Issue No. 8 September 1984

FEATURES

TIR NA NOG
A CRASH exclusive preview of an amazing ‘computer movie’ from Gargoyle Games

DOWN YOUR WAY
The compact Downsway programmable interface

WHITE LIGHTNING
An Oasis of graphics design

THE LEGEND OF AVALON
A CRASH exclusive preview of Hewson’s newest game

COMCOCTION
We take a look at a unique new programmable interface

ARTICLES

THE VIRGIN SORCERER
David Western talks to Virgin Games programmer Martin Wheeler

KEYBOARD WARLORDS
A profile of wargamers MC Lothlorien

REBIRTH OF THE THINGS
How Crystal became Design Design and another exclusive CRASH preview of their super-fast Dark Star

REGULARS

EDITORIAL
and indexes

CRASH FORUM
Lloyd surfaces again from his expense chits

NEWS INPUT
A brief roundup for the month.

CRASHBACK
Looks at six months back and further

THE ADVENTURE TRAIL
Derek Brewster rips his shirt apart and turns green

SIGNPOST
Your adventure problems and answers

THE ADVENTURES OF JETMAN
Beyond the Eye of Oktup

CRASH HOTLINE AND ADVENTURE CHART

PLAYING TIPS
Plus map of Antics

THE TERMINAL MAN
Cross & Co. enter the Burning Land

DIY

BUG-BYTE COMPETITION
100 Rapscallions to be won!

CRASH QUIZ

GILSOFT GOLD COMPETITION
Over £1000 of adventure software to win!

REVIEWS

CRASH SMASHES
Black Hawk, Match Point
ADVENTURE SMASH — THE HULK
And plenty more from everyone else

- ATLANTIS, M and J Software
- ATHLETE, Buffer Micro
- BLACK HAWK, Creative Sparks
- BLOCKBUSTER, Compusound
- CONQUEST, Cheetah Soft
- DECOR WRECKERS, Scorpio
- ELECTION, Mastertronic
- FALL OF ROME, Argus Press Software
- FORMULA ONE, Spirit Software
- THE HULK, Adventure International
- THE INFERNO, Richard Shepherd
- MACHINE CODE TUTOR, New Generation
- MATCH POINT, Psion/Sinclair
- MICRO OLYMPICS, Database
- PLANETFALL, Argus Press Software
- RAINY DAY, C.C.S.
- SPECTIPEDE, Mastertronic
- SPOOF, Runesoft
- S.O.S., Visions
- STAGECOACH, Creative Sparks
- TANK TRAX, Mastertronic
- VOYAGE INTO THE UNKNOWN, Mastertronic
- WARRIORS REVENGE, Video Force
- WHITE LIGHTNING, Oasis
- ZAPPER, Anco Software

Editor

Roger Kean

Consultant editor

Franco Frey

Production designer

David Western

Art editor

Oliver Frey

Adventure editor

Derek Brewster

Staff Writer

Lloyd Mangram

Contributing writers

Matthew Uffindell, Chris Passey

Client liaison

John Edwards

Subscription manager

Denise Roberts

Circulation manager

Tom Hamilton

Cover by

Oliver Frey

Transcriptions

Matthew Wilson and Dave Foreman, http://www.crashonline.org.uk/

Additional review transcriptions

Chris Bourne, http://www.zxspectrumreviews.co.uk/

The Land of Youth

Anyone expecting to be thrust into another 3D space shoot em up in the follow up to Ad Astra by Gargoyle Games will be in for a shock on two counts. One; because this is an adventure game, and two; because it possesses some of the most amazing animated graphics you’ve ever seen on the Spectrum. Greg Follis of Gargoyle Games says, ‘We like to think of Tir Na Nog as being a computer movie.’

And so it is. You play the hero Cuchulainn, a figure standing 56 pixels high and animated through no less than 64 separate frames. The result is a very large character who walks, turns and thrusts with his sword in liquid animation as good as a Walt Disney cartoon character could. On top of that, there are many other living creatures in the mythological Celtic game world created in Tir Na Nog, and they too are all fully animated and they all move and act independently. To create a sensation of three dimensional depth, parallax movement has been incorporated, so that when Cuchulainn moves the foreground, midground and background all scroll at varying speeds.

Perhaps the most astonishing visual treat can be seen whenever any of the characters walk in front of a detailed graphic like, say, a bush. We are normally so used to some form of colour attribute problem or clashing of drawn edges that it is almost taken for granted that something will go wrong, but that we won’t mind too much. Consequently, on first play, it may well go unnoticed that this doesn’t happen in Tir Na Nog. Characters move effortlessly across other graphics or each other without the least disturbance of either graphic.

A rough sketch of the Map of Tir Na Nog, which will be included with the game cassette.

On screen, Tir Na Nog is a richly designed game. It is played in a make-believe land and starts somewhere near the centre of this land. From the first frame all the land can be seen, stretching into the distance. The player must imagine that he is a film camera, which may point in the four directions of the compass — these are the four ‘camera angles’. From each angle Cuchulainn will be seen in the centre of screen facing away from the camera, towards it, or facing left or right. He is moved by facing him to the left or right. A series of interlinked paths cross the land along which he walks. Tunnels, caves and secret passages make longer journeys possible. Beyond him the background is also animated as flocks of birds fly to and fro, the trees wave in the breeze and clouds scud across the skies.

Cuchulainn — the first fully animated hero on the Spectrum. Beyond can be seen the smoke belching volcano, which erupts from time to time, feeding the Sea of Fire.

The game consists of many sub-quests and typical adventure problems to be solved. In addition to the cassette, the large box contains a map of Tir Na Nog, drawn in a style which will be familiar to those who enjoy Lord of The Rings or the Thomas Covenant trilogy of books. There is also a booklet explaining the game and its objectives as well as providing a detailed history of the fall of the Sidhe and the breaking of the Seal of Calum. It is the re-uniting of the four parts of the Seal which forms the main quest in Tir Na Nog. This is the work of a hero, and Cuchulainn looks tough enough to be up to the job. In the first locations you will soon encounter the Sidhe, once mighty warriors and protectors of the Seal of Calum, now shrunk with the destruction of the Seal to petty and annoying creatures. It is the Sidhe who may want to make you look for a sword with which to defend yourself. Cuchulainn is allowed to carry up to four objects at a time and there are some 150 throughout the adventure, so forward planning is required. The carried objects are listed in the information area below the playing screen, and their use is selected from the keyboard and indicated by an asterisk. Once selected, Cuchulainn may thrust with them in what can only be described as a thoroughly athletic manner.

Tir Na Nog is not a game for a few moments, and any suspicion that the highly detailed graphics have been accomplished at the expense of content will soon be dispelled as you set out to defeat the Great Enemy by seeking the fragments of the Seal of Calum. Details of pricing are still uncertain at the time of writing, but it may be around the £9 to £10 mark. I predict, however, that there will be very few who consider it unworthy.

Tir Na Nog is for the 48K Spectrum, written by Greg Follis and Roy Carter of Gargoyle Games.

And the Quest of Cuchulainn was this — to bring together the fragments of the Seal of Calum and to reunite them, for the lightening of the burdens of the world and his own lasting glory. So he took himself to the barrow of the Sidhe, and standing before the Altar of the Seal, he gazed upon the gateway to Tir Na Nog...

DOWN YOUR WAY

Downsway proves the point that not all programmable joystick interfaces have to be big and bulky. The unit plugs into the edge connector port of the Spectrum and could be mistaken for a neat rampack if it were not for the 9-pin D plug protruding from its side and a two position slide switch. What is quite astonishing is that there is no logo or maker’s label to identify the unit, which is pushing the incognito image a little bit too far. No instructions are provided with the unit, so beginners may have to solve the riddle by process of elimination.

OPERATION

The interface must be programmed from Basic. The slide switch is set to programming mode (Upper position for lack of annotation). Each individual joystick function is programmed in turn. The joystick lever is activated and at the same time the appropriate key pressed on the keyboard. Care must be taken to ensure the lever is released before releasing the key on the keyboard, as the memory stores the actual data on release of the lever. Once this operation has been completed for all the functions, the slide switch may be returned to the normal position. The function of the joystick may now be checked and the correct characters should appear on the screen when activating the joystick.

The Spectrum is now ready for the game to be loaded. Atic Atac is taken here as an example. This game has provision for Kempston, Cursor or keyboard control. Either Cursor or keyboard control may be used in combination with the Downsway interface.

Keyboard control will be chosen and the joystick controller programmed for left, right, down and up using Q, W, E and R and fire action with T. Having checked the individual actions in Basic, the game is loaded and the keyboard control selected (option 1). On play, two things become apparent. First the good news, the fire action although programmed only individually, will work even when activating a direction control. The bad news is that the diagonals do not oblige in a similar manner; they will not operate unless they are programmed beforehand. The same programming procedure as with the other directions applies, only that two movement keys will have to be activated at the same time while holding the joystick lever in a diagonal, so depressing Q and R keys the joystick must be pushed into the upper left diagonal and released.

In fact the standard procedure will be to program the 4 diagonals first and then the 4 main directions followed by the fire action. A snag will occur when trying to check the programmed functions, as Basic will not register two keys activated simultaneously and therefore the diagonals cannot be checked. If an error has occurred, it will only be noticed after loading the game and this means having to reset the Spectrum and restart the procedure. With a bit of practice, however, this should not occur. The fact that the programming has to be accomplished in Basic requires the function keys for the game to be known beforehand. In most cases this information will be found in the cassette inlay. During the period of the test, the Downsway unit performed faultlessly and without any side effects.

CONCLUSION

The Downsway interface is a very compact and effective programmable joystick controller. The lack of programming instructions complicates the initial use, especially since there is no annotation of the slide switch.

As with most of the soft or hardware programmable interfaces the programming is required to be done before loading the game and requires a little exercise, but apart from this drawback the unit proves to be far more versatile than any of the standard interfaces and provides a joystick facility for any game on the market.

Franco Frey

WHITE LIGHTNING STRIKES

There is a large interest developing in Games Designer programs. Lots of Spectrum owners have experienced a wealth of commercial games programs. Many of them feel at one point or other that they could improve and do better programs or have original ideas for new games concepts. Some may have experience of programming in Basic and have felt the disappointment in the deficiencies of Basic as a graphics and sound language. Every programmer goes through the stage of despair at the lack of speed when operating from Basic. Only very few will dare venture into low level machine code language directly from Basic. They will either learn to use specific machine code routines, which they will be able to access from Basic, perhaps using a machine code toolkit, or they will delve into a high level graphics development language. Nearly all of these dedicated people will find themselves learning machine code operation in the end and become machine code freaks. The interim stage of a high level graphics language or of a toolkit will help them bridge the gap between Basic and hex code programming by improving the end result of their work and thus keeping their interest alive long enough. In fact, the results may be so impressive, that some people may not even be bothered to develop any further and settle for this relatively easy and rewarding interim stage.

THE WHITE LIGHTNING PACKAGE

White Lightning is a high level development system for the Spectrum 48K. It consists of three distinct programming blocks:

The Sprite Generator
Spectra Forth
Ideal

The White Lightning language is a fast integer Forth which conforms to standard Fig-Forth.

Ideal is a sub language incorporated in Forth which deals with the graphics manipulation.

The Sprite Generator is a stand alone utility, which provides a development system for creating user defined characters and sprites for later use in Forth and Ideal or from Basic. Due to the wealth of material, only a very marginal cover can be given, but this should give the programmer an idea of the possibilities contained in this package.

THE SPRITE GENERATOR PROGRAM

The Sprite Generator program assists in the design and editing of graphic characters, which will later be manipulated as sprites in Forth, Ideal or Basic. At the end of the session the sprites generated can be saved to tape for later use. 167 arcade characters are provided with the package. These can be reviewed by loading and running DEMO B on the demonstration cassette. The demonstration sprites are located after the White Lightning program and may be loaded and edited with the LOAD SPRITES FROM TAPE facility.

The Sprite Generator program displays to the left the character square, an 8 by 8 grid and is the area where the sprites are created and edited one character at a time. The Sprite Screen situated on the right is an area of 15 x 15 characters in which sprites are created, developed and transformed. A sprite library of up to 255 sprites or 12500 bytes may be created and more than one library may be merged into White Lightning.

The character is generated on the character square and then transferred to the Sprite Screen. From here it can be used for sprite creation or saved directly as a sprite to memory. An information rectangle provides the information of the sprite in the Screen Window. It indicates the memory left, start and end position in memory, sprite height and length (in characters) and the sprite number. The special functions provided are plenty and include mirror, rotate and attribute handling. Sprites can be combined into larger sprites. Sprites may also be combined using the Boolean (logic) functions OR, AND, EXOR. The functions are too numerous to mention.

A spritely bunch

SPECTRA FORTH

The standard Spectrum editor or a special Forth line editor may be used to create the source code for later compilation. Forth achieves its superior computing speed by employing a computation and data stack on where the data or operations to be performed are held coupled with the use of Reverse Polish Notation, which may be familiar to Hewlett Packard pocket calculator owners.

The language is made up of a standard set of vocabulary of Forth words. Programming is achieved by defining new words based on the words of the existing vocabulary (‘The house that Jack built...’ principle). Values to be passed to these words are pushed onto a stack. Forth produces very compact code, the source code is very readable and it has near enough the speed of machine code without requiring the in-depth knowledge of machine code. Access may be gained to Basic and to machine code routines for full flexibility.

IDEAL

Ideal is a sub language with a dictionary of over 100 words. Ideal stands for ‘Interrupt Driven Extendable Animation Language’ and is designed to facilitate the manipulation of sprites and screen data. Forth/Ideal words can be executed under interrupt. This facilitates timing, as the Spectrum interrupts occur 50 times a second independent of any running program. This way smooth background scrolls may be produced independent of the foreground movement. Ideal may also be accessed from Basic. This allows the programmer to utilise the animation and screen facilities of Ideal before having to learn Forth. The animation speed will be reduced due to the higher overheads of the interpreter, and more memory will be used for the Basic source.

Most of the Basic commands that handle sound and graphics on the Spectrum have been implemented in Forth and if these functions are accessed via Forth, will execute more rapidly.

DEMONSTRATION

Running the demonstration tape gives a clue as to what can be achieved with Ideal/Forth. All demonstrations are explained in the manual indicating the method employed and the commands required for the special effects. The animation is very fast and the interrupt facility displayed to its advantage in several demonstrations.

MANUAL

It is here where White Lightning scores very highly. The manual is a 131-page booklet and provides an excellent introduction into this highly versatile language system. The manual is divided into the three main sections on the Sprite Generator, Spectra Forth and Ideal. Each and every command is explained in detail and illustrated with sample programs.

Glossaries are given for FigForth, Ideal, Forth/Basic and Extended Spectra Forth. Important Usr call addresses are listed.

The demonstration programs are briefly described and 16 sample programs are provided for the aspiring Forth/ldeal programmer.

CONCLUSION

White Lightning proves to be more than just a high level graphics development system. At £14.95 it includes a fast and efficient Forth language, the graphics sub Ideal and a versatile Sprite Creator all accompanied by an excellent beginners and reference manual.

Franco Frey

In an exciting departure from his previous games, programmer Steve Turner has turned his back temporarily on the evil Seiddab and plunged back in time to the Dark Ages, a period of black arts and magic, an age of unreason. CRASH takes a look at this new adventure which will appeal to arcade and adventure players alike. Come with us now and immerse yourself in Hewson Consultants’...

The purpose of this piece is not to review The Legend of Avalon, the new arcade/adventure style game from Hewson Consultants, but to PREview it. At the time of writing the game is almost complete.

Steve Turner is well known for his 3D games which from the Seiddab Trilogy, space arcade action games, but he has felt the need to write a game along different lines and the result of several months’ work is The Legend of Avalon. The game is an adventure played in an arcade manner. It is much more of a true adventure than, say, Atic Atac, in the sense that objects and their usefulness must be thoroughly investigated, gradually allowing the player a greater control over the playing environment. Some arcade skills are required to guide your character around the enormous maze-like complex of rooms and dungeons and avoid the evil spirits which will beset you during the game.

THE LEGEND OF AVALON

Beyond the shadows of the sun
Where countless alien realms are hung
The lord of earth reached out in dread
To claim his tribute from the dead
His horn sounds out his warning cry
The wild hunt thunders across the sky.

Mage and Lorelord combine their might
To crush the chaos of the night
With cunning craft they forge for war
The sword of power, Caliburn
The Amulet of Evermore,
The Wraithbane, rod of lore.
Upon a bier of burning gold
They set the cup of power untold.

Before the radiant host they fly
To chasms deep below the sky
Within the crystal Isle of Glass
The destiny of men must pass.
The earth is rent as powers collide,
Victors and vanquished sealed inside.
Warriors, Lorelords, all are gone —
Lost, entombed in Avalon.

THE SCENARIO

The year is 408 AD. The crumbling empire of Rome is giving way before the onslaught of barbarian nations. Most of the Roman legions have left Britain in support of Constantine III, their self-proclaimed emperor. The modern age of reason is over — the Dark Ages are settling in for a long night. Maroc the Mage is a lore seeker. He travels, gathering knowledge of the old ways, and is learned in the subtle arts of herbs and healing. One night while orating one of his collected rhymes, ‘The Legend of Avalon’, an old woman throws back her head and foretells a new age of chaos. The air chills as she speaks of the dreaded Lord of Chaos, once again leading the Wild Hunt across the night sky, stealing the corpses of the dead. She points to Maroc and tells him to go to the Isle of Glass. Taking him aside, she gives him an old oak staff with an iron head bound to one end, and two old maps. ‘There is Avalon!’ she cries as she laughingly leaves, pointing to a hill rising in the distance.

The fearful villagers guide Maroc to the island by way of a causeway. It is midnight. Maroc is abandoned in the darkness whilst his guides scurry away. He sits down and recalls the night’s events. He doesn’t have long to wait...

INSIDE AVALON

The game commences with Maroc, abandoned outside the dreaded castle and dungeon complex. A spell descends upon him and projects his astral preserve within the castle. It is as an astral projection that you play the part of Maroc. Because he is in any real sense insubstantial, Maroc cannot move or carry or do anything. There are, however, many spells to be discovered which will allow Maroc to do many things. The two most important are the Move and Servant spells and these are thoughtfully provided almost immediately. In fact the rod which the old woman gave to Maroc is the movement spell and it appears as collected in the spell scroll below the playing area. The servant spell is found in an adjacent room and the two allow Maroc to continue with his quest to destroy the Lord of Chaos.

The servant is a wraith-like sprite who can move about and collect objects for Maroc, including other spells. Only one spell may be used at a time and is selected or terminated by the fire button. For those who may be worried about their arcade skill, The Legend of Avalon is all joystick driven. Pressing fire selects the spell scroll and using the joystick the collected spells listed may be scrolled for selection. Pressing fire again activates the spell. If Maroc has selected the movement spell then the astral projection may move around, opening doors and collecting some things. If the servant spell is activated than Maroc remains stationary and the joystick controls the servant to do his bidding.

Objects with a useful value may be collected by the servant and placed in the sack Maroc carries on his back, but only four objects may be carried at once.

Avalon consists of some 220 locations on eight levels. These are the Gate House level which once contained barracks and guardrooms; Caverns of Doom; Mines of Despair, caves cut into an iron lode and once the source of material for the forges of the Lord of Chaos; Great Halls of the Deep, once the living quarters of the armies; Goblin Warren; Labyrinth — only wraiths occupy the lower levels; Catacombs of the Undead; and finally the place where the Lord of Chaos hides himself.

ACTING OUT THE LEGEND

The visual display, as the screen photos show, is in 3D, so positioning of Maroc or the servant is all important, especially when opening doors in a hurry. The various levels combine rooms with one or more doors, caverns and tunnels which are inhabited by spiders and bats. Contact with the tunnel walls will decrease Maroc’s psychic energy, denoted in the spell scroll as a dragon’s tongue of flame. There is a spell available to replenish it sparingly. During play there are various situations which decrease the level of psychic energy.

Throughout the complex there are minions of chaos that may be found lurking within the rooms and caves. Two types of goblin warrior, one with sword and another that fires arrows, a wraith with skeletal frame, the guardian of chaos, also warlocks and wizards. If Maroc encounters one of these creatures, they will move to attack his astral projection and after a short fight, drain it of energy. When this happens the old oak rod returns Maroc to the start location for another try. Here Steve Turner has introduced a novel approach to the adventure. Instead of starting a new life with the game reset, Maroc sets out with the situation in Avalon as he left it last time. In other words the player faces the situation complete with the effects of his previous existences there.

The Legend of Avalon presents a new departure for Steve Turner, but more than that it is a new departure in the Spectrum game, a real blend of adventure and arcade. Steve has already said that he might return to the alien Seiddab again, but using this type of game format, in which case we may yet get to see what the awful Seiddab actually look like inside their creeping, crawling and flying machines. I can’t wait!

All information is correct at time of going to press, but the game is still in completion stage and there may be changes made which alter some details contained in this article.

A valuable insight to a programmer’s thinking: an early sketch showing the various monsters that inhabit Avalon.

SOME STATISTICS

There are 223 rooms on eight levels, 255 doors, 32 tunnels, 27 spells, around 100 people of types like goblins, wraiths and guardians, plus seven wizards and warlocks. Most will kill on sight except the warlocks, who are men in various stages of corruption and may help you if you give them something they like, or they may attack you. If you lose a life you start over but still have all the magic you have collected and people, doors, objects etc. will mostly be as you left them. The object is to penetrate to the 8th level and banish the Lord of Chaos from his earthly realm. You will need the four items of high magic to do this — read the legend carefully. The game has over 10K of object code, 12K of graphics and 10K of assorted data tables. The objects may affect the player, and some objects may be found inside other objects. Doors are opened by using the handle and moving back slightly to let the door open, but some may be invisible and some may be locked.

COMCOCTION

Lloyd Mangram plugs in programs and plays

The latest spate of joystick interfaces has brought a multitude of different programming concepts on the market ranging from the software selectables to the personalised card systems.

As the Sinclair owner is aware, the Spectrum does not provide a dedicated joystick port (rather odd for a games computer), and the add-on market has been quick to provide various solutions to the problem. Before this however, the software houses have had to make do with the keyboard as a playing ground. The multitude of key combinations used for each and every game meant that whoever would bring out a joystick which catered for all these games, would have to provide a system which used the input port address of the keyboard and could link any of the keyboard keys to any of the joystick controls. With five joystick controls and 40 keys this meant an astonishing amount of combinations and it is with no surprise that some manufacturers chose early on to create their own interface standard, leaving it to the software houses to develop compatible software.

The earliest and most established is Kempston, using a different input port address to the keyboard (input address 31). Fuller went along similar lines, but selected input port 127. Where Kempston was accepted as the joystick standard, the Fuller system suffered from the lack of support from most software houses (except Imagine).

AGF opted for part compatibility by using the keyboard port address and linking the joystick controls to the cursor keys and 0 for fire button. This was met with success too, and the cursor key joysticks (mostly AGF and Protek) developed into a standard.

Much of the software catered now for the Kempston and cursor joysticks and the last thing needed was another standard. Promptly Sinclair launched the ZX Interface 2 which was to provide the Spectrum with two joystick ports and a games cartridge interface to complete the arcade image of the computer. You guessed, a new Sinclair standard was created, with the joysticks operating off specific keys, one off the top right half-row, the other off the top left half-row of the keyboard. Although technically a good idea (each joystick requiring only one keyboard address for fast machine code access), it nonetheless created a further confusion on the market and the software houses had to provide a whole plethora of compatibilities. In exasperation, some programmers provided a soft option by including a ‘select your own keys’ routing within the program. A new interface was needed, which enabled all the games to be played with a joystick and which provided the user with a fast and easy programming system.

Frel Limited purport to have found the ideal solution with their COMCON interface...

THE HARDWARE

The COMCON comes in a brightly coloured package and impresses by its sheer size of 120mm width and 135mm depth with a sleek profile of 19mm excluding the extension port chimney stack.

Most of the top stack is taken up by a 4 x 10 matrix of two-pin connectors. This matrix represents the Spectrum keyboard and is annotated accordingly with a white legend.

Protruding at the rear are six two-core cables with Molex receptacles which can be plugged into any of the 40 matrix positions. These six cables represent the six joystick controls (4 direction and two fire) and are annotated at the entry point of the cables to the enclosure.

To the rear right is a 9-pin D connector plug, which will accept any Atari compatible joystick.

A vertical extension port is provided at the front of the unit and is protected by a collar which blends in nicely with the Spectrum’s rear enclosure. This extension port provides the possibility of connecting the Currah µSpeech unit or the Alphacom printer, both do not have extension ports (the Alphacom only provides a ZX81 extension port).

Overall the unit looks tidy and professional, the injection moulded enclosure being of good quality and the connectors rugged enough to survive any ill treatment from game addicts.

OPERATION

COMCON operates parallel to the keyboard using the same input port. Each joystick function is represented by a cable which can be plugged into any key position of the matrix. So if the game requires key Q for up movement, the ‘up’ function cable is plugged into the position marked Q. Simple!

Naturally if the program caters for diagonals, the joystick will automatically provide these as the diagonal movement of the joystick simply is the equivalent of pressing two keys simultaneously on the keyboard. As the interface operates on the same input port as the keyboard, there is no problem of incompatibility as regards to other peripherals. It goes to say that joystick and keyboard can be operated together without any electrical collision and that therefore multikey games such as Flight Simulation etc. can be enjoyed with the joystick and keyboard combined.

COMCON also provides two independent fire or special function actions (six cables). Frel Ltd market for this purpose a modified Quickshot 2+2 joystick which incorporates two independent trigger buttons on the grip (F1 = index finger operated button, F2 = thumb operated button) at the expense of the very little used Rapid Fire option. Also available from Frel is a special Flightlink joystick with two independent fire buttons which also makes full use of the fire actions on COMCON. The extra fire function proves to be very useful with arcade games (Cavern Fighter or Full Throttle should prove its potential!).

Any Atari compatible joystick can be connected to COMCON (Kempston, Quickshot 1, Sumlock etc.) although the second fire option will not be available.

The review team of CRASH has been operating COMCON for over two months and has had no compatibility problems so far. The major benefit of the unit is its ease of programming, beating any other system for sheer simplicity and speed. The possibility of programming the joystick functions during loading or even in the middle of play is invaluable. In fact most of the time the game is loaded first and the programming is accomplished after reading the operating keys in the screen instructions.

COMCONCLUSION

COMCON proves to be a perfect solution to the problem of joystick incompatibility with the Spectrum. Any program can be catered for. At £19.95 the unit is very good value for money. The choice is left to the Spectrum owner, whether to go for a two or three standard interface such as the RAM Turbo or Kempston (catering for Sinclair, Kempston and Cursor) with the added bonus of the cartridge port, or to be truly independent from any standard and gain an extra fire function!

EPILOG

Frel has informed CRASH that the latest Cambridge Computing joysticks have a revised pinout on the D connector affecting the 2nd fire action. Frel provides the service of modifying the COMCON interface to suit the Cambridge joystick 2nd fire function at a charge of £3 all inclusive.

At the same time the company offers to upgrade any Quickshot 2 joystick to the Quickshot 2+2 spec with two independent fire actions with the loss of Rapid Fire at a total cost of £4 all inclusive.

“I’m not a star. I don’t think so anyway. I still go round anonymous through the playground.”

THE VIRGIN SORCERER

The games software industry has long thrived on stories of teenage programmers. DAVID WESTERN travelled to the dusty streets of London’s Portobello Road to meet one of the youngest, 15-year-old MARTIN WHEELER, who has written two of VIRGIN GAMES’ most successful Spectrum games, DR FRANKY and SORCERY.

The interview took place on June 29 at Virgin Games’ office in the Portobello Road, West London. At the time Martin was still 14. He hails from Reading where he attends Meadway Comprehensive School. David Western’s questions are shown in bold text and Martyn’s replies in normal text.

When did you start with the computer?

When the ZX81 came out, when was that? Anyway, six months after it came out — 1980/81, around then. I got a ZX81. Sitting around the old black and white telly!

Did you do any programming at school — do they have computers at school?

Yes they do, but because I wasn’t in a high enough maths group, they didn’t let me into the Computer Studies group. So I was a bit cheesed off about that. You have to be in the two top groups and I was in the third one down. But then again, my friend was in the third one and he got in just because he flukily passed the exam.

You’re in the Computer Studies group now I presume?

(Laughs) No. I’m still excluded.

But do they know at school that you have written two games for Virgin?

Yeah, they know that.

How do your friends react to you?

I think they’re all pretty astonished.

What sort of computers do they have at the school?

Loads of BBCs like most schools do, and they’ve got two VIC 20s, I think. Pretty redundant I should think. I don’t know what else they’ve got because I haven’t been in the computer room much.

And what do your friends think of your success — are you a star at school?

No, not really, I’m not a star. I don’t think so anyway. I still go round anonymous through the playground — kids don’t know who I am. My success is confined to a small group of friends both inside and outside of school.

So did you teach yourself?

Yes, with the old ZX81 manual. I had the ZX81 for about a year and then I went onto the Spectrum. I got a 16K Spectrum at first. I did have a 16k RAMpack on the ZX81 and I thought that was plenty. But when you get to the Spectrum it all seems to go away and you want a 48K, don’t you.

“I saw an advertisement in a mag — ‘I want to be rich and famous department!’ I thought, oh great, I’ll send my game up.”

Did you start to learn programming straight away?

Yes, it was my main interest and there weren’t many ZX81 games anyway, and the ones there were, were few and far between, so I was programming all the while. Started off out of magazines, copying other people’s programs from the listings, then you start to write your own.

How did you come to join Virgin?

Oh well, I saw an advertisement in a mag — ‘I want to be rich and famous department!’ I thought, oh great, I’ll send my game up. I had a few turned down though. It was ages ago — I sent them off a BASIC game first, then I moved onto the compiler and they gradually got better. And then I sent off Franky. I was at a friend’s house one night, and my mum rings up and she goes, ‘You would have to be at your friend’s when the man from Virgin phones!’ So I rushed home and she said they want to buy the game. And I was going, ‘Yes, yes’ and dancing around. Really, it was through that advertisement.

Did they buy it just as you had written it?

They made a few alterations, you see it was compiled from BASIC and I lost the BASIC copy of the game, so it was hard to make any major alterations. I’m actually learning machine code at the moment.

How long did it take you to write Dr Franky?

Not too long actually. They say I’m a fast programmer. It took two weeks to write the whole program and then for another week I was changing bits — you know — a brick here, a brick there.

What made you choose that particular idea?

I became influenced by something on telly — you see something and you think, ah that could be good as a game, and then you start to work something out. Dr Franky was originally going to be a sort of looking down game, a bit like Atic Atac where you look down on a room, and it was going to be a maze game. I changed it to have levels.

Now what about Sorcery, which is something different. How soon did that come after Franky?

It was Christmas Day that I started Sorcery. First of all what I did was draw a picture of a wizard, flying all over the landscape with mist and trees — you know, the Sorcery title page — that’s how the picture actually looked. I did the title page first, believe it or not. I always like that because it gives you a sense of having done something.

Funnily enough, some of the games I do, I make them up as I go along, because I find that instead of sitting down and writing out exactly what’s going to happen, you can experiment on the computer by saying, oh move it this way — and then you try moving it that way and you can experiment by making graphics. The graphics I’ve done on my games are simply done on the Horizons Character Generator.

So it’s a fairly organic process?

Yes.

And how long did that take?

A bit longer than Franky. About three or four weeks. There was a bit of a problem with the INKEY$ because I was using the IN command to read the keyboard and there was a muck up with the different issues of the Spectrum and I was having to put in IN values. I had the same problem with Franky. In fact, if you find that Franky has a problem jumping, it’s best to pull the EAR socket out. And on Sorcery.

If you want another tip, something nobody knows, if you actually do Sorcery and get to the end, the next round it will be a different weapon you need. But if you fail that time you go back to the original weapon.

There’s just the two choices?

No, it goes on for quite a while.

Do you have a contract with Virgin Games?

Yes, I do.

And what do your family think about it all? What family have you got?

It’s hard to tell what they think. There’s just my mother and father, yes the only child — story of the only child! They are encouraging me — secretly I think they’re very pleased. But they don’t seem to show it much! My mum still nags at me for not clearing up my bedroom and stuff like that.

This is a cheeky question. Are you making a lot of money?

Well I don’t know because I don’t know anyone else who makes games so I don’t know whether it’s a lot of money or not. Er, a substantial amount you know. I’m pretty pleased anyway. I get paid and I get a percentage.

Well, here you are, an established programmer for a large software house, but do you play other programmer’s games?

Yes I do play games. I’ve got quite a collection. I like the Ultimate ones, dare I say it! Sabre Wulf, I really like that. I’ve just done it in fact, and I’ve made a map.

I like Ultimate’s games very much because they’re all so professional, they follow a sort of pattern and all start off with the same sort of presentation. But the graphics are smooth and good. There are some other companies — Melbourne House. I like those quite a lot, adventures like The Hobbit and so on.

Have you used any of their utilities, like Melbourne Draw?

No. My screen drawing program was done with a very simple screen kit program that anyone could write really — just moving a cursor around the screen. I do the whole picture in big character square blocks and then I etch it out with a cutting pixel, as I call it. It rubs out blocks, you know, leaving a smooth edge for the drawing and then I print the colours.

Do you ever play on the arcade machines?

Yeah, I do. Favourite ones? Zaxxon, Xevious (I really like that one). But I haven’t been in the arcade recently. Haven’t seen anything new like Dragon’s Lair.

“I become influenced by something on telly — you see something and you think, ah that could be good as a game.”

What about adventure games?

The Hobbit, I love The Hobbit still I haven’t done it yet. Close though, getting closer. I’ve killed the dragon and shot Bard with his own bow and arrow.

Would you like to write adventures?

I don’t know, I was writing one at one time and it went wrong so I thought, oh hell! I couldn’t get out of this problem, that’s why I pulled the plug out, and as soon as I pulled it out I thought, oh I could’ve done that! That would solve the problem. Uuurrgh! But I thought, I can’t tackle all that again!

What are you working on at the moment?

I did have a program, in fact I’ve still got it on tape somewhere. It’s about this fellow running through the streets with a gun. I don’t know whether you’ve seen Blade Runner. Pretty similar to that with dark streets and a man shooting the bad guys. This man is out hunting some evil being. That’s about all I’ve been working on as far as programming goes. A few other ideas I’ve churned out and then thought, no, I couldn’t start.

But I understand that you’re working on a board game. We’ve all seen the ads Virgin have put out about their new venture into board games. Are you doing it for them?

Yeah. I’m working on this board game with Andrew, he’s my friend. And we’re hoping to have some success with it. It’s a fantasy, fighting board game where you have two opposing sides, supposedly in conflict over this mystical land, each trying to destroy the other. You have various pieces each with their own characters — like there’s the cleric who’s got his cross and he’s very weak and can’t beat anyone up; then there’s the warlock who can kill just about everybody but he can’t swim across rivers and he can’t climb mountains, so he’s pretty immovable. It’s for two players but I suppose you could have two on each side working together, or you could have a third person acting as a referee. It’s a versatile board, you can play it longways or sideways.

Virgin seem to produce a very diverse number of things. Are you planning to do anything else within the company?

Virgin’s been a very helpful company, so I don’t know. At the moment it’s the board game. They didn’t actually suggest it and they haven’t even seen it yet. I’m just unveiling it now, so I’m hoping they’re going to like it. I made the game up about six years ago on the back of a cereal packet. I thought it was quite a good idea so I thought I’d do it again professionally on a big board with better pieces.

Let’s move back to computer games again. What do you think about software piracy?

Well obviously it’s doing some sort of damage to the industry but then again, I get the sort of feeling that kids say, hah! I think this game’s quite good, I think I’ll pirate it but I wouldn’t buy it anyway. I think they just pirate it because they want a large collection, you know. If they didn’t pirate it, I can’t imagine them buying it because they probably haven’t got the pocket money.

You think the games are too expensive?

Yes, some are. Let’s see — Sabre Wulf’s gone up to £9.95 now. I don’t know why Ultimate have suddenly leapt up in their price range. That put me down a bit — I wish they would stick to £5.50. Yeah, I think some games are a bit expensive — I think the price should go down.

Apart from programming, what other things are you interested in?

I like art and as you can see I’ve illustrated the board game. I like drawing things like that. In fact before I was on the ZX81 I was drawing cartoon comics. I did a book, it was quite thick, with a cartoon story about these space adventurers blasting off to another planet because they had stolen some gold. I’m doing art at school.

You must have lots of friends of your own age who are games players. Are they going to grow out of playing computer games — is the bubble going to burst?

I don’t think so — things like The Hobbit are very intellectual. No you don’t grow out of computer games. I can see some software houses going but maybe, like Imagine has done, and games aren’t selling as well as they used to, just not so many people buying. From my own experience I can tell you that my friends have stopped buying games quite a lot, and they’re only buying very few, ones that get fantastic ratings in magazines or that they’ve seen in shops. So I don’t know whether the slump’s going to go down or escalate. And in the end I think more professional software’s going to come through with superb graphics. It’ll be not so much games as animated adventures.

Do you want to be a part of that?

Yes, I would like to be. I’d like to tackle much more ambitious things.

On your own, or would you be happy to work in a team?

I don’t really mind. I do like working on my own though. I get along on my own quite well, you see, being an only child you get used to it. But I wouldn’t mind collaborating with other people on things.

How about some general things now. What kind of music do you like?

Let’s see. I like the Thompson Twins, Spandau Ballet, Howard Jones, Police — an endless list. I don’t go to concerts. I haven’t had the money until my games were published! But I just buy their tapes.

“I did notice on your last cover you had a spaceship flying down a canyon of cassettes and I noticed my tape was in there. That pleased me!”

Any girlfriends, or no time for that?

Yes, well I did have, but they seem to go very quickly, Don’t know why maybe because I’m weird or strange or something. Different from everyone else.

What do you think of CRASH? I suppose we’d better have that down on tape!

I think it’s a really good magazine. I like it, apart from you got my age wrong. (We made you 16 I think?) Yeah and I’m 15 in July. I did notice on your last cover (June, No. 5) you had a spaceship flying down a canyon of cassettes and I noticed my tape was in there. That pleased me!

I think the reviews are very good, especially the colour photographs, they are really outstanding. Quite large as well, that helps. I think CRASH is a very popular magazine. It is amongst my friends anyway. You’ve got three people doing all the reviews, haven’t you? I think that’s a very good idea and gives a different view for each game. Well, I really like CRASH. I always get it.

What other magazines do you get?

I buy Your Computer, but that’s too full of adverts. Computer & Video Games — I’ve got quite a few of those and I quite like that, but there’s too much about video games and less about computers. I hate program listings and I never type them in anymore. So that’s why I like CRASH — you can look through and not a listing in sight! And I like magazines that stick to one thing, like CRASH is all Spectrum software, so if you see something that really catches your eye, you can think, wow, that’s a Spectrum game and not go oh, it’s not for my computer.

What about the other programmers who work for Virgin, have you met any of them?

Well I met Andy Green briefly. We were doing a sort of cock up TV interview that went wrong. That was the first TV interview I ever did. We did it on the back of a bus! It was just before Franky came out, but it was never shown on telly.

Finally, anything you’d like to say to your fans out there?

Fans! I wish I did have fans. Fans — where are you?

After this you will have fans!

Will I? Well, I’ve still got four years to go to get Matthew Smith’s reputation, haven’t I?

THE KEYBOARD WARLORDS
A profile on M.C. Lothlorien

From the earliest days of the Spectrum, the name of M. C. Lothlorien has been synonymous with computer war games. Two of their titles, Johnny Reb and Redweed, are still firm favourites when it comes to voting on the CRASH HOTLINE. But M. C. Lothlorien’s history goes back further than the Spectrum, right back in fact to the misty days of the ZX81.

CRASH took a trip north to meet the people behind the software house with the intriguing name...

THE DISHWASHER IS LAUNCHED

For a company that has unleashed the fury of Greek, Roman and Japanese wars on us, beset us with American struggles for supremacy, and swamped us in red Martian vegetation, M.C. Lothlorien operates from a curiously sedate street in Poynton, verging on Stockport, not quite Manchester. The day of our visit was stunningly hot and sunny until we reached the outskirts of Manchester when, of course, it began to rain. It was the day before Imagine collapsed — portentous weather perhaps. But Lothlorien should be used to portents since their earlier games were entrenched in a period of history well used to reading auguries and divining the meaning behind omens.

As if to underline this point the first object to catch the visitor’s eye in the outer offices is the large bronze Grecian warrior’s helmet — the living flesh, so to speak, behind Lothlorien’s well-known logo.

Roger Lees, Geoff Street (on phone) and Mike Cohen

Who is M. C. Lothlorien and why the unusual name are two questions with one long answer. There are three partners, Mike Cohen, Roger Lees and Geoff Street. Geoff is a relative newcomer but he has known the others from when they were all at school together. Both Mike and Roger came to the software field from a background of finance and Mike has some legal experience, being a student barrister. For Mike the rot set in around Christmas 1981 when his wife bought him a ZX81 computer. At least, that’s Mike’s story. Roger Lees tells it slightly differently, Mike bought the computer as his wife’s present to him for Christmas. The truth is lost to history, as was Mike. History was and remains a major passion as it does for Roger. War games is another. The computer seemed to offer wonderful opportunities for developing war games and Mike set himself to learn BASIC programming, and the first result was Tyrant of Athens.

“Lots of people who looked at the result thought it was pretty good,” says Mike. “They said I ought to try and sell the game.”

The obvious choice of action was to take out a small advert for mail order and almost immediately an argument sprang up between Mike and his wife, who thought £95 for a quarter page in ‘Your Computer’ would be throwing money away. Geoff Street, who joined the team long after the incident smiles as Roger recalls the battle. “The game became known as Dishwasher because it was dangled as a bribe: ‘If it makes any money I’ll buy you a dishwasher out of the profits’.”

Mike won the argument. “We expected 20 replies,” Mike goes on, “which would have covered the cost of the ad. We got 200 replies within two weeks!”

Fired with enthusiasm, Roger bought himself a ZX81 as well and began work on Samurai Warrior and Warlord. They started placing quarter pages together in several magazines and business expanded. Of course it was just a sideline, almost a hobby, and at the time Mike Cohen was trading under the name of M. C. Associates Trading while Roger Lees was using a long-established family trading name — Lothlorien Trading. Later, when the Spectrum arrived, they realised that producing games was a full-time occupation and thus M. C. Lothlorien was formed between them.

As Lothlorien expanded it became clear that they needed someone else and last summer Geoff Street joined the partnership. Geoff has considerable programming experience having worked for some years previously in the commercial field as a jet-setting trouble-shooter for banking interests around the world, flying to exotic locations like Hong Kong and the States bug shooting.

WAR GAMES AND PRESENTATION

When the Spectrum opened up the home computer market in a big way, Lothlorien transferred the war games to the new machine and added Johnny Reb to the Spectrum catalogue. This strategy war game based on events in the American Civil War has proved enduringly popular, although by the standards of later games like the Confrontation series of scenarios, it is very simple.

Talking about Johnny Reb brought up the subject of reviews for their games. We mentioned that Lothlorien war games hadn’t on the whole received very kindly reviews from CRASH, largely due to a lack of reviewers sympathetic to the type. Roger says, “There is a problem. Generally the magazines aren’t into war games and we do expect mixed reviews, who doesn’t? But we see good and bad ones, and those where the reviewer clearly didn’t understand the game at all. We never write in to comment on reviews though.”

We did remark that despite less than enthusiastic reviews in CRASH, the Lothlorien war games tend to sell consistently well on mail order. “Well I think that’s true,” says Geoff. “Retailers find that they have a sales explosion on a new game but if they haven’t got rid of it within a month they’re stuck with the stock. But that isn’t the case with ours — the war games that is — and they say they can sell them for much, much longer.”

Tackled on the fact that the type and presentation of the graphics used in war games might put off gamers used to arcade-style graphics, Mike says, “Maybe we let ourselves down over the presentation of games, preferring to let the game idea sell itself. Now we want to concentrate more on presentation and execution. We’re very conscious of the need to improve on that side of things and we’re also in a position to dictate the state of the art in our own area.”

Roger Lees adds, “As machines get bigger, we believe it is absolutely essential that the game element is developed. If you pinch too much for graphics you can spoil the game, and you also have to make sure that the graphics don’t get in the way of playing the game.”

Mike’s feelings about Lothlorien’s position to dictate the state of the art in war games is echoed by a young programmer who works with them, Steve Hughes. He also thinks they need to improve the look of the games, and is currently working on one for the C64, a game which he describes loosely as “Sophisticated like a Lothlorien war game but with a raised visual standard.”

ACTIONMASTER

With M. C. Lothlorien established as a full-time working software house, games started coming in for consideration from hopeful programmers. “We get good and bad stuff through the door,” says Roger, “but we haven’t always got the time to check it out! It’s easier with arcade games. After twenty minutes or so, you know whether you like it or not. Not so with war games and adventures (very much the problem reviewers have). Sometimes we have to make a favourable response to the author before it’s all properly played through.”

Simon Cobb and Steve Hughes

In addition to the range of war games, Lothlorien have added adventures and arcade games. The first two arcade games were Bedlam and Beetlemania by Steve Hughes. Originally these were marketed by Steve’s own firm A.W.A. Steve, who is 24, ran the company with a partner, an airline pilot, who has now retired from the software business. In addition to the two games they marketed Orion, a monitor/assembler for the Oric computer. At the time Lothlorien were doing some Oric versions and wanted Orion so they went to visit A.W.A. in their Manchester offices. Steve says that things were not going too well with A.W.A. but Mike Cohen and Roger Lees were impressed by the arcade games. A deal was struck and Lothlorien repackaged Bedlam and Beetlemania and released them under their new Actionmaster banner.

“I was very chuffed with the games at the time,” says Steve. “But they’re very dated now. Jetpac came out at the same time as Beetlemania and put a stop to that sort of game.”

Steve Hughes is not a full-time employee, preferring to remain freelance, but everything he writes is marketed by Lothlorien and he spends a lot of time in their offices working. The latest release is Chock a Block Charlie for the C64. “I don’t have a favourite computer. I like chopping and changing between the Spectrum and the C64.” At 24 is he over the hill as a programmer of games? “No!” he replies, shocked at the question. Has he any programmer heroes? “There’s so many good programmers around now — hard to choose one. Don Priestly perhaps (Maziacs) and he’s in his forties!”

Steve blames Sir Clive Sinclair for his introduction to computers (who doesn’t!) and programming. He won a competition in the Manchester Evening News sponsored by Sir Clive. The first prize was a ZX81. “So the rot set in and the eyesight’s getting worse,” he says cheerfully.

Unlike Steve, Simon Cobb is a full-time Lothlorien employee. 17-year-old Simon was responsible for Grid Patrol, the game that broke a CRASH joystick! The first version of Grid Patrol he sent to Hewson Consultants and they renamed it Di-Lithium Lift. “I wrote a second, more complicated version of it but they said it was too similar to Di-Lithium Lift. However, Lothlorien were interested. Luckily they wanted to expand their in-house programming and they offered me a job. I took it!”

Before Grid Patrol, Simon had written a game for the Aquarius called Astranoids. “I had a friend who worked on the Aquarius for C.C.I. and I got mixed up in it. The game wasn’t much good but I wrote another one for the Spectrum. After months, C.C.I. paid me £100 for it, but it wouldn’t work on series 3 Spectrums. I made some corrections and sent it back but it never got released anyway.”

Simon is now at work on a new arcade shoot em up provisionally titled Lifeline. Simon showed us some screens of what looked like a hard and graphically attractive game. It has three phases with 14 screens in all. No release date yet.

AFTER THE BRIDGEHEAD

M. C. Lothlorien are in the midst of expansion plans. Including the three partners, there are now ten people working together in offices bursting at the seams. More space is available to them soon and they can’t wait to get into to. Even as we were taking photographs another young hopeful programmer arrived for an interview with Geoff.

Mike Cohen says, “We’re planning to release three new titles each month for eight months of the year, plus translations of existing games to other machines.”

On the list is Redcoat, a war game set during the American War of Independence. Described as a cross between Johnny Reb and Confrontation, it will accommodate different scenarios like the latter game but is designed to be much simpler in concept and playability like the former.

Another new game is Masters of Serebal (its working title) from the same author as Special Operations, a strategy/adventure role playing game with arcade elements. There is also an interesting project, two separate games based on the Battle of the Bulge. Written by two different authors, the games look at the battle from both points of view, German and Allied. “We’re looking at how to present them both,” says Roger.

On top of that there is a naval Greek war game, a strategy simulation. They are looking for a name although the game is described as being similar to the well-known board game Trireme. All these games will be graphical and incorporate Lothlorien’s new thinking on visual presentation.

As we left Lothlorien to the rest of their busy day, the rain came down afresh and stayed with us all the way to the M6. As soon as the car turned south the rain stopped and the sun came out. It was Roger Lees who explained the phenomenon. “Everyone says it rains more in Manchester than anywhere else in England, but it isn’t true. We get just the same amount of rain as anyone — it just does it more slowly and for much longer in Manchester.”

Whatever the weather, it’s doubtful the staff of M. C. Lothlorien have much time to worry about it — they’re too busy at the keyboards planning more wars.

Rebirth of the Things

Crystal has been noted for its sophisticated programs for well over a year and Halls of the Things has been one of the most enduringly popular Spectrum games. Now the company has been reborn under a new name with a fresh image and re-launches itself with an exciting new space game, DARK STAR. Programmers Graham Stafford and Simon Brattel came to visit us and explain themselves and how Crystal transformed into...

DESIGN DESIGN

When Simon and Graham arrived at the CRASH offices on a sweltering day late in July, the relative peace was shattered. As Graham sat down and began to talk, Simon busied himself transforming the editorial office into a tangle of cables, interfaces, monitors and computers. The occasion was to show off their new game, Dark Star, and introduce us all to Basil (who, despite the name, is female). Basil is a software development computer built by Simon specifically for writing games for the Spectrum. Amidst the rattle of keyboards and sharp odour of soldering irons, Graham explained where Crystal came from and where Design Design is going to.

CHANGE OF NAME

First of all I asked why they wanted to change the name from Crystal to Design Design. And why Design Design?

‘It conjures up the right image,’ says Graham. ‘We design programs rather than sitting around in some isolated tower writing them. But the word Design on its own, or Design Software doesn’t really sound right. The hard letter D at the front is good, but you should repeat it for effect, rather like Duran Duran — so Design Design.

‘The thing is, Crystal goes back a bit and the name is associated with Chris Clarke’s Crystal. Chris was one of the original founders before he moved on to Artic Computing. Now we want to alter the image. We want more contact with the magazines than we have had and we want to offer a more professional service across the board. We’d like the public to learn a lot more about us, because we like to think we’re unique in various ways.’ Graham points to the conglomeration of boards, connectors and chips that make up the emerging Basil. ‘You’ll see why in a minute,’ he grins.

“We all started from university as a bunch of guys who thought, look at this software that’s being produced, we can walk all over it...”

I ask him whether they are altering the name and image now because it’s the low summer period and Simon looks up from his soldering to say that they release games when they are ready and not because of the time of year. But Graham adds:

‘Well we have wanted to change the name before this. Last Christmas we did very well and we said, let’s sit back, let’s invest money in equipment, let’s invest money in finding people to work. Let’s do what we feel we’ve always wanted to do but never had the funds to do it. Because, you see, we all started from university as a bunch of guys who thought, look at this software that’s being produced, we can walk all over it, and that’s how we got together. The company is by no means what it originally was.

‘Chris Clarke was the originator of Crystal. I was his partner. After a while, for various reasons, Chris left. Invasion of the Body Snatchas was about to come out. I wanted to change the name then, but a new software company coming out at Christmas is not a good idea. So we thought we’ll continue on with the old name and then halfway through next year, we’ll plan it all properly, we’ll come out with some very special programs and let everybody know about it. I know there are programs of ours that haven’t been received very well, although happily that’s a rare occurrence, and we would like to think that by Christmas this year we will be more of a force than we are now.’

SEEDING A CRYSTAL

The software house we know as Crystal originated from Manchester University — specifically from two rooms in Owens Park Hall of Residence. Graham looked after the stock and the programming while Chris Clarke looked after all the administration. As the operation expanded, more programmers came to join them. The Manchester-based re-born Design Design now consists of a main core of four, Graham, Simon, Neil Mottershead and David Llwellyn. David is the company’s administrator while Graham programs mainly on the Commodore 64. Simon and Neil work on the Spectrum and used to program as a partnership.

Space screen from Dark Star

‘They now program separately,’ says Graham. ‘Not because they didn’t program well together, because the results show that they did (Halls of the Things and Warlock of Firetop Mountain), but they wanted to pursue different avenues in games. Most of the games so far have been more in Simon’s vein than Neil’s.’

Design Design operates from a large terraced house near Manchester which, for reasons of security, they would prefer to remain anonymous.

‘Three of the four of us live and work in this house. Neil used to as well, but now lives with his parents in Stockport. In all there are six people and an office there. We program in our bedrooms — the rooms are quite large — we get up when we want — we program when we want — we go to the pub when we want. It’s not a 9 to 5 job because we’ve found you can program a lot better like that. You can program at night when there’s no noise if you want.’

Simon glances up, Basil is almost ready. ‘In fact most programmers seem to work at night,’ he adds.

We laugh about Imagine’s PR type ads where the programmers of the megagames are shown living off Coke and junk food. ‘Well that’s true,’ says Graham. ‘Programmers do need something. I need to smoke. Simon drinks Coke at horrific rates. Jon Ritman drinks coffee, thick, black tar! It’s anything that requires mind concentration you see.’

How do the Design Design team go about writing programs?

‘Most times it starts off as trying to prove a point, like with Dark Star,’ Simon goes on ‘I thought you could do 3D graphics at speed and no one else did. When it’s going we get all the people in the house, because it’s almost a commune, and any of our friends, and we play about with the coding — what if we change the speed of the aliens, etc.? And when that’s done we don’t go and play with it again until a couple of weeks or so, and then you do it all again. Eventually you end up with a program that’s had a lot of ideas and different versions tried. Then I take it down to my brother, who’s a school teacher. They’ve got 60 pupils with Spectrums and we give him a copy and say right, pirate that! I come back in a couple of weeks and go in and see them playing and that’s where I get my feedback from.’

Hyperspace tunnel from Dark Star

Graham takes up the point about programmers. ‘We think the programmer is important — people like a Simon Brattel program — they go and buy a Simon Brattel game — it’s not the company they’re buying. There’s an awful lot of companies out there that are the Company Image. Just because it’s Imagine, doesn’t mean it’s a good game.’

There’s also the advantage of pushing the programmer instead of the company image, that when a game fails to excite the buyer, it doesn’t necessarily put people off the company, I point out.

‘Well, It’s the Wooluf!, for example, did not get well received,’ Graham starts.

‘It’s my fault,’ Simon interjects. ‘Because I looked at it and said, ah, it’s a sprite game. People like sprite games, let’s sell it. It was a well written sprite game, but it’s like a blind spot because we don’t like sprite games so I couldn’t see that it wasn’t going to be received well.’

‘Now we don’t want that to impair the chances of, say, Dark Star, because it isn’t the same person who wrote them both,’ Graham adds. ‘His next game (Martin Buller — It’s the Wooluf!) is very good though — excellent. It’s one of those car driving games like Atari’s Pole Position. He’s done it almost as well as the arcade. I’m really staggered because I’d written it off as one you couldn’t do.’

FROM THE BEAST TO BASIL

A clatter from Simon’s long, customised keyboard announced that Basil is up and ready with a new game loaded from disc. But before we gather eagerly around the screen for the preview, Graham and Simon explain the equipment they have brought with them.

‘As you notice,’ Graham starts, ‘we don’t trust anyone else’s hardware. We looked around for something to write software, but gave up. We’re both originally electronic engineers so we did it ourselves. Simon’s built all of his computers — he’s never bought a commercial computer.’

‘I did buy a Beeb,’ Simon adds quietly. At this point he rummages about in an amazingly battered brown suitcase which ‘saw his mother through the war,’ and produces a long PCB strapped between aluminium frames and introduces us to The Beast. The Beast is the development system designed by Simon and on which Halls and Firetop were written. ‘It became unreliable after a bit, so I designed Basil,’ he says.

“...we do all our own hardware for writing the programs. We don’t go out and spend £7,000 on Sages like Imagine did — it didn’t get them very far.”

Basil

The Beast

Graham takes up the story. ‘Now Basil’s got half a megabyte of RAM, the Z80 processor runs at 7 meg and the discs have got hundreds and hundreds of Ks flying around. It is specifically designed and devoted to writing software for the ZX Spectrum. We’ve got the Zeus Assembler in there, all written by ourselves, the whole operating system and everything in there is tailor-made for writing software for the Spectrum. No one else we know has done that and that is one reason why we consider ourselves unique, in that we do all our own hardware for writing the programs. We don’t go out and spend £7,000 on Sages like Imagine did when they were still alive — it didn’t get them very far. You’re wasting your money. Basil cost about £500 not including the discs. Imagine had 20 Sages and had placed an order for 34 more!’ He looks scandalised at us.

‘The one thing about Sage,’ says Simon, ‘is that for writing Z80 programs, Basil outperforms it by about 5 to 1 for speed because it’s designed to.’

‘So we’ve got the hardware side,’ Graham continues. ‘You can appreciate the hardware and how it works. You know that when you’re doing a certain instruction that’s how many T-states it takes and you know that’s why it takes so many T-states. You can write more efficient and faster codes.

‘So, as you can see, we’re not a group of people who brought the ZX81 and learnt programming like that. We’ve got a very solid background in all aspects of computing. If you can build your own computers then you know how they work, you know how to pull the best out of them, you know how to really stretch them to the limits.’

Planet screen from Dark Star

REVIEWS & REVIEWERS

By this time CRASH reviewer Matthew Uffindell is anxiously hovering around the, as yet, blank screen of the colour monitor, awaiting a glimpse of Dark Star. But Simon has the game firmly bottled up inside Basil. ‘Before we look at anything,’ he says sternly, ‘there’s something I want to chat about, because I don’t like the way you review games at all. This Use of colour, Use of sound — I mean, let’s suppose Mike Oldfield, say, comes out with a new record; can you imagine any reviewer who said use of bass guitar, use of keyboard, would get very far?’

I tell him that I agree.

‘Can you say that in the article?’ he demands.

I agree to that as well and try to explain that when CRASH was first conceived I didn’t want to have ratings, hoping that the reviews would stand on their own. But everyone else concerned with the project felt that magazine reviews had to have ratings.

Graham joins in. ‘A case in point. On Invasion of the Body Snatchas we felt the actual review, what they said about the game, was very fair —’

‘What they said about the game in the critical comments,’ Simon interjects, ‘was spot on. It has to be because it’s someone’s opinion.’

‘But the ratings were wrong,’ Graham says. ‘It got 67% (69½% in fact) and they said this is a very nice version of Defender for the Spectrum, shame about the lack of sound. And then there were programs in the same issue that they said, this is absolute garbage but it’s got nice graphics, as in ‘big blobs moving around’. And it was getting the same overall mark. So we felt unfairly done to because if someone had read the two reviews they would have felt that Invasion was a far superior program to the other one, BUT if they just looked at the ratings (which an awful lot of people will do) and then read the review if it looks like a good rating, then they would get totally the wrong idea.’

We go on to talk about the ethics of reviews in general and Graham points out that they differ with CRASH in several respects where games we think are good, they think are not. But clearly the game that has most annoyed them recently is Psytron. ‘It really got up our wick,’ Graham says indignantly. ‘Not because it’s selling well but because they get up and say that that program makes other programmers gasp! And it doesn’t!’

‘If you’re not an honest programmer you’re not going to write an honest game,’ Simon adds. ‘We know a lot of programmers in the industry and you find that programmers have a very different opinion of their games to the market.’

So how does he feel about his games?

‘Halls of the Things is our game. It’s leaps and bounds above anything we’ve ever done. That’s an honest opinion. It’s not my program because three of us wrote it. I don’t necessarily like my own programs just because I wrote them. That would be stupid because if you had that attitude you would accept any old garbage. Programmers can’t have that attitude. I hate Invasion of the Body Snatchas. I don’t like the game. Rommel’s Revenge was a disaster. I don’t know why people like playing it because it’s too slow.’

What about the reviewers’ accusation that Invasion lacked sound?

‘There’s this class of games which are very predictable. A case in point — I’m not insulting it — is Manic Miner. Matthew Smith knows exactly how long it’s going to take to do each frame of display because he’ll save on the monsters, they’re always about the same size and speed, so he can make noises because he can interleave the highs and lows as it is predictable. In Invasion you can’t do that because there’s a random number of monsters, there’s a random number of projectiles, the landscape changes, all the times vary so you can’t get up and actually make a proper noise. What you have got to do is stop the game, make the noise, and carry on. Of the other versions, Defenda (Interstella) is silent — they’ve seen the problem, Starblitz (Softek) makes noises and you can see it jerk. This is why we didn’t put sound on the screen.’

So, if Simon dislikes Invasion so much, why do it in the first place?

‘I did it to prove a point. A friend of mine and I were playing Beeb Defenda and he said you couldn’t do a Defender on the Spectrum anything like as successfully as Acorn Soft’s. I got up and said you could and spent the next two months regretting it! And that’s also what happened on Dark Star. The same friend said you couldn’t begin to do proper 3D graphics at high speed on the Spectrum. I thought, right! I hate 3D games, they’re all dreadful, they’re slow, none of them do the stars properly, they’re all terrible games, they all look hacked. Let’s get up and do something about it. So Dark Star was developed from someone saying you couldn’t do it properly.’

PIRACY

By now everyone is watering at the mouth. When will the amazing Dark Star be revealed? Not yet it seems...

Talking about releasing games naturally leads to discussion of piracy. Design Design seem to take a very philosophical view of it all. Says Graham, ‘We wouldn’t go and sue a kid for copying our program. We’d have a go at any company that does it. Someone did it with Rommel’s and we’re in the process there. Luckily though, none of our games have been a Sabre Wulf or an Atic Atac such that if they run off a thousand illegal copies and dump them on the market nobody’s going to notice those extra thousand and they’re definitely going to sell because it’s only been out four days. Ours seem to sell steadily for a long while. It’s incredible how Halls still sells.’

Simon

MSX AND THE SPECTRUM

So how many programmers are there working at or with Design Design? Graham isn’t specific, apart from the actual members there are a number of others who market through them and the four men in the team are in contact with other well known programmers who contribute to the spirit of Design Design but go their own way in marketing, like John Ritman (Bear Bovver).

‘Well on the Spectrum front we’ve got a lot of good programmers,’ says Graham. ‘We’ve also got a good Dragon 32 programmer. Some our Spectrum programmers will be time-spliced to do work on the Amstrad because the Amstrad is a nice machine. You can forget MSX!’

Simon, who has been sitting at his keyboard playing Space Invaders to keep Matthew Uffindell on a keener edge for the revealing of Dark Star, suddenly leaps animatedly to his feet. ‘Can we put a point across about MSX?’ We all look up expectantly. MSX has been on everyone’s mind recently.

Simon walks to the window and turns around. ‘MSX is a terrible standard. It is terrible,’ he repeats emphatically. ‘I’m speaking as a designer. That’s why I was stressing I can design computers. Because no one’s gone on about the hardware on the MSX. It’s got a sprite chip. There are going to be a lot of companies in the market who write sprite type games who will love that computer.’

Graham joins in. ‘Ocean, although they’re not too keen on the MSX, think it’s reasonably good and they prefer it to the Amstrad. And the reason is because on the Amstrad you’ve got a raster display like on the Spectrum. You can do whatever you want with it. BUT you’ve got to think about it and write software to drive it. On the MSX you just do this pretty shape and shove something out of a port.’

Simon taps the edge of the desk firmly. ‘Let’s get this straight. Sprites are fine, I’m not anti-sprite. But you cannot have ONLY sprites, and that’s more or less what MSX has done. Because you can’t get at the video display memory. I’m seriously opposed to MSX. People are going to fall left, right and centre for MSX because it suits their sprite games. But in six months time, when everybody’s tired of sprite games, there’s going to be no alternative. The software industry will go poomph!

“MSX is a terrible standard... I’ve seen some of the MSX games and a lot of people looking at them say, oh they’re garbage but they’ll get better. But it WON’T get better. You can forget MSX!”

‘On top of that,’ he continues agitatedly, ‘I don’t think a standard is good for the software industry. At the moment there are lots of software houses who eke out a living because they are very good in one particular niche. If you’ve got a standard for machines so you can write one game for all computers on the market — supposing this horrid situation should ever arise — then the software houses who are best at sprite games are going to crush everyone else. It’s not good for the British computer industry to throw it all away to some Japanese standard that isn’t really a proper standard anyway.

‘Another point is, it is claimed, that MSX has good graphics. I’d just like to reinforce this point — graphics doesn’t just mean pretty shapes. Dark Star does not have pretty shapes — the reason it’s got good graphics is because it moves fast. Graphics should be interactive. Now the thing about MSX is that the update on display is so slow that you can’t do vector graphics so you won’t be able to do 3D games like Dark Star, Rommel’s Revenge or Combat Zone. I’ve seen some of the MSX games from Japan and a lot of people looking at them say, oh they’re garbage but they’ll get better because the Spectrum games got better. But it WON’T get better! Because MSX isn’t an open-ended system. Spectrum games were awful when they first came out because they programmers didn’t know what they were doing. But because the display is versatile you can get to do better and better things with the machine. The Spectrum encourages you to write different programs for it. And a programmer can’t ask for more than a good processor like the Z80 running fast, a reasonable amount of memory, which the Spectrum’s got, and a display which is easy to get to.’

We make the analogy that the musical equivalent of MSX in the music recording industry would force musicians to write in only a very specific way, limiting music to a single type. Simon points out that the Spectrum, which isn’t a sprite machine nevertheless has probably the best sprite games written for it, like the Ultimate games.

Well what about the QL then? There’s a moment of silence and they both laugh. ‘Hah! Forget it, it’s terrible, it’s already failed. We knew it would,’ says Graham.

Graham

DARK STAR AND BEYOND

Finally, the moment arrives. Simon is clacking away noisily on his extraordinarily long, custom keyboard, calling up bits of Dark Star from disc and dumping it into the Spectrum. As the first sheet appears, deep space, spinning plasma bolts, alien ships, an amazing star field moving in perfect 3D, we gasp at the sheer speed of the graphics. No one has seen such fast or smooth animation. ‘Star Wars’ someone mutters, recalling the great arcade favourite of recent months.

‘I don’t mind the association with Star Wars,’ Simon says as he deftly keys himself between two zooming tower blocks (he hates joysticks). ‘The thing is, though, that we thought of it before Star Wars and it does look like Star Wars. It was an original game and fate **** on us!’

“I will try and do noises on Dark Star. But it’s basically that if you put noises in you slow down the game.”

Each Crystal game has incorporated some sort of innovation like the loading routine which gets rid of the flashing border, like the proportional spacing used in Hi-score sheets — Dark Star’s innovation is its amazingly flexible front end which incorporates, for the first time ever on the Spectrum, truly user definable keys. And they mean KEYS because on Dark Star you can define any key (except the top row) to a function, you can have as many keys as you like to control a function and indeed you can have the same key controlling two or even three functions. This means, for instance, that it is possible to select accelerate and fire at the same time if you wish, or keys to make your ship accelerate and dive whilst banking to the left — and so on.

There are three sheets on Dark Star although the game is still in its unlinked pieces, and it may be that more detail will be added before its planned release. There is a space sheet where you are attacked by alien saucers firing plasma bolts and you can fire back. You can also enter hyperspace fields which take you into the second sheet, a startling 3D warp tunnel which weaves all over space. This more resembles a road race game, because you can fly out of the tunnel and see it weaving through space below or to the side of you, but the longer you are out of its enclosing protection, the more damage you sustain. The third screen takes place down on the planet surface, the stars now forming the lights of a huge city. Tower blocks rise into the night sky, some of them friendly, some alien and firing at you.

Behind all this action, there lies a strategic plot about rescuing princesses from towers, accomplished by battling the enemy for planets to gain supreme control. If it all seems too difficult, Simon has designed the front end to allow the player to completely customise the entire game to suit players’ skills and growing abilities.

And what about the sound? Simon gives a short laugh. ‘I will try and do noises on Dark Star. But it’s basically that if you put noises in you slow down the game. So what we shall do is hack things into the divide routine. In between sheets we’ll do something.’

As the others get to grips with Dark Star, Graham tells me about Design Design’s other new games. They’re releasing Halls of the Things for the Commodore soon, there’s another space game provisionally nicknamed The Spinning Around Game which is for the Spectrum. Martin Buller, who wrote It’s the Wooluf! is at work on a racing game and the team are at work on the sequel to Halls, Return of the Things, which should be ready for Christmas. ‘If you think the monsters were mean in Halls, wait until you see them in Return!’ Graham says enthusiastically.

After some four and a half hours, Graham and Simon pack away all the equipment. Basil is returned to her battered suitcase, the one that saw mother through the war, and the two programmers head north for Manchester. We plan to make arrangements for a photographer to visit them next week to get pictures of everyone and then peace settles once again on Ludlow.
ROGER KEAN

GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES

It’s been a summer of gloom and doom highlighted by the disappearance of Imagine, Carnell, Rabbit and some others.

Software and computer retail outlets have been moaning that nothing is selling and software companies have been upset that stocks aren’t being reordered. Some people are even saying that this coming Christmas, usually the good time, is going to be poor for sales.

Boris Allan in the Ziggurat column (Popular Computing Weekly, 19-25 July) says that at one time software houses like Imagine were thriving with so much money boosting the coffers that the small disagreements which existed within the company, hardly seem to have mattered. But now the money is no longer coming in at a rate that will produce the enormously rich with enormous cars. He also goes on to say, quite rightly, that the problem with Imagine (and nearly every other software house) is a lack of imagination.

But in the first point, the full coffers, is it really the case? Imagine excelled at one thing very well, publicity. In a short space of time the company became one of the best known in the software business. It never hesitated to point out to journalists (national press as well as computer press) how much every square foot of carpet in the offices cost, how much every hand-crafted nut and bolt in Mark Butler’s custom motorbike cost, how many thousands of pounds worth of Sage computers it owned for software development. It hit the headlines again and again with fanciful stories of teenage programmers earning £35,000 a year. If you are very successful at creating an image of success then it’s amazing how willingly banks and other investors will pour money in. The partwork publisher Marshall Cavendish was prepared to front a quarter of a million pounds to develop games for their Input magazine — at which point it became clear that despite all the ad campaigns, despite Arcadia and Zzoom, despite the media hype, Imagine did indeed lack imagination.

The point I’m making is this: are we really looking at a slump in the software market or are we looking at a case of severe indigestion?

Early in 1983, about the time Imagine was forming around the success of Arcadia, there were only a handful of software houses producing Spectrum games. Today there are in the region of four times that number. Then it was almost impossible to purchase a cassette from a shop — a few W H Smith branches were displaying about ten games, computer retail outlets mostly sold hardware and there were only fractions of today’s number of shops anyway. Most software houses emerging from the back page classified’s of the magazines were still doing sales via their own mail order. Today hardly any significant mail order sales are made and there are literally hundreds of computer retail outlets selling software, and now newsagents have joined in as well.

May it not be the case that we are looking at a market that certainly has grown with more Spectrums sold but that has not, however, expanded at the rate at which the retailers and producers have done? In other words, there aren’t enough punters in the markets to go around. It would be very easy to see that during last summer (also not particularly good for sales) everyone did better than during this summer, and interpret it as a disastrous, possibly terminal slump in the market.

If you take this into account along with the collapse of apparently blue chip companies like Imagine, then the situation certainly does look gloomy. The real point in Imagine’s case is whether they really ever made the kind of money of which they so openly boasted? I don’t think so. Flashy cars and big houses can be easily bought with small personal profits from a rising company’s coffers using mortgages and hire purchase. Offices can be expensively fitted out using the goodwill and credit of local suppliers who can see from their newspapers and telly that the purchaser is doing well — why worry about the money? In truth Arcadia and Zzoom were Imagine’s only real big sellers. Was their PR true? At one point Mark Butler was heard to say that 75% of all Spectrum owners had bought Arcadia. Assuming at that time that half a million Spectrums were sold, that would have meant 375,000 copies of Arcadia had been purchased. This is a ludicrous figure! As any honest software house will tell you, a sale of 25,000 cassettes is good, 40,000 is a best seller and anything over is simply marvellous.

Something well in excess of a million Spectrums sold may seem a lot. In comparison with the numbers of record players or cassette decks in use in British households it is probably in the region of one-fortieth. Consequently the market for music is far larger and sales figures in the music business are going to be a great deal higher. Companies like Imagine, with all their media hype, managed in a very short space of time to convince everyone that the British games software industry was a boom area like British music. Well true, but to only one-fortieth of the size.

As a result software houses and retail outlets blossomed, jumping on the software bandwagon, and the market did expand, but not to the tune that the new entrepreneurs expected it to — because they hadn’t seen through the hype. And so many of the new software houses hadn’t seen through the gauzy haze of delight that all you had to do to make a few mega-bucks was churn out yet another pac-kong and punt it out at £6. Rabbit is a good example. Like Imagine they were also capable of quite successful hype, not in the press so much, but certainly with dealers. Claims of 60,000 cassettes sold per month in the summer seem highly exaggerated. In truth the only two games of theirs I have seen that were worth anything were Escape MCP for the Spectrum and Troopa Truck for the Commodore. They too had lacked imagination as a company.

In Ziggurat, Boris Allan adds that more people seem to want serious software, useful software and not mega-games. Our impression at CRASH is that people certainly don’t want mega-games at £40. What counts as useful or serious says Boris, can vary tremendously with the individual. Games are serious and useful — they’re entertaining as well, of course, or at least they should be. Our impression is that people still want games, good ones, imaginative ones, games that are serious and useful in that they stretch the skills and abilities of the player. And we are fortunate that Britain possesses some very talented programmers who have been busy this year stretching the abilities of the Spectrum to match the expectations of the player.

I was asked recently what I thought was most exciting about the Spectrum as a computer and I replied to the effect that it was the way that reviewers were able to say of a game that it had gone as far as the Spectrum could be pushed, only to have to eat their words the following month. As a nation of computer buyers and users we are going to have to make some serious decisions very soon. In fact the most serious decision about the future of British computing is being made without our consent as users. I’m talking about the introduction of MSX as a so-called standard. Well commercial decisions are frequently taken without the consent of the public in their presumed best interests. And MSX is being sold as being in the best interest of the consumer — a standard whereby any game written for any machine will be available for your machine, as long as it’s an MSX machine or can interface properly.

The Japanese have failed or faltered in their attempts to force MSX on Americans and have, instead, turned their eyes towards the next best market — Britain. We’re being used as a sort of test case. But it isn’t just a jingoistic or nationalistic urge which makes me alarmed that computers like the Spectrum or the Amstrad may be swamped by some foreign import standard. It is quite simply the fact that we don’t need MSX and MSX is no good. Simon Bratell of Design Design (used to be Crystal Computing) puts the case strongly and well in our article Rebirth of the Things. A standard which is bound to appeal to software houses because of its ease of making simple sprite type games on a widely acceptable scale, is being introduced and heavily marketed which force programming into narrow and inescapable channels. If MSX grabs a hold, then you can wave goodbye to the exciting and heady days of programming advances such as we have been privileged to see on the Spectrum. We’ll be selling British innovation down the drain for the sake of a convenient standard and settling for a period of stagnation in games development. And make no mistake, America may be able to produce Hollywood on the Commodore, but Britain produces the high flying ideas on the Spectrum and will probably do so on the Amstrad.

Development of innovative software does take time; often five months of a programmer’s time may go into a game (there are many games we can see where that’s patently not the case, but I’m talking here about serious programmers!) and that time must be paid for. It’s quite clear that a software house with respect for its customers, producing these more serious types of games cannot do so for a retail price of £1.99. You don’t have to be the least bit discerning to realise that few of the games which have yet been released at these low prices are in any sense original or really worth even the low price when it comes right down to it.

In the same issue of Popular Computing Weekly, its editor in his View column remarks on the number of software houses joining the budget software bandwagon as a reflection on the stagnation of software sales. As I have already pointed out, a lot of the so-called slump is actually due to the glut of cheap looking (if not cheap priced) software. But a lot of companies indeed are joining the cheap bandwagon, and the operative word here is ‘budget’ software. That means the game, its contents and its program qualities are produced down to a price. As with MSX, by insisting on software houses not charging the £4 plus price we have been more used to, we are pushing the games software market into a cul-de-sac from which it might find it difficult to emerge — to our detriment. Imagine have been responsible for a lot — not the least being that when anyone wants to complain of software house rip-off prices for games they always equate the company with Imagine and mention fast cars and handmade motorbikes. Imagine have created an image for the software houses that doesn’t sit fairly on almost all of them.

At CRASH we have always taken the view that, depending on the complexity of the game, a price of between £5 and, say £6.50 is a fair one as long as the game deserves it. These prices existed in the good times, they exist in the bad times. If software houses can really write good programs at a price of £1.99, well fine and good, we’ll support their efforts. But what is most urgently needed is some common sense, an ability to look beyond the immediate muddle, to be able to strip away the false hype from the real enthusiasm; there’s a need for the inefficient and possibly uncaring retailer to cease spreading despondency because his false hopes haven’t been matched by tough reality. Here at CRASH we hear from a number of retail outlets and as many have done really well this summer as have had a miserable one. That’s not surprising because, just like software houses, there are innovative, knowledgeable shopkeepers who offer quality for money and there are those who put profits and commercial considerations above the customers’ needs. Like retailers and software houses, there are good times and bad times — it’s a closed circle — we must make sure we get the best from the good times and support those through the bad times who help to make the good times even better.

COMING TO THIS SCREEN SOON...

As if to underline the points I have been making so far, there are two marked differences between this and any previous issue of CRASH. On the one hand there are many less reviews than usual because the summer months have depleted the market of as many new games as there have been before (although the handful includes some excellent ones); and on the other hand we have been privileged to see rushed preview copies of three games by three very different software houses which, in their varying ways, are each going to push the outer limits of Spectrum programming even further out.

Yes, people have been right — this summer has seen a weeding out, although by no means to the gloomy degree predicted earlier. But it has also acted a bit like a forge fire, tempering the steel of those software houses determined to offer value for money. I think this issue offers happy reading on several levels — Enjoy!

Roger Kean

LETTERS

I am told by Lloyd Mangram that several letters each month sent to him enclose mail order forms and payments. I know it’s often convenient to send two different items in one envelope (and cheaper on the postage) but readers who enclose mail order material with letters to the editorial side run the risk of delays in receiving their goods. The reason for this is that anything addressed to a competition or to Lloyd may well sit unopened for up to a week. So, in your own interests, please send anything to CRASH MAIL ORDER separately.

APOLOGY TO SALAMANDER

In the August issue of CRASH we wrongly stated that Salamander Software had collapsed. The information that they had done so came from seven independent sources. Salamander Software have been understandably distressed by this, and as a retraction we print the following statement from them:

As you are no doubt aware, there are a number of rumours that Salamander Software has gone bust; even to the extent of being printed as a statement of fact recently by one of the computer magazines. This is news to all of us here at Salamander. We feel that it would be useful and desirable to our loyal customers, and to inveterate rumour mongers, to inform them in black and white that Salamander is alive and well and currently working on new projects designed for release towards the end of the year. We do not deny that the annual summer slump of software sales has caused us to tighten our belts a notch or two, but we are not in a position of having to cease trading and do not foresee this happening in the future. We are only a phone call away, so should anyone else feel the urge to write us off, we would appreciate the decency of a phone call before organising the wake (don’t forget to invite us!).
SALAMANDER SOFTWARE

N·E·W·S   I·N·P·U·T

THE GREAT SPACE RACE IS ON...

Legend have announced their second title — it’s called The Great Space Race (or, in a world of jargon — TGSR for short). With a prescience based firmly in sensible marketing techniques, the company which was originally named Microl, changed its name to Legend shortly after the release of their first game, Valhalla. In a short space of time and with only one product, Legend have indeed become something of a legend.

Valhalla has clocked up some pretty impressive statistics something in excess of £2m in sales on the Spectrum alone with launch orders in the region of a quarter of a million pounds for the Commodore version. The game swept the boards to win the Leisure Program of the Year award from the Computer Trades Association and the Game of the Year award in the 1984 British Microcomputer Awards run by Personal Computer Games.

No surprise, then, that the recent announcement about their second game should have caused such a stir among the press.

MOVIE SOFT

The Great Space Race continues the development of ideas first seen in Valhalla, although TGSR is not a ‘Valhalla clone’. In keeping with Valhalla, however, TGSR is going to be a hard game to categorise — neither adventure, nor strategy, it combines many of their elements into an arcade situation. The basic premise of the game is very simple — the player will be engaged in a death struggle against the computer to win a race through space. It is split into two distinct sections, the first being to select a crew for your racing ship, the second being the race itself. As I said, the premise is simple, the game isn’t. The concept of ‘moviesoft’ is to make computer games more like interactive films, and the stick figures of Valhalla have now become fully animated beings. Legend are particularly proud of their routine with the dubious title of FRIG (which stands for Facial Region Interpreted Graphics). What it means to the player is that the characters you control are animated right down to the facial details.

In part one you must bargain with computer controlled characters for a crew and for back up fighters. As in Valhalla, the game continues with or without you so you may well find that by the time you’ve negotiated for, say, a good fighter pilot, the crew member you also wanted has been snapped up by the computer for its crew. The second part, which is more of an arcade type game, is a very violent race with no holds barred. It requires fast thinking as options always have a time limit on them, but is played with single key presses to activate any option. All your characters talk to you over the Vidphone, appearing in person to ask for instruction. A typical action request might be from a fighter who wants to know whether he could chase and attempt to destroy another fighter trailing you, whether he should just follow it or ignore it. All the characters are individuals and must be chosen for their abilities.

No decision has yet been taken on how many ‘enemy’ characters you will be racing against. This is being currently determined by the Legend secret play test group. The game, too, is still under wraps but Legend say that the screen graphics are presented in true solid 3D, not wire frame, and the program has a Camera Director Module which can present literally billions of possible views of space.

THE LEGEND

Legend itself has remained something of a mystery. ‘We are not, by nature, a high profile company,’ says its chairman, John Peel. ‘We let the product speak for us and so all the emphasis is put on the product.’ At the centre is the husband and wife team John and Jan Peel with the marketing back-up of Peter Moxham. A team of some seven other programmers work on the games both in-house and on a contractual basis. ‘When we started,’ says John, ‘we wanted to put together the finest software team, all very professional programmers.’

Their efforts are concentrated on one project at a time. TGSR is a much bigger project than Valhalla and John says they have spent close on a quarter of a million developing it ready for its October launch on both the Spectrum and the Commodore.

John Peel acts as overall producer, co-ordinating the development of the game, while Jan is responsible for much of the characterisation and still regards the people of Valhalla as her ‘children’. They operate from a suite of offices in the suburban surroundings of Chingford, North London, only a stone’s throw from Epping Forest. Upstairs are rooms which contain the development environment. Unusually, Legend’s games are developed on BBC Micros, heavily modified and backed up with plenty of disc storage. Asked whether they would eventually translate Valhalla and TGSR on the Beeb, John snorted contemptuously and replied that the machine couldn’t cope with the memory requirements.

ON YOUR MARKS, GET SET...

It won’t be long to wait now for what Peel describes as their spectacular futuristic romp. Readers of CRASH will be given a treat and should keep their eyes peeled in the next month’s issue, as we will be running a competition with The Great Space Race — but you’ll have to be good as there are only a select number of winners possible. The launch is being backed by T-shirts and sweatshirts, a strong advertising campaign and the kind of detailed presentation that made Valhalla a success. And what comes after The Great Space Race? What about the future, I asked John Peel?

He looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling and said softly, ‘Yes, we are thinking about the future...’

SPECTRUM ‘AWARENESS PACK’

The Open University has made its Micros in Schools ‘Awareness Pack’ available for the 48K Spectrum to enable parents — as well as teachers — to understand the many ways children can benefit from the use of computers in the classroom. The pack is designed for computing novices and brings the user to the point where it is possible to connect up, switch on and use the educational material on the microcomputer, evaluate its potential and understand enough computer jargon to communicate with computer experts, it is claimed.

SPECTRUM FLOPPIES

The hardware add-on people Thurnall Electronics have launched a low-priced 3 inch drive for the Spectrum. It may be used with either 16K or 48K machines and allows the use of other add-ons. The Disc Basic allows the user to SAVE and LOAD programs, programs which start at a specific line automatically, pictures in full colour, strings, string arrays and multi-dimensional string arrays, numeric array and multidimensional numeric arrays, as well as code to/from any specified memory locations. The drive will cope with 150K of data capacity per disc (200K unformatted). The 3 inch disc drive costs £199 and comes complete with all cables and plugs.

GAMES WORKSHOP

If you like complicated board games with an adventure feel to them, then you will probably have visited the excellent Games Workshop shops in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham or Birmingham. Hives of dungeons and dragons industry, Games Workshop have also been selling appropriate computer games. Now they have launched two games for the 48K Spectrum on their own label — Battlecars and D-Day. Battlecars is set in the year 2081 and involves two players battling to the death in illegal car duels fighting with missiles, machine guns and mines. D-Day is a graphic wargame based on the Normandy landings of 1944. Two players take the part of the Allied and German sides, battling through four different locations. The players have between forty and sixty units each to deploy including tanks, bridge-layers, infantry and ships. Both games should be available from October, priced at £7.95. Watch the next issue for more details!

SINCLAIR BLITZ

Sinclair Research is to spend £2.5m on promoting the ZX Spectrum computer over this coming pre-Christmas period. They expect to sell a further 500,000 units between now and Christmas. In contrast the QL only gets a budget of £1.3m. A further sum of £200,000 will be spent promoting the free software that Sinclair is giving away with each Spectrum purchased.

DK’TRONICS SPECTRUM CLUB DRAW

As we announced in the June issue of CRASH DK’TRONICS have now made the draw of entries to their Spectrum Owners Club. Winner of the fist prize, the Sinclair QL computer is Richard Hildrick, York. Second prize winner (£100) is Andrew Fairholm, Rugby. Third prize winner (£50) is Simon Harvey, Northants. And the fourth prize winner (£25) is Mark Middleton, Lincs. The winners have been notified by DK’Tronics.

NEW VENTURE

In the August issue we reviewed the strategy/finance game New Venture from Falcon Computing. Unfortunately the price was missing from the review. It is £5.95.

NEW CIRCULATION MANAGER FOR CRASH

Newsfield Limited, the publishers of CRASH Magazine, have appointed Mr. Tom Hamilton to be Circulation Manager. Tom Hamilton has spent many years in the wholesale and retail side of magazine sales and also has substantial interests in computer and software sales. He will be operating from his offices in Birmingham and will be interested to hear from any readers or retailers who encounter difficulties in obtaining CRASH in their locations.

Games this month:

ZZOOM
COOKIE
ALCHEMIST
ANDROID 2

WHEELIE
OMEGA RUN
SCUBA DIVE
FIGHTER PILOT
HARRIER ATTACK

ZZOOM
(Imagine)

Zzoom is one of the games that was B.C. (Before CRASH). It is exactly one year old now, and was the most wanted game of the August ZX Microfair last year.

Zzoom, being a fairly old game, has held its own in the market well, probably due to its good 3D graphics. They’re pleasing and realistic, especially the way that the clouds move at different speeds depending on how close or far away they are from the player’s view. Action is compelling and continuous, if not even tiring (it’s hard work flying). The enemy aircraft ‘zzoom’ very realistically towards you. Overall, it’s stood the test of time very well and can still be recommended as a great air to air/land and sea conflict.
MU

I remember Zzoom being reviewed well because of the graphics, which were some of the best looking 3D at the time. I particularly liked the screen layout and fresh use of colour. As it’s a pretty fast game, the periodic ‘breathers’ between bouts of action are quite welcome. Has it stood up well? Yes, I think so, because it is very playable and yet hard enough to be interesting and a challenge. It’s one of those games that’s certainly worth dusting off and putting on the computer again. With Imagine going down the pan, some of their games may enjoy a curiosity revival.
LM

(Matthew) It never had CRASH ratings of course, but graphically its realism would still give it a fairly high rating from me, say 72%. When you’re playing it you want to keep on, so it’s fairly addictive, but to want to come back to it another day — that might be a bit different. I think I’d give its addictive qualities about 69/70%.

(Lloyd) I’ve enjoyed playing it again and against current competition I think I’d give it 75% for addictivity, and about the same for graphics.

COOKIE
Ultimate

Cookie, along with Tranz-Am was the second batch of releases from Ultimate. Of the two, perhaps Tranz-Am was the more popular, possibly because in some respects Cookie resembled Psst, and oddly Psst wasn’t quite as popular as Jetpac had been.

This game was never really heavily pushed. Why? I don't know, because I think it’s a great game and probably the most difficult to master out of the entire Ultimate range. The graphics are well up to today’s standard and the game is very playable still, although some of its original addictive qualities are let down due to its dramatic increase in difficulty with each stage. Nevertheless, I would recommend this game highly. Good value and plenty of unique touches.
MU

I liked Psst, in fact it was one of my favourite games. Cookie I found much more difficult to master, and playing it again — nothing’s changed! I think I would agree that it is probably one of the most, if not the most, difficult of Ultimate's games, and it has been grossly underrated. To judge it by today’s games is no problem, it certainly equals anything available. The graphics are detailed, amusing and fast. The game content is very high, and I always admired the idea that objects first have to be ‘stunned’ so that when hit for a second time they can be directed in the direction you want. This makes ‘zapping’ into a quite complex art. Yes, I think Cookie would be a fine buy for anyone who hasn’t already got it, and is wondering why all the recent releases have been boring. Sometimes, it pays to look over your shoulders!
LM

(Matthew) Cookie is a game that demands a lot of skill, timing and patience, so I’d give it 79% for playability today; it has a high level of addictivity if you’ve got the time and patience! About 72%. The graphics are great, very original and colourful. I’d give them 83%.

(Lloyd) I would go higher on playability, the game is great fun to play, and I agree with the other ratings. I think if Cookie were to come out now, this month, it would do very well on ratings overall.

Flapping in the Alchemist.

Zapping in the Alchemist.

ALCHEMIST
(Imagine)

In issue 2 we said that Alchemist was Imagine’s first step into the mist-shrouded world of terror and mystery. Perhaps overstating it somewhat! Alchemist, however, was Imagine’s first attempt at anything with adventure overtones in an otherwise arcade style game.

Alchemist does have some Imaginative graphics, although I can’t agree with the review, ‘exceptional graphics... excellent graphics’. They are quite old looking and don’t move very easily about the screen. The keyboard layout is poor. Overall this game comes nowhere near Atic Atac, as mentioned in the original review. The castle which seemed massive on first playing has dwindled down to just a dozen separate rooms. I think it was overrated.
MU

I don't entirely agree about the graphics. They are quite original, certainly very detailed. If they move awkwardly it is more because of their size and inertia which has been added. On the other hand I do think Alchemist lacks a lot in playability because of the content, which isn't very high. It’s an easily completed game and unlike Atic Atac doesn’t have sufficient arcade interest once completed to keep you having another go.
LM

Use of Computer

80%

Graphics

85%

Playability

90%

Getting Started

68%

Addictive Qualities

89%

Value For Money

95%

Overall

85%

(Matthew) The 80% for use of computer doesn’t hold up as far as the keyboard play goes, and I wouldn’t give it more than 69% now. The graphics too, by today’s standard, would have to come down, probably around the 72% mark. As to its addictive qualities, well the original 89% is right out of the window! More like 60% for me.

(Lloyd) I wouldn’t push the graphics down much at all, they still look fine to me. It got 90% for playability, well it’s fun to start with but I think that’s over the top. It seems to me, looking back on it, that Alchemist was among the first of a generation of games which tried to get definitely away from the shoot em up tradition, so perhaps its ratings were more appropriate then than they are now. Certainly its addictive qualities were rated far too high, I think around the 68% mark now.

Excellent fishy animation in Scuba Dive.

SCUBA DIVE
(Durrell)

Scuba Dive certainly got a rave review from CRASH in issue 2 (92% overall) and has remained a popular vote in the HOTLINE ever since. How does it fare now?

Use of computer

89%

Graphics

98%

Playability

90%

Getting started

89%

Addictive qualities

90%

Value for money

98%

Overall

92%

Soon after the arrival of Scuba Dive a few other companies followed suit and produced underwater games. Scuba Dive is still the best one though. I tend to agree with most of the review but the game does tend to get boring, tedious and unaddictive very soon — no lasting appeal for me. Sound and a few more danger scenes could have made this low content game better. However, I wouldn’t tell anyone not to buy it, just that they might be a bit disappointed after a while. I must say, that the animation and drawing of the sea creatures is very well done.
MU

I think I agree with Matthew about the content of Scuba Dive, not that it’s bad in itself, but that the implementation of the game makes for one that is fairly slow after a while. Scuba Dive’s success lies more in the first few plays where the graphics delight and the size of the underwater caverns promises much fun. It isn’t a game of skill in the sense of fast timing and firing accuracy, but swimming skills to take a time to master. Once that’s achieved though, some of the fun does lag. On the whole I would say that if we were reviewing as new today, it would still get a very high rating from me, but less on the addictivity.
LM

(Matthew) I think 89% for use of computer was a little high because controlling your man isn’t as positive as it could be, or as positive as many games since have shown can be the case. The fish etc, are very good, but the caves look a bit uninteresting and the diver is small and not as well done as the fish. I would say the graphics should be 74% now. I never found it great fun to play, just searching around for treasure, so I’d give its addictive qualities and playability about 70%.

(Lloyd) I wouldn’t drop the graphics by anything like as much, perhaps around the 85% mark. I agree on addictivity but would keep the playability figure up more, say around 79%. I think it holds up pretty well.

Taking off for another straffing run over enemy territory in Harrier Attack.

HARRIER ATTACK
(Durrell)

Durrell’s Harrier Attack was a B.C. game. At the time of its release a number of magazine reviews commented on the tastelessness of a game which sends Harriers into strafe and bomb an island town in the wake of the Falklands Conflict. Well, that’s as may be, but it seems a rather pointless criticism to level at a game which is firmly in the tradition of computer games — knock hell out of the enemy!

This game is fun to play. I have to say that this is the first time I’ve played it, so it really is like a new game review for me. I think the various skill levels play a major role in its addictive qualities. Graphically it is quite primitive by today’s smooth standards, but by no means does this interfere with a great game. Colour has been used realistically and wisely. I can’t really fault it at all as a simple shoot em up except that I wish Durrell would update some of the graphic features, such as increasing the size of the playing characters, and perhaps adding a bit more sound. Overall it has stood up very well.
MU

I remember first off being struck by the nice effect of the sun glinting on the waves of the sea and thinking that because of the more solid looking graphics it was more fun to play than say Penetrator, which it resembles. But after a few plays I realised that there is less fun here than in Penetrator, which isn’t to say that Harrier Attack is boring, but I do think it lacks content. Having taken off, bombed, landed, there isn’t much more to do except improve the old hi-score. The game still looks quite good by today’s standards although the landscape scrolling is a bit jerky. In its day, Harrier Attack was one of the new generation of somewhat better looking shoot em ups, and that was its strength. Spectrum programming has overtaken its look now.
LM

(Matthew) Although the control keys are the cursors, you only really need up and down for the most part, and they are responsive, so I’d give use of computer 73%. Graphics, oh, about 70%, and playability 71% — it’s quite good fun. Addictivity a little lower, high sixties I think.

(Lloyd) I wouldn’t go quite so high today as I would have a year ago. Graphics, yes, not bad, around the 68-70% mark, playability about 68%, but its addictive qualities drop off rapidly. Once you’ve landed you don’t want to bother again somehow, only 60% — medium addictive.

Zooming along in Wheelie.

WHEELIE
(Microsphere)

Wheelie got the best overall percentage in CRASH issue 2 — 93%. In fact that makes it one of the highest scoring games in any issue of CRASH. Even now, it is fighting it out in the top five of the HOTLINE chart and has been successful in most popular sales charts as well. What do we think today?

All I can say is that Wheelie is still the same compulsive, addictive game that it ever was. Nobody has tried yet to copy this game because it cannot be bettered. This game is so panicky, I just can’t put it down. All the features are well structured to test the skill of the player and develop those skills in preparation for the final race against the biker. The graphics are so realistic, especially the crashes, but also the way in which the speed of the bike relates to hazards. They just haven’t been improved upon by anyone yet.
MU

Wheelie was a highly original game when it came out, and looking at it now, one can only say that it is still original because no one has done anything like it. I rather doubt that any other version would be better anyway. I don’t know yet what the Eddie Kidd game from Martech will be like, but if it’s anything like Wheelie it will have to be really good to be better.
LM

Use of Computer

89%

Graphics

86%

Playability

90%

Getting Started

95%

Addictive Qualities

99%

Value For Money

99%

Overall

93%

(Matthew) I think the graphics are marvellous and I would want the rating to go up from 86% to 90%. I’m tempted to put up the playability (90%) a percent as well, as for addictive qualities (which were 99%) I’m only disappointed they weren’t lower so I could put that up too!

(Lloyd) Wheelie seems like a good wine, put it down and when you open the bottle it tastes even better than when it was new. I agree with Matthew — a real curve of a game.

FIGHTER PILOT
(Digital Integration)

Fighter Pilot was the first offering from Digital Integration, a software house which has established itself very firmly with this and its second game, Night Gunner. We gave Fighter Pilot an overall rating of 86%, and said that it was definitely the best simulation for the Spectrum yet. Is it still?

Use of Computer

82%

Graphics

90%

Playability

85%

Getting Started

90%

Addictive Qualities

85%

Value For Money

85%

Overall

86%

Yes it is! Undoubtedly the best flying simulation for the Spectrum as far as I’m concerned, and it will remain at the top for a long time to come, I’m sure. Nothing I can see about the review needs commenting on — game and review stand up well to the test of time! After playing so many games and mastering them, this one still remains unmastered by me — perhaps if I played non-stop for two weeks I might be able to fly this high performance fighter well. The ultimate simulation for the Spectrum.
MU

Attention to detail, especially in simulations, is bound to make a game playable, and Fighter Pilot hasn’t really been bettered on that count. Everything works and combines to make this a very real experience of flying. There’s the possibility that someone, maybe Digital Integration themselves, will come up with a similar program that actually creates a detailed ground effect, but until that does happen I think the original review’s comments about being the best still stand.
LM

(Matthew) In general I wouldn’t alter any of the original ratings. At 85% for playability, it rather depends on whether or not you are daunted by the prospect of learning to fly the plane, and I can see some people (like me!) being put off— but the feeling of getting the hang of flying is great fun.

(Lloyd) No, I wouldn’t argue with the ratings either. In fact, I might be tempted to put value for money up slightly (85%) because this program offers loads of possibilities for enjoyment if you like simulations.

OMEGA RUN
(C.R.L.)

We said of Omega Run (issue 2, 87% overall) that it hovered between being a flight simulation and a straightforward game. Since then a number of flight simulations have appeared and Omega Run tends to look more like a game than a simulation, with, oddly, more similarity to Zzoom than anything.

The instructions are of a high standard, each item being very carefully explained. The idea behind it is still quite good although, looking back, it seems to lack a fair amount of content and variation, meaning its addictive qualities have dropped in comparison to later games. It’s a shame the 3D effects couldn’t have been improved, like a moving landscape. The graphics stand up as fairly detailed, but there aren’t all that many of them. It’s still playable when you get it out again, but doesn’t have much of an addictive quality.
MU

I thought Omega Run was a lot of fun when I first played it, although not so addictive as to keep me trying. I saw the Commodore version not long ago, expecting a vast graphic improvement, but it looked very similar, no attribute problems of course. Getting the Spectrum version out for a re-run, I left it feeling somewhat unimpressed because it does lack content, there’s too much twisting and turning to shoot enemy planes down, and little else.
LM

Use of Computer

78%

Graphics

90%

Playability

83%

Getting Started

96%

Addictive Qualities

82%

Value For Money

90%

Overall

87%

(Matthew) It got 90% for graphics — no way! There aren’t many graphics, and there really isn’t any proper attempt at 3D as in later games. No, that would have to go down to about 59% now. I’d also drop the playability rating (it got 83%) to about 63%. It’s addictive qualities were overrated too, not 82% anyway, more like 60%.

(Lloyd) Well I’d go along with most of that. I don’t think Omega Run has exactly stood the test of time as well as other similar flying games.

ANDROID 2
(Vortex)

Android 2, a follow up (no surprise) to Android 1, was a CRASH SMASH in issue 2 getting 90% overall. How’s it stood up?

Use of Computer

80%

Graphics

96%

Playability

92%

Getting Started

90%

Addictive Qualities

90%

Value For Money

89%

Overall

90%

The 3D effect on Android 2 works very well and is still one of the leading 3D maze style games. It’s attractive, colourful and boasts good animation. Playing it today, it’s still difficult which in a sense makes it challenging. In the original review, one of the bits used was mine, I said that this was a good game in itself with great graphics like Ant Attack, but a better playing game than Ant Attack. I haven’t changed my mind! The demo and instructions are some of the best seen.
MU

Considering the difficulty of getting through the very complex maze with all its hazards, this is still a very playable game with plenty of challenge and a lively, full, colourful screen. I always liked the graphics and the 3D effect and no one has really challenged Android 2, in my opinion, if one is looking at maze type games. In truth, I don’t think it has dated at all.
LM

(Matthew) I’d drop the graphics by 10% down to 86%, playability down 13% to 89% and addictive qualities down to 70%.

(Lloyd) I disagree! I wouldn’t drop the graphics a bit, nor the playability because I think this is still enormous fun to play. However, it is hard to get through, which might lower its addictivity a mite, say down to 85% from the original 90%. For my money this is still a game which, if it came out today, one would buy and enjoy as entirely up-to-date.

Of the nine games looked at this month Lloyd and Matthew reckoned that Microsphere’s Wheelie and Digital Integration’s Fighter Pilot are the two that had stood the test of time best of all, neither of them looking the least bit dated, and are certainly still the most enjoyable to play again.

IMAGINE...

When it comes to adventures, memory is the limiting factor but, if you think that if extra memory should become available it should be used in creating even more locations to visit, then you clearly haven’t played as many lifeless, unimaginative adventures as I have.

Graphics adventures have proven the more commercial yet too many are burdened by mediocre or downright useless pictures that add little to what would otherwise be another lacklustre text game. Graphics should not replace vivid, imaginative text.

Many text-only adventures concentrate on getting as many locations as possible into the 48K of the Spectrum and some even brag of such efforts as if this alone were any indication of the quality of a game. Inevitably, there results a loss in quality of location descriptions or even the problems themselves.

The microdrive seemed at first a good opportunity to provide the memory for both the imaginative text and good graphics. Strange that no one has produced a microdrive adventure and I know of none being developed. It is true that such an adventure would be more expensive but perhaps adventures, some of which are a bit pricey in any case, might accommodate the extra cost.

If and when the microdrive adventure does arrive I hope the extra room is used, not to double the length of the adventure, but to improve the vocabulary, descriptions, graphics and friendliness. Now let’s think, you might combine the graphic quality of The Hulk with the rich text of Level 9 — some adventure!

ATLANTIS

Producer: M&J Software
Author: M. Gamble, J. Gamble

You play James Parker who, after a 30-year search, discovers a map showing the location of the fabled island of Atlantis. You lead an expedition to the island but the long journey has soured relations among the crew and in the fight that ensues you are knocked unconscious. You awake alone but decide to carry on with your quest to find the lost city and, eventually, your way off the island. You immediate worry is to find enough food and water to sustain you on your journey.

The game has 150 locations, 30 of which carry a small graphic representation of the scene. 90 objects are strewn liberally throughout and the game features a vocabulary of some 200 yards.

On loading you are presented with a choice of three levels — easy, moderate and hard. The easy level allows the player 40 commands before he is overcome with hunger, and the hard level 20. Although at first your overriding concern is to survive, collecting treasure along the way will add to your score. With an open mind and nimble fingers I set off.

After what must be 40 commands (chose the easy level of course) my belly starts to rumble and I’m told to get something to eat. Since I find myself beside a gurgling stream I decide to drink some water. On filling my flask and drinking I’m led to believe all is well again but I met with the curious report THAT’S A NICE HAT YOU ARE WEARING. Either this is a bug or someone’s got a peculiar sense of humour. It’s true I did pick up a hat earlier and who knows, it may well be a nice one. Being a shrewd explorer I decide to refill my flask and perhaps take another drink as well but, alas, food and drink cannot be accumulated in this way and I must wait until my next 40 commands are running out. Once nourished I settled down to a jolly jaunt through sand dunes and forests, collecting treasure and many items for which I just couldn’t find a use.

Some of the situations you meet are a little incredible. You find the master key inside a coconut of all places, and how on earth do you get into a forest by digging through the bottom of a pit?

To my knowledge this is the first Quilled adventure with graphics. A competent game, Atlantis provides many difficult and sometimes peculiar problems which will take weeks to solve.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: Quite difficult
Graphics: Some, primitive
Presentation: Average
Input facility: Verb/noun
Response: Very fast
General Rating: Fair, food element can become a distraction.

Atmosphere

6/10

Vocabulary

6/10

Logic

5/10

Debugging

7/10

Overall Value

6/10

THE HULK

Producer: Adventure International
Retail price: £9.95
Author: S. Adams, M. Gruenwald, J. Romita

Ever since the early days of Automata adverts, comic strips have been associated with computer games and now a well-established adventure games company and a comics group have got together to bring the green mass of the Hulk to the adventure scene.

The Hulk is the first instalment of the Questprobe Series of games from Adventure International which will feature Marvel Comic characters including Spiderman and other Superheroes. Marvel Comics are publishing a comic called Questprobe featuring the Hulk.

You are Robert Bruce Banner, an ex-physicist irradiated by highly charged radioactive particles during the test detonation of a nuclear weapon. The radiation has a mutigenetic effect on Banner’s cellular structure causing him to transfer into the green-skinned monster known to all as the Hulk. Although the Hulk is clearly superhuman — he can leap to a height of 3,200 feet and withstand a temperature of 3000°F — it is possible to injure him. We are told he could not survive a near-hit with a nuclear warhead. Yes folks, even superheroes have no answer to these awesome weapons.

You begin as Banner tied up hand and foot to a chair and if you think you must flip to your alter ego to escape then I’d say you’re doing quite well for an adventure which comes in a box marked ‘Difficulty level: Moderate’. When in a room a gas soon permeates your skin turning it back to a Californian brown tan whilst flexing within are more gently rippling muscles.

What immediately strikes you is the richness and quality of the cartoon like graphics which depict your inflation to the green mass of the Hulk and subsequent demise to Bruce Banner. The detail is stunning. The graphics are not only tremendous but very fast, as is the response time and so the adventure flows along smoothly. There’s no beep on input but the routine is so fast and efficient that mistakes are rare.

Your task is to locate all the gems and find somewhere to store them. There are many interesting problems to tackle but the foremost is how to survive. But when death-defying attempts come to an end not all is lost. In true cartoon style the hero is never really killed and pressing D for down will bring you out of the clouds and back on terra firma.

Other cartoon characters in this adventure are the Ant-Man who when reduced to the size of an ant retains his original mass loading a super punch for a half-inch high figure, and Doctor Strange who can tap the universe’s ambient magical energy.

Vocabulary involves simple verb/noun couplings e.g., if you input WAVE FAN the reply AT WHAT? comes up and the program kindly gives you an example of the type of input is now requires — e.g. AT TREE.

When in need of assistance you may type HELP and more often than not be greeted with SORRY I CAN’T DO THAT BUT ASK FOR A SCOTT ADAMS HINT BOOK AT YOUR FAVORITE STORE!

My only criticism of this fine adventure is the repetitiveness that sets in once you’ve established the object of the game. As you move around collecting gems each of the three domes becomes indistinguishable as each is represented by the same graphic. To leave each dome the same routine is painstakingly followed.

The Hulk is a truly marvellous adventure with super graphics and a theme familiar to everyone.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: Average
Graphics: All locations and some actions. Remain on screen. Excellent
Presentation: Good
Input facility: Average. Two word inputs
Response: Very fast
General rating: Good.

Atmosphere

8

Vocabulary

7

Logic

8

Debugging

10

Overall value

8

THE INFERNO

Producer: Richard Shepherd Software Ltd
Author: Pete Cooke
Price: £6.50

Richard Shepherd have always had a good reputation for high class packaging of software but more recently have created interest in the program on the tape as well. After playing and thoroughly enjoying Urban Upstart I eagerly loaded up The Inferno.

The program closely follows the plan of Dante’s Inferno which depicts the thirteenth century concept of Hell. In your quest there are nine circles through which you must pass to reach to centre and escape.

The style and format mimics that first seen in The Hobbit but the graphics are very simple, although to be fair every location has a graphic. The graphic depiction of a scene scrolls up on pressing a key — in this case the ENTER key — to reveal all the text at the bottom. The word ENTER appears in the bottom right hand corner and the border changes colour when the program is ready. Were this the only distraction when playing the game there would be little cause for complaint but this constant need to press enter is coupled with the most infuriating input routine ever devised.

Every so often a key depression repeats a letter and if you are not meticulous you can spend a lot of time deleting back to correct these mistakes. As it turns out this game is quite enjoyable and long delays are rare as it has a fast response time but an awful input routine is a major setback for any adventure to overcome. Sometimes the action becomes too fast to read without the foresight to switch off the graphics, for example, when getting Cerbus to limp aside to let you down to the next level.

After only a few scenes you become aware of the independent characters featured in the game though they wander backwards and forwards like zombies. Virgil, like Thorin in The Hobbit, has a limited patois and generally comes out with such gems as THIS IS A DANGEROUS PLACE or WE MUST HURRY.

To tell a character to do something you must begin the command with the character’s name; you can also ask Virgil for his inventory by entering VIRGIL LIST. Vocabulary moves quite some way from simple verb/noun but you might be surprised at TAKE with no GET option. However T is a very useful abbreviation for TAKE.

The Inferno is an adventure let down by an infuriating input routine. On the plus side the game features graphics at every location, an interesting and enjoyable storyline and the puzzles, lightened with a useful HELP command are not too difficult.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: Easy-average
Graphics: In all locations. Scroll off. Can be turned off. Average
Presentation: Black text on white. Average
Input facility: Poor. Accepts full sentences
Response: Normally fast, some graphics a little slow
Special features: Independent characters
Overall: Good

Atmosphere

7/10

Vocabulary

8/10

Logic

8/10

Debugging

10/10

Overall

8/10

SPOOF: THE MAGIC DRAGON

Producer: Runesoft
Author: D.V. Stevenson, Jon A. Slack
Price: £7.50

With a name like Spoof you might guess this piece of software represents a lampoon on the software scene. On playing, it reveals a sometimes biting satire on the fantasy world in general and the text adventure in particular. Unfortunately, much of the humour will be lost on all but the most experienced, and literally die-hard, adventures as this adventure proved most difficult without some guidance. As in most comedies there is a fall guy. You help Yaw Ning (The Tired One) to find Spoof the Magic Dragon, despite the whole world being set against him.

You begin in the village square and enter the store to collect your adventure kit and sword to find that the shopkeeper is really a doctor. Who can this doctor be? We learn he is stranded on this tiny planet because he has lost a vital component from his Time Machine. Thus start the Chronicles of Yaw, Part 5387, with the first quest of many to find and return the part.

Moving south past a Keep Out sign you find a green slimy frog sitting amongst the folds of a beautiful dress. Once you’ve kissed the frog you have nine moves to get back to Grimy Gerty’s which lies nine moves somewhere to the north. This may now seem straightforward but what might you have done had you not read what you must do in this column? Luckily my hair is firmly attached to my scalp and I managed to contact Runesoft.

A little further on you find some wart remover but don’t drink it — it’s one of the items needed to fulfil the quest from the three headed vulture; others are the dress of a princess, a magic rope and the ring from a pig’s nose. This last is wonderfully and amusingly set up since no sooner do you learn of your need for a pig’s ring than you see a conspicuous sign pointing to a pig’s cave. These ever-so easy occasions comically contrast with the utter lack of mercy shown should you make a wrong move with any of the puzzles. To this extent not only is the vocabulary unfriendly but so is the program as a whole. One slip or inappropriate input and you’re dead! And it is no use matching satire with silliness. On requesting HELP I was told to panic. I input PANIC to meet IN A BLIND PANIC I THRASH ABOUT, LOPPING MY HEAD OFF WITH A SWORD AS I DO SO with the inevitable result I AM DEAD. One very cute point is you can panic to your heart’s content — but only before you find the sword.

At the Bogg Inn you find yourself with yet another quest — the place is riddled with them — this time to get Lancelot’s armour. It may show how pedantic this adventure can be to say that you can only enter the inn once (so wandering around aimlessly is not a good idea) and you TALK to the locals in the bar but don’t SAY anything, this last being the more usual entry for communication.

One of the few places you can examine anything is within the fairy ring and the only thing you can examine here is the goblet whereupon you drop it. If you stick the pieces back together again you have, in the vernacular of another source of satire, something completely different. This may be the time to mention that you’ll need the Holy Grail before you can embark on the barge.

Humour necessarily pervades each and every placename with the Obligatory Mountains, Lake Necessary and Necessary Forest. In the Lake Necessary monster’s lair you are told THERE’S A FUZZY PHOTOGRAPH OF WHAT MAY, OR MAY NOT BE, A HUMAN BEING ON THE WALL. The monster busies himself eating half a cat and your left arm and if you try to swim away the monster kills and devours you. The last thing you see are half a cat, a bit of owl and your left arm swilling around the contents of the monster’s stomach.

Spoof is a Quilled adventure and therefore has an almost instantaneous response time. As a satirical piece it is often amusing and would suit a jaded and very experienced adventurer.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: Very difficult
Graphics: Occasional, things like signs
Presentation: White text on blue. Good
Input facility: Verb/noun
Response: Very fast
Overall: Good.

Atmosphere

6/10

Vocabulary

6/10

Logic

5/10

Debugging

7/10

Overall Value

6/10

WARRIORS REVENGE

Producer: Video Force

Warriors Revenge is the first part of a Trilogy of continuous adventures. After you have mastered The Land of No Return, The Castle of Death awaits you but cannot be played without completing this adventure. The instructions on the cassette inlay are almost obscure in places but charmingly precise when in the loading instructions it says ‘Type LOAD... ENTER... PLAY on cassette recorder and Warriors Revenge will load automatically.’ Amazing what these computers can do.

You are asked by Yeta, Wizard of Sebra, to return three golden keys lost in the land of No Return. A semi-role playing combat system allows you to fight monsters and hopefully you survive long enough to return the keys and collect a reward.

Your skill, determined by pressing S as numbers ranging from 1 to 6 are randomly flashed onto the screen, and stamina, equivalent to hit points and similarly determined by pressing A, are added to values achieved during the fight sequences.

Warriors Revenge is basically a multiple choice adventure. At each location you decide between options like R (Run), L (leave), D (Drink), F (Fight), as well as the usual N, S, E, W. Which of these confront you varies with the location, but of course, you always have a choice. However, just as with some of the quiz shows on TV that feature exotic prizes, you may be forgiven for thinking that when a crucial answer is needed it relates to a trick question.

For example, take the time I came across a cavern which sounded to me suspiciously like a crevasse. You are told you can probably jump the crevasse and so you have no need of Spock Logic to rule out R (Run) from the other two options — Jump and Vine. Yet jump gives you the report that you nearly reach the other side but fail while Vine has you falling into the cavern since the vine breaks. Run, incredibly, saves your life as you use the rope and tie it to the tree and swing across. So the moral here is that you must pick the least probable option to survive.

For ‘A Game of Skill and Determination’ this program has much dependency upon luck. Leaving aside the aforementioned appropriation of skill and stamina points the adventurer has locations where your progress is determined by pure luck. Take the place where you meet a man sitting by a tree stump. To pass you must engage him in an arm wrestling match but let me save you the doubts cast upon your manhood; when you are confronted by the choice between the numbers 1 to 9, choose 4. I had to break into the program to get around this bit of nonsense.

If you’ve caught the tone of this review you might guess at what’s coming next. When I broke into the program a load of twaddle tumbled out onto my screen. The programming is, to borrow what’s now becoming a worn euphemism, inefficient. Furthermore, though I am not the world’s greatest for spelling, it’s not difficult for me to spot that this program has some howlers. It gives you the impression no one else could be bothered to play the game.

The game is not mappable. N takes you into the forest and S further into the forest. There is no Save routine — perhaps not essential considering the length of the game but it is certainly very easy to get yourself killed. At one point you must guess the name of a potion. If you don’t guess correctly (?!!) then you are killed and must start again.

Perhaps this game would suit the younger end of the market, I think to myself, but what is this? Is this the game’s attempt to splash its name across the pages of a notorious, salacious Fleet Street journal — a warrior is being raped! Run round to the video hire ship will you and hand in my video recorder — I’m going back to organic farming... Moo... Baa... Bah, Bah!!

COMMENTS

Difficulty: Average
Graphics: A few, very small
Presentation: Yellow on black. Good
Input facility: Very limited choice
Response: Fast
General Rating: Poor.

Atmosphere

4/10

Vocabulary

1/10

Logic

2/10

Debugging

4/10

Overall

3/10

ATHLETE

Producer: Buffer Micro Ltd
Author: D. Webb
Price: £5.50

Like Micro Olympics (Database, reviewed this issue), Athlete employs animated figures in the running events. These include the 100m and 400m sprint, the 110m and 400m hurdles. The only other event is the hammer throw. This is seen directly from above with the figure of the thrower as a pair of arms and a head in the circle.

In the running events you compete against two other runners controlled by the computer — this is a single player game. There are two bar codes at the base, one for power and one indicating distance to go. The speed of your runner is key controlled, but judgement is required to ensure you don’t run out of power before the race finishes. In the hurdles the jump key is used to get over the obstacles and power is again a factor in winning.

In the hammer throw the character starts to spin and you must judge the right moment, as his speed increases, to loose the hammer. Waiting too long will result in a No Throw. Before each event, which follows on automatically from the other, you may select the skill level from 1 to 10. The hammer throw is interspersed between the other events.

CRITICISM

‘Athlete is a fairly playable game, it has a better running method than Micro Olympics — more practical anyway. The game tends to lack variety and atmosphere, with only running events and a poor hammer throw. I quite like the strategic element whereby energy has to be conserved and used appropriately. Overall, not as good as Micro Olympics but better than many we’ve seen.’

‘The first thing I didn’t like about this game was that a ten second delay occurs while a menu and other text is displayed, which happens between each complete game — not very good if you want to get on with the game. I found the game uncompetitive and, if anything, boring to play. The skill levels range from easy to impossible, where you don’t stand a chance against computer controlled athletes. Overall, not a very addictive, attractive and playable game.’

‘Athlete is a lot better than the spate of running, jumping and standing still games we’ve seen recently, but it lacks much in the way of events and therefore in playability and addictiveness. The animated running men are quite good although the hammer throw is a bit basic looking. The running is controlled from the keyboard or joystick on a fast, slow, jump basis, which is kinder to the computer than the method employed in Micro Olympics, but it simply isn’t as much fun either. I became bored quite quickly with this one.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 5 or 6/7 and 8 faster/slower, 0 to jump
Joystick: AGF, Protek, Kempston, ZX 2
Keyboard play: responsive, easy to use
Use of colour: not much
Graphics: average to fair, reasonable animation
Sound: very poor to none
Skill levels: 10
General Rating: Fair to average.

Use of Computer

60%

Graphics

58%

Playability

47%

Getting Started

57%

Addictive Qualities

39%

Value For Money

45%

Overall

51%

BLACK HAWK

Producer: Creative Sparks
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £6.95
Language: machine code
Author: Phil Snell & Dean Lock

A detail from the attack screen with tank and three factories

Black Hawk is an arcade shoot em up of positively violent proportion. It is also a fairly complex game to get into at first and requires some concentration on the detailed inlay instructions. It is also the first translation to the Spectrum of the popular arcade game ‘Xevious’. We would have to say at the outset however, that the Spectrum’s display isn’t up to the quality of a dedicated arcade machine, so no one must expect those extraordinary graphics. On the other hand, Creative Sparks have added some other interesting features and this is a game which uses ‘Xevious’ as a departure point rather than trying to be a copy.

The time is the near future and the place is a group of heavily defended islands. You are flying your Black Hawk. Your mission is to seek out and destroy enemy airfields and missile launching sites. There are, however, many other installations to destroy. Up against you are enemy anti-aircraft guns, helicopter gunships, SAM missiles and missile launchers. The success of your mission is gauged by your SLF figure (Strategic Loss Factor) — in other words you get points for targets destroyed, i.e. tanks, rockets, SAMs, aircraft ships, gunships, jets, helicopters and others. ‘Others’ are ground installations like factories.

Your aircraft has a computer attack system which features a two-screen display — the defence screen and the attack screen. In the attack screen a small yellow U at the bottom indicates your vertical position and a white cross-sight may be moved over targets. When it turns red, a missile is automatically fired to detonate the target. It can be used to destroy flying targets as well as ground targets, but any flying target which reaches the base of the screen will cause your computer to flip automatically to the defence screen. This shows the Black Hawk at the base of the screen and the approaching objects will soon appear at the top, flying rapidly down towards you. In this screen you may use your cannon to destroy the enemy. Successfully destroying them will return you to the attack screen again.

Your object is to gain a high OTPF (Optimum Target Percentage Figure). At the end of a mission this figure is calculated and, if high enough, additional weaponry may be added to your craft for further missions. Weaponry may also be removed if you fall below the appropriate figure. The weapons are ECM Pod which detects radar, radios and listening posts; X Cannon which increases fire power in the defence system; Blitvig which destroys all visible enemy units and is limited in use by your OTPF; and finally, the Wild Weasel which makes you invulnerable for a short time and may only be used once per mission.

This gives a brief (!) run down of what to expect from Black Hawk — there is more to it. Two skill levels, Rookie and Honcho, plus increasing difficulty.

CRITICISM

‘I haven’t had as much fun since the last May fair brought the arcade machines to town for three days. I also have a very sore first finger from firing! The general trend recently has been away from shoot em ups to more complex adventurish games, but there’s always room for a really good shoot em up and this is one of those. An awful lot is going on even at the start and on the lower level of skill, and by later missions the shrapnel is flying like snow in a blizzard. The graphics are all fairly small, although nicely detailed but they move very fast and smoothly and the down scrolling landscape is very smooth as well. Perhaps the only difficulty which is a bit aggravating is that the cross-sight when white is a bit hard to see on the blue of the sea. Black Hawk is a shoot em up that requires a great deal of concentration as well as very good hand and eye co-ordination. Extremely addictive!’

‘Just what the doctor ordered! A fast, aggressive, brilliant shoot em up! First loading the game and reading through several screens of information, I decided to take on the task of destroying everything in sight and so I found myself confused by the way the screen kept on flicking over from one image to another. This is quickly overcome with several playings of the game, although to be fair it is indicated in the instructions on the inlay. It took me about half an hour to get used to the aggressive style this game plays by which time I was totally absorbed by the sheer single-mindedness of the enemy I was up against. The more I played this game, the more I wanted to play it, while the computer was throwing more and more defensive weapons at me in an attempt to eliminate me. The graphics come in various sizes from small to large but all reasonably in scale with each other. The various enemy objects are realistically animated, recoiling guns, rotating helicopter blades, rotating radar dishes etc. Colour and sound have both been used very well. This has got to be the best shoot em up game I’ve seen for an age, one that has loads of playability and addictive qualities and I still haven’t seen what is yet to come.’

‘I thought this was going to be a flight simulation game, little did I know that I was to be dumped in the midst of a raging battle. First impressions are rather daunting with all the instructions written in future jargon, but never fear, once into the game you can forget most of them. Also, at the outset the graphics seem a little disappointing, quite simple really, but somehow after half an hour’s play they all seem fine, indeed very good, and suddenly there are so many things all over the place, whizzing, whirling and firing. Shoot em ups haven’t exactly vanished from the scene thank goodness, but Black Hawk may well start a full-scale revival!’

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors, or Q/A up/down, O/P left/right with 0 to fire
Joystick: Kempston, ZX 2, Fuller, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: very good generally, one small problem with the cross-sight
Graphics: very good, smooth and detailed, very fast
Sound: good noises and tune
Skill levels: 2 but increasing difficulty by mission
Screens: 2
Originality: loosely based on arcade original ‘Xevious’, but as a Spectrum shoot em up, entirely original
General rating: an excellent addictive, fast arcade game.

Use of computer

91%

Graphics

89%

Playability

95%

Getting started

92%

Addictive qualities

95%

Value for money

87%

Overall

92%

BLOCK BUSTER

Producer: Compusound
Author: Frank Woodcock, Max Barr
Price: £5.95

Blockbuster is a computer version of the TV game, and it’s a good one too. A game to test general knowledge, spelling and speed of recall which may be played by one player against the computer or between two players. The general object of the game is simplicity in itself, but the content makes for a lively and playable one.

The screen is broken up into 25 six-sided blocks, interleaved like a honeycomb, so that there are five vertical columns of five blocks. The blocks are coloured yellow and the object is for the player (or player 1) to make a linked bridge from left to right or vice versa, while the computer (or player 2) does the same vertically. Player 1 makes the blocks turn blue with a correct answer and player 2 turns them white.

At the start of a game the players are asked their names and the skill level desired (1 to 9). Then the blocks appear with the central one being ‘free’. Randomly chosen letters appear in the rest. The first player then chooses which block he wishes to conquer and a question appears below the screen asking the player to identify and spell out whatever word the computer chooses which begins with the initial letter in the block. The trick here is that the question is open to both players (or the computer), with player 1 using left hand keys to interrupt and player 2 using the right hand keys. It is possible to interrupt before the question is complete. An incorrect answer will award the block to the player’s opponent, and the first to complete their bridge across the screen wins.

CRITICISM

‘If you didn’t enjoy the TV quiz show, then you probably won’t enjoy this computer version. But if, like me, you did enjoy the TV show, then there’s a good chance that this will appeal. The nine skill levels should suit most players and the large-sized cassette box comes with a supplementary questions tape when you run the main loader out of questions. All in all a good package.’

‘This is a very good translation of the TV programme. The game has several large databases providing loads of words and answers. Having skill levels is a great boon to the player if just playing against the computer — this effectively slows the computer’s thinking process allowing for a single person to build up his or her skill factor. Colour and sound (sound can be switched on or off) is well used and makes the game more playable. Overall a great game for one or two players and can be recommended as a family game.’

‘Blockbuster is an educational type of game that, because of the way it is played, is very entertaining. If you’re playing on your own, it’s quite fun to see the computer leaping in to make a guess before you and getting it wrong. Obviously the program hots up as the skill levels increase and the computer gets more intelligent. I enjoyed it, and although this is definitely not a game where addictivity really enters, I’m sure it will appeal generally to lots of people who want something to put on in the evenings when Blockbuster isn’t on the telly!’

COMMENTS

Control keys: very simple
Joystick: N/A
Use of colour: simple and effective
Graphics: Spectrum text on simple colour clocks with a time bar at the base
Sound: switchable, useful entry beeps and simple tunes
Skill levels: 9
Originality: hardly matters in this case
General Rating: Interesting, entertaining and overall, good.

Use of Computer

71%

Graphics

N/A

Playability

76%

Getting Started

77%

Addictive Qualities

N/A

Value For Money

78%

Overall

76%

CONQUEST

Producer: Cheetahsoft Ltd
Author: Duncan Nightingale
Price: £6.95

Mediterranean Europe is divided into grid squares. Your aim as emperor is to gain 100 squares of territory as quickly as possible in the graphics strategy game, Conquest. You’ll have to contend with barbarian counter-attacks on your flanks, random plague attacks which may wipe out one or more of your legions, and the possibility of civil war.

Conquest is for one player, and the game takes place over a map of Europe and half of Russia. The cassette comes with instructions on screen on one side and the game on the other. The known world is divided into 600 territories, or squares, which include sea. Movement onto land is permitted, but not onto sea squares. The game starts by choosing a location for the capital city, which can support only one legion, commanded by the emperor and coloured purple. As this legion moves it colours the territory occupied red. For every five squares captured, you are awarded another legion, commanded by a general, and these captured territories are coloured black. If territory is lost, so may the legions be, as there may not be enough taxes to support them. The legions are allowed to move one square at a time, controlled by the cursors.

The emperor’s legion has unlimited movement within the empire but also makes a single square capture per move. There is a maximum of 16 legions available. Attacks by barbarians on an unprotected flank may wipe out a captured territory. Such attacks occur more frequently as the game progresses.

There are five levels of difficulty, each adding more playing factors such as generals falling in battle, the legions receive combat records indicating their chances of successful conquest, the emperor may also be killed, in which case a general will declare himself and civil war may break out. In between moves the computer takes action like outbreaks of plague and deciding whether legions become disloyal.

CRITICISM

‘This tactical game set in Europe ages ago is fairly typical of the strategy layout and in its aims. It’s also fairly ‘typical’ in the sense that it isn’t exactly very exciting (remember the one about watching paint drying?). The best part of the game is the map of Europe, which is very well drawn. My recommendation would be to avoid it like the plague, especially at £7. Cheetah Soft’s catchphrase is, ‘Soft we’re not’. Well perhaps they should realise that the average Spectrum owner isn’t either.’

‘After reading through 48K of instructions I felt 1 needed a rest. It took four or five months for the game to load and then a key display appeared on the screen and I was asked whether I would like a printout — for the cursor control keys? As suggested, I selected skill level one to get used to the rules of the game and my legions expanded across the continent rapidly. Only it’s rather boring, moving legion squares and watching things turn red, and waiting for the slow response time of the computer as it wipes you out with the plague and barbarians. Feeling bored, I broke into the program and went onto skill level five leaving my original conquests from level one intact. Despite the higher skill level it’s still boring due to the fact that the plague can take about half a minute to spread. One of the more boring strategy games I’ve encountered, and in my opinion, a rip-off at £7.’

‘The lengthy on-screen instructions in Conquest manage to make the game sound involved and exciting, although why most of these couldn’t have been printed on the inlay, I don’t know. Not everyone has a printer. But the game itself is slow and tedious to play. The map is very good but watching squares flashing on and off on it isn’t so good. There are strategical elements contained in it to liven things up, but the more that’s happening, the slower everything goes. This simply isn’t the kind of programming that should be on sale today at this sort of price. In all honesty it’s no better than any Mastertronic game at three times the price, and some Mastertronic games are better.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors, plus three command keys
Joystick: Cursor type
Keyboard play: key layout is hardly important but responses are very slow
Use of colour: very simple
Graphics: good map, but rest very poor
Sound: none
Skill levels: 5
General Rating: A poor program and a slow game which is over-priced.

Use of Computer

42%

Graphics

35%

Playability

18%

Getting Started

20%

Addictive Qualities

13%

Value For Money

15%

Overall

24%

DECOR WRECKERS

Producer: Scorpio Software
Author: Andrew Reed
Price: £1.99

In a way Decor Wreckers resembles Terminal’s Carpet Capers, except that it’s infinitely cheaper and more playable. As in Carpet Capers you have to cover something while nuisances are undoing your good work.

Basically Decor Wreckers is a ‘Painter’ type game. You play the part of a paint roller (makes a change from fighting paint rollers off). The screen is blue, you must paint it yellow, all of it. The trouble is that there are various insects and creatures, Sid Spider (who else!), Freddie Fly, Bertie Bugg and Sammy Snail, all of whom crawl or fly about wiping off the paint. The object of this very simple game is to get the screen all painted and get your roller ‘home’ in the bottom right hand corner before any nasty can damage the paintwork.

Succeeding in this mission will promote you to the next screen where there are more nasties at work. Unfortunately you only have a limited amount of paint per roll. Running out of paint is tantamount to losing a life.

CRITICISM

‘The keys are responsive and the sound is fair, but it could all be better, and the graphics are a bit jumpy. After about an hour’s play I started to get really bored with this game because there is so little variation.’

‘Bad memories came to mind when this one turned up — mainly Carpet Capers. The extra low price didn’t help in convincing myself that it may be good. Decor Wreckers, however, is quite high quality for the price! Keyboard response is very good and it needs to be because the pace of the game is quite fast. Painting the screen is fun at first with the interlopers to interfere with your handywork. As the game progresses more things spoil the paint and the game rapidly becomes unplayable. Colour and sound have been quite well used and in all it makes a good game at the price with plenty of frantic action.’

‘The graphics and movement are neat and fast, also reasonably smooth. Decor Wreckers was great fun to play — for about fifteen minutes or so. And that’s the central problem. The concept is so very simple that it can’t possibly hope to hold anyone’s interest for very long. It’s really a very early Spectrum type game with improved graphics. However, at its price it may well appeal, though whether you’ll feel its low price is worth it for the simplicity you get it another matter.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: good, Q/A up/down, O/P left/right
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive and fast — there’s also a neat touch that the roller can cover a full width of the roller or a half width which forces your reactions to be more efficient
Use of colour: fair to good, very straightforward
Graphics: simple, but reasonably detailed and fairly smooth moving
Sound: fair
Skill levels: 1 but gets harder with each screen
Lives: 3 fills of paint
Originality: not very as based on ‘Painter’ type game, but a reasonably novel approach
General Rating: fair to average.

Use of Computer

58%

Graphics

52%

Playability

52%

Getting Started

54%

Addictive Qualities

41%

Value For Money

58%

Overall

53%

ELECTION

Producer: Mastertronic Ltd
Price: £1.99

The aim of the game is to defend the parliamentary seat of Pendell by choosing your manifesto from given points, within 10 days and with a budget of £5,000 and any donations you may collect along the way. In other words Election is a strategy/options game.

At the start of the game you must select the party you wish to represent, Tory, Labour, Alliance; and then choose three of the points offered for your manifesto. You are shown what points the two other parties are campaigning on. Pendell is split up into 24 streets, and the political colour of Pendell can be seen as the streets are listed showing how many houses support the various parties. From then on the game offers up the usual allowance of options such as attending meetings in different streets, where value points are provided for you to use in answering questions tabled. You may rent billboard space in specifically offered streets, or buy advertising space in the local newspaper.

Then there’s the street by street canvassing, when you may choose how many to visit in a day. When renting billboard space, attending meetings or canvassing, the program informs you of the political colour of the street in question. In between the campaign activities, various random disasters can strike such as your campaign manager running off with the funds. When the 10 days are up, it’s time to sit back and watch the votes come in, street by street.

CRITICISM

‘Standing for parliament is one thing but defending a seat in an unresponsive town like Pendell is another matter. This game seems to have been put out unfinished and it’s very uninteresting and very boring. I wonder whether the programmer ever played this game...’

‘For £1.99 this must be one of the best value for money games I have seen. The election simulation is rather absorbing and addictive. Several correct political opinions are in there, like Common Market, defence, unions etc. It really is a good game, I thoroughly enjoyed it. On the subject of low budget games such as this, I would say that the text type simulation would usually be the best value for money as low budget games are rarely written in machine code for super smooth graphics, so the BASIC type which do not rely on graphics, like this one, are better suited.’

‘Election actually seems interesting for the first few minutes, but then it becomes tedious. You are following the same limited number of options time after time for ages. A day seems to take forever, but the worst isn’t over. When the game is complete and you ‘sit back’ to watch the results coming in, the twenty four streets take almost 15 minutes to complete. 15 minutes when all you do is sit back and yawn. I really can’t see this being thought of as exciting — after all, it is a simulation, not reality, and therefore has little of the real excitement attached to an election, and no justification for the long wait.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: general entry
Use of colour: generally uninteresting
Graphics: mainly text with small characters for houses
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1
Originality: election games are hardly new, and this one has little to offer apart from the long election day sequence
General Rating: Two reviewers thought it a waste of time, one thought it above average to good.

Use of Computer

40%

Graphics

N/A

Playability

28%

Getting Started

35%

Addictive Qualities

38%

Value For Money

45%

Overall

37%

THE FALL OF ROME

Producer: ASP Software Ltd
Author: M. Edwardes, P. Rawling
Price: £6.95

This strategy game is set in the period starting from 395 AD, the moment when the sweeping pressure of the barbarian tribes finally forced the Roman Empire to its knees. The object of the game is to see whether, by skill and manipulation of the forces at your command, you can alter the events of history and maintain Rome as a great empire. The Fall of Rome is for one player against the computer.

All the events take place on a map of Europe which is divided by red border lines into the various provinces. At the start of the game you are shown those which are under Rome’s control.

Playing is split into three distinct phases. During the first you are asked to create and move your forces province by province and any money balances left over. Your military forces are split into Mobile and Static legions, Cavalry units and Auxiliaries. You are allowed to create one mobile legion per province per turn if you have sufficient funds. Static legions are converted from mobile ones but, once converted, may not be changed back. Again, depending on funds, you may create cavalry or auxiliary units in a strict ratio to the number of mobiles in the province. If any money is left over, it may be moved to one of the adjacent provinces indicated on the map where it may do more than leaving it where it is.

The second phase is the movement part of the game. Here you are asked how many mobile legions you wish to move, again, province by province. The same goes for cavalry and auxiliaries if there are any present. With each province, the map will indicate the possible destinations of the movement.

The third, or attack phase, shows you how many enemy tribes there are in the various provinces where Roman military forces have been moved, and it gives their varying strengths. You are allowed to attack one enemy per province per move. The computer calculates the result based on enemy strengths and Roman forces available, this completes a turn and one turn represents five years. At the commencement of the second turn you can see how well you have done, where you have hung on and where you have lost control.

CRITICISM

‘The Fall of Rome is quite playable but it misses the quality that makes adventures, strategies and some arcade games good, the quality of making the player believe he is in the situation depicted by the computer. The graphics aren’t bad, but a game about the fall of Rome doesn’t need graphics — after all, adventures and strategies are in the mind of the player.’

‘I’m a little surprised at Argus for their covers on these games. Nowhere does it state which computer the game is for, although there are obviously several versions available, and yet inside on the inlay it states that you should check on the cover carefully to see if you have the right version for your computer! The instructions are reasonably comprehensive and the game is easy to handle after a few minutes’ playing. The map is well generated and the included insert showing the names of provinces is useful — it doesn’t, however, tie up fully with the map on the screen which is confusing when you want to move troops into unoccupied areas. The element of strategy is interesting when replaying real history, even within the confines of what is a very limited amount of memory for this type of game. I found coping with troop movements was easy and interesting for a while, but this is not a fully blown strategy war game and it therefore has its limitations. It also lacks something in ‘atmosphere’. There is undoubtedly a major war game yet to be written along these lines. It seems a pity that on the whole most clever or sophisticated programmers want to work on more glamorous projects than war strategy games. The Fall of Rome is quite educational, a reasonable amount of fun at first, but not really exciting enough in the end to appeal all that widely.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: general input of figures or first three letters of a province
Keyboard play: a user-friendly program with good error trapping
Responses: the BASIC program works with commendable speed and computer assessment time is kept to a minimum
Use of colour: sensible rather than exciting
Graphics: very good map, clear display
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1
General Rating: For strategy fans and younger players this could be worthwhile, as there is a fair amount to handle. Overall on the average side.

Use of Computer

65%

Graphics

54%

Playability

52%

Getting Started

63%

Addictive Qualities

47%

Value For Money

49%

Overall

55%

FORMULA ONE

Producer: Spirit Software
Author: S.C. Stephens
Price: £8.95

Well, after months of speculation and rumours the road racing game with the famous steering wheel has arrived. Quite how, we don’t know, since last heard of, the police were investigating the company because of customers’ mail order money going missing and the game’s non-arrival.

The cassette includes two versions, a 16K and a 48K version, to suit either type of machine. The inlay claims that the game is based on current formula one levels of braking and road holding. The 48K version gives you a choice of ten tracks; Hockenheim, Osterreichring, Kyalami, Zolder, Paul Richard, Monza, Zandvoort, Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Monaco. These are selected from the front end menu, each track with its name appearing on a key press one after the other.

The screen display is not unlike that of Psion’s Chequered Flag. You are seated in your car, your hands seen on the steering wheel. The road is white, seen in perspective against the green grass and blue skyline. Movement is indicated by the small signs on the side of the road, but there is no moving background as in other versions.

What makes Formula One different to all other road racer games is the much vaunted steering wheel which comes with the game. This is a yellow plastic device, shaped rather like the top of a big pickle jar, and was promptly nicknamed the Yellow Ashtray in the CRASH offices. It is designed to fit neatly on the Spectrum in such a way that it can be rolled left or right along the top row of keys. These are designed to proportionately increase left or right turn. There is an option for automatic or manual gear change.

CRITICISM

‘I’d understood both from the ad and from the publicity since, that the ‘delay’ in this game was due to faulty mouldings for the steering wheel. So one might have expected something special, perhaps (is it possible) an add-on at a price of nearly £9. But perhaps that’s asking too much. In the event, the flimsy plastic lid you actually get is a gimmick hardly worth having and certainly not worth paying for. In addition, the left/right keys (all the top row) are designed to proportionately increase the turning movement, so they are less effective for simple keyboard use. The 3D works quite well, but the car graphics are not a patch on Chequered Flag, which they resemble, as nothing in the car is animated at all. Not such a bad program, hardly a good game.’

‘You may have felt ripped off by not receiving this game had you ordered it, but you may still be ripped off by getting it. With the game came a free ashtray for hours of frustration. With ten tracks you can have a choice of disastrous driving. 3D graphics are very effective with the signposts whizzing past either side of the track, although I haven’t found out yet what their usefulness is, apart from indicating that the 3D is actually working. The idea of having proportional keys is a very good one, but doesn’t work well with this game. The actual key response is appalling and would seem to have been faster if written in BASIC, with a delay or two to three seconds after pressing a key. Response time totally spoils the playability of the game and that, of course, makes it completely unaddictive.’

‘The game looks good but does not play the same way — in fact you might say NO WAY. It’s not possible to guide this vehicle around the tracks provided. The actual car looks unprofessionally drawn and I would have thought it would have been possible to make the wheels look as though they were going round as there is no other way of seeing movement at first until you gain enough speed to see the marker posts sliding by. The track also seems to go on forever, at least it does at the average speed of 30mph, which is about all you can safely do when the wheels apparently don’t take you where you think you’re steering. I’ve yet to find out whether there are other cars in this game, as the inlay suggests, because I’ve never been able to qualify yet, and I’m not sure I can be bothered to try again.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Accelerate = Z, Brake = CAPS SHIFT, change up = S, change down = A, to steer use all top row
Joystick: the yellow ashtray
Keyboard play: steering keys are highly unresponsive
Use of colour: good
Graphics: 3D effect works quite well, overall less than standard graphics
Sound: below average
Skill levels: 1
Screens: 10 tracks (48K version)
Originality: well the road racer is hardly original, but the steering wheel is, on the other hand, it doesn’t work very well and is a laugh
General Rating: A barely average looking 3D race game with built-in unplayability.

Use of Computer

20%

Graphics

64%

Playability

15%

Getting Started

42%

Addictive Qualities

5%

Value For Money

2%

Overall

25%

THE MACHINE CODE TUTOR

You are sitting in the cockpit of a Lear jet at 1000 feet and approaching the runway at a sickening speed. Damn the instructor! Okay, so he had given you the instruction manual on how to land this bird a fortnight ago, and you have read it over and over again and think you know the proper procedure, step by step, on how to approach the land. The instructor had said it would be dead easy and yet, where is he? He isn’t sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, talking you gently down, guiding you along and making sure that you develop a hands down experience and live to see it... He knew your survival chances were zero and that the result would be a CRASH!

Learning machine code may not be as dangerous as learning to fly, but the same principles apply. You may buy a book on how to learn machine code, read all about the different commands and their effects, then try them out entering the mnemonics, assembling and running them by entering the famous last words: RAND USR... CRASH!

A long wait... Nothing. A sigh and a reach for the Spectrum power plug. You may not die, only your pride is hurt and you do get another chance... after loading the assembler again. The trouble is you don’t know what went wrong and begin to have doubts about your ability to learn machine code. Worst of all you will only enter the examples following the book word by word, for safety reasons, but without really knowing what you are doing. You won’t stray and experiment, because you could CRASH again...

Well, why risk life and limb, when you can earn your wings in a flight simulator. No danger here, your approach is recorded, all the instrument readouts monitored and if something goes wrong, such as forgetting to lower the landing gear, you just step out, get told off by the instructor and have another go. Wait a minute, why not develop a simulator for machine code tuition?

Well, Malcolm Evans has done just that. Stick the L-plate on your Spectrum and follow the leader:

THE COMPLETE MACHINE CODE TUTOR

The first aid kit comes in a plastic enclosure and consists of two cassettes and, oh no, the dreaded manual.

The assembler/simulator program is recorded on each cassette followed by groups of lessons which you are asked to load from within the program. You can also select not to load any lessons and proceed to experiment on your own using the assembler and simulator as a general purpose training ground, but if you are a newcomer, you’d best stick to the lessons to start with.

PROCEDURE

The Complete Machine Code Tutor (TCMCT) covers in 35 lessons all the instructions on the Z80 microprocessor. Each lesson consists of a detailed description of the instructions with all their effects registers and flags, followed in most cases by an example program. This example shows an application of the instruction and forms the basis of the exercises. The example is displayed as an assembler listing with memory address, object code and source code. To see the effect of the commands, the program may be ‘run’. The simulator takes charge and lets you single step through the program, displaying after every step the latest register, flag and stack contents on the lower part of the screen. The example may be rerun several times and when understood there is the option of editing the existing source code of the example and experimenting with the commands to hearts delight. The code is reassembled and the simulator activated. It is here that you will notice that the simulator is highly intelligent, avoiding any program crashes and displaying your lapses with English error messages.

It is this feature which can endear the TCMCT even to experienced machine code programmers, as it allows you to experiment without ever getting into serious trouble. It eliminates the reluctance to risk daring manoeuvres and gives you the necessary confidence to learn machine code.
THE MANUAL

The manual need only be read at the beginning. A list is given of the assembler instructions recognised. These pseudo-ops are commands to the assembler instead of to the processor and consist in this case of DEFB N (Define byte), DEFW NN (Define word) and BIN N (same as DEFB N, but the simulator will display the memory contents in binary rather than hex or dec code).

Next to this list thirteen error messages are listed, which the assembler will display upon aborting the assembly. These include error trappings such as unknown instructions, missing spaces, brackets or numbers, too large or labels too long or not found etc, are very comprehensive and should pinpoint the offending item quite clearly. There are also six different error messages listed which will appear when the simulator tries to run runaway assembled code. These include useful items such as:

PROGRAM COUNTER HAS JUMPED TO NON VALID ADDRESS: PC jump to an address which is not the beginning of an instruction line.
YOU ARE TRYING TO RUN CODE IN ALLOCATED STORAGE AREA: PC jump to a storage area.

YOU ARE ABOUT TO AFFECT MEMORY AREA NOT ALLOCATED TO YOU: You are trying to load a memory location not allocated to the work area (16384 to 23295 and 32000 to 32192 allocated).

YOU ARE ABOUT TO WRITE MEMORY WHICH WILL AFFECT YOUR PROGRAM: You are trying to load a memory location within your program instructions.

THE STACK POINTER IS OUTSIDE ALLOCATED MEMORY AREA: SP outside 32193 to 32255.

THERE ARE TOO MANY REGISTERS CALLED UP: Too many registers are used, but the simulator will run displaying only part of these registers.

A list of all keys used at various stages of the assembler/simulator with a full description of their functions is given, but the layout is so logical that after two minutes of use you will feel at home and be able to concentrate on the lessons.

Of beneficial use is the list of all the lesson headings together with a summary of the Z80 instructions, so that at any time the appropriate lesson may be recalled for further study of a particular instruction. The appendix contains tables for the effect of instructions on flags and the obligatory pictorial description of the shift and rotate functions. A very useful idea is the glossary, which should help the beginners understand the necessary computer jargon which separates the men from the boys...

CONCLUSION

The TCMCT is the first of its kind of program which gets the Spectrum owner on to a good footing with machine code and eliminates all the usual anxieties and long recovery procedures (from CRASHES) associated with machine code experimenting. The lessons include all the Z80 commands. These are explained in detail on screen, but for the total beginner it may be necessary to read a more general description of a microprocessor system with explanations of the various function blocks and the general modus operandi. It is highly recommended to purchase the Zilog Technical Manual, which not only gives a short and precise description of the Z80 CPU architecture, but also provides a reference manual for all the commands in the practical Group Table form together with the necessary execution timings. It must be understood that TCMCT is only intended for exercising machine code, so no provision is made for relocating the assembler/simulator or for positioning the object code at a specific memory start address. TCMCT is not a full blown assembler/editor/monitor with which complete commercial programs may be written. It is however the best machine code tutor and no serious Spectrum programmer should learn machine code without it.

Franco Frey

MATCH POINT

Producer: Psion/Sinclair
Memory required: 48K
Retail price: £7.95
Language: machine code

So many of the better games this summer seem to be sports simulations of the active kind rather than the strategic armchair sort, of which type Match Point is a supreme example. We’ve come to expect rather special programs from Psion and Match Point doesn’t disappoint. It points up the advances in Spectrum programming which underlines to some extent comments made by Crystal/Design Design programmer Simon Brattel in this issue about the versatility of the video display of the Spectrum encouraging programmers to write better and better looking programs. Match Point would have been almost inconceivable this time last year, so too would Database’s Micro Olympics.

The game is for one player against the computer or two players against each other, although the flexible front end allows you to enter not only your own name but also that of the computer so if you want to you can have the thrill of beating McEnroe (or being beaten by him of course!) or Navratilova if you prefer.

The screen display, prominently green naturally, shows the tennis court from the ‘commentators’ box’ position, looking straight along the centre of the court from one end. At the ‘back’ is the scoreboard, and to either side are spectators who convincingly turn their heads to follow the movement of the ball. The two players are fully animated and the movement of the ball results in its shadow being seen on the grass to help you judge its position. Further detail is added by the ball boy who runs in to collect net serves.

Games and scoring are quite authentic for lawn tennis, a match being played over three or five sets with the winner being the player to win either 2 or 3 sets respectively. Six games make up a set, the winner having a clear lead of 2 games, although a tie-break comes in automatically should the score reach six games each, except in the final set when play continues until one player achieves a two game lead. As you can see, stamina is required. Game scoring follows full rules including deuce and advantage. Players change ends of court automatically at the correct moment and service follows the accepted pattern.

The game can be controlled by keys or joysticks with fire being used to serve and change racket swing. The movement, speed and position of the ball can be determined by type of swing, where the ball hits the racket and at what moment during the swing the contact is made. All this adds up to an extremely realistic program.

What the deuce, take advantage of the sun and serve an ace

CRITICISM

‘At last someone has had the guts to reproduce the game of tennis on the Spectrum, and they have made an exceptionally good job of it. Every detail has been really polished even down to the spectators’ heads moving left and right with the ball. Ball boys do a great job as they run realistically across the court. This must be the ultimate yet in sports simulation. A great feat of programming. Great!’

‘Match Point is an interactive tennis game where the players move about and hit the ball very well. A point against the game is that the automatic change from forehand to backhand and vice versa can cause more problems than it’s worth. I would prefer to be in complete control. Forced changeovers can cause problems! Generally, though, this is a very playable and addictive game. It is certainly a vast leap over the very first tennis games. Remember them — the first TV arcade games with two flat bats and a ball in black and white?’

‘If you become worn out — and you will — then you can sit back and watch the computer play an exhibition match played by middle, senior or top seeded tennis stars until you feel well enough to take the court again. The colouring of the graphics is sensible rather than exciting, black figures on the green background, but the animation and speed with which they move more than makes up for any disappointment caused by Spectrum colour problems. Match Point calls for considerable skill in placing the ball where you want just as in the real thing, and I can’t imagine anyone becoming bored with it very quickly. Addictive in fact.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: selected: (2 players) S or J/D or K move left/right, 1 or 0/Q or O move up/down, CAPS/SPACE swing racket. But all keys may be user defined
Joystick: ZX 2, Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: sensibly used without attribute problems
Graphics: very impressive, smooth and fast with a deal of realism
Sound: not much at all, but hardly affects play
Skill levels: you may play quarter, semi- or finals, entering at any level, each increasing in speed and computer skill
Originality: highly original from the programming point of view to have achieved the level of this game
General rating: excellent and addictive to play, so much so that its rather high price seems well justified.

Use of computer

87%

Graphics

92%

Playability

90%

Getting started

87%

Addictive qualities

92%

Value for money

86%

Overall

89%

MICRO OLYMPICS

Producer: Database Publications Ltd

Database are the publishers of Micro User, the BBC Micro users magazine, and this program is a successful translation from their Beeb version, and their first excursion into Spectrum territory. Olympics year seems to have resulted in a welter of track sporting simulations of the interactive sort, CRL did an Olympics program, even Automata put the Piman through the wringer. There’s Stickman Olympics from Avalon and Athlete by Buffer Micro. All of them have been aiming at the popular arcade version which has the player thumping hell out of the machine (usually cracking the front glass in frustration after losing!), but this is the one that really matches up, and deserves a good placing beside Psion’s Match Point.

There are eleven events to be entered into from the main menu, five of which come under one key press for running events. These include the 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 metres. The three throwing events are Javelin, Discus and Hammer; and then there’s the long and high jump and the pole vault. In each event you can compare your result with current world records.

Each event takes place against the computer with the computer (ME) going first and you (YOU) going second, although in the running events you compete simultaneously of course. Most events require the use of three keys, all of which can be user-defined at the start of each event. Running is accomplished, as in the arcade version, by hitting a left and right key as fast as possible. There is a book on Spectrum programming written specially for very young children which in its first chapter tells the child how to take care of the computer, pointing out that thumping the keys, the way those silly games players do, is bound to ruin ‘Spectrum’. Needless to say, Micro Olympics is Database’s subversive way of attempting to destroy everyone’s Spectrum so you’ll go out and buy a Beeb next time around!

CRITICISM

‘This is the best of the athletic type games I have seen. It’s got more realism than the rest and is generally more fun. But I would like to point out that the Sinclair ZX Spectrum keyboard was not designed for rapid finger movements. Therefore I suggest that a joystick should be used — no option however, so the joystick interface must be programmable and preferably one with two independent fire buttons as these would be better than actually thrashing the joystick to death! Another point is that in true sporting style you must finish any event you start. This resulted in a lengthy key bash for the 1500 metres. Generally a good game but not designed for keyboard play.’

‘This game is an adaptation of Track & Field, the well-known arcade game, the one where you must push and pull the joystick as hard as you can. Not surprisingly, these machines have a short existence! I found a joystick a lot easier to use with the definable keys (mine was set to Protek protocol). You really do have to move the joystick fast to get your man moving well — don’t go in for the 1500 metres — you’ve been warned! The graphics are good and work well in most cases. The sound is good, with the crowd cheering even after a no-throw. I was a bit disappointed there was no two-player option, but a nice feature is when you throw the hammer or discus and release it at the wrong moment — the screen goes blank and cracked in the middle and says your picture will be returned as soon as possible.’

‘So far none of the Olympics games brought out for the Spectrum have been really worthwhile playing and were not very interactive with the player. But this version, very similar to Track & Field, should provide amusement for quite a while. The only reason forgiving up might be a tired keyboard or wrist. Graphics are very well animated and coloured, general colour and sound has been put to good use. Your computer opponent is pretty good, but he can be beaten.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: user-definable
Joystick: no option but most key mapped protocols can be used via UDK
Keyboard play: responsive if not violent
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: large and very well animated characters with multiple colouring used
Sound: not much, but the applause works very well, although chopped off at the end like some Monty Python effect!
Skill levels: 1
Screens: 7
Originality: a good version of the arcade game
General Rating: Very good, amusing, rather more than a completely addictive and certainly playable.

Use of Computer

79%

Graphics

76%

Playability

78%

Getting Started

79%

Addictive Qualities

74%

Value For Money

75%

Overall

77%

PLANETFALL

Producer: Argus Press Software Ltd
Author: T. Garden, P. Rawling
Price: £6.95

Planetfall comes in a larger sized cassette box containing detailed instructions on what is in fact a trading strategy type game. Between 2 and 12 players may take part, handing one or more cargo ships across the gulfs of space between a maximum of 15 star systems. Your ships can carry up to six commodities which are in demand in varying quantities at different star systems; these are Uranium, Iron Ore, Machinery, Medical Supplies, Computers and Gemstones.

At the outset, if you are not loading a saved game, the players are asked to enter their names, the number of ships they wish to own and then the names of the ships. Next task is to decide on how many star systems are desired by the players and enter that. The display then cuts to the Galaxy Map, a two-dimensional representation showing the relative positions of the star systems chosen with Sol in the centre.

A key-press takes you to the Commodity price list and time display. This list shows the buying and selling prices of all commodities on the various planets — planets never buy and sell a commodity at the same time. Travel time from your current position is also shown, and this is important later on. Each player is allocated some trading cargo at the outset, the number of items being shown and a start cash balance of £5,000. At the base of the display the Captain and Ship are indicated and you are asked to which star you wish to travel next. The star is selected by pressing its initial letter. The process is repeated for each player, ship by ship.

When this is completed an ETA of planetfall is shown, followed by the first player’s ship’s log. This indicates any travel delays and reasons and arrived at destination. Occasionally you may actually discover a new system which will then be displayed on the Galaxy Map.

The ship’s log then becomes the Trading Display. A flash tells you whether you are selling or buying, and the commodity in question is displayed, the number of units the planet wishes to buy from you and underneath that you may enter the number you wish to sell. The planet will then make an offer over which you can haggle until a deal is settled or falls through. After selling you can start buying along similar lines. When all is complete you may deposit money at the local bank if you wish and you are then asked which destination you wish to visit next. Pressing the X key will display the menu so that you can have a look at the Commodities and Travel display again to judge the most suitable destination for your cargo.

Additional details are the bank statement which shows deposited money and assets for all players, and the random element of Urgent Messages. This details the urgent need for a commodity on one of the start systems and you must dash to be there first.

CRITICISM

‘Obviously not a game of much fun for the single player. The program never really supplied enough information on which player was having his or her go. I found myself lost in space in what was an uninteresting game.’

‘Whatever images the name Planetfall conjures up of intergalactic mega-bug-blasting would be wrong, because this is a trader game and it is one of the best trader games I’ve played in a long time. The game is fun to play because it is self explanatory and easy to play. The display is well thought out and laid out in an easy to see manner. If you want a trader game, this is definitely one to buy.’

‘Planetfall has the advantage of being very flexible, allowing you to determine the length of game and its complexity. It’s really designed to let lots of players take part, but I suspect that more than four would tend to drag things out such a lot. Each player doesn’t have too much to do, but as the game progresses you begin to realise that careful planning of buying and selling, as well as picking the planets to do it all on, is very important. Input routines are quite rapid and the whole is well thought through.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: general input
Use of colour: good
Graphics: text only
Sound: poor, optional on or off
Skill levels: 1
Screens: 11 displays
Features: 2-12 players
Originality: overall concept is not uncommon and originality hardly enters into this type of game
General Rating: Above average to good, with one reviewer not enjoying it at all. Good value for larger groups who like this type of game.

Use of Computer

62%

Graphics

N/A

Playability

69%

Getting Started

73%

Addictive Qualities

65%

Value For Money

70%

Overall

68%

RAINY DAY

Producer: CCS
Author: Roy Poole, Terry Murray
Price: £2.99

Last month we announced in the News Input of CRASH that C.C.S. were launching a range of new low-price games under the sub-heading of Charlie Charlie Sugar software. Rainy Day, is rather aptly named, a collection of puzzle games to while away the dull rainy days. Fate decreed a hot summer — never mind!

There are three different types of game included, each accessible from the front end of the program. The Puzzle unit offers you the choice of ten small pictures which must be sorted out. The complete picture is shown on the left of the screen, whilst on the right it is shown with all its character blocks muddled up. A yellow cursor block acts as a shuffling space so you can move the picture blocks about to rearrange them. The time it takes and the number of moves you make are soon shown on screen along with best times and best moves. The cursor block is moved appropriately enough with the cursor keys or a joystick.

The Codebreaker is an unusually elegant version of Mastercode, the game where you have to guess a combination in a limited number of goes. In this case the combination is a safe locking number in five digits. After each guess you are told how many numbers are correct but in the wrong position and how many numbers are correct in the right position. 15 attempts are allowed and a time limit which runs down to zero.

The third item is a Reaction Tester. A black coloured ball is dropped from the top of the screen into a glass of liquid. The object is to interrupt with a key as fast as possible so that the ball hardly drops at all. Witty comments are attached to the various level markers which judge your performance. The droptime displayed is in 1/100s of a second.

CRITICISM

‘Three games in one, I thought, can’t be good. Well two of the three aren’t bad at all — this is for puzzle type games. Codebreaker is a non-complicated version of Mastermind types and I found this worked quite well. Finding the correct code will open the safe and play a tune. I found the Puzzle Unit very difficult to complete, perhaps it would have been easier if a group of people tried to solve it — good for families. I thought the Reaction Tester was a bit pointless, but it makes a little break between the others. In this trio of games, colour has been well used but sound is only a frill and doesn’t make any difference to the playing of them. Rainy Day is well priced for its contents.’

‘The playing appeal of games like these is pretty limited, although the two main puzzles will probably find families with very young children enjoying them as a group participation. Neither the picture shuffling nor the code breaking is new — Corridors of Genon incorporated the code element and we’ve seen other compilation games with it, but I thought this version was well presented if graphically unexciting. On the whole reasonable value for money, but not generally recommended unless you particularly enjoy puzzles.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors, Q to return to menu, 9 to swap a piece
Joystick: AGF, Protek, ZX 1
Keyboard play: reasonable
Use of colour: well used
Graphics: average
Sound: limited
Skill levels: 1
Originality: all ingredients seen before in various forms
General Rating: Reasonable value for money, hardly an addictive sort of game, probably good for families and younger children.

Use of Computer

60%

Graphics

55%

Playability

66%

Getting Started

67%

Addictive Qualities

69%

Value For Money

72%

Overall

65%

SOS

Producer: Visions Software Factory
Author: Simon Ffinch
Price: £5.95

S.O.S. stands for Save Our Souls, the international distress signal. You may already know this, but if you don’t the learned intro on the cassette blurb will tell you. In this case the S.O.S. is coming from stranded astronauts on a planet surface and it’s your job to fly a shuttle down to the ground and rescue them. From this you will already have gathered that what we have here is another ‘Rescue’ or ‘Lunar Lander’ type of game.

In this version the animated mothership is quite large. Your shuttle is equipped with a thruster and laser fire which shoots a beam out in the direction of vertical movement. It’s needed because there are asteroids in plenty on the way down and firing aliens on the way back up. Each astronaut, there are six, must be rescued one at a time by landing on one of three platforms on the planet’s surface. With each landing the platforms are reduced in usefulness, thus reducing your choice of landing sites as each rescue is carried out.

Progressing to harder screens, there are more aliens to dodge and pulsing stars appear at the edges of the landing sites, making the final approach more difficult. Points are scored for space debris shot to pieces and for the rescue of the stranded astronauts.

CRITICISM

‘It does get a bit hard to determine the value and worth of a game like this because one has seen so many versions of it. I remember Silversoft’s one being quite good. This version does have some nice animated aliens with plenty of variation and colour. The shuttle moves rather well and can put on quite a turn of speed when necessary. I would say this is the hardest to play I’ve come across. I thought, perhaps, it was a bit unplayable in fact, but once you get used to the alien movement it improves. I find ‘Lander’ games of medium addictivity, and I suppose it’s a matter for personal taste really, but I think this is a pretty good version for the Spectrum.’

‘At first this looks like a normal ‘Lunar Lander’ that has been jazzed up a bit with animated graphics, but as it turns out, it is an exceptionally aggressive version. This game isn’t fun at first because it is too difficult, but as your skill improves, so does the fun. I think they’ve made the first screen too hard to be enticing. The graphics are unusual and varied and colour has been well used. But essentially this is a ‘Lunar Lander’, and if you like the game type, you’ll probably enjoy this tough version, but generally I would say it isn’t worth bothering with otherwise, because the game isn’t original enough.’

‘The best version I’ve seen on the Spectrum, with colourful aliens and meteors that move smoothly in all directions. I particularly like the way your rescued colonist falls out of the shuttle if you fail to dock accurately with the mother ship! Very painful. S.O.S. is quite tricky to play because of the proliferation of aliens, and therefore manages to hold the attention well. Quite addictive.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z/X left/right, N to fire, M to thrust
Joystick: Kempston, ZX 2
Keyboard play: reasonable layout and responsive
Use of colour: good
Graphics: good
Sound: in space no one can hear you scream, but these aliens are fairly noisy
Skill levels: 1 but with progressive difficulty
Lives: 3
Originality: there have already been at least four versions before this one
General Rating: Generally considered the best version for the Spectrum of what is now an old game.

Use of Computer

64%

Graphics

70%

Playability

58%

Getting Started

65%

Addictive Qualities

69%

Value For Money

64%

Overall

65%

SPECTIPEDE

Producer: Mastertronic Ltd
Price: £1.99

There’s little to surprise in this game — the name says it all. Spectipede offers the full scope of the arcade original with centipedes, spiders, fleas, scorpions, mushrooms and poisonous mushrooms. On higher levels there are two centipedes to contend with. The players may move the firing base upwards for the traditional four squares to avoid segments of pede which make it to the bottom. Segments will also fall straight to the bottom if they pass over a poisonous mushroom. Spectipede may be played by 1 or 2 players.

CRITICISM

‘It’s odd to see that the cheapest ‘Centipede’ type game available for the Spectrum is also the best of all those around. Graphics are excellent, true to the original arcade version, they are clear, very detailed, well animated and have excellent use of colour. The keys are well positioned and movement is responsive and fast. This is clearly a well thought out game with good demo, instructions and sound. It’s worth every penny of £1.99 — a Mastertronic winner.’

‘There are so many versions of the venerable creepie about that it’s hard to see why anyone should want to put out anymore. However, this is the cheapest around, and it’s certainly up with the best and most expensive. It has all the proper details and fast moving graphics. The scorpion even flashes different colours — not much seen on the Spectrum. As to the game itself, well when it’s well done, as here, ‘Centipede’ games are still a good, fast and enervating shoot em up worth anyone’s half hour between times.’

‘A good ‘Centipede’ can be very addictive to play, and Mastertronics have a very good version here. The only thing is that the game is so old hat now, I wonder whether anyone’s that interested any more? But if you are, then at its price, this is certainly the one to buy. For once, a low price provides a good version, but I think the price also reflects the age of the game itself.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: CAPS/Z left/right, K/M up/down, L to fire; or cursor keys and 0 or 9 to fire
Joystick: Mikrogen, Kempston, Cursor type
Keyboard play: sensible keys and responsive
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: small, one-character size, but detailed and fast
Sound: very good, continuous
Skill levels: progressive difficulty
Lives: 3
General Rating: We suspect a re-release, but if you haven’t got a ‘Centipede’ type game in your collection, well worth its price.

Use of Computer

75%

Graphics

66%

Playability

78%

Getting Started

55%

Addictive Qualities

72%

Value For Money

82%

Overall

72%

STAGECOACH

Producer: Creative Sparks
Author: John T. Harris
Price: £6.95

The West has never been wilder! The driver of the San Pedro stage has been shot in an ambush and the coach is out of control. Creative Sparks bring you three different screens of action in this unusual arcade style game. Stagecoach employs an isometric 3D style perspective view where positioning of the characters plays a part in getting through. The object is to leap onto the stage, get the horses under control and drive the stage on its way, collecting passengers, boxes of ammo or gold and steering a safe course through the dangerous Sierra Peligrosa mountains, avoid the Comanche Indians, and finally arrive safely at the small mining town of San Pedro. This is everyone’s chance to become John Wayne.

The first screen is called The Jump. Here you see yourself riding on your horse through a barren desert. But it isn’t so barren. The sand is strewn with cacti, animal bones, graves and other debris. Running into anything will unhorse you. The computer automatically picks you up and limps you back to the horse. Pressing the fire button will remount you, but watch out for the cactus plants. Remounting near one will just cause you to fall off again. Fortunately, you can walk your horse past them. Slowing down, you see the San Pedro stage, driverless and plunging forwards to catch you up. It veers all over the place. You must now ride up behind it and leap onto the roof, then walk across the roof and take the reins.

Having gained control of the coach you must now drive it on, slowing to let passengers board. Care is required or you’ll miss them as they jump up and down in rage, worse still, you could run them over. Picking up enough passengers will move you onto the second screen, the San Peligrosa mountains. This section of the game requires you to drive between the precipitous mountains, find the way through without damaging the coach too much, avoiding rockslides, and collect boxes of gold or ammunition. All the details can be seen on the map facility.

Survive the mountains for a set period of time and you will emerge onto the Indian plain. These ferocious savages will ride up, one to the front and two to the side, preventing you from steering the coach, while a fourth will attempt to jump on the stage, grabbing passengers. All you can do is get up on the roof and attempt to shoot them. If an Indian gets up onto the roof when you are up there, or when there are no more passengers left, then the game will end. It will also end if the damage points mount too high in the mountains, or you fail to pick up passengers in time on the first screen.

There are four skill levels which affect how much the stage moves about while trying to mount it, how close you must stop to passengers to collect them, the length of time allowed for collecting gold in the mountains, how much damage a rockfall will do, and the distance from town you emerge from the mountains. Apart from the display, other information provided is damage points, number of passengers, damage points, gold and ammo collected and distance to town and time spent in mountains. This information can be accessed by a key press, otherwise the screen only shows the game.

CRITICISM

‘Yep, I sure found it difficult to jump up onto the stagecoach in the first part of the game, but on doing so I rode the coach into the mountains. There manoeuvering was made easier by the helpful arrows which indicate an open ended direction, and an ability of the horses to reverse (clever horses)! This is a good game which I enjoyed; a point against it though was the long time between starting again after hitting a cactus — but then I noticed that you can speed this up by pressing H. Perhaps there was a lack of sound, but overall, pretty good pardner!’

‘I felt this was a bit of a disappointment after Orc Attack, nevertheless, it should take a long time to master. Instructions are excellent and extensive. Playing the game is quite difficult, more so on the second screen in the mountains. Compared to Orc Attack, the graphics are rather plain although the animation is quite good. There could have been some improvement on the general detail especially the way the stage turns, which it does by rotating through 45° very suddenly, and not squashing up in perspective. This makes the turn look rather unrealistic. Good features are the bucking horse, riding indians and also the way that they drag passengers out of the coach. I would have thought colour and sound could have been put to better use, but saying this, Stagecoach will provide hours of skillful fun.’

‘The perspective view of Stagecoach is a little similar to that in Ant Attack, although it looks a little ungainly when the coach is going away from you. But the animation of ‘you’, your horse, the passengers and the indians is excellent and quite realistic. There’s also quite a bit more to do in this game than in Ant Attack. Positioning yourself to jump is very tricky, especially with the cactus plants popping up from behind the coach. The presentation and instructions on the inlay are very detailed, and the overall control seems to work very well when you get used to the perspective.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: user-definable, four directions and fire needed. H speeds up remounting, ENTER for the map
Joystick: ZX 2, Kempston, Fuller AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: good
Graphics: good animation with lots of detail
Sound: good tune, otherwise limited
Skill levels: 4
Lives: percentage of damage or lack of passengers
Originality: a very unusual game
General Rating: Good to very good, playable and reasonably addictive.

Use of Computer

89%

Graphics

75%

Playability

73%

Getting Started

89%

Addictive Qualities

72%

Value For Money

76%

Overall

79%

TANK TRAX

Producer: Amoeba Software
Author: C. Steel, B. Baker
Price: £1.99

Enter the explosive battlefields of the Second World War and engage in combat with the columns of enemy tanks, it says on the inlay. First thing to note here, is the use of the plural in tanks, actually there’s one tank to battle with. Well, there’s two if you play this game as it should be — in two. It doesn’t state on the cover that it is only a two player game, although that doesn’t prevent you playing against yourself.

The option menu allows for wind variation, playing by day or night and playing in foothills or mountains. Playing at night means that the two tanks are invisible except when a shell explodes nearby. In the foothills one tank is usually lower down a hillside with a low rise between it and the other tank. In the mountains there is a giant molehill between you.

Each player has an inclination and a velocity counter. The object is to get the trajectory and force of shot correct to blow up your opponent’s tank. Shots which hit the mountains blow chunks out of them. The wind feature allows you to have the wind blowing at steady velocity in one direction or to change direction and force randomly. The trajectory of shots is affected by the wind.

CRITICISM

‘Tank Trax has not got the greatest graphics ever seen etc, but it does have a certain degree of strategy and mild addictivity. I thought it was slightly above average because of its addictivity and playability. Of the graphics, you can say that they do their job.’

‘This is one of the better games from Mastertronic and is quite playable. A fair amount of predetermination is needed to judge what angle of elevation and what velocity will be needed to blow the enemy’s tank to pieces. Colour and sound have been quite well used. In all, quite playable and an average sort of game.’

‘Tank Trax is not designed to keep you on the edge of your seat despite its active looking cover. It’s reasonably amusing for a few minutes if you are playing against yourself, as the computer takes no part in this game. The graphics are very simple, although the tanks are quite nicely drawn and it is a very static type of game, which together with the simple graphics tends to make it tedious after a short while. I wouldn’t consider this one worth its low price, although it might be suitable for very young players.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 6/7 elevate up/down and decrease/increase velocity with key 1 to set positions, 2 to fire
Joystick: hardly necessary
Keyboard play: fairly slow
Use of colour: limited
Graphics: average
Sound: poor
Skill levels: 1
Originality: there have been better games on the theme than this
General Rating: A very simple game, with limited appeal and some ‘mild’ activity.

Use of Computer

60%

Graphics

44%

Playability

47%

Getting Started

55%

Addictive Qualities

52%

Value For Money

50%

Overall

51%

VOYAGE INTO THE UNKNOWN

Producer: Mastertronic Ltd
Author: Amoeba Software
Price: £1.99

An issue or two back we received no less than two letters from readers berating us for not having reviewed Voyage into the Unknown because it was an exciting adventure. So, here’s the review. The very inadequate blurb on the inlay states that your basic objective is to take off from a desolated earth in a spaceship you have found (you don’t know much about them) and search the universe for a special crystal which will destroy the Death Star. Movement of the spaceship is controlled by the cursor keys. Additionally you have an on-board laser, a personal laser for those little moments when you are not on board and a remote robot grab arm for when you teleport down to the surface of some planets. Beyond this, there are no instructions on play.

It isn’t an adventure in the traditional sense. A graphic display shows you some details of your ship controls, fuel remaining, a scanner for shooting enemy ships, a message display which tells you what’s around you. Some of the messages are totally incomprehensible. In keeping with telling you nothing at all, at the start of the game it is a mystery how to take off in the spaceship. It is included vaguely in the blurb, Engines, Power, Ignition — yes, that’s E, P, I and away you go, on your quest for the special crystal.

CRITICISM

‘This game sounded quite good with a fairly straightforward idea behind it — just find the crystal, it said. I tried... I tried... and I tried. All I got was to be sucked into black holes and out through the other ends, landing on weird planets where I couldn’t do anything at all, fighting off enemy ships that appeared for a blink on the screen and then disappeared, killing me off in the process. Playability-wise, this game scores zero. You have no control really over the game. A total mess.’

‘Can anyone tell me what a ‘buke’ is? Please, PLEASE, it’s been driving me crazy for days. Please, Derek Brewster, can you help? I’ve heard of a rebuke, but a buke has me stumped. This game seems to be lull of silly jargon like ‘Time Warp Chuck Out’ which sound a bit like closing time at the local. It’s also full of planets on which the player appears to be able to do nothing and go nowhere. I must say that I have never seen such an utterly stupid program before. Meanwhile, on my scanner, I can see another buke spinning round. Please — someone…’

‘It seemed to me that a major part of the program was damaged on take off. Because unless I’ve missed the point entirely, I found Voyage into the Unknown to be exactly that — completely unknown. The actual playing area provided in this game is tiny, especially considering the 48K available. Perhaps that’s what you get for £1.99, but really isn’t good enough. In my opinion, this is a total waste of time and I wouldn’t even both rating it.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Cursor, 0 to fire, Robot controlled with K, L and W, F fires personal laser
Joystick: cursor type
Keyboard play: if anything, over-responsive
Use of colour: poor
Graphics: very poor
Sound: there isn’t any
Skill levels: 1
General Rating: A waste of money.

Use of Computer

20%

Graphics

25%

Playability

2%

Getting Started

2%

Addictive Qualities

0%

Value For Money

2%

Overall

9%

ZAPPER

Producer: Anco Software Ltd
Price: £2.99

As its name implies, Zapper is a simple alien zapping game, a sort of ‘Galaxian’ on its side. Your laser base sits on the left of the screen and can move vertically. 60 attack waves of aliens zig-zag towards you and any ‘landing’ on your base axis will result in a loss of one life. There are 12 aliens in each attack wave, and before each wave the sprite is blown up enormously (like something out of H.U.R.G.) so you can see what it is. Each attack wave features its own animated alien.

As you shoot them, and the screen has to handle less graphics, they speed up considerably, making the last few quite hard to hit. There really isn’t any more to it than that.

CRITICISM

‘The idea of this game is very, very simple — just zap the aliens. Easy? Well the aliens do speed up to make life more difficult. They are very well animated and detailed, there’s a good choice of colour which also helps to show up the detail. Keyboard play is very easy and responsive from well laid out keys. One of the addictive things about this game is that you just want to see what the next wave of aliens will be like. Otherwise Zapper isn’t really very addictive. Overall, a good, brainless zap em up game.’

‘You can’t actually say all that much about Zapper! I mean it is simple. On the other hand, it’s rather fun to play and all the aliens are so jolly — I can’t think of a better word to describe them! Better played on the keyboard than a joystick as the controls are simple, because there isn’t continuous fire, so the fire finger gets a bit tired because of the speed needed. Probably appeal enormously to younger players, especially at the low price.’

‘Zapper is honest, to say the least, for it’s nothing more than a mindless shoot em up. It’s pretty fast, though, and the graphics are amusing and well done. I can’t say it held my attention for very long as there is no content to speak of, but for a while waiting to see what alien will pop up next retains the attention. Fast and rather pointless, but fun for a while certainly.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q to T/A to G up/down, H to ENTER for fire
Joystick: hardly needs one, one reviewer using programmable reports that keyboard is better
Keyboard play: sensible positions and responsive
Use of colour: excellent
Graphics: smooth, varying and detailed
Sound: good
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 3
Originality: hardly
General Rating: About average fun, lacking content and therefore much addictivity, reasonable price, may suit younger players.

Use of Computer

70%

Graphics

59%

Playability

70%

Getting Started

65%

Addictive Qualities

57%

Value For Money

65%

Overall

64%