Producer: Microbyte
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.50
Language: BASIC & m/c

It is the age of the Vikings and you are Olaf (in blue), pitting your wits against Wilfred (in red), alias your Spectrum, in this game of ancient strategy. The basic object of the game is to conquer the known world, which includes North and South America, Africa, Europe and most of Asia. Your castle and home is situated somewhere on the site of where Winnipeg will one day be built, and the awful Wilfred has his sited somewhere to the north of Lake Victoria in Africa. Continents are entered and left via ports marked as green spots and conquering is accomplished by placing appropriately coloured flags in columns and rows throughout the country.

Plagues of rats and fleas are a problem for Wilfred and he often has to return home to delouse. Both sides have an ammo allocation which is depleted whenever one of the enemy's flags is replaced by one of your own. This is also replenished by returning home. It is not possible to enter a continent totally conquered by Wilfred if his ammo level is above 40. Occasionally enemy shipping approaches your sailing ship and a small area at the bottom left of the screen clears to reform as a view of the sea, crenellated walls and a cannon.

The enemy ships appear on the horizon and must be fired at by moving the cannon left and right and pressing key Z.

Movement is via the cursor keys, each army taking turns. A message screen at the bottom informs you of Wilfred's seemingly endless misfortunes, a lot of which have to do with the widely spread Wangu tribe of head hunters.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors during main game, 6/7 left/right and Z to fire for the sea going cannon
Joystick: AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: very unresponsive
Use of colour: poor
Graphics: poor
Sound: very poor
Skill levels: none

The inlay describes this as a game of High Resolution Action Graphics. If only that were true it might have just overcome the silliness of the program. Because you input the direction of travel, up, down, left right and nothing else, there's very little to do in this game. Then the moves are all very slow. And the game never wants to end. Even if you sit still and let Wilfred slowly turn the world red, it doesn't end the game when he succeeds. Other funny things happen - if Wilfred crosses your actual position, you turn red as well, at least until you make a move. Half an hour's play should convince anyone that they have successfully wasted their money.

The graphics hardly live up to the inlay's claim - blocky white suggestions of the continents on a blue background, red and blue flags, men and castles and green character blocks for entry/exit points. It all looks very primitive and there seems to be little point to the game anyway. The Wangu tribe are all over the place, so I suppose they are the real winners, having already conquered the world!

The game is not only hard to get into, but there isn't anything to see. It's full of things that happen beyond your control. Only the occasional attack on your sailing ship by enemy ships has anything like an action feel, but the cannon balls leave trails of uncleared pixels behind them. The instructions and graphics let this game down, but its main problem is the program itself. After playing for three quarters of an hour without any apparent ending in sight, Wilfred (at the time visiting my American home) suddenly began creating whole new chunks of land in a straight line downwards, joining the eastern seaboard of America from Florida to Brazil. Laying flags behind him, he swathed down through the South Atlantic, hit the message line and crashed with the report, '50% Out of Screen, 148:1'. Farewell Wilfred.

Memory: 48K
Price: £5.50

Military strategy games should be complex and well-devised if they are to satisfy war-gamers and should enable the player to develop tactical skills. Programs like Johnny Reb and Apocalypse are examples which demonstrate those qualities. Regrettably, Wilfred the Hairy, Olaf the Hungry from Microbyte does not fulfil those requirements and left the reviewer wondering why the game has been produced in such an apparently unfinished state.

The intention of the programmer seems to have been to create a world-wide, map-based conflict between two armies captained by the aforementioned heroes. The computer acts as one and the player takes on the role of the other.

You may move your "piece", drawn as a rather sketchy warrior, across the continents, returning when your ammunition is exhausted to your equally sketchy base. There are no easily-distinguishable screen prompts to show when it is your turn and instructions are very limited.

It really seems as if the computer is hogging all the play, leaving you a few brief moments in which to move round the board and deposit flag markers to show your territory. There is no effective combat sequence, except a small graphics window which displays sea fights using a movable cannon and enemy warships.

After a time it seemed easier to let the computer carry on alone as there was no stimulus to play and no excitement or skill if you did. It is an undistinguished and tedious game offering little originality or playability.

WILF SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES

MICRO: Spectrum 48K
PRICE: £5.95
FORMAT: Cassette
SUPPLIER: Microbyte, 19 Worcester Close, Lichfield, Staffordshire

This is a game with an amusing and intriguing title... unfortunately that's about all it has going for it.

Wilf (for short) gained points for easy and reliable loading, but promptly lost them for demanding that I "Stop the tape" part way through so it could give me some badly spaced instructions, largely duplicating those on the photocopied sheet which accompanied the tape.

The colourful insert boasts "High resolution action graphics", and indeed the pot-bellied stick figures of Wilf and Olaf move smoothly, if excruciatingly slowly, around the screen.

The map though, is built out of low-res block capture either Europe and the enemy stronghold of all continents except Europe.

The first problem is working out which of the amorphous blotches is Europe. Next you manoeuvre your man (Olaf, in blue), using the cursor keys, to position flags marking your territorial gains, while Wilf, controlled by the computer, does the same.

Contact with the enemy causes loss of ammunition which must be replenished at the home castle, and random events can affect the ammo levels too.

Moving onto a green area allows you to sail over the sea in a jerky UDG boat. (Apparently sea-battles are possible, but despite playing for several hours none of Wilf's craft attacked me).

The idea is uninspiring and the execution is dismal. As well as the graphical shortcomings, control of movement is slow and awkward, you can sail the ship to a landlocked lake, the messages sometimes disappear before they can be read and have no relation to the state of play (hostile tribes can attack you while you are right outside your own castle, for example).

The game is boring in the extreme. The computer plays a cagey game and despite covering all continents with blue flags and even somehow turning Wilf blue as well I couldn't beat it.

The option to play another human would considerably enhance the interest, but even then I doubt this game would hold many adventurers' attention for long.

A strategy game for the 48K machines - very boring and full of bugs. I did manage to play part of the game until I hit the bugs.

The screen displays a crude map of the world and you, being Olaf, have to occupy as many continents as possible whilst your opponent, Wilf the computer, is trying to do the same. Your progress is mapped by a blue flag every time you make a move and, boy it's slow. Sorry Microbyte. I was not very impressed.

Microbyte can be found at 19 Worcester Close, Lichfield, Staffs.