Producer: A'n'F
Retail Price: £8.95
Author: Icon Design

Have you ever wondered how computer games find their way onto the shelves of your local computer store? if Wibstars is to be believed, it's amazing it happens at all.

In many respects, Wibstars resembles those trading/strategy games that were so popular a few years back, except that this one has strong arcade overtones. The first task for Billy Wibstar, entrepreneur and novice businessman, is to collect trading goods from a warehouse.

Three types of commodity are available: computers cost £100, disks go for a tenner, and cassettes set you back a fiver. Billy starts off with £200 in small-denomination, used notes - borrowed from a sceptical dad. Goods are collected on-screen with the use of a fork-lift truck, represented by an icon. This can be moved over to icons representing the computers, disks and cassettes. Keeping the fork-lift pressed against the icon, increases the number of the commodity ordered. When the amount you want is reached - or you run out of cash - taking the fork-lift down to the exit moves the game on to the second stage.

This involves the loading of young Bill's van. The guys in despatch aren't particularly helpful though, flinging the items down four chutes in rapid succession, and forcing Billy to move his van back and forth in an attempt to catch as much of his order as possible.

In the third stage, Billy hits the streets. But another cowboy distributor has got away from the warehouse first and hogs the road ahead. This screen is a scrolling bird's-eye-view, not unlike Spy Hunter, where the two vehicles are able to move left and right across the roadway. To make matters worse for Billy, the van ahead of him has a loose load which is being strewn across the road. There's an advantage to be gained from this however, as driving over useful items such as computers, disks and cassettes adds to Billy's stock. On the other hand, useless debris causes damage which has to be repaired - another drain on his overstretched resources.

The final game section consists of a series of platforms and lifts as Billy attempts to deliver his goods to a shop. Items are only removed from the van one at a time, or, if he feels he's perfected the technique, he can chance an arm and grab the entire hoard of one commodity.

The package is kicked towards a conveyor belt, which should take it into a lift. Timing is critical, as the conveyor may dump the package under the lift and crush it - another depreciation of stock.

The final results of Billy's exertions are then totted up. If, after van repairs, he has managed to shift enough merchandise onto the shop's shelves to make a profit, he goes through the whole process again. We are, after all, a nation of shopkeepers, are we not?

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable, up, down, left, right, fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: bright and varied
Graphics: do the job without being exciting
Sound: poor
Skill levels: one
Screens: four

This has to be the most infuriating game of the month. I've been playing it for ages now and I still haven't managed to survive a day without being horrendously overdrawn at the end. Wibstars plays in a similar way to a lot of the pattern/platform games that were around in late '83; the controls are simple and completing the game requires more timing or luck than skill. If this was going for the bog-standard budget price it would be an average buy - as it's nearer ten quid all I can say is stay well away.
BEN

This is basically another platform game. The road sequence is too simple to represent any challenge, and the catching sequence makes little overall difference to the game. The platform sequence is, to say the least, infuriating. The random movements of the lift make the game very, very difficult to ever achieve a profit. The graphics are fairly basic stuff - small, lots of colour and iffy collision detection. And there's not a decent bit of sound to be heard anywhere. This isn't much of an improvement on the last A'n'F platform game Chuckie Egg II.
PAUL

Haven't you always wanted to be able to take the role of a distributor? No? What a coincidence! Nor have I. This is a fairly poor game. The graphics are very drab and uninteresting. True, the various stages are very different indeed, but they have one very unfortunate problem - they're all as boring as each other! To be honest, I found the most addictiveness in the catching stage, but similar games can be found in most Spectrum books as listings, and only take half an hour to tap in. Expecting anyone to buy this is asking too much.
MIKE

Label: A'N'F
Author: In-house
Price: £8.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Oh dearie me. Who let this one out? Someone somewhere, probably in the pub, decided that it would be funny to do a game which parodied the computer industry. is it funny?

Well, do you think that calling the company Wibstars instead of Websters (a real company) is funny? I find it tedious.

When you try to base a game around a joke you have in the pub the chances are it isn't going to hang together as a game. Wibstars is actually several games in one, another bad sign, the answer to not having one good idea is not to put together five bad ideas.

The object is to make computer products and then sell them at a profit. In practice this means playing three or four games which have no special relevance to the game idea and in contrast bear quite a lot of relevance to other peoples ideas.

For example: in stage one you choose, with your allotted budget what goods you will sell - a combination of discs, tapes or Spectrums. They cost different prices and you decide which combination is best. How do you select them? Using an icon/fork-lift truck arrangement straight out of Ghostbusters, then you have a screen where you try to pick up goods in your lorry - this involves driving between different tubes down which products are falling and catching as many as possible.

Next up is a section right out of half a dozen recent road games where your lorry drives to the shops, watch out for a car in front of you which drops junk, finally we get manic Miner meets everything else as your product has to ascend a series of ladders and platforms, via lifts and boxing gloves and make it to the shop. Your little man who can help the product on his way actually looks like Miner Willy.

The graphics are passable but, honestly, I can't believe A 'N' F is serious with this one. Avoid, utterly, completely, totally.

A'n'F
£8.95

Somebody somewhere thought it would be a great idea to base a game on the trials and tribulations of a software distribution company. With such an inspired concept as a starting point this game was always going to face an uphill struggle to succeed. Nonetheless great games can spring out of lacklustre notions - unfortunately Wibstars isn't one of them.

Wibstars is three mini games tacked together. Firstly there's a very rudimentary game in which you must get your van under the right chute to receive the goods due for dispatch. Secondly there's a brief arcade section, where your van is displayed from a birds-eye view going along the road. In front is a van from a rival firm which jettisons debris into your path. All you have to do is avoid the junk thrown at you. The climax of the game is a platform and conveyor belt scene - manoeuvre your goods up the screen, avoid the hazards and you can finally get your goods to market. As a screen from a platform game it works reasonably well but there's only one. Any platform game you could mention has far more screens of at least equal complexity.

Wibstars three games do not stand up either on their own or when thrown together in this order. A poor release which is below the standard of much budget software.

Spectrum 48K
Publisher: A'n'F Software

"Hey, now here's a wacky, zany idea for a game, John... running a software distribution company!"

"It's new, Brian. It's different. I like it... but strategy games don't make money, do they?"

"No problem, John, we'll make it an arcade game... we'll make it several arcade games in one! Remember A View to A Kill?"

"Who could forget it?"

"Yeah, well what I mean is, like that only good. We'll pinch the idea... er, I mean well borrow the concept but, produce a totally original and utterly brilliant game of our own."

"What about a title, Brian? It's got to have a good title."

"Yeah, catchy, but sort-of really explaining what the games all about... How about Rip-off the Punters?"

"What???"

"Just a joke, John, just a joke. Think of some software distribution companies, I mean people the kids in the street will have heard of." ,

"Let's see, there's... there's... well there's Websters."

"Brilliant! We'll call it Wibstars. Geddit?"

"Well. maybe... It'll do for now, anyway. The thing is, how do you see the game?"

"Start in the warehouse, John. Obviously you've got to load your lorry up with product before you get it out on the street. I know, down the left-hand side of the screen we'll have a tape, a disk and a computer, and you control a little man in one of those dumper trucks, what do you call them..."

"Fork-lift?"

"Pardon? Oh, right, I'm with you. Anyway, joystick or keyboard, right, the reviewers like that kind of thing. You can redefine the keyboard as well, they love that. So you move your truck up against each of these graphics."

"Hang on, Brian, what's that new word people keep using, not graphics these days..."

"Icon, John? Well, not really icons, just drawings of cassettes and disks, and you give the player £200 and he chooses what to buy with it."

"I thought you said no strategy."

"Oh, just a bit... appeal to the intellectuals."

"Not too much, though."

"No, right, anyway, when the truck's loaded up we switch to another game."

"You mean that's it for the first part?"

"Oh yeah, but it'll get harder, John, it'll get harder. The next section I see... I see a lorry moving along the street."

"Scrolling?"

"Yes, it's these new underpants... oh, scrolling screens, yes, love it, drive the lorry up the screen... hazards, though, got to have hazards. Got it! There's another lorry in front and it's spilling things out of the back... and it's (you'll love this) it's another software distribution lorry! You can pick up even more disks and tapes and stuff if you run over them in your lorry, but you've got to avoid the nails that are also coming out with them."

"Will it be harder, though?"

"Of course, John. I know, we'll make the things you want and the things you've got to avoid come out of the lorry at the same time! .Might lead to attribute problems, but it could make it really difficult, John."

"Room for another game, though, Brian?"

"Oh yes, John, got to have three sections, they all have three sections. The third one I see... I see... I see platforms and ladders, John. I see moving conveyor belts... I see lifts..."

"I see writs from the Manic Miner people."

"Oh no, we'll just have the one screen and it'll be so duff they'd be ashamed to say it resembled any of theirs."

"Just the one screen, Brian?"

"Be running out of memory by this time, John. But I think we should go ahead with this one. And I've got just the programmer, he turned up on the doorstep last week. He's brilliant, only twelve years old and he knows Basic and everything."

"Let's get moving then. I can see the reviews already..."

"Yeah, absolute crap, they'll say."

"What??"

"Just joking, John, just joking."