So, it's very exciting.
4/5
Addictive top view football game.
3,5/5
It's cute, it doesn't seem to have much substance, though.
3/5
Something similar to Scuba Dive, only Spanish and harder.
3/5
Terrible alien beat'em up plus cage climbing - with two or three moves.
1,5/5
A sort of Gauntlet/Avenger set on a pirate ship, and it's not bad at all.
3,5/5
An original take on the race concept: you partecipate in a chariot race in an ancient Rome coliseum, avoiding obstacles and fighting your opponents while riding. There are a good sense of speed, a very nice rendering of the curves of the track and nice music and effects. It's hard too, though.
3/5
An original blend of platform, shooting and puzzle elements in a sci fi setting. It's not easy. It's frustrating, with addictive potential.
3,5/5
Pretty terrible stuff.
1,5/5
You're busy travelling to some planet in your tiny spacecraft while giant green monsters are busy smashing you into little pieces restlessly.
1,5/5
Strangely nobody ever thought of doing a pogostick game before or since.
1,5/5
Atrog, 14 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
A whole greenish and blocky village is chasing you and beating you, women included, while you try to find the programmers of the game to kill them.
1,5/5
Piggy, 15 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
Your average 1983's maze game, only it was released in 1988 and it's harder. Bug Byte probably found this tape inside some old and forgotten cardboard box.
1,5/5
Lots and lots of room to visit, while pads send you into the air - and that's the only way to jump in the game. Forgettable. There's not even overkilling, because you just can't shoot.
1,75/5
Was there a show titled "Star Wars Droids"? I didn't know that, but it must have been really wonderful, judging by the game.
Anyway, it's strange affair, an action game all based on icons, similarly to the stuff Psygnosis was releasing at the time, only way more basic. You control R2D2 and C3PO or whatever their names were in the original movie, and you must move horizontally along some cave or corridor while shooting at swarms of robots and stuff. It's not even totally unplayable, just uninspiring, and the icons are not the best way to face the action.
Sometimes you find a computer and you must connect the R2D2 to it and solve a puzzle to eliminate some barrier that closes the way.
2/5
Crappy stunts on a motorbike.
Ok, what's going on in this game?
1,5/5
A sort of Dinamic's Game Over gone wrong. By the way, it even makes Dinamic games look easy.
1,75/5
A bad motorbike race game. It's got nice music, though.
2/5
You're riding a flying skateboard or something through the summer night (I don't know if it's summer), shooting at stuff that could be books (you don't want to study), cans of something or I don't know what - just don't stumble on the clouds (or on the sun)!
You die very fast, and a sampled voice shots "Ok yah!", but the game is not very ok nor very yeah.
1,75/5
Budget isometric 3d arcade adventure, with small, jerky and confusing graphics. Not very clear what's happening on the screen, why things are exploding, why you are dying and the meaning of life in general.
But sometimes you find an item and you put it in your pocket. And it's not clear what it is.
2/5
Probably one of the worst game released in 1988 by a major software house, it boasts on the cover of the inlay that it's a "KALEIDOSCOPE of psychological warfare", but then the game immerses you in a monochrome sea of cyan, only interrupted by some swarms of violently colour clashing aliens. You run around shooting, and you start to be bored almost to the point of falling asleep, and maybe that's the real reason the title is "Dream Warrior". There are hallucinatory bits when a monster appears for a second and then disappears, though. Anyway, it's a fairly avoidable game.
1,75/5
Robot duels and bags of money.
2/5
You are Hercules and you fight some big, nasty sword-equipped skeletons, sometimes you hit them, sometimes you don't, and it all soon becomes rather boring.
2,5/5
Not very inspiring 3d skateboard game, sort of Paperboy without papers, and going down.
2,5/5
Murphy, 16 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Ride your fantastic pogostick over skyscrapers, and die crashing against little birds.
1,75/5
You have a key for every single limb and one to climb up, you just have to find which hand or foot you need to move in order to go up a little more, and you have a limited time to reach the top.
It's not terribile, but not even engaging.
Anyway, I've never understood the point of climbing things, especially if they're some kilometers high.
2,5/5
After all these years, I'm still not sure of how it's supposed to work, yet I know it's bad.
1,75/5
You're a girl in the West and you're busy punching swarms of shooting cow boys charging from left and right, while running through a town. It's a basic blak and white thing that won't impress you much.
1,75/5
I fired and then I forgot.
2,5/5
One of those games authored with CRL's 3D Game Make. You're some kind of monster trapped in a hellish environment: a terrible game. I died 87 times in the second screens and then I gave up.
1,75/5
Martial arts on a platform, meaning that you can fall off or your opponent can push you off. The animation is not very smooth, it looks like some frames are missing. There are not many moves, and the fight is not very engaging.
2/5
If you're looking for confusing monochrome graphics, random and unreliable collision detection, and bad keys layout - this shoot'em up is just for you.
1,75/5
Vertical shoot'em up with big monochrome graphics in which you're not entirely sure why you die.
2/5
Delfox, 18 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Frantic horizontal shoot'em up maybe moving just a slight bit too fast, and with your spaceship doing some strange and not entirely comprehensible movements. Anyway, it seems rather dull.
2/5
A mediocre fantasy arcade/adventure with semi-3d perspective graphics.
2,5/5
It's a good gang beat'em up with horizontal scrolling where you must save president Bush so he can start the first Iraq war a couple of years later.
Monochrome graphics with nice animation, nice tunes, good playability - although the first three levels are very easy, while the fourth or fifth immediately starts in an impossible way.
Also, controls could have been a little more responsive. Nonetheless, it was a quality release.
3,5/5
I don't know, this is a bit bad, with your main sprite suffering from one of the gravest cases of colour clash, although you may pretend he's just awfully bleeding, and the game doesn't seem to go anywhere, it's a sort of Ikari Warriors/Commando, vertical scrolling (with a bit of flip screen on the side), where you shoot hundredgs of enemy soldiers and you can drive a jeep. It certainly can't be said that it's unplayable.
2,75/5
Bi-directional horizontal shoot'em up where you can control both a helicopter or a tank, a feature that vaguely reminds of Silkworm, which didn't exist yet, at least for the Spectrum. The game doesn't seem great, but the parallax scrolling is beautiful and it was a budget game.
3/5
It's an entertaining little shooter set in a western environent viewed in a isometric 3d angle. You only have to wander around town, and there is a set number of gunslingers you have to kill before that specific room can be considered clean - but you're not stucked in a specific location until you've cleaned it, you can explore. Graphics are small, and it all considerably slows down when there's another sprite on the screen, but it's not that bad.
2,75/5
Merlin, 18 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
You control a HUGE, GIANT and colourful Merlin, but the gameplay is simplistic and lacking.
2/5
Not completely terrible but ultimately boring tennis game.
2,5/5
I don't dislike it. Side view BMX racing game, with jumps and cans of drink to pick up.
2,75/5
Okayish top-view "push the other balls off the platform" with scrolling, but not ok enough.
2,5/5
Smooth horizontal shoot'em up whose lack of power up's and variety doesn't make it much interesting.
2,5/5
5 a side soccer game in which you can't even enter the goal post with the ball (I tried repeatedly because I couldn't score kicking it).
Playable but mediocre sci fi maze game.
Tanium, 20 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
It looks good and it's not unplayable but it's very slow, including, and most of all, the shooting.
2,5/5
A Gauntlet clone, a little bit jerky, and with a slightly more 3d view.
2,75/5
It's got a cute irate punky creature as a star, which tends to bounce when hitting a platform or an obstacle (green rocks), which doesn't particularly help manoeuvrability.
2,5/5
Bloody hard 3d motorbike game where you die non stop every few seconds and, to make it even worse, there's multiloard too. The graphics are almost identical tp Glider Rider. Being so ludicrously frustrating I shouldn't be giving it
2,75/5
This is more interesting than your average 3D Game Maker effort, the design's got something to offer. Right from the start, the idea of the four crosses creepingly approaching you from each angle is pretty good, and the dangerous but silly ghosts often shooting each other off is a nice touch. Still, it's unmistakably 3D Game Maker. So, not very good.
2,5/5
A mistreated and neglected isometric 3d arcade/adventure that may not be very good, but it's not that bad either. Graphics and sprites are well drawn, the atmosphere is eerie and there seem to be lots of rooms to explore. Recommended to mappers. Music's nice too.
3/5
An Ikari Warriors clone that's clearly on the shoddy side, with confusing graphics to worsen things, but it can be played.
2,75/5
A sort of Road Runner in space where you play the part of a sort of Wil E. Coyote. There are a lots of birds to be caught, and you can catch'em by jumping on them, or using items spreaded round, rockets or such. You can even visit underground tunnels, and there must be a bonus level, that I haven't seen yet. It's well done.
3,25/5
Droidz, 21 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
It's another Gauntlet clone, but this time there's at least a change of scenario, and it's more a sci fi thing where you're controlling a robot. You're shooting at things that look like yellow and green worms.
2,75/5
Sci fi maze game that moves at demented speed.
2/5
There are much worse football games on the Speccy but, still, the scrolling of this top view effort is rather jerky and I find it hard to understand where my player is and to control him satisfyingly.
2,5/5
A series of marine themed old style mini-games with lots of missiles and such.
2/5
Spanish jump'n'shoot of the hardest kind.
3/5
A jump, shoot and deactivate the bombs game with jerky scrolling and animation and repetitive gameplay. You start on a two-visibile-floors-at-the-time spaceship which reminds of Visitors.
2/5
A decent futuristic race game, using a vehicle hovering over the track.
A budget mix between Commando and Gauntlet. It's not terrible.
Slug, 25 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
It's an old style single screen action game sharing dynamics with ancient stuff as Jumping Jack, but with more modern graphics. Terrible loading screen. It's playable.
Cute, minute, colourful graphics for this underwater game lacking manoeuvrability, which doesn't help playability.
2,5/5
Scarcely inspiring bi-directional shoot'em up on water.
Jerky animation for this droid-shooting-droids game with scrolling and lifts to reach other levels of the building. It's rather dull.
I find it strangely addictive which doesn't make much sense because the graphics are so confusing that I can't tell what's going on most of the time and I die every few seconds.
3/5
It's a very playable but not very engaging Into The Eagle's Nest clone, with items to pick up, and adventure elements. The other levels must be pure shoot'em up's with different perspectives, but i didn't play them.
3/5
Mediocre full price one on one beat'em up, but some fun can be squeezed out of it. For example, I like constantly changing the colour of the monochrome graphics while playing.
2,75/5
Kljuc, 27 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
Seems a pretty bad and basic looking multi-screen platformer, to me.
1,5/5
Compared to other driving games of the period it looks almost amateurish. Just look at WEC Le Mans. Anyway, this game mixes racing with shooting, and that's the main difference. The other differences are that there is no sense of speed, even when it's going at maximum speed it looks like the car it's "walking", the road doesn't convey any movement effect, the car is not very responsive, but in spite of that the game is playable, maybe even too much, in fact is on the dull side. Still, let's give it
2,75/5
Budget sci fi vertical shoot'em up with domino explosions, lots of colours, interesting sound effects and a bit of confusion. Big and colourful bosses too. It's not unplayable.
3,25/5
This is the best CRL's 3d Game Maker made effort that I've seen, which is not sayint much, because they're usually very bad. Anyway, Evaristo el Punky seems almost decent, although the only reason that made me want to go further when I was a kid was to reach the topless girl and see what would happen.
2,5/5
Another bad CRL's 3d Game Maker effort.
Shoot the enemies from the top of a riding stage coach. Western game that I find graphically confusing and very hard.
2,5/5
Choose your players (guys from the neighborhood) and play basketball in alleys or parking lots. Nice idea, but the actual playing part is not that good.
2,5/5
I couldn't even start the proper game (I think) because I wasn't able to gain enough power by alternately pressing the "o" and "p" keys as in those Decathlon games. Not nice.
1,5/5
It's Metro-Cross on a scooter. It's eminently playable.
3,5/5
I can't do much with this one.
Eliminator, conceived by Nebulus guy John Phillips, seems to blend Space Harrier with a race driving game, or with Metro-Cross, with its view from behind on a fast moving chequered track in which the semi-trasparent sprites tend to appear confusingly, lots of shooting, of dodging and ramps to jump over the obstacles. It's good.
3,5/5
Cyan shoot'em up. In the first level you control a plane, viewed from behind, in costant nosediving through enemy fleets among the clouds until the sea and a ship are visibile.
Once you destroy the ship, simultaneously dodging all the missiles aimed at you, there's a helicopter level, with view from above, shooting dozens of enemy helicopters. And then I don't know. Unexciting but playable enough.
3,25/5
Definitely better than the similar Road Blasters.
3,5/5
Hello there, YOR.
A playable cruel futuristic sport from France.
3,75/5
Gremlin Graphics jumped on the Robocop bandwagon with this arcade game starring a futuristic cop and divided in two sections, the drive to the crime section (comprehensive of shooting at other cars) - neatily drawn and animated, with very responsive controls (better than both Overlander and Road Blasters) - and the "in the apartment complex" section where you try to catch the baddie, shooting, jumping, exploring, using lifts. Trying not to kill civilians, also, preferrably.
It was a well done bi-action game in the unexciting context of 1988's general mediocre releases.
3,75/5
Nicely animated and drawn, fast and playable, although it seems a bit dull gameplay-wise.
A boring variation on Jet Set Willy with lots of electricity and switches.
Thing!, 02 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
Cutely done arcade/adventure. Although tending to the dull and annoying side.
2,75/5
Arkos, 02 Dec 2017 (Rating: 2)
Unexceptional (and a bit bad) run, jump and shoot game with flip screens.
It's simply Infogrames' title from the year before, Prohibition, without any interesting development - the only difference being that it's set in space.
Flip screen shoot'em up, you control a guy that disappears on any backgrounds, except maybe green backgrounds, chased by hordes of armed people: you can duck, shoot and run out of the screen, no jumping - terrible colour clash, repetitive gameplay, and debatable playability.
Rehash of the old arcade Armageddon, with cuter graphics. But why when my shooting base has been hit and I can't defend the earth anymore I must behold the slow and total annihilation of the planet? Whatever.
Did anybody need a third Spy vs Spy? I don't think so.
2,5/5
I like the animation of the up's and down's.
2,75/5
Submarine 2d arcade/adventure similar to Electric Dream's Mermaid Madness.
Another CRL's 3d Game Maker effort, this time clearly channeling Faster Than Light's Hydrofool and it's better than the average CRL's 3d Game Maker result, but it's STILL a CRL's 3d Game Maker thing.
Gutz, 02 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
Sci fi maze game with a slight 3d view filled with annoying little monsters, and with side scrolling cave section connecting the various mazes. Lots of shooting. Not a great game, really. Very good music though.
2,75/5
Beat'em up/platformer. Ugly sprites, but smooth scrolling and very responsive control makes it quite playable in my opinion.
R-Type, 03 Dec 2017 (Rating: 5)
Looks like it deserves all the praise.
Rex, 07 Dec 2017 (Rating: 4)
Yeah, this is utterly impressive stuff, once you come over the initial harsh impact with the difficulty level.
A Jump and Shoot game organized in flip screens, with big and colourful graphics, smooth animation, nice sound, high playability. Good stuff.
Great to watch, but the pixel perfect bits ruin the playability.
Rastan, 08 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
Extremely playable Leap and Fight game with a muscular star and his mighty sword, and blinding backgrounds.
3,5/5
Fast and tough top view combat racing game.
3,75/5
Xenon, 14 Dec 2017 (Rating: 4)
Solid, albeit hard, vertical shoot'em up with a shifting vehicle.
3,75/5
by Krisalis Software Ltd (Shaun Hollingworth, Peter M. Harrap, Jason Wilson, Ben Daglish)
This entry in the Pac Man saga is a scrolling 3d version of the early game and, even more importantly, with the possibility of jumping over the ghosts - so this time they can't corner you so easily. It's enjoyable, sufficiently nice to look at - in spite of Pac Man's yellow clashing with the background - and
very, very playable. A defect: the speed seems to be slower when moving vertically. Still, pretty good.
4/5
previous review:
Pacman in 3d. It'd be very very nice, it only bothers me how it slows down when moving vertically compared to the horizontal speed.
3,5/5
Cerius, 22 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
An easy budget game based on Exolon.
by Sentient Software Ltd (Mike Lamb, John Mullins, Jonathan Dunn, Bill Harbison, Alick Morrall)
Chicken bells, chicken bells. And fusilli with tuna. So, that part was settled. No fear of dying of hunger. Plus fortuituos encounters. And a lunch offered. Then, in the evening, the only one that came by. Sense of responsability, I suppose. Twenty years later, it was Lungs of Death. While somebody was at the Addicts Eve, waiting for a Grace to be granted, at the Gates of a Saint. So, it was a day of going out's and coming back in's, walking over red carpets, among glimmering twinkling spheres, people carring packages, the magic and the frenzy of the preparatory day. Trying to spot a head curled by an imaginary tempest while a mesmerizing arpeggio resounded. Love Comes Tumbling. And then trying to get into the narrow passage, between the competitor and the kerb, risking the set back of a halt. Another kind of hypnosis. And it was like that drunk fever filled with presage e trepidation were in it too. Was it the swerve from a real finish line? Should we really celebrate? Or was it just another kind of illusion, on a different screen? Fastly going nowhere.
5/5
by Shaw bros
You're the new sheriff in town. Bullets kill you. Arrows too.
And then blood pours slowly on the screen.
3/5
by Canvas (John Gibson, Dawn Drake, Dave Worton)
Ok, I was intrigue by this game BITD, but never had the chance to play it. Crawling in dirty tranches trying to reach distant targets protected by hordes of troops and whatever's. A more sophisticated version of Commando, in which you could help the USA to keep their military supremacy over the world bullying it again and again. Now I've tried it and... yeah, it's just like I thought it was, a more sophisticated Commando game, in which you can multidirectionally walk, run, craw, use different weapons, you have missions to accomplish, maps to refer to, bunkers and cannons to avoid, routes and strategies to adopt, and other stuff. I like the small but detailed graphics, which the reviewer didn't seem to appreciate much, after all the Spectrum (and Amastrad) versions was put in the hands of veterans like John Gibson (Gift From The Gods, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, STONKERS) and Dawn Drake (graphics for Robocop, Target; Renegade, Batman: The Movie). So, not a hot shoot'em up, but a slower and slightly more thoughtful one and good at that.
4/5
by Linda Wright
You're a bored reporter busy with insignificant little articles about uninteresting local matters when you're reached by a letter informing you of a dangerous presence in a village nearby: an unidentified sheep-hungry beast.
Your boss agrees to send you there to investigate and write an article. The Beast is a text adventure, with the odd (and not excellent) screen thrown in, based on a sort of Hound of Baskerville story visited through a journalistic point of view. First of all, you must leave the office and reach the small village. Once there, you can start interact with various characters, ask questions, and begin to solve the puzzles. The descriptions are nice and the game lets you play and explore, you don't get stuck at the start, you have plenty of stuff to be busy with. The Games Machine said it wasn't good, Your Sinclair declared it only okaysh, Crash gave it a Smash. I agree more with the latter.
4/5
by Arcanum Software Developments (Casey Bee Games, Rory C. Green, J. Dave Rogers)
Marauder is a super-smooth sci fi vertical shoot'em up released by Hewson.
You control a futuristic terrain vehicle and must penetrate enemy territories for very important and unquestionble reasons that the instructions can explain to you better than I could. The result is nonetheless that you must face and destroy a thick series of not very amicable machines, robots, tanks, vehicles, and fixed firing stationings divided in a set of about ten levels, each of them with a particularly crowded ending. Not big bosses here, but an ordeal reminding of Commando end leves. And it's not a coincidence. Not listed by WoS, the real programmer of this little jewel is the same of the celebrated Elite Systems conversion, veteran Keith Burkhill, hiding under the alias of "Casey Bee Games", although not trying so very hard to hide, in fact his name is in the official instructions. And he put its previous experience with vertical shoot'em up's to very good use: as stated at the very beginning of the review, Marauder is super smooth, your vehicle very manoeuvrable, responsive and it can fire very quickly, allowing you to react very efficiently to your enemies. As in almost all the "on the ground" shoot'em up's, there's no automatic scrolling, meaning that you can decide at what pace you want to play, very cautiously, or like a demented kamikaze, advancing at full speed, shooting very fastly all around. A nice touch are panels flashing lights of different colours: shooting at them will gift you with extra lives, extra smart bombs (extremely useful) or (very) temporary shields depending on the colour you hit. Which could also curse you with a loss of life, a temporary jammed gun or a temporary reverse of your controls. These panels can be used in a strategic way, at certain points of the game. Graphics are good with some splash of colours here and there to make them less dull and differentiate the leves, 128k version has its own music and effects, playability is dreamy - the difficulty level is very well balanced. A lesser known Hewson's masterpiece.
5/5
by Tim Miller, Tony R. Porter, Kevin Bulmer, Jon Harrison, Ben Daglish
In this game you must peform skating stunts in a disused multi-story car park, following a specific route, and once finished a jury will vote your performance, determining the end of the game or your succeeding to the next level. Although, if you pass the votation, there's another possibility: you can load a section with different graphics and gameplay, where you must skate over obstacles trying to reach the other end of the itinerary. Then you can go on to the next level of this section, or go back to the car park and face a new challenge there. Each section has 4 levels. The car park part is in a monochrome but fluidly scrolling, well drawn and animated sorf of 3d display, while the other is shown in a colourful side view. It's pretty good, although personally I'm not very skilled at doing the stunts. I usually just press randomly the directional keys while jumping, hoping that something good happen. But I'm certain that there's a more rational and graceful way to play.
3,75/5
It should have been written by Paul McCartney.
2,5/5
by Ace Software [2] (Alan P. Cresswell)
Overhead 3d car racing games, not very dissimilar to Super Sprint, but at budget price. It's nice, can become vaguely addictive, although I find it a bit slow and the gameplay is repetitive, although the levels are different from each other.
3,5/5
by Beam Software (Dave Moore, Rob Howard)
Big building destruction and little men eating was the thing in 1988, with games like Rampage and Ramparts, and The Muncher is another one in this streak, with the difference that is not a single screen thing like the two previously mentioned, and the sprites are not transparent, you've got a full coloured huge monster to create havoc and wreck a whole city, if not a whole nation (Japan), and to destroy humans, tanks and helicopter, themselves fully coloured. So, as you move the environment scrolls as you breath fireballs, punch, kick, jumping on rooftops and eating anything that moves. Which is not that bad.
3,75/5
by Paul Griffiths, Mike Brown, Martin Severn, Andrew Severn
Looks quite good, and it's not unplayable, but it's just slow and a bit jerky.
It's a sci fi version of Into The Eagle's Nest, which was a WWII version of Gauntlet, which I don't know what was.
3/5
by Paco Menendez, Juan Delcan
This Spanish classic is one of the last interesting isometric 3d efforts, along with Where Time Stood Stills and Inside Outing. Like The Great Escape, it creates a small world that works like perfect mechanism, with its routines and its characters. It also shares with John Heap's masterpiece the thrill of forbidden explorations in the night. There are also differences: the graphics don't scroll as in the substantial implementation of the Filmation concept that is The Great Escape, but it's back to the flip screen concept - only, each time you enter a room, the perspective changes, leaving you disoriented. Also, the timeline doesn't limit itself to a daily routine, but there are various things happenings throughout your stay at the abbey, especially murders, and there are verbal communications from various dwellers of the religious building. The story, of course, follows the plot of the famous novel by Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), which also spawned an admirable movie starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. And impressively playing the game successfully until the end takes almost the same time than watching the movie. And there are sequences that are almost a movie, where the subject of the "shot" is not your character, but somebody else busy with his own actions.
Another peculiarity is the almost constant presence of a novice at your side, following you everywhere, not only that: if you press the "z" key, you can suggest him what direction he must take, which can be very useful if you need an item you can't get near to. So, it's a very impressive and intriguing piece of software, with a story full of mistery. That said, I think there aren't many items in the game, the pace tends to be rather slow and the game is very long, too much for my taste. Even playing with a real Speccy, though, you can save your position, and take the next game from there.
4,25/5
Mixing beat'em up's and maze games, like Saboteur. Neat graphics.
A charming mix of colour clash and blocky animation - multiscrolling and thick with monsters.
3,5/5
Satan, 21 Jan 2019 (Rating: 3)
Satan [Dinamic Software, 1989]
A strange Dinamic game in which it's hard to die and there aren't colourful but clashy graphics, they're in fact small and monochrome.
Your character is an agile guy jumping, clinging and climbing with ease while collecting power up's and annihilating dozen of monsters.
It's playable. Dunno if it can hold one's interest for long though.
3/5
Cautious and moderately paced vertical shoot'em up.
3/5
Hit, 21 Jan 2019 (Rating: 4)
Cute verb-noun text adventure with gangsters and killings in prohibition time.
3,75/5
A minor Hewson release, that is a simple top view maze game mixed with Mastertronic's Pippo.
It's very playable, it's colourful, and it's in my top 10 games from 1989.
4/5
Various levels organized in a Zaxxon perspective, describing different sequences of the movies, in the first
you ride a jetbike through the forest, in the second level you're at the steering wheel of the Millenium Falcon, and the rest I didn't see. The accent is on the dodging part, and on the make-the-enemies-crash-against-the-obstacles side. It's nice enough.
3,5/5
A multicoloured mess with jerky scrolling.
2,5/5
This sequel was a Crash Smash, a Sinclair Megagame and a Sinclair User Classic but it seems too overwhelmingly busy and confused to me.
3/5
Dull and repetitive scrolling beat'em up. I had the original and I remember finishing it by keeping pressed a couple of keys from start to finish. And this is how I saved Madonna.
Bought it because the italian Zzap! gave 89% to it (Spectrum version). Totally wrong.
2/5
It seems a pretty good beat'em up to me. I didn't find problems in performing the "big jump" as some other people, not with the PC keyboard, anyway.
3,75/5
Too hard. Terrible collision detection.
2/5
Unresponsive and badly animated subway beat'em up.
1,75/5
Pretty cool sword beat'em up, taking place in a post-apocalyptic world of metropolitan ruins with beautiful backgrounds and a great tune in the title screen.
3,5/5
Pleasant but extremely easy text adventure in which you travel through time.
Very professional chopper-based shoot'em up with a high degree of destruction and a scrolling that sometimes
carries you to the left, and sometimes pulls you down and then pushes you to the right. While in the second level, which starts in sheer darkness, it just follows your movements. So, there are slight touches of originality. And lots and lots of annoying enemies. I don't enjoy it much, really.
3/5
It's okaysh, whatever it is.
3,25/5
How could I not remember Galaxy Force. I spent money on this impressive pile of crap.
1,5/5
This beat'em up was undermined by the disappointment effect given by the quality of its predecessors,
but, sorry, I don't think it's totally bad. I almost enjoy it (for a couple of minutes) and I spent money for it at the time.
2,75/5
I'm fond of this licenced game, far more than of the movie. U.S. Gold tries the multi-section rendition of the film, slightly in Ocean style, and this time - contrarily to Moonwalker - it succeeds, or, anway, this is my opinion.
The levels refers to specific cinematic sequences and are mostly based on an explorative platform gameplay,
with the bonus of the whip as a weapon, immerse in an atmospheric monochrome that, in the caverns of the first level, gets darker and darker while your torch progressively extinguishes. This is followed by a run, jump and dodge section on the top of a train carrying circus animals, by the exploration of catacombs under the ground of Venice, the choice of the right portal through a code sheet included in the packaging, a stage taking place in the Zeppelin with a floating effect making you sick, the climbing of the Buchenwald castle using your whip in the midst of a lightning-ridden storm, and the final inside the rock-embedded monuments of Petra, Jordan where you have to pass through three final ordeals to reach the sacred Graal. I spent much time on it back in the day and I think it's pretty good, so I subjectively give it
5/5
p.s. no Sean Connery, though
This was the Spectrum conversion of some C64 hit, I remember Thalamus had plenty of them,
all were shoot'em up's - but whey they tried the port to the Sinclair machine, something got lost in translation,
I suppose. It's a side-view shoot'em up with a narrow playing area, because the upper section of the screen
is taken by a top view of the action. Never got much far in this, because it's pretty hard. The gameplay
reminds of Firebird's Sidewize, which is better under any aspect. Still, Sanxion is not bad.
3/5
For a Domark's Bond game, it is above average. Still, not exactly particularly exciting.
It's a group of playable but not much engaging mini action games, in fact so many that the game can be
finished in about five minutes, or so the RZX Archive teaches us. Graphics and sound are good.
3/5
Vertical shoot'em up with busy monochrome graphics and jerky animation. Luckily at least the bullets are differently coloured. But it's still confusionary. Lots of very fleeting power up's help you in your fight against flying scorpions and such.
2,75/5
Great two voice beeper tune and very nice loading screen. Apparently, you, as Casanova, must collect bras all over Venice, while jealous boyfriends and husbands try to kill you. And they're not the only danger: women can kill you with their love, lethal multi-directional little hearts. You can reply with your mandolin, because the tunes you know are real killers. You know only a limited quantity of them, though. It's very hard, and you can die very easily and very quickly. Your first attempts may last a few seconds. Love requires practice. A game for people who like to suffer.
2,75/5
I was never a fan of the original conversion by Elite, and I'm not a fan of the conversion of the sequel made by U.S. Gold, which plays in the same way: the hard way. Aesthetically is an overall improvement, both visually and sound-wise, and indeed there's a one-more-go factor, it's pretty good a game, by I just can't bring myself to give it 4/5. (for now).
3,5/5
It's a shoot'em up with a Zaxxon perspective set in a sort of post-apocalyptic world made of ruins and desert, reminding of Critical Mass or Orbix the Terrorball, but you can't wander around - the scrolling is one directional like H.A.T.E., released in 1989 too. You can also land and collect survivors. It's a simple gameplay, not unpleasant, not exceptional.
2,75/5
It's a frenzy blast'em up thick with aliens of all shapes and sizes. You move from room to room
in space stations, moonbases etc. whiley they shove you, push you, grip you, catch you, try to strangle you,
drain your energy in anyway, while you can shoot in multiple directions, even pointing at the ceiling or at the floor, walking, ducking, ducking and walking at the same time, or jumping like a demented kangaroo.
It's very well done, but the gameplay is a bit samey.
3,5/5
It's an improvement compared to the original Out Run conversion, under the aspect of speed, but in the meantime
race games on Spectrum got even better, with titles like WEC Le Mans and Chase HQ or even a minor one like Power Drift, and Turbo Out Run pales compared to them. Moreover, you don't have a clear view of the vehicles that are directly in front of you. Okaysh, nothing special.
2,75/5
The Alien Syndicate is taking control of a mine, in an asteroid, and if you don't stop them - guess what - they're going to destroy the universe or something like that. So you've been sent to the above mentioned asteroid and you must destroy all the aliens, and in order to do that you have to kill the alien queen, which requires a special weapon that, of course, has been splitted in four parts and scattered in the mine. So, using keys, ladders and the magic power of jumping you must explore the mine and find what you need, while annihiliating aliens and avoiding missiles.
It's got two very bad reviews, but it's ok, the graphics are good, the special effects too and it's not unplayable.
Not a bad budget game, in my opinion.
3/5
Impressive vector graphics race game with high jumps, roller coasters and stuff.
3,75/5
A very repetitive Renegade clone, with nicely drawn sprites and a couple of good moves,
but it's not enough. My arm was aching after a game.
2,5/5
Just another Breakout/Arkanoid clone.
2,5/5
You already know from the original title that you're in for an exciting experience.
It's a shallow and tedious shoot'em up/beat'em up with scrolling and some jumping, served with an unattractive
black and white graphics, so easy that I've finished the first level at the first attempt, started a second level that looked identical to the first, and interrupted the playing for lack of motivation.
2/5
A step backward for Ocean, a film licence nearer to Highlander than to Robocop, quality wise.
Red Heat was an action/buddy movie starring Arnold Schwarznegger and James Belushi, not a cinematic masterpiece, but at least it was entertaining, the game is not - and Schwarzie has never been so vulnerable:
most of the time you're subjected to the baddies' punches, headbutts and projectiles and you can hardly fight back.
Your headbutts are pretty useless, while your fist is powerful enough, but a bit slow, and overall the controls are a bit unresponsive. James Belushi only appears at the start of the level, grinning stupidly, and then disappears.
2/5
This Schwarznegger licence is evern worse than Red Heat.
1,5/5
And Game of Crap. This is the worst rated arcade game of 1989, and it shows. It's a slow-motion, terrible version of Space Harrier which makes you fully understand how good that Elite conversion was, in spite of all the flaws.
1,25/5
Fly around the town and escort the grannies to their home through crime-ridden streets, protecting them from killers, sociopaths, mass murderers and such. When you're tired of the grannies you may want to save some birds, in the sens of gals, which for some reason are always perched on some tall building or platform. You have no weapons, all you have to do is crash against the criminals before they touch or shoot the girls, old and young, until they get home or they touch the ground. You only lose energy when you're hit by bullets. And sometimes the thughs are so kind to kill each other. Which means that the game is very playable. Additionally, it offers very coloured and cartoonish backgrounds and some nice beepings.
Superkid is a very simple concept, which can become boring very fast, but it's well executed.
For a budget game, it was good.
3/5
Superboring one-on-one beat'em up in costume.
1,75/5
Budget beat'em up with the occasional shooting, Graphics are well drawn, sound is nice and the playing is smooth.
Too smooth. In fact, I was able to go on for dozens and dozens of screen withoug getting much hurt, killing enemy after enemy. It's a bit too easy, and a lot too samey, both visually and in gameplay.
2/5
Ikari Warriors in space.
3,5/5
I'm not sure about this one.
2,5/5
Zybex, 30 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
Horizontally scrolling jetpac shooter characterized by the peculiarity of a constant autofire,
you just have to pick up all the power up's, and select among the 3 types of lasers the one that suits
the circumstancial swarm the most. It's got a pretty good average score in the WoS archive, and it's vastly playable, personally I find it a bit uninteresting. It surely was very good for a budget game.
3/5
Xybots, 30 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
It's got unequivocally good reviews from Crash, Your Sinclair, Sinclair User, C+VG, ACE, The Games Machine and guess what - it's actually good.
3,5/5
Artura, 31 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
Doesn't seem to be a total crap. Maybe.
2,75/5
Looks and plays great.
4/5
The main concern of Silkworm is to wed the epicurean principles with a thick barrage of fire.
The game is in fact extremely playable, very easy, but in a very pleasant way.
So easy, in fact, that's it's one of the rare games I've finished without cheating.
Longevity, hence, is not its main quality. Its main feature is its philosophical depth.
Additional fun can be had playing with a friend,
applying the division of labor concept, allowed by the simultaneous use of a jeep and of a chopper.
A single player can use both by selecting the same controls for both.
3,75/5
Cabal, 03 Apr 2019 (Rating: 4)
The main concern of Cabal is to fuse in a single entity, intellectual elements like carnage, total destruction and sheer annihilation. It attains this goal by summoning the typical Nietzschean figure of the Superman, similar to the one personified by John Rambo in the full-length film-essay "First Blood" (1982). Being such a skilled bloke, the main character of the game is potentially able to defeat whole armies, including tanks and helicopters - while dodging hissing swarms of bullets and grenades. Cabal, though, is critical about the theory of absolute subjectivity promoted by colleagues like Operation Wolf and Operation Thunderbolt, and support a more moderate position on the matter, defined as "view-from-behind". This means that, using the opportunity of free will, the main subject can actually moves along the scenario - but, still, it uses a crosshair to aim like the two above mentioned titles.
If the fire button is keep pressed, in fact, the control transits from the Superman, which stops, to the crosshair.
I remember that back in the day I bought Cabal. I wasn't displeased with it.
Its reasoning is sound and well structured. It is able to persuade that a scorched earth policy is the only possible salvation, as, after all, the great thinkers have always suggested, from Confucius to Bertrand Russell, via Mahatma Gandhi.
4/5
It moves smoothly, although a bit slowly. And it's boring.
And the choice of colours offends my pupils. I think I hate it.
3/5
A decent Frogger clone released in 1983 (one of the many), but Frogger was never so exciting in the first place.
Will you succeed in becoming the strongest and fastest pyjama-wearing fighter in this three-staged oriental game?
I surely won't.
The first stage is characterized by unarmed combat against a sequence of opponents in one-on-one fights, first a ninja identical to you, then wicked knife-wielding gnomes, some eerie spirits, a sort of minotaur trying to pierce you with his horn, and finally a big fat orc that shakes the ground when threateningly walking toward you. Substantially, you have to find the right combat move for each opponent and insist with it until he's defeated. Which is rather boring.
The graphics have nice cinematographic touches, though. The second stage consists of pole-fighting on a trunk over a river against skeletons and such, the third is about sword-fighting.
The game received rave reviews at the time, but, frankly, except for some of the graphics features, I can't see why - although it's sufficiently playable and there is a variety of moves that makes it superior to most beat'em up's.
3,5/5
If it wasn't for the scandalous collision detection and other minor flaws, this could have been a good horizontal shooter.
As it is, it doesn't deserve the Sinclair User Classic it's got.
When you defeat an enemy, he explodes. The typical clever coin-op gameplay where you have to smash people FOR HOURS. It's pretty smooth though, even when it's got 5 sprites on the screen simultaneously.
Vertical shoot'em up where you can turn your foes into frogs.
Nicely drawn and animated arcade/adventure.
A digitalized mess of a beat'em up.
A fun platform game. You can choose between full coloured and monochrome. If you go with the latter, you can pick the colours of the background and of the sprites. If the result hurts your eyes, you will be the one to blame.
Playable modernized version of the Phoenix coin op.
A sort of Jet Set Willy with adventure elements. Very colourful.
Cute and cruel arcade/adventure where you control a rabbit.
Supercute arcade/adventure.
ACTIVISION, 1990
by Vivid Image (Mevlut Dinc, Raffaele Cecco, Hugh Riley), Shaun G. McClure
This is a completely forgotten peculiar arcade/adventure although it was a YS Megagame, a Crash Smash and a Sinclair User Classic too. It's different, but difficult. As a mad professor trapped in temporal distortion, You have to recreate various eras of the evolution starting from running after small primates, teleport them in the safety of a cavern and allow them to develop. As you carry some tasks out, future time zones open up and you can move between the various time zones to keep the progress going, and you can see how what you did in a previous era develop in the future eras. Graphics are monochrome but detailed and well animated. Surprisingly, even legendary Raff Cecco was involved in this creation by Vivid Image for Activision.
3,75/5
This is a scrolling beat'em up with big, colourful sprites and backgrounds. The characters, though, are often rather grotesque in their shape and movements, because they're composed by blocks and shaded by black masks to avoid colour clash. The game is pretty hard too, but nonetheless definitely more interesting than similar efforts like U.S. Gold's Vigilante or Melbourne House's Double Dragon. So, all in all, not bad at all for the Speccy.
3,5/5
NARC, 11 Jan 2020 (Rating: 3)
NARC [Ocean Software, 1990] #ZXSpectrum A Crash Smash with 95%, that then received 31% from Your Sinclair when re-released as a budget, this game is a sheer bloodbath. Not even in Commando or Ikari Warrios I had to kill so many people. A very educational game.
3,5/5
128k only. 2 players simultaneously.
Unluckily not exactly as good as the tv show. Far from terrible, but a pretty undeserved YS Megagame. Shoot and collect game with some Monty Python/Terry Gilliam weirdness thrown in.
3/5
You are a flying bear and you must save your robot friend kept captive somewhere in space. But you start from planet earth, avoiding all kind of dangers, missiles, planes, helicopters or alternatively punching them. In the second level you're in space. There are lots of colours, cute miniature graphics, detailed backgrounds, a good dose of colour clash. This is a licence from a British cartoon, I think, and I hope it is easier to watch than it is to play.
2,5/5
What did Bob Pape do after the miraculous R-Type conversion? Another horizontal space shoot'em up conversion of a Irem coin-op: Dragon Breed. Not spectacular as R-Type but still a high level effort. Damn hard though.
3,5/5
As in Dragon Breed, released the same year, you control a sort of dragon which can use its tail as a shield or as a lethal weapon, while shooting at myriads of nasties in a horizontally scrolling enviroment. It was a Crash Smash. Pretty tough too.
3,75/5
Never understood back in the day how this peculiar sci fi game works, but now that I know, looks like I can't stop playing it, tonight. After all, it was a Crash Smash (95%), a Sinclair User Classic (92%) and a TGM Star Player too (92%).
Simply too hard. You even have to make the old heap of rusty iron jump from platform to platform.
Well done, but a bit overrated: Crash Smash (93%), Sinclair User Classic (91%) and Your Sinclair Megagame (93%).
Very cute and playable Spanish arcade/adventure.
No British magazine reviewed it.
MicroHobby gave it only 72%.
It probably deserved more.
Time to suck some blood.
It's pretty good once you learn how to control your character and how to use his transformations.
Also, it's got nice details, like the women pointing their crucifix at you, or the way you suck the blood of the people until they wither and become just bones falling to the ground.
Crash Smash (91%).
Hunt the vampire in a Hewson's Firelord environment, with night sequences.
72% in Crash, 80% in Your Sinclair.
3,5/5
A nice text adventure about a mystery regarding a house that you inherited from your supposedly dead uncle, and what he built in there. No sudden death syndrome involved.
3,75/5
Atmospheric horror movie license with horror multiload and frightening difficulty level.
High vote just because I like the mood, but it's not so terribly playable.
3,75/5
edit: just watched the video walkthrough. It's one of the very rare games that gives you satisfying graphical sequences each time you accomplish an important task and when you finish the game. A certain effort has been put into the game.
Pretty good Spanish arcade/adventure.
A hellishly difficult and infuriating subterranean Scramble clone, that can become quite exciting if you don't give up too soon.
4/5
