Producer: Mikro-Gen
Price: £14.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Mikro-Gen Team

This latest game from Mikro-Gen has a lot to live up to. It has been hailed as the first Mikro-Plus game with an additional 16K memory supplied via a piece of hardware which plugs into the back of the Spectrum. This Mikro-Plus interface has a joystick port and so the game can be played with a joystick. This facility also allows copies to be transferred to tape or microdrive. Without a joystick the game plays well on a keyboard and on side two of the tape you receive with the game is a head alignment routine to ensure trouble free loading from your tape recorder.

Shadow of the Unicorn is the first piece of software to be actually marketed with a hardware add-on (Psyclapse and Bandersnatch from the old Imagine team never saw the light of day). The surprising thing about the game is its conspicuous lack of the sort of mind-blowing features one might expect from such an innovative breakthrough. The celebrated Lords of Midnight is now one and a half years old and it must be a sad reflection on games design when this game is far inferior in terms of basic structure than that first Midnight game.

The fundamental flaw in Unicorn is the curious state of affairs that has your character looking, say, south when he is travelling west. The character is literally not looking where he is going! Were this not strange enough there is an added complication found when a character is in a town or village. He may be in a settlement but may only know it for sure after looking through all four compass directions. Getting to a village, castle or other distant object isn't as effective as in the true landscaping adventures, as, ignoring the virtually unchanging backdrop of distant mountains; you can only see the terrain of the adjacent square next to you in the viewing direction. You don't feel as if you are approaching them, you literally see them, you turn and move toward them and then that's it, you're on top of them, whether it be a castle or a windmill. Compare this to Lords of Midnight where you could aim for distant lakes and towers and you might see the point I'm making. In these games you get the impression that the towers, keeps etc. actually exist whereas here it is only too obvious that they are an artifice of computer memory. When considering some of the finer aspects of this game, these flaws in design may shrink somewhat but only when games such as Lords of Midnight and Runestone have temporarily slipped the mind.

It is not only in the area of games design where Mikro-Gen have me puzzled. The game is marketed with a (too) large booklet which is fashioned along Tolkien lines but, as in so many books and booklets that accompany adventures, falls somewhat short of the narrative powers of the great master himself. None but the final two chapters has any great relevance to the computer program.

You might think that a game which makes use of a new piece of technology would have a fine instruction booklet. Not a bit of it. This game has only a flimsy sheet of card giving you a very short summary of the story (much too short given the length of the book) and a few instructions concerning the hardware and its implications. I found on one occasion some difficulty in finding out exactly how to save a game and ended up loosing it, much to my chagrin as I had put in a long session and had progressed well. After the joystick controls (Left Right for movement, Up to take or drop, Fire to fight, Down to turn view to the right) you get a rather plain list of the characters with 1) Mithulin, King of Oronfal, 2) Avarath. Wizard of the Zim-Faranid, and 3) Holdin, Captain of Falforn up to 10) Lairmath, another Captain of Falforn. Not all of these characters hold equal sway in the stormy lands of Falforn and the royal lands of Oronfal. The three main characters are Mithulin the king of the royal lands, Rolquin queen of the storm lands and Avarath the wizard who is distinguished by his ability to fireball the irritating monkey-like figure who attacks characters willy-nilly throughout the entire course of the game (later research reveals this persistent assailant to be a nalesh).

Actually, while I'm about it, how about this tip for avoiding the pain in the neck nalesh. Because characters are safe unless you select to move them (there is no real-time element or any urgency with the other characters), and because the nalesh always attacks from the side of the screen furthest from you, avoid the beast by quickly flicking between characters as you move your chosen character across the screen. After only two or three flicks your character ends up being attacked by the nalesh from the wrong side of the screen leaving the character to peacefully leave the screen in the direction chosen and be happily on his or her way.

A convenient way to take you through the logistics of this game is to look at the screen which retains the same format throughout (and should be on this page somewhere unless the powers that be mix up the pictures as with Warlords/Red Moon). At the top left is the name of the character you are using at that particular time. Next to this name is the location you are passing through which generally is helpful enough to locate your approximate position on the map supplied with the game (if you are following one of the paths, or you have entered a castle, this position can be verified accurately). Below the name of the character presently playing is the compass whose arrow does not indicate direction of travel but the viewing direction which only becomes the direction of travel if you swing it around to lie left or right on the screen. The yellow and red bars adjacent have variable lengths to represent generally decreasing energy and (thanks to the aforementioned pain in the necks) increasing injury. Decreasing energy is reversed on eating at one of the magical berry bushes which can be puzzlingly sparse when you really need them, and no doubt there exists some spell to undo the harm of injury. To take no action with either injury or energy can result in a character's death, and loosing an important character can see you starting a new game.

The standard of graphics in this game is rather puzzling given its added memory resources and its destiny as a mega-game. There are quite a number of heavy-handed colour clashes and one piece of animation has the king doing a sort of constipated break-dance. One thing you can do is hand it to the game for clever music effects; the music is in keeping with the game and is very tuneful indeed.

Shadow of the Unicorn is a very good game by any standards. It is complex, has a story-line which is worth the considerable effort getting to know and yet is instantly and enjoyably playable. The tone of this review has been F flat for one very significant reason; the game is costly due to the Mikro-Plus add-on necessary for the additional 16K the game offers. What is a little puzzling (even worrying) is just where this extra memory has been allocated, as the improvements such additions might bring are not immediately apparent.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: the most difficult thing is reading the book
Graphics: good, but not as might have been expected
Presentation: simple and easy to get to terms with
Input facility: perhaps could have done with some textual information

Mikro-Gen
£14.95

Pssst! Hey, kid, wanna buy a game? Not any old game you understand - this one gives you a fancy set of fins that bolt on the back of your Spectrum.That not only means a whole 16k more to splash around in - but a joystick port as well.

But what of the game? Shadow Of The Unicorn is an arcade adventure, rather in the vein of the excellent Lords Of Midnight.The goal is to rescue the lands of Oronfal and Falforn from evil.

Of course, baddies abound in the game and each character has different powers to deal with the assorted nasties.The ones that you're most likely to meet in the early stages are small hideously misshapen dwarves.These are easily zapped by the magician, but for the likes of Gail, the best strategy is to leg it.

There's a mountain more to this game - and many a player will spend happy hours wandering across the extra 16K's of peaks and deserts.

Publisher: Mikro-Gen
Price: £14.95
Memory: 48K + 16K included
Joystick: Kempston interface included

A long, long time ago somebody wrote a book full of evil, and then somebody else found it and read it, and all the evil flew out and infected a vast fantasy land, and you've got to make it right again.

There are ten characters to control, but you start with three - King Mithulin, Avarath the Wizard, and Ulin-Gail the Satyr.

Yes, it's that sort of game - lots of strange names and places to explore, all very Tolkienish. You also get to see the latest wheeze from Mikro-Gen, the Mikro-Plus interface which has 16K of the game ROMmed into it.

Most of the extra memory seems to be about having a really enormous playing area. The graphics themselves are not particularly special, but you get attractive views of the land and your characters, which you play one at a time, are animated.

Mikro-Gen seems to have been unable to reproduce the masking effects of Everyone's a Wally for the graphics, but the colour-clash really isn't too bad.

It's very much an adventure game on a grand scale. Most of the heroes have objects associated with them - Holdin's Helm, or the Veil of Guinol. Clues to the appropriate use of such objects are to be found in a 100 page novelette called Shadow of the Unicorn, written by Dale and Shelley McLoughlin.

The book tells of what happened prior to the adventure. It is particularly helpful in explaining who the various characters are and also filling out places on the map provided with the game - which is neither complete nor entirely accurate.

Characters vary in abilities. Avarath is clearly the most useful to start with, because he can zap the nasties with his magic staff. Unfortunately, he loses energy fast, so he'll have to look out for magic bushes and wells to replenish his energy.

Some characters, such as Avarath and Mithulin, are vital to the game and you lose if they die. Others are less important, and serve to protect or run errands for the major players.

Shadow is obviously a big game, and after hours of play we felt we had only scratched the surface. At the price it's clearly great value, since you get the 16K black box and joystick interface thrown in, as well as a novel. Unfortunately, you can only use the interface with the game.

We've given it a Classic after a bit of soul-searching - somehow you expect miracles just because there's some hardware hanging off the back of the Spectrum, and miracles you don't get. But the full quest, if you can fathom out what's going on, is obviously going to take a while to sort out, and the setting is atmospheric and intelligently worked out.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Mikro-Gen
PRICE: £14.95

So here it is. The first Mikro-Plus game from the people who brought you the chartbusting Wally saga.

Ever since the long lost Imagine company began talking about mega-games which would only work with extra-bits stuck into the back of your computer, people have been waiting to see just what it was all about. They waited, and waited...

But now something of the sort has appeared. Is it a genuine way of producing better games? Or simply a new way to stop you people pirating software?

Let's look what you get for your £15. To start with you get the Mikro-Plus gadget which adds an extra 60K of usable memory to your Spectrum. You plug it into the back of your machine like any other interface and stick your joystick into the built-in socket.

Then you get the Unicorn game-tape, a map and instruction booklet, plus a 100+ page novel giving the background to the lands which lie under the Shadow of the Unicorn. The game won't work without the Micro-Plus.

The tape also includes a tape head alignment utility on the B-side - which is pretty useful. So you've already got quite a bit for your money. But what about the game itself?

It has a basic swords and sorcery plot. Your task is to recapture the evil forces that have been released on the two kingdoms of Oranfal and Falforn. Like Lords of Midnight you can control - to start with - three characters. These are Mithulin, King of Oranfal; UlinGail, a satyr and the King's friend, and the Wizard Avarath.

But as you explore and meet more people your forces increase. Each are accessed - Wally style - by pressing the appropriate key. Each have their very own purpose and affect the success of your mission.

At first glance the game doesn't look that impressive. The graphics just are not up to the quality of Pyjamarama or Herbert's Dummy Run for example. And despite all that extra memory there are still colour clash problems.

The main characters are depicted as black outline silhouettes - with a bit of grey shading in some cases.

It's a good idea to simply take one character and wander about and explore once you've loaded the game for the first time. Pay close attention to the compass at the top of the screen and the location details which flash up - Dun Darch/Tir Na Nog style at the top of the screen. Also above the main window you'll see two bar graph readouts. Green for your energy rating, red for your injury status.

It helps to use the map supplied, although not all the locations are marked on it. So beware! Once you've got your bearings end are happy with the controls, it's time to start on your quest.

In true Mikro-Gen style, you have to find certain objects and use them in the right way. You really MUST take time to read the novel which comes with the game, otherwise you won't pick up on some of the useful clues contained within its pages.

It would also be advisable for the player to make a map as you play. You can get lost very easily - told you it was BIG!

Is the Mikro-Plus a great new innovation? We reckon that still remains to be seen with the arrival of the second game based on the TV cartoon series Battle of the Planets.

In the meantime, if you can persuade your parents to part with the dosh - Christmas IS corning up fast - then put Shadow of the Unicorn on your shopping list. Your won't be disappointed.