Producer: CRL
Retail Price: £8.95
Author: Andy Stoddart, Ian Foster

In Blade Runner you play the Part of a 21st century bounty hunter - a sort of futuristic Clint Eastwood who is on the track of replidroids. Replidroids are highly sophisticated robots that have been developed for use in hostile or dangerous environments and are used by humans as off-world slave labour.

Despite looking human and, for the most part, behaving just like humans, replidroids have been banned from Earth. They are manufactured in half a dozen grades, and the highest grade replidroid is superior to any human in terms of strength and agility, and at least as smart.

When the game begins, you're after the least harmful grade of replidroid, grade one, but as the droids fall and the points clock up the set of replicants that you chase after gets nastier and nastier until the very unpleasant sixth level replidroids are your quarry.

The city to be patrolled is split into nine sectors; you are equipped with a gun and neat hover vehicle - a skimmer. The skimmer's viewscreen is divided into three areas: a detailed sector map, which displays an aerial view of the part of the city you are currently travelling over; a smaller mapscreen which highlights the sector in relation to the whole city, and a message window. Replidroids and their creators are shown on both the large scale viewscreen and the sector map by flashing graphics. As you move across a sector boundary the next map windows onto the main screen and the yellow highlighting block on the long range scanner moves position accordingly.

The aim of the game is to move your skimmer through the maze of streets that forms the city until it is above a replidroid on the run, and then land by pressing the fire button. The droids constantly hack around the teeming freeways and as your skimmer descends the display changes to a side-on view of the street you have landed in.

Landing is achieved automatically: the computer takes over and runs through an animation scene lasting about a minute which shows the skimmer gracefully setting itself on terra firma. Once you've landed it's time to pursue your quarry on foot. A scanner along the bottom part of the screen shows the positions of both you and the droid, and looks three screens along the street.

Pedestrians and groundcars also use the roadway, and they're oblivious to your mission, perfectly happy to get in your way. Bumping into a pedestrian wastes time, while a collision with a vehicle is fatal. If the fugitive manages to race out of the scanner's eye then your skimmer returns to ground level to take you back to the map screen. If things get really frustrating, you can always shoot the innocent bystanders though, as this gets them out of the way rather efficiently!

The background scrolls from right to left, and a pseudo 3D effect allow you to move in and out of the gutter and onto the pavement. To retire the replidroid and earn the bounty points, you have to get directly behind it. One quick shot and the city is populated by one less malignant robot. The skimmer returns and the story continues.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick:
Keyboard play: unresponsive
Use of colour: okay
Graphics: quite neat at times
Sound: excellent tune, little else
Skill levels: one
Screens: 2

At first sight Blade Runner seems to be a good little game, however, after a few goes it loses most of its appeal as there is very little gameplay. Once you've shot a few baddies and seen all the different streets there seems little point in going on any further. The graphics are a mixed bag: the characters generally all look the same apart from a variety of haircuts and hats - so even though the replidroid is going in the opposite direction to the rest of the pedestrians, it is often hard to spot. The streets contain neat details like posters and so on, but the scrolling is rather jerky. The only thing that really stands out about this game is the tune on the title screen.

Yet another 'Game-of-the-film'! Not a bad one, either, despite the fact that it's the game of the soundtrack of the film. Only one thing stops it being excellent, and that is the fact that doesn't present much of a challenge. The instructions should have given more detail on the gameplay, as they do little more than set the scene for the game. The time it takes to begin to understand the game is more or less the time it takes to master it. The graphics are good, excellent on the pursuit screen, where you must 'retire' your replidroid. If you are a hardened arcade freak, looking for an easy but entertaining game, look at Blade Runner.

I felt there was something missing from the game, and not enough to do while I was playing - it's like a mini version of Ghostbusters. The plot's simple: find a replidroid, jump out of the skimmer and kill the replidroid. This turned out to be a very tedious job, as I found the game very slow to respond to joystick movements and even slower on the keyboard. Bladerunner might have been improved a bit if there weren't such long pauses between landing and taking off in your skimmer. CRL could have made a good game out of a great movie, but I'm afraid they've made a total hash of it.

CRL
£9.95

A word of warning - if you're a replidroid and your company offers you early retirement, take care. It may not mean a cottage in the country and cream teas with the Darby and Joan. Nope, for replidroids retirement is just another word for a one way trip to the tip. One Ford (Harrison) will take you there and you'll more than likely end up in another (Cortina).

In CRL's Bladerunner, you're the one doling out the pension scheme to twenty-four renegade replidroids on the run on earth. The first screen presents you with an aerial view of the city. You must guide your skimmer car around the streets in pursuit of the robotic runaways, then hover over the area before landing.

The screen now changes to a side on view of the city street with a scanner along the bottom that indicates how far you are from your quarry. As soon as your skimmer's come to rest, start legging it after the replidroid so that you can explain the benefits of retirement to him - you'll find your gun a convincing persuader. But watch out, the streets are mean and you must take care not to blast away any passing pedestrians or get run over by skimmers. The more replidroids you take out, the more money you make for your own retirement.

Now I didn't expect the game to follow the film faithfully - it says on the inlay that it's a 'video game interpretation of the film score by Vangelis' - but a bit more variety in the gameplay wouldn't have gone amiss. Overall the idea for the game's fine but it feels unfinished. A touch more speed and a bit more polish would've improved it no end. As it is, I retired early from this one.

Publisher: CRL
Price: £8.95
Programmer: Andy Stodart
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, programmable

We're only just months into 1986 and CRL have already found a new way to be pretentious. The company has licenced the Blade Runner film score and built a game around it.

Once loaded the game plays nearly two minutes of the film theme music. There's no way to break into the game; your auricular sense is force-fed, presumably because CRL paid a pile of money for the music - quiet though it is.

The game bears some resemblance to the film plot and almost none to the classic Philip K Dick novel which inspired it - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By the 21st century robot designers have created the replidroids - human droids used as slaves in the conquest of space.

These designer robots don't take to the idea of being slaves and a revolt in an off-world colony ensures that they are banned from Earth. Any replidroid found on Earth is to be eliminated. The job goes to a special unit of bounty hunters.

As a bounty hunter you have a company car, called a skimmer, which flies to its destination - this makes sense in a city which looks like a reject from a geometry set.

The most prominent feature of the dashboard is the map showing the sector in which you are cruising. It indicates the robots - coloured yellow - and their creators - cyan. Your car is shown as a yellow diamond. A scanner at the top right of the screen shows the direction your search for replidroids should take while, at bottom right, another window provides text information about robot locations.

To retire a droid - a polite 21st century term meaning annihilate - you must land in its vicinity. You take your car there by moving the diamond cursor over the map until you are over the replidroid's marker.

Press fire and you are treated to a display of the skimmer descending to street level. It gives an opportunity for the program to show off, in all its stunning glory, the plodding graphics which are a feature of the game. The car takes all of a minute to land by which time the robot should have made good its escape.

No such luck. You hop out of the car, taking your droid scanner with you and find that it is either one or two screens ahead of you. You will easily spot the replidroid. It's the only other figure running in a street full of zombies all of whom are walking in the opposite direction.

The droid can knock people to the ground but if you get onto the pavement and run into someone you will also take a dive. It's easy to get up and continue the chase. The replidroid will move out of scanner range and your car will come to pick you up - another unsuccessful mission completed.

If you follow your quarry onto the pavement wait for a clump of people to move off the screen. You should, by the law of averages, get some breathing room in which to work. Make a dash for innermost part of the pavement. Few people walk that way and the replidroid will often stray into that lane while on the pavement.

When your scanner flashes it's time to press the fire button of your laser weapon. If you're within range your quarry will fling its arms into the air, its knees will bend and half of it will disappear - more as a result of attribute clash than CRL special effects.

Your bonus, scored in an unspecified monetary denomination, ticks away as you chase the robot. If it reaches zero you've bombed out again but anything left on the financial clock will be added to your bank balance.

When you've nobbled a replidroid your car will pick you up and you go hunting for others. If you thought that the descent sequence was slow just wait for the skimmer to ascend.

By the time you've retired three or four droids you'll be ripping your hair out waiting for the next small part of the game where you are granted some participation.

There are six stages of replidroid which you can choose to chase. They are progressively more difficult to catch and stage six can be very vindictive when cornered on the street.

As the game progresses you will find the replidroids start to congregate at the sectors where the creators have their hideouts. If a droid gets near a creator you're in trouble. The elimination of the creators is another way in which you could lose the game.

The sequences between the action are well put together but, after you've seen them more than once you'll get an irresistible urge to smash up your Spectrum. Programmer Andy Stodart, the resident at CRL responsible for Rocky Horror Show, should know better than to betray the player for artistic self-indulgence.

CRL
£8.95

When I grow up I want to be Harrison Ford, but in the meantime I'll be happy to pass the time playing the part of Deckard (Harrison Ford in the film) in the computer game Blade Runner.

Yet another licensing deal gave birth to this game, but it's not the game of the film of the book, instead this is the game of the soundtrack of the film of the book. I imagine that the film rights were more than CRL could afford, so they got the soundtrack rights instead. Not that it seems to have made much difference because the game looks just as if it were based on the film and only a few names have been changed.

You are cast in the role of a bounty hunter who sets out to eliminate a group of 24 replidroids. These are superhuman artificial beings created by genetic engineering as a form of slave labour for work on other planets. But these 24 have returned to earth to destroy the 'cyberneers' who created them, and it's up to you to stop them.

Because this is the game of the soundtrack you have to sit and listen to a chunk of music before the game starts. This wouldn't be too bad on the 128 which has a decent sound chip, but on the ordinary 48K Spectrum listening to its feeble BEEP for more than a few seconds is a bit of a waste of time (though CRL don't seem to have any plans for a 128 version with added sound).

The first part of the game shows you a plan of one sector of the city and the location of any replidroids in the sector. Other sections of the screen contain a map of the whole city, details of your earnings and messages from police HQ.

The main problem on this first screen is deciding which replidroid to go after. The locations of the cyberneers are marked with blue symbols and you have to reach the replidroids before they get to them, but if there's more than one replidroid in a sector and they're all going after different targets then you're going to have to make some quick decisions.

Once you've located a replidroid the screen changes to a view of the city streets. Your jet car hovers down to street level and you have to get out and chase the replidroid in a sequence which is a direct copy of one of the chase scenes from the film.

The graphics in this part of the game are very good, being similar in style to the shaded graphics in CRL's Tau Ceti. The bounty hunter jumps out of his car, and you then have to get him to run along the crowded street in pursuit of a replidroid. The street and pedestrians scroll across the screen from right to left, and Deckard can also move across the width of the pavement in order to avoid colliding with pedestrians. I found catching a replidroid almost impossible, since they seem to run at exactly the same speed as your own character, so the only way to kill them is to get lined up precisely behind them and shoot.

There are six types of replidroid, each type deadlier than the last and harder to pursue as they run faster and dodge in and out of the crowds more.

If you bump into a pedestrian you'll both get knocked down and lose valuable time which may allow the replidroid to get away. If that happens it's back to the first screen and you'll have to track your target down again.

Like the film Blade Runner, the game is visually quite stylish and there are some nice touches such as the heavy raincoat that the bounty hunter wears and which flaps as he runs along. Perhaps I'm feeling generous towards this game as I enjoyed the film so much, on the other hand there are few games based on films or TV programs that manage to do any sort of justice to the original, and I think that Blade Runner is one of the few.