Producer: Bug-Byte
Retail Price: £2.95
Author: Eugene Smith

Oh deary, deary me. You know when you wake up on a summer's day and you see the good old yellow smiling face of Mr Sun looming through the window at you and you feel all happy and warm. Well, dear reader, come 2086, when you're about 115 or so years old, he won't be there any more. Oh no, he'll be a tiny speck in space, all cold and miserable and you'll have to huddle around your electric fires. Well that's how it is, according to the future predicted by the latest Bug-Byte game.

Poor old mankind is huddled together in thermal knickers in a ghetto surrounding the last operational power station. Now, big problems have occurred - the station has started to malfunction and all the auto components are rampaging through the complex. With a power failure imminent you are elected to save the human race from freezing to death.

You see, you're the one and only remaining cyber-technician, the only person owning the ability to restore the power station to its proper working self. You're given a team of five working droids and are asked to deactivate all 51 sections of the station.

Roboto is a 51 flick-screen arcade adventure with arcade overtones. What the player has to do is to go round each of the sections (each section takes up a screen) and destroy the circular power orbs found there. Each room has two or more exits and are all linked to form a map. You can pass through a room without shooting the orb, but ultimately they all have to be destroyed. The droid can move in four directions and also has a limited supply of bullets for shooting the orbs and any nasties occupying the locality. Occasionally, shooting an orb gives the droid extra bullets, and they re certainly needed!

The journey through the power station is made hazardous by sliding doors, electrified walls and sparks - all have to be avoided since one touch from any means the instant destruction of one of your five droids.

COMMENTS

Control keys: O up, K down, Q left, W right P fire
Joystick: Sinclair, Kempston
Keyboard play: not wonderful
Use of colour: varied opinions settle for 'reasonable'
Graphics: small and uninspiring
Sound: there's a tune but generally sound is poor
Skill levels: one
Screens: 51

Roboto is a very simple game, fun to play, it has nothing in it, however, to catch your attention. It's very much like the very early cheapo Spectrum games - simple and short-lived. All the graphics are much too small to have any decent effect on the game's presentation and the sound is nothing more that a constant and monotonous buzz. The maze looks pretty boring as you move around it in a very wobbly fashion. Everything about Roboto is basic and it presents no really effective challenge to keep you at the keyboard or joystick for hours . I suppose this kind of game is alright for the younger users in the Spectrum market, but people who have been Spectrum owners for a time may quickly get fed up with this game.

Roboto is a fast arcade shoot em up from Bug-Byte and so far they have produced some good games (ie Sodov the Sorcerer). Although some of the screens may take some time to pass it's fun and playable. Some screens contain weird objects which must be overcome in order to progress. The graphics are good and detailed and there is a wide use of colour on many screens. A jolly tune greets you at the start and gets you into the game. If Bug-Byte can keep up the standard of games like these, then they are on the way to some Smashes soon. Next time you get three quid go out and get it.

Lots of colour and good graphics make Roboto reasonably attractive initially, but as you progress through the game, it starts to get a little boring. It's quite easy to start off with, and soon you find yourself flying through loads of screens 'with the greatest of ease'. For the price, it represents pretty good value for money, but it fails to have any really long lasting appeal, possibly because it's so easy. If you're a hardened zapparoony arcadian, it's probably not worth the effort, but it may appeal to some who want a simple, easy and attractive arcade game.

Bug Byte
£2.99

Here's a topical little game in the light of recent Sellafield mishaps. It all concerns the last remaining power station, in the year 2086, which is running wild. It's up to you to create a robot to venture into the complex and deactivate each of the fifty-one zones.

It should come as little surprise to find that behind this plot lies another platforms game, but without the ladders. Your five droids can either sink down a level or move faster with a twitch of the joystick. There's the usual selection of rampaging robots shooting at you and a maze of exits linking the sections - and as some are part of one way systems it all takes a bit of mapping.

Nothing revolutionary then, but timing of the robots and the sliding doors is perfect so that each screen will take some time to master. Everything a budget game should be.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Bug-Byte
PRICE: £2.95

At first I thought it was a deliberate plot to confuse me. It said quite clearly use the Z and X keys to move left and right on the cassette inlay. But it would not work.

It was only when I checked the instruction on the game itself that I discovered it was the Q and W keys. A bad mark.

Having said that, Roboto is quite an entertaining little game.

The idea is to guide Roboto, a laser armed robot, through 51 rooms of a power station, destroying power orbs and solving puzzles and tricks.

Good fun for an hour or two.

Bug Byte
£2.95

Bug Byte has released a few simple but fairly enjoyable games since its reappearance as a budget software label, though none of them have been in the same league as the best budget games such as Spellbound from Mastertronic.

Roboto continues that rather average track record, being a 51 screen dodge 'n zap game in which you control a group of robots and must attempt to repair a power plant and save the human race from destruction. The game is set in the year 2086, when the sun has become a weak, dying star unable to sustain life on the earth's surface. The human population has dwindled to a small settlement which relies on the power station for heat and energy.

The trouble is that the automatic components that maintain the plant have gone haywire and are on the rampage. As the only technician in the group it's up to you to take control of the last five droids and guide them through the plant, deactivating each room by destroying the 'power orbs' that you will find.

It's all standard stuff, with deadly sprites and objects out to make life difficult for you, not to mention a variety of traps that have to be avoided. Your droids are very small figures - about a single character square in size - and the graphics of the game as a whole are small and not very finely detailed, though the animation is smooth and the overall presentation is quite adequate.

Some of the obstacles that you have to get past are quite tricky, and some of the rooms are challenging enough to make you keep on trying to solve them, but in other places the traps and rampaging components are so deadly that they simply become irritating as you lose life after life without making any progress. Many of the gaps that you have to guide your droids through are so small that they require single pixel accuracy in your manoeuvres, but since the graphics are all so small this accuracy isn't really possible unless you've got great eyesight or are sitting right on top of your TV screen.

I suppose that 51 screens for £2.95 is reasonably good value, as long as you don't mind the game looking a bit dated, and are prepared to persevere with some of the really tough screens.