Issue No. 26 March 1986

FEATURES

THE 128K UK SPECTRUM ARRIVES
Franco Frey manages a quick PEEK before we POKE him and get the new machine back out of his clutches

BREAKING THE BARRIERS
New software label Nu Wave

CRASH QUESTIONNAIRE
Once again we ask you what you think of us. This year we’re offering lots of prizes — £100 worth will go to one form-filling CRASH reader

Preview: MAX HEADROOM
An early peek at the game that brings MAX to your Spectrum screen.

SOFTWARE FROM THE EMERALD ISLE
John Minson visited ST BRIDE’S SCHOOL, where they write adventures and hold classes for grown up Gels

2186 — A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
The winning entry in the Letts Diary Competition from the Christmas Special is printed in full for your delectation

CHANNEL FIVE
What’s going on inside Micronet — an update on the latest developments

Previews: KNIGHT TYME, BOMB JACK and GHOSTS AND GOBLINS
We check out the follow up to SPELLBOUND from Mastertronic and learn what Elite Systems are up to, arcadewise

Preview: STARSTRIKE 2
Andy Onions from Realtime came to visit, told us about hard sums and showed us some of STARSTRIKE 2

DIY

COSMIC WARTOAD
Battle your way though a wordvoid to win a copy of the Toad Game

MAX HEADROOM
A chance to win the studio where the MAX HEADROOM visuals are put together — all expenses paid, courtesy of Quicksilva

WIN A DAISYWHEEL AND WAFADRIVE
Oxford Computer Publishing want some literary typists to write a missive using WORD MANAGER. Bumper prizes on offer

BECOME A BRAIN SURGEON...
Well... a DIY brain surgeon at least. Collect a camera if you come top, or a copy of ID if you run up

£100 COMPUTER WATCH ON OFFER
You could be the proud owner of a Seiko watch that your Spectrum can talk to

REGULARS

EDITORIAL
Plus an index or two and a BIG Thank You!

MERELY MANGRAM
Lloyd loads up and goes again. A trawl through the new release news

JETMAN

LLOYD MANGRAM’S FORUM
Another collection of prose from the CRASH Reader Interface, Lloyd Mangram

RESULTS AND PRIZES
A bumper round up after the December extravaganza. The Comps Minion tries to catch up

CRASH HOTLINE AND ADVENTURE CHARTS

LLOYD MANGRAM’S HALL OF SLIME
At least no-one sent in a picture of their toothbrush this month — some folks must have right slimy teeth!

CRASH COURSE
Rosetta continues her quest into the Blackboard Jungle

TECH NICHE
Simon Goodwin’s Tech Tips, plus Franco Frey’s examination of the Icon Graphix package and Romantic Robot Multiface One. Dominic Handy tries his hand at managing words

DEREK BREWSTER’S ADVENTURE TRAIL
A couple of SMASHES this month from Derek. Read his column and find out for yourself, idle person!

SIGNPOST
Derek rifles through his postbag and deals out a few hints in Signstumps

ROBIN CANDY’S PLAYING TIPS
More POKEs, tips and hints, including maps of MARSPORT and GUNFRIGHT

SEAN MASTERSON’S FRONTLINE
Manning the barricades, Sean looks at a Desert game and takes to the air

Don’t be an APRIL FOOL! Make sure you get the next CRASH, out on 27th March

REVIEWS

- 2112 AD Design Design

- Arc of Yesod Thor

- Battle of the Planets Mikro-Gen

- Benny Hill’s Madcap Chase DK’Tronics

- Caves of Doom Mastertronic

- Cosmic Wartoad Ocean

- Desert Rats CCS

- Enigma Force Beyond

- Flyer Fox Bug Byte

- Football Quick Quiz Rothmans/Cassel

- Forbidden Planet Design Design

- Lord of the Rings Melbourne House

- MOVIE Imagine

- Myla Di’Kaich Global

- The Neverending Story Ocean

- N.O.M.A.D. Ocean

- Rambo Ocean

- Sir Fred Mikro-Gen

- Spitfire 40 Mirrorsoft

- Their Finest Hour Century Communications

- Three Weeks in Paradise Mikro-Gen

- Twister — Mother of Charlotte System 3

- William Wobbler Wizard Developments

- Winter Games Epyx/US Gold

- The Worm in Paradise Level 9

- Yabba Dabba Doo! Quicksilva

- Zorro US Gold

Publishing Executive

Roger Kean

Editor

Graeme Kidd

Technical Editor

Franco Frey

Tech Tipster

Simon Goodwin

Adventure Editor

Derek Brewster

Strategy Editor

Sean Masterson

Staff Writer

Lloyd Mangram

Contributing Writers

Robin Candy, John Minson, Rosetta McLeod

Art Editor

Oliver Frey

Art Director

Dick Shiner

Production Controller

David Western

Production

Gordon Druce, Tony Lorton

Process camera

Matthew Uffindell

Photographer

Cameron Pound

Advertisement Manager

Roger Bennett

Subscription Manager

Denise Roberts

Mail Order

Carol Kinsey

Transcriptions

Matthew Wilson, http://www.crashonline.org.uk/

Additional review transcriptions

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

Thanks to those CRASH authors who have allowed their work to be reproduced.

It’s just round the corner ... Imminent UK launch. Great shakes! No, I’ve not lost the calculator keypad, no, it wasn’t in the box in the first place. How much extra? Still, at the price... what was the price? One eightyish ... Does that include the brand new manual supplement and the two free OCEAN games? What were they?... Sound chip... video output... serial interface... huge memory. Did you say credit cards?... oh, you mean access facility via memory bank switching. What WHAM disc? oh, RAM disk (shriek!). Colour supplement by Dorling who?.., yes, very pretty, aesthetically pleasing, educative... but what about the hard facts? What do you mean baud rates have been made redundant? Please bring back those exceptional Japanese printer manuals. With the cheap Vero phone connectors, does this mean that you can connect up directly to the phone? No? That one is for the extra keypad and the other for the serial printer. He’s got a parallel printer, ... that’s a shame... acts as a MIDI interface, well now you’re talking. Pinouts? Pleeease... Logan, no not you Terry, Dr Ian Logan, where are you... Please HELP!!!

Spectrum the difference? Don’t touch that heatsink. No, it doesn’t get red hot. Show some respect for people’s status symbol.

Checklist: No change to the keyboard, red hot Spectrum logo and new 128K printed at bottom right of keypad. Lots of connectors. Same old edge connector but with shorter tracks to prevent cross fertilization of tracks from switched on owners who jog their peripherals after power-up. 8-pin DIN plug for monitor connections. Surprise, surprise, not only full complement RGB output with vertical and composite sync and bright output, but also composite PAL for modern TV sets with video input. Great! Sinclair’s got the connections, you supply the cable.

EAR and MIC sockets now moved to the lefthand side. Close to them the serial printer port, no not the standard 25-way D connector, but the now increasingly popular Vero phone connector. Got a cable? And another one of those thingie connectors at the front of the corpus delectus, this one to link up the £19.95 worth of coiled Calculator pad wonders for mathematical genius trainees...

Under the skin there is real evidence of the many splendoured things the 128K is endowed with: the sound chip; a great whopping 32K x 8 ROM; new modulator chip and sixteen 64-Kbit memory chips for the magical 128K memory number. All neat and tidy, no botch-up in sight, and this with only an Issue 6K board. Switch on and the new 128K world is revealed. A five option menu box presents itself. Using a blue bar selection cursor and the up and down cursor keys you can choose between TAPE LOADER, 128 BASIC, CALCULATOR, 48 BASIC and TAPE TESTER.

TAPE LOADER is the default selection and enables you to load any 128K program from tape at high speed. 128 BASIC is what it’s all about. It’s the extended Spectrum BASIC with some new commands and a full screen editor. CALCULATOR turns your computer into an expensive desktop calculator, which can be controlled via keyboard or keypad. What this means is that you don’t need to fumble with LPRINT statements to get results to show and that the current result is stored for further calculations similar to any pocket calculator. 48 BASIC destroys all chances of enjoying the upgraded 128K performance by returning you to the good old 1982 Sinclair Research logo. This is only to be used sparingly for the odd hundred 48K Spectrum games in your library and the odd hundred still to be released. Just to make sure you remain nostalgic, there is no way you can get back to the 128K future other than to reset the machine. TAPE TESTER checks that you’ve set the right volume level on your cassette player and should guarantee better loading statistics. Hmmm!

So what’s new in 128K world? For a start, there is no one-key entry system anymore. Hurrah? Booo? Different opinions, different reactions. A definite advantage is the redundancy (voluntary, but of course) of the extended mode key, which lives in retirement and only occasionally provides access to special characters such as square brackets. BASIC programs may be entered in capital or lower case letters with or without spaces before or after BASIC keywords, yes, you can be sloppy. When the current program line is checked for syntax and is accepted, the BASIC keywords are automatically converted to capitals and spaces inserted where required.

The good news is the full screen editor for BASIC programs. You can hop around with the normal cursor keys anywhere you like and make corrections to the existing lines. This is always followed by a variety of different squawks and squeeks, depending on whether you have inadvertently pressed the wrong direction keys or the ENTER key, much to the detriment of musical BASIC programmers.

Pressing EDIT displays an option menu box with an assortment of special functions. 128 BASIC takes you back into the editor; RENUMBER (at long last) automatically alters the line numbers so that they start with 10 and increment by 10 changing at the same time any references to the line numbers which appear within the lines such as GOTO etc; SCREEN reduces the editing screen area down to the two usual editing lines, providing a lot of scope for scrolling with the cursor keys; PRINT lets you print out the current program onto paper and EXIT returns you to the main menu.

But where is the extra memory? BASIC treats the extra memory as a RAM disk. BASIC does not use the extra memory directly, but allows programs, screens or data files to be stored in the extra memory area similar to disk or cassette storage. All the commands for RAM disk storage are the same as cassette commands except that an exclamation mark (shriek!) must be typed after the keyword. These commands can be included in the program currently in the BASIC memory area, so that BASIC overlays can be merged during runtime thus creating larger than life programs. Functions available are SAVE!, LOAD!, MERGE!, ERASE! and CAT! (to display an alphabetic catalogue of all the files on RAM disk). It is possible to carry over 128 programs into 48 BASIC by typing SPECTRUM and ENTER. However, any commands only available in 128 BASIC will not be accepted.

Sounds alright so far, doesn’t it? Which leads to the delectable desert (as in food). Apart from the usual beepety beep made (in)famous by the old 48K, the 128K has an up to date synthesizer chip. Both sounds (beeps and all) have now been modulated onto the TV signal and can thus be amply heard through your regular TV box. Should you be lucky enough to be using a monitor by way of the video output, you will no doubt have the latest HIFI stack to amplify the signal coming out of the MIC socket. This opens up a whole new world to all who dearly love the Spectrum and have constantly been defending (or was it deafening) the poor mute thing against evil alien-ZAPPing monsters. Their voice be heard at last!

Programming the sound chip consists of creating sound strings, usually with LET statements, which include the notes and special sound commands. With the use of the PLAY command up to three strings simultaneously may be read and converted to sound. Then are three tone channels and three noise channels, which can be turned on or off individually. This is done with the command M followed by a number indicating the correct orchestration. An instrument covers two octaves c-b and C-B, sharp notes prefixed with a hash and flat notes with a dollar sign.

You can change the octave range with the command O followed by a number between 0 to 8. There is a one octave overlap between each octave range. The length of each note can be set by prefixing it with a number from 1 to 12 from semi-quaver to semi-breve including triplets, and the overall tempo is dictated with the T command followed by a beat per minute value of between 60 to 240. The volume of the individual notes is set using the V command followed by a number between 0 and 15. Special volume effects provide a variation of attack and decay sequencing under the control of the U command followed by a W command (8 different volume envelopes). Command X controls the timing of these effects. Last but not least there is a musical phrase repeat facility using brackets. Double closing brackets provide an infinite repeat until an H command in any of the musical strings is encountered.

MIDI-compatible musical instruments may be connected to the serial port, so that music programmed on the Spectrum 128 can be played through a synthesizer, drum machine or whatever. To send the output to the MIDI interface, the musical string should include the letter Y followed by a channel number from 1 to 16. Using the same channel number in each string, up to eight notes can be played by one instrument at the same time. On the other hand, using different channels, up to eight instruments can be controlled. A prerequisite is of course a MIDI lead, which will be available from Sinclair Research. Sinclair encourage all do-it-yourselvers by providing nil pinouts for the MIDI cum RS232 connector. In fact they have done such a good job of it, that they have even forgotten to mention such things as baud rates and serial data format for the printer... ? I’m sure there is a logic there somewhere, but you can’t find that either in the manual ...

The Spectrum 128 is bound to be a successful newcomer. Despite the improvements and additions it still has retained a unique and traditional character — standing out rather like the Beetle does amidst a host of Japanese imported cars — with its peculiar and outdated BASIC, real rubber-feel keyboard and lack of joystick interface and parallel printer port. Existing Spectrum owners may not find the heart to swop over, unless they can get a good deal for their current equipment. Newcomers, however, get a good deal, specifically as the 128 in 48K disguise has already a massive range of gripping software at its cassette port...

Franco Frey

BREAKING THE BARRIERS

A look at the first release from a new software label: NU WAVE

Tired of conventional shoot em ups? Bored with run of the mill adventure games? Had enough of trudging round seemingly endless landscapes trying to solve obscure puzzles? Maybe you’re the sort of person CRL are aiming their latest release, ID, the first piece of software for their new label, Nu Wave.

ID isn’t a game in the usual sense of the word. It’s much more of a computer entertainment — a puzzle, riddle or conundrum on a large scale.

Once you’ve loaded the program, you are presented with an empty screen and a flashing cursor prompts you to type something in. A counter at the bottom of the screen tells you that ‘Trust’ is currently 0%. Perhaps this is your first clue — folks who have fond memories of Deus ex Machina will immediately recognise the typeface in which the word ‘Trust’ appears. Aha! Mel Croucher had something to do with this product. And before he starts sulking, so did Clem Chambers of CRL (the chap on the end of the phone insisted we say this). The ID software is ‘based on an original idea by Clement Chambers’ as they say.

The scenario is rather strange. An alien life form has taken up residence in your computer. This life form, ID, was sent to Earth eons ago to observe, to maintain a watching brief without interfering in the affairs of man. ID has been many things. An electronic entity capable of assuming many forms, ID has witnessed momentous events and has been involved in incidents which have changed the history of the world.

Disorientated, confused, and with its memory shattered, ID is now in your computer. It is up to you to communicate with this creature, build up its trust, teach it and learn from it while gradually trying to draw out details of its past incarnations.

Throw away your joystick — this is a job for the keyboard. This is a text only game: ID uses the screen of your Spectrum as a teletype on which it gives vent to its opinions, fears, emotions. You can communicate with the creature inside the Spectrum via the keyboard, and input your side of the conversation using a maximum of one screen line — thirty two characters’ worth, so keep it short and snappy.

“Hello” is a good way to start your journey with ID. From there on in, you’re firmly on your own, communicating with the computer which displays a fair old of artificial intelligence. You know you’re starting to make progress when ID asks for your name. In the final version, which we have yet to see, the computer, or rather ID will respond to long periods of silence on your part with a series of statements generated from a pool of phrases. In the copy that arrived at CRASH Towers, ID was quite happy to burble along for quite some time before grinding to a halt, and had to be interrupted frequently so someone could get a word in edgeways.

Gradually, as you build up trust, ID begins to piece together half-formed memories into patterns. Swinging between moods, violently at times, ID tells you about the mood that is currently washing over it. “I feel incensed as we talk”, it might say, turning the screen a deep red. It’s up to you to probe, ever so gently at first, into the consciousness that has taken up residence in your machine. Gradually, as trust built up, you begin to make progress, prying answers and piecing together the puzzles that constitute ID’s previous existences.

Rush in with too heavy a dose of curiosity and ID’s trust will wane. Be rude, and you lose trust points. Every so often ID poses questions — honesty and consistency, on the whole, seem to be the best policies if you want to build up a working relationship with your... your... patient?

Describing this game, or computer entertainment, is very difficult to attempt without revealing the details of play. ID’s secrets are there for you to discover, and, according to the inlay, you may well discover something about yourself on the way. The language generation routines used to put words from ID onto the screen are rather neat. Occasionally the persona trapped inside the RAM witters on, spouting near gibberish, but most of the time the sooths that ID has to offer are witty if not downright hilarious. Ever laughed at a Spectrum before?

There are some very neat touches in the responses. As ID chatters away, moving the flashing cursor over the top portion of the screen as the letters form into words on the glass teletype, jolly beeps and burps emanate from the computer. Tell ID to “SHUT UP” and he does so, immediately. And you lose a few trust points for being so crass.

There’s no need for a degree in analytical psychology — anyone can get chatting to ID, but a little historical knowledge comes in handy. Remember, ID has existed in a number of forms in the past and has been involved in historical events.

To begin with this program can be very frustrating as you thrash around, without a clue about what it is, exactly, that you should be trying to achieve. Once a few trust points are in the bag, however, the game opens up and soon you are likely to be hooked. Lateral thinking is vitally important — don’t always go for the blatantly obvious. That’s about the only hint on offer here... And if all this questing after half-formed memories gets a bit much, you could always sit back and let ID do the talking — the program bears a not entirely coincidental resemblance to a famous language generating program, ELIZA. Not that Alan Turing, who lent his name to a test he devised to determine whether a computer was ‘intelligent’, would have been entirely fooled. Ah yes, “that reminds me of a joke I once witnessed a long life ago” as ID might put it.

The program involves some artificial intelligence techniques, and in a sense could be described as experimental software, interesting in its own right. Unfortunately, once you’ve worked out the various identities that ID has had in the past, that’s it, you’ve spoilt it for yourself. Next time you load the game, the problem remains the same and there’s isn’t that much of a challenge left in making ID whole again. But then, the strange being locked inside your computer could be used as a conversation piece — it’s quite fun just sitting back and seeing what it has to say.

This is the first Nu Wave release, and subsequent software will not fit easily into the games mould. The next project on the drawing board, apparently, is an adventure game for the Commodore which is played without text or graphics, using sound as the medium for communication. There are certainly some unusual ideas floating around CRL if ID is anything to go by... maybe they’d like do a follow-up called EGO based on a ZZAP64 reviewer!

The story so far: Hunter S Minson, in Ireland courtesy of New Concepts Software, to cover the launch of their sport simulation, SURF CHAMP, has realised that a swell of four inches does not make good surfing, so has leapt into a passing hire car in search of diversion. Now read on...

GAMES LESSONS

MARIANNE SCARLETT, the headmistress at the door of ST BRIDES

We were just outside Rossnowlagh on the Atlantic coast when the Guinness began to take hold. Sitting in the middle of the back seat and surrounded by journalists from competing publications I felt like the Mafia were taking me for a long drive to a concrete surfboard. All I could rely on was that they seemed friendly and nobody had tried to throw me out as we reached speed along the coast road.

Somehow the idea had hit all five of us simultaneously. Timmy the Dog had pricked up his ears at the first mention of a ripping yarn. Here we were in County Donegal, not a sparrow’s spit from that fabled seat of learning, St Brides. Now St Brides boasts a secret. Were we not the hard bitten investigative journalists to uncover that conundrum?

There is something about Irish geography that defies all known concepts of distance. Burtonport, home of the Games Mistresses, may have looked close on the map but the journey was tortuous in the extremes. A trek through towns where there seemed to be at least one cleric for every lay person. But at last we rolled into the tiny fishing village and drew up outside a house which recalled strange memories. If Tony Perkins had appeared at the door brandishing a knife and dressed as his mother, I wouldn’t have been Psycho-ed out!

Our welcome was decidedly un-scary but no less weird. Perhaps those winding Irish lanes had worked their leprechaun magic and we’d slipped back through time. There were no electric lights in the place, the maid who answered the door was surely not of this decade. Could this really be the place where some of the more inventive Quilled adventures were being programmed? Perhaps my name was Trixie Trinian after all. No steady on — it was either too much Guinness, or too little.

Then, as we sat in the gift shop with its crafts from many nations, the door opened and in swept the headmistress herself, Marianne Scarlett, dressed in a pink twin set. As she told us later, she’d resisted the temptation to get dressed up, by which she meant the gown she wears in her educational role. But this was hardly London street clothes, so spill the beans Marianne — what is St Brides?

First there was the building, and that has had its past, providing a safe house for IRA men more than 50 years ago. Then, more recently there were the Screamers, a group who believed in the efficacy of letting all go in a Primal Scream, and who were virtually banished from the tiny village by local talk and sensational press interest. After which St Brides moved in, establishing the school in April ’84.

This is probably not the sort of school that you’d go to though, because the young ladies of St B’s are past the age of compulsory education, from their 20s upwards. And they go there for a week at a time, maybe more, to wear a uniform, sleep in a dorm, to take lessons and obey the rules, all without the creature comforts of 1985.

A pupil’s eye view of MARIANNE SCARLETT in a ST BRIDES classroom

“They spend 24 hours a day living in a different time, living a different life. We give people a different experience of living as themselves.” Marianne’s background is both teaching and humanistic psychology and this is far more than a theme holiday hotel; as an experiment in human behaviour it’s “fascinating”. St Brides works because the pupils are never given the chance to do anything but live the imaginary 1920/30s era.

Select advertisements bring in each fresh intake of eight, who pay around £120 a week for the privilege of indulging in things most of us are only too happy to escape. Marianne greets each new girl and pretty soon one will be chosen who shows a desire to be leader, and she will become the prefect. But according to Marianne most are only too glad to give up the responsibilities of their adult world and are delighted at “having an excuse not to be grown up.” Remember this next time you laugh at somebody who tells you that your schooldays are the happiest days of your life.

This world of lessons — and the ‘pupils’ do have to study the basics of maths and languages — may seem rather crazy, but some people get their jollies dressing in chain mail made from coat hangers and killing orcs with cardboard axes. Once you’ve sat in that slightly damp room, listening to scratchy records played on a wind-up gramophone under the stern gaze of Marianne Scarlett, you can understand how easy it is to get lost in the game. One who did just that is Priscilla Langridge. She committed the unthinkable sin of introducing a micro into this time warp.

Marianne was at first rather taken aback by the anachronistic intrusion. “My experience has always been looking back in time.” But it didn’t take long before she realised that unlike television, which she thinks is passive and mind rotting, computers “call for 100% concentration and commitment. They’re not just playing with a joystick.” So, about a year and a half ago part of St Brides entered the modern world, though they’ve been known to do their computing by candle light.

Priscilla was a writer long before fate, or more probably an advertisement, brought her to the west coast of Ireland. Hardly a computer expert at that stage, she looked upon the micro as another medium, like books or comics, to be exploited as a rich experience — rather like the school. In fact the Secret of St Brides, their first adventure, set in the corridors and dormitories of the house, then out onto the cliffs, came from a game that they would play as they took the pupils on rambles. A mystery would be created from a few bare facts found as they walked along the shore.

Selling at first by mail order only, via a suggestive show of stocking tops and school uniform, Secret sold well enough to gather some good reviews and cement a proper distribution deal. It’s very much a standard Quilled product in form, though Priscilla claims to “like the economy of the two word input. People make a fetish of excess sophistication.” Its main strength lies in Priscilla’s writing skills, which are both witty and atmospheric.

Secret is also refreshingly different — there’s not an orc or an elf in sight. And it casts you in the role of a female character, though neither woman sees herself as carrying out a crusade for women in computing. “We’re not setting out with a market in mind,” Marianne tells me. Priscilla adds “We want the games to be open and accessible, to appeal to adventurers of both sexes.”

Spurred on by their success, the Games Mistresses, as they styled themselves, set to work on The Snow Queen, intended to be the first of a series of tie-ins with books in which it’s hoped that facsimilie editions will accompany the game. Snow Queen is based on a classic, dark fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen in which a girl seeks to save her brother whose view of life has been corrupted by a fragment of a mirror made by the devil. With it, the programming has become more sophisticated, so that Gerda appears to have a will of her own when it comes to obeying instructions.

The next project takes the mixing of media a stage further as St Brides originate their own comic books which will tie in with games. Wonder Girl is a super heroine in the classic mode, with lots of in jokes for comic fans. Silverwolf is a more traditional adventure, and from the sample pages that Priscilla handed round it’s obvious that both are being done with an eye to comics being adult and arty. Once again, there are scantily clad females and subtexts of sexuality. “Computers and comics are both unusual media for presenting fantasies.”

So we are given a tour of the studies, the classrooms, and the spartan, though bright dormitories of this place where fantasies can be realised. But questions remain unanswered, the programming room remains unshown, and a whole area of the house, the old servants quarters joining the school by just one door, stays a mystery.

My head is clearing and all I feel is that I’d like another drink. It comes as a surprise that if we didn’t have to charge back to the surf, Marianne and Priscilia would happily take us down to their local. And what do the villagers make of the latest inhabitants of a house with an odd history? “The Irish like anybody who is enterprising,” Marianne says, adding that coverall for a good scheme, plan or wheeze, “a bit of a crack.”

So now I know that the place does exist, and it isn’t some clever hype. I know that Marianne and Priscilla are most charming hostesses and I know that they are fully capable of playing a seductive game of the imagination. But should I be surprised? All good fiction draws us in so that we live it to some degree.

Marianne and Priscilla and presumably the programmers we were told about but never saw, they are all busy realising the philosophy of St Brides as a centre for fantasy and fun. Let Priscilla have the last word. “We do things that are fun. If it stops being fun we stop it.”

In the Christmas Special, we invited readers to imagine they were making entries in their Letts diary in the year 2186. The competition, sponsored by Letts, produced a crop of imaginative entries and lot of copies of the Letts Computer Users diary for 1986 were given away. Top of the pile, was ROBERT NORTON’s entry, which was passed round the office in a chorus of chuckles.

Robert picked up a set of Letts Revision Software for his pains, as well as a diary — and we thought his work deserved a wider audience. So here it is, two hundred years into the future — with apologies to a more contemporary diarist, Adrian Mole...

THE HIGHLIGHTS OF 2186

JANUARY 1st 2186

Received this diary for Xmas. Bit disappointed as I really wanted a hover-cycle. Dad said that in his day you were lucky if you got a second-hand Commodore computer for Christmas. Looked up Commodore in Lord Mangram’s long word dictionary. Apparently it’s a military rank. You could probably only buy them from Army and Navy stores.

JANUARY 3rd

Spent my software token that Auntie Janet gave me for Xmas. Bought a strategy/arcade/adventure game called “The Space Shuttle War”. Dad said that it was in bad taste coming so soon after the real thing, and that people had complained about it on TV. It shot straight to number 2 in the charts a week later. The holographics are amazing, the best I’ve ever seen on the Spectrum Super. It’s incredible what they cram into 2000K these days.

FEBRUARY 13th

What a boring day. I don’t think that it’s stopped acid raining since I got up this morning. The only bit of excitement was when Tibby came running in from the back yard. Mum told me to put the cat out, but the fire extinguisher wouldn’t work. She had to throw a bucket of water over him instead. He hasn’t stopped steaming since. Personally, I think we should buy a Robo-Pet. At least they’re acid-rain proof.

FEBRUARY 20th

School started again today. Depressing. My new form tutor is ancient. The headmaster says that they just can’t afford to buy new androids every year, so we’ll have to make do with the older, ‘but more experienced’ ones. Old isn’t the word. He looks like he’s pre-Sinclair. My mate Dave’s new teacher is the latest model, with built-in 3D projector and positronic humour circuit. I’m not sure what a humour circuit is. Maybe he giggles when handing out lines!

MARCH 3rd

Got into Mum and Dad’s bad books today. I forgot that they were in the room and let fly with a filthy word. Mind you, I had a good reason to: the final of the Indoor International Tiddlywinks Championship was on TV, and was just reaching the deciding winks when the stupid cat went and bit through the solar power lines. The power went out, the cat lit up and I jumped to my feet angrily shouting out, ‘OH, Tebb it!!’ I realised my mistake immediately. Dad went crazy. Mum, who had been in the process of throwing her non-alcoholic cider over the smoking moggy, span round towards me, sending a spray of non-alcoholic cider over the room. I was ordered to my bedroom without any protein tablets and told never to say such vile words again. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t even know what it means! Well, at least they can’t stop me writing it in my diary. Grown-ups! They can all get Thatchered as far as I’m concerned!

MARCH 21st

Went on a school trip to Ludlow today. We visited the building that originally housed the Newsfield Publishing empire. In the town centre there is a plasti-bronze statue of Sir Lloyd Mangram. ‘Did he really wear a paper bag over his head or is that just what they call Artistic Licence?’ I asked ‘Old Rustbucket’, my form tutor, but he didn’t know. He did say that Lord Mangram was one of the few famous people who never had their likeness captured on canvas or celluloid. Him and Jack The Ripper.

APRIL 13th

Pirated Dave’s copy of “Mega-Galactic Mice From Mars” today. Took six hours just to type in the POKE. I got a little worried when the Software Protection Chip in my Spectrum flashed a warning that it was about to self-destruct, and that I had 30 seconds to leave the vicinity of the explosion. Turning the power off had no effect, as it immediately switched to its reserve battery, but I managed to stop the countdown with a wad of chewing gum and a corn plaster. Two seconds from meltdown! Phew! Mind you, it was worth it just to see the cat running around after the holographic Meta-Galactic Mice. Well, hobbling around would be a better description, what with the bandages and all.

APRIL 22nd

Got picked on by the school bully this morning. He trapped me in a corner of the playground and threatened to throw acid-rain in my face unless I gave him my protein pill money. I only had a hundred and fifty Euro-dollars on me, so it could have been worse. Revenge is forthcoming. I’ve asked Dave to lend the bully “Mega-Galactic Mice” and a copy of the POKE. So, provided that he doesn’t have any chewing gum or corn plasters lying around, he may become a big noise in the neighbourhood.

MAY 4th

The cat has gone missing — again. This frequently happens. The last time, it had gotten its tail caught in the rear bumper of a over car, and was dragged for 50 miles up the M996 before the driver heard the screams. Luckily the address tag that all licensed domestic animals must wear was still attached to his collar, and he was returned to us minus one life, half of his fur coat and any dignity that he may have had left. My Dad says that black cats have always been thought unlucky, and that Tibby is a prime example. What he seems to forget is that the cat was originally as white as snow, but has slowly, over the years, been charred to its present condition.

MAY 18th

The cat has returned — battered and bandaged. It appears that the foolish creature attempted to mate with a Robo-Cat a few blocks away. Sparks flew, Tibby flew, and so did his address tag. It took some time for the owners of the mechanical mouser to find the tag among the plasti-grass in their back garden, hence the delay in the cat’s return. Dad is being sued for the price of one Robo-Cat and a patch of melted synthetic lawn. The topic of Tibby’s sexual proclivities is carefully avoided when I’m around, no doubt to save my parents from embarrassing explanations. At times like these I’m glad I had the foresight to bug their bedroom.

JUNE 10th

Old Rustbucket dragged the class to a boring museum today. In the music section they demonstrated the forerunners of holodiscs, things called ‘records’. Just bits of crudely shaped plastic, which you had to scratch with a needle to make sounds. Primitive! I’ve heard clearer sound on an inter-planetary trunk call to Jupiter City. One item of interest though, was the body of the ‘time hopping’ android known as Cliff Richard. It amazes me that he escaped detection for over 150 years, pretending to be human. Nobody knows what time he ‘hopped’ from, as he de-activated under interrogation but it is assumed to be a far more advanced society than ours, judging from the androids complex circuitry, which cannot be duplicated using any known methods. Personally, I don’t think much of this so-called ‘advanced’ society, if, with so much power at their disposal all they do with it is send back in time a bloody pop-singing robot!

JUNE 29th

Tried to discuss the political and economic aspects of the civil war on Saturn with Lynne Constable but all she wanted to do was drag me behind the hover-cycle sheds. When we got there, we found my friends Dave and Ian, smoking an illegal substance: Tobacco! They offered me something called a ‘fag’ and, having decided to be a man of the world I had to try it. I set fire to one end, sucked on the other, breathed in, coughed, choked violently, finally managed to look at my friends and said ‘Not bad, but I’ve had better.’ Seeing through my bravado, they then informed me that I had just smoked the filter. That made me immediately decide never to take drugs again. Anything that needs a filter on it CAN’T be good for you.

JULY 15th

Dad had a tele-link call from his brother and his family in America. My uncle emigrated there before I was born. God knows why. Practically every city is covered in a large radiation-proof dome in case there’s another nuclear accident, the theory being that if one city blows up then at least the rest of the country keeps its fresh air. Bad luck for the suckers inside the dome though! Can’t say I’d fancy living inside a giant bra cup myself, but then Americans are strange anyway. Spoke briefly to my cousin Chuck. Typical Yank. Talked with a mouth full of re-useable chewing gum. Dad told me later that Chuck ws a test-tube baby. Interesting. I wonder if his star-sign is ‘Pyrex’?

JULY 27th

The cat came into the house with a dead sparrow in its jaws this afternoon. Dad went into panic mode. With the Robo-Cat court case still pending, the last thing he needs is a charge of harming an endangered species. He chased the cat all over the house, finally catching it in the kitchen. After a small tug-of-war over the corpse, he threw the incriminating evidence into the garbage incinerator. If I had not been there, I think the cat might have followed.

AUGUST 6th

The court case has been dropped. The justice computer decided that Dad couldn’t be held responsible for the maniaical nature of a cat. The cat was sentenced to the electric chair. (No, no... only joking). As a celebration, Dad bought Tibby a personal force field. We should have done it YEARS ago! It’s fantastic. The field generator is built into an ordinary cat collar and activated with a remote switch. It stops the cat bumping into or biting things. And, more importantly, stops things hitting him. If he gets into trouble now, I’ll eat my collection of CRASH Weekly!!

AUGUST 31st

We have been discussing where to go for our family vacation week. Mum voted for South America, as it’s just about the only place on Earth where you can see real trees in their natural state. Dad wanted Hawaii, (where you can see women in their natural state. Dirty old swine). I quite fancied Moonbase myself. After Dad had checked his Eurobank account, we settled on a compromise. We’re going to Blackpool — again!!

SEPTEMBER 7th

Here we are in Blackpool. Again. The place never seems to change. Laser lights painting pictures in the sky, rides on the Robo-Donkey, million Euro-dollar bingo, fruit machines by the thousand and a sea-wind that blows acid-rain hats around like confetti. I once heard that the government erected a giant shield to try and reduce the force of the infamous Blackpool wind. It blew down within a week.

SEPTEMBER 14th

Returned from Blackpool to find Tibby in a terrible state. We had forgotten to switch off his personal force field before leaving, which meant that he could not get at the food from the automatic dispenser. He was starving half to death among a mountain of food on the kitchen floor. Poor thing. He’s always been his own worst enemy, and now got us to contend with as well.

OCTOBER 3rd

The President made a national telecast today. He said that the price of solar power would be going up, due to the unusually dense clouds over the Republic of England. National reserves are at an all-time low and rationing may soon be forced upon us. Dad got very angry and threw his cup of pseudo-coffee at the President’s holographic image. He started ranting about never voting again and if he did he would vote Royalist the next time around. I can feel the government quaking in their boots at the very thought of this. From laughter.

OCTOBER 16th

My birthday. Still no sign of a hover-cycle on the horizon. Ended up with the usual sort of presents. Software, of the potential bargain bin variety; books — (“Biggles Flies Undone” and “Build Your Own Robo-Butler”), plus holodisc tokens. No party. Dad said he couldn’t afford to feed the whole neighbourhood every year. Just as well I suppose, considering the cat nearly drowned in the pseudo-fruit punch last time.

NOVEMBER 5th

Bonfire night. Went to the community park to watch the firework display. A large area of plasti-grass had been cleared for the central pseudo-wood bonfire, which was lit by laser pistol. Computer controlled ignition of the firework displays ensured that all the pyrotechnic displays went off perfectly. According to my history teacher, fireworks have not always been state controlled. People were once allowed to buy them from shopping centres and set them off personally. This resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries over the years. How foolish of them.

NOVEMBER 30th

Bought my Xmas presents early this year. Got Mum a large box of vegolates (low calorie of course), and Dad’s getting a pair of slippers to replace the ones that Tibby chewed to pieces last year. I’ve made sure that these are non-toxic as the vet hates being called out on Boxing Day. For my grandparents I’ve purchased some classical music (non-holographic) by Wham and Duran Duran (Yech!!). I’m playing safe and not buying the cat anything. In previous years he’s had a Robo-Mouse (stuck in throat), a musical ball, (rolled into the vacuum droid, followed by Tibby) and a box of cat sweets, (got head jammed in box).

DECEMBER 14th

Put up the Christmas decorations. We dragged out the old ‘auto-unfolding, pre-decorated, plastic Christmas tree’ again and the floating fairy lights worked after a bit of tweaking with the control box. The anti-tangle streamers were a bit of pain though. As usual the damn things tangled. One day I’ll report them to the Trades Descriptions Committee. Mum insists having a ‘traditional’ Xmas dinner, unfortunately, which means having cloned turkey, organic vegetables and freeze-dried gravy. I don’t know why we can’t have protein pills, as we do for the rest of the year. After all, eating food is merely a pagan tradition, suitable only for lower order animals. Tradition! Humbug! (Whatever that means!)

DECEMBER 25th

Fantastic! Great! Nova-Brill! I’ve got my hoverbike at long last. Just come back from a test run. It’s like riding on air. Well it IS riding on air, actually, but I’m too excited to bother with details. It’s got everything. Fifty-speed air gears, somersault retros, programmable homing memory and emergency back-up generator. Bit tricky to control at first, in fact I nearly took the top off Mr Spilsbury’s plasti-privit, but I’ll soon get the hang of it. Dad said he’d teach me properly. Good old Dad!

DECEMBER 26th

Tebb it! Tebb it! Tebb it! My stupid old father just rode my hover-cycle through Mrs Pursehouse’s window!! I told him to be careful but he didn’t listen. I warned him that they didn’t have somersault retros in his day but he just grinned and said that he could handle it. He shot off like a laserbolt, clipped a solar power pole, span [...] bits [...] to give up. I must try to acquire some for next year.

The first month of 1986 saw some changes at Micronet. Simon D’Arcy vacated the Editor’s terminal, becoming Micronet’s Publisher; Sid Smith, Simon’s Deputy, moved into the hot seat and is working on a new section — The Sunday Supplement. And a new record was set.

The mood at Micronet is jubilant: there are some thirty thousand Micronet pages on Prestel, and on average each one was accessed ten times a day during January. That makes almost nine and a half million page accesses in the month: a record. Micronet is the most popular area of Prestel...

THE FIFTH CHANNEL ON YOUR TV SET?

A great deal has been happening on The Net, as afficionados like to call it, since we took at it in last June’s TECH NICHE. Perhaps the most significant change has taken place on the Chatline front: the service has expanded considerably. There are now two ‘Daisy Chain’ chatlines, which allow subscribers to send messages for all to see, and no less than seven brand new ‘Quickchat’ channels have been opened.

The new Chatline service is run on a computer which is much more sophisticated than the one it began life on — the frustrating delays and breakdowns that aggravated Chatline users have largely been eradicated. The seven new Quickchat lines work rather differently to the 100 page message board principle of the original Daisy Chain chatline — they cope with one message at a time, and you can’t step through the old messages. New messages on the Quickchat channels appear a few seconds after they are sent, and overwrite the current frame. “Blink, and you’ll miss it”, as Micronet puts it on their explanatory page.

Now that Chatline is run on a mainframe computer, the Chatline service has been fragmented so that people with a common interest can go to a particular area. Religion, politics and adventure Quickchat lines already exist, as well as a gay line. People dialling up the net can now communicate very rapidly with other users who share their interests. Of course, the personal mailbox facility is still going strong, allowing Net members to communicate with each other, sending personal electronic mail, using ready drawn greetings card frames from the Micronet library if they like or keying in a straightforward letter.

CLUB SERVICE

“Micronet is becoming more and more of a club and communications service”, Peter Probert their publicity man asserts, “Increasingly Micronet is becoming the link between home computer users nationwide”. About 20,000 people are currently ‘on the Net’ and it has become the largest single area of British Telecom’s Prestel service, accounting for nearly a quarter of the page accesses on the whole system.

The Gallery section of the Net has really taken off in the twelve months it has been running. The Gallery allows individual Micronet subscribers to rent a collection of up to twenty six linked pages and then use them to publish their own material so long as it’s not done for financial gain. Soon after the service started, a queue of over four hundred people waiting for Gallery pages formed. The Powers That Be decided that a bit of weeding out was needed — now it costs a bit more to get started in the Gallery, and the people who thought they ‘might as well have some pages anyway’ and did nothing with them have stopped clogging up the area.

In the Gallery, you can rent up to four frames for four months at a cost of 99p a frame and a 5p editing charge is levied every time you edit one of those pages. Up to twenty two further frames can be rented in a Gallery ‘Exhibition’, costing 50p each with a 10p-per-edit-charge. So for £15 excluding editing charges, it’s quite possible to publish a respectable small magazine on Micronet much cheaper than printing a few hundred copies. And the potential audience is huge — your Gallery entry reaches into homes containing 70,000 people.

The Gallery service is very much an electronic publishing First for Micronet — currently there are over 250 Gallery exhibitors, and some of the material is very good indeed. Understandably the range of topics covered in Gallery entries is wide ranging — from motorbiking to religion, Net gossip and collections of random jottings. Well worth a browse. And just to keep Gallery exhibitors on their toes, Micronet has introduced an element of competition, publishing a league table of the most popular Gallery slots for all to see... Otherwise, Micronet staff don’t interfere with the content of Gallery frames, unless they’re obscene or illegal, of course.

PLAYING GAMES

Interactive games are getting popular too. Apart from the games run in the Gallery, gamesters might like to browse through some of Micronet’s own offerings. In the ‘Buttons’ section there’s a prize adventure running. You’re charged a few pence per page as you progress through it, but the incentive is a juicy cash prize which is awarded each month, when a draw is made from the subscribers who solved the adventure. The ‘Round Britain Race’ has also proved very popular. The player moves a flashing cursor on a grid laid over a map of Great Britain, attempting to find four specified locations. The cursor can be moved North, South, East or West, one square at a time and each move costs a penny. Once again, a cash prize is awarded periodically to someone who has completed the game.

Of course, there’s a range of games and utility software which can be downloaded into your computer and saved to tape or microdrive, some of which is free and some of which you pay for.

On the more serious side, a new business related service, Bizznet, has opened, where subscribers can access pages relating to a range of business matters. Simon D’Arcy, Ex-editor and new Publisher of Micronet sees the service moving towards providing more and more useful information: “The idea is to provide information for Mr Average at home who wants assistance in filling in his tax returns, who wants to know where to go to get the cheapest car insurance, who wants to know where to put his money — which Building Society is offering the best rates, whether or not the Post Office makes more sense than a Building Society, and so on.”

More specifically, Micronet wants to provide information useful to people setting up their own business, for instance, and a whole range of new services are on the cards as Mr D’Arcy explains: “The idea is to help people who have been fostering a germ of an idea, who want to become self-employed by expanding their ideas. Maybe they’ll come to rule out, once and for all, the idea of setting up for themselves if they take advice and find that the idea doesn’t really stack up — on the other hand, we’d like to be able to give people the necessary impetus to take their idea further. A Watchdog area is planned which will be a consumer hunt, taking up the cudgels on behalf of people who feel they’ve been conned — perhaps buying a program that won’t work or a computer that breaks down and their local store is being rather unfriendly when it comes to replacing the faulty goods — we’ll be investigating the matter on behalf of the customer”. And a ‘Legal Eagle’ offers free legal advice on a range of knotty problems.

Simon D’Arcy, for it is he, Publishing Executive of the most popular part of Prestel by far. No wonder he looks a happy man

CLASSIFIEDS

Looking for a job? Micronet can help. Jobsearch is just one of over thirty interactive areas on the Net. Run in conjunction with a national employment agency, Jobsearch collects news of computer staff vacancies from recruitment consultants and displays them — vacancies often appear in Jobsearch before they reach the more conventional press and the section keeps up front; it’s updated twice weekly.

A thriving classified/small ads service runs on the system. In the Talent sections, Netters can advertise their skills, from plastering through drumming to landscape gardening. A Home Search service is running, as well as a Swap Shop where folks can offer odd unwanted items for sale or exchange and can advertise for items wanted.

The Contact sections, apart from the Chatlines, encourage people to get to know each other. At the moment the Agony Auntie is temporarily indisposed (something to do with being revamped!), but the Grafitti board is thriving — it’s surprising what people have to say to the world! Already several Micronet members have organised evening meets at pubs, and there have even been a couple of marriages as a result of contacts made on Micronet. (Not an activity that Micronet is likely to actively encourage — experience has shown that Micronet Weddings tend to result in the cancellation of one partner’s subscription!)

In many ways, Micronet is becoming a CB channel for micro users — of the 20,000 subscribers around 8,000 are Spectrum owners. The publishers encourage special interest groups to flourish. “Unlike a conventional magazine, which has one editor, we’ve got somewhere in the region of forty or fifty people editing their own areas — excluding the Gallery”, Simon D’Arcy explained, “There’s a whole range of subject areas which are put together by individuals or groups. A member of the Micronet team oversees contributors — not from the censorship point of view, but to offer advice on the English or graphics, and to keep an eye on what’s going on”.

Spec-tacular is one such area on the Net which should be of particular interest to Spectrum owners. Stared in December 1984 by Mike Kent, Bob Garbutt and Dr Mike Sun, Spec-tacular contains utility programs, technical hints, news and reviews of Spectrum products and a User to User group, boasting 650 members. The User to User group consists of people keen to get in touch with one another using their modems on a one-to-one basis, and is based on a directory of members. What’s the use of having a modem if there’s no-one to call up, goes the argument. Apart from Micronet, that is...

The new editor of Micronet, Sid Smith, is looking forward to expanding the services offered even further. His personal ‘baby’ at the moment is the Sunday Supplement, which should come online for the first time, on a Sunday of course, at the end of February or early in March. The Sunday Supplement will contain reviews of books, films, shows and carry listings of events around the country. A gossip columnist — ‘a doyenne of the industry who will remain anonymous’ is the official line — is set to contribute incisive human interest stories, and Micronet’s very own situation comedy/soap opera spoof, MACRONET will soon be entertaining folks after their Sunday lunch.

The Celebrity Chatline feature, in which subscribers can interview an industry figure live, on line, will be included in the Sunday Supplement but the Celebrities won’t all be involved in the home computer industry. Just stars of stage and screen, as it were...

It’s quite clear that if Micronet maintains its present rate of growth and keeps the innovative edge, it will become a major force in publishing. At the moment its pages are really only open to people who have home computers — there are a lot of Prestel TV sets in living rooms across the country, but as a proportion of the total number of tellies, Prestel sets are very much in the minority. In the longer term, as technology advances, the potential for a service such as Micronet is exciting — and not just for the people in Micronet Towers.

“Micronet could become the fifth entertainment channel on home TV sets”, Simon D’Arcy is convinced. “In the long term I would love to see the remote terminal which is capable of accessing Prestel and Micronet which would free the domestic user from having to use a micro — which is a restraint at the moment, because it’s still a fairly technical affair to access Micronet using a modem. You have to enter passwords and so on. I would love to see it a lot easier.”

Admittedly TV sets are currently available which allow you to access the broadcast Teletext services, Oracle and Ceefax, and some include a printer, and a few allow you to go online to Prestel. “I’d love to see television sets which allow you to access Prestel automatically catch on — then if there was nothing on the broadcast channels, you could press button five on the remote unit and be automatically connected to Prestel and Micronet. Then you could do whatever you wanted, maybe hook up a computer, download software and start playing a game on the same TV set you were using to watch Coronation Street five minutes before.”

Channels One, Two, Three and Four had better look out. Micronet’s coming!

WELL AIRED ALREADY

The 128K Spectrum has finally arrived. In two days time CRASH will be going to the official launch, to learn all the intimate details, including the final price announcement. There’s not much to say here about the new machine — its arrival has not been so much an If?, or a What?, but more of a When? February 13th, fortunately not a Friday...

LOKed OUT?

Lloyd’s postbag has been brimming with letters on the subject of Lenslok over the last couple of weeks. Lenslok is a nifty device which could boost the life of programs it protects and thus prove a boon to the industry. Only three programs in the UK have been Lensloked so far, and the system has met with a mixed reaction from the consumer.

Lenslok has got off to a rather unfortunate start. Lenslok was effectively launched on a prestige product: Firebird’s Elite. It has suffered from not one, but two mishaps. First off, either the code used to set up the Lenslok display was incorrectly written — or at the very least, the first set of instructions that come with Elite didn’t describe the setup procedure accurately. People were unfamiliar with the new device, and quickly became frustrated. Cue a lot of aggravated Lenslok users.

Cockup Number Two arose when the wrong lens was shipped with some copies of Elite — fortunately for all concerned, only five hundred copies of the game were involved. Given the fact that each lens is a unique key, designed to work with a specific scrambling routine, this is rather like a hotel checking a guest in and issuing the wrong key. Except the guest finds out about the mistake pretty quickly, and returns to reception, rather than spending hours on hands and knees trying to get the key to fit, throwing a wobbly about locks and then either staying somewhere else or posting the key back to the hotel manager with a letter of complaint.

We’ve just used Lenslok on a copy of Elite to get the photos on this page — the Elite we borrowed from Mail Order had the right lens, but on our monitor the initial sizing display had to be set considerably wider than the lensholder for the characters to be unscrambled. The amended instructions in the package refer to a 5mm gap between the outer lines of the on-screen rules and the ends of the lens holder.

It would be a great shame if the bad feeling generated around Lenslok resulted in the idea being rejected by the legitimate software buyer — it’s the best anti-piracy device that the home computer market has seen so far. To be fair, quite a few Elite owners have written to Lloyd, saying they can’t understand what all the fuss is about, and Digital Integration, who installed Lenslok on Tomahawk report very few problems. But then they got the set-up code right and so far as they are aware Tomahawk has always been shipped with the right lens. According to the man at Digital Integration, apart from a few people who just couldn’t get on with the Lenslok system, there have been very few complaints. It doesn’t work very well with very tiny telly screens and polarising or anti-glare filters on the screen can throw the system out of line a bit — but those are minor problems.

The whole Lenslok system is still finding its feet. One software house installing Lenslok was sent an inaccurate specification of the lens they were about to use. Luckily after much hair pulling they became convinced there was a mistake and got a new specification which enabled them to make the best use of the lenses supplied before the software was mastered. Fortunate, because if the display software written to the original lens specification had not been modified to suit the lens actually produced, Lenslok would have made a lot more enemies.

Lenslok is a new product and there are bound to be teething problems. Hopefully they will soon be resolved — let’s face it, painless Lensloking should be less aggravating than unloadable Turbo and Hyperloaders...

LETTS DO SOME REVISION

In plenty of time for this year’s examinations, CRASH Course this month looks at Letts Keyfacts Revision software for O Level GCE, CSE and GCSE.

Over the years, Letts have built up a solid reputation as publishers of the highly successful Study Aid series, and have now turned their attention to the computer education market. Their Keyfacts Revision software is the result of a great deal of research among teachers throughout the country to determine the most appropriate technique and content for computer-based learning. Letts are keen to stress that the programs are not designed merely as cramming aids for exams, but rather are planned for use throughout courses. Quite a number of large educational publishers are now producing similar types of software for a wide variety of subjects, but not all of these programs are educationally valid, and in some cases, the student would achieve better results using a good set of notes.

The Letts programs use a variety of approaches to capture the learner’s interest and to introduce an element of enjoyment into home study. The major advantage of computer programs over the normal textual study aids is that they can encourage greater participation in the learning processes and improve motivation. The computer can also mark the answers and, in the case of subjects such as mathematics, can actually demonstrate various constructions and solutions. Used in conjunction with other methods, the Letts programs are extremely useful indeed. Each package contains two cassette tapes and a booklet describing the software, and retails for £11.50.

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Producer: Charles Letts & Co
Price: £11.50

The Merchant of Venice and Henry IV part 1

Both of these packages provide an extremely thorough study of the play involved. The first program on The Merchant of Venice is concerned with linking events to plots and themes. If, for instance, the event is that ‘Antonio discusses the reasons for his sadness with friends’, the student has to match this with a choice of four plots and eight themes. If Money is selected as the correct theme, the computer responds by asking the student to consider the friendship theme as well. The Plots program takes things a step further by presenting various events from each Act, and then asking the student to construct the play’s chronological order. The final two programs, Write and Quotes, involve a very thorough knowledge of the actual text of the play. Write displays incomplete paragraphs taken from the play and the student has to complete them. Different levels of difficulty are available: for instance, if ‘Portia and Mercy and the Law’ is chosen at the easiest of the five levels of difficulty, the screen display begins, ‘Disguised -- Balthasar, Portia has --- task of saving Antonio while upholding the law, as T---- is no power in V----- can alter — decree -----------.’

At this level the words omitted could be guessed by anyone, but at the most difficult level, the paragraph is presented in dashes only! It is, however, possible to cheat — pressing X displays the completed paragraph on the screen. Quotes begins by inviting the student to select a character and theme, and the computer displays the Act and Scene together with a quotation which has to be completed. Again, a cheat facility is provided, and a helpful comment is given to provoke further thought.

Henry IV Part 1 has similar Write, Plot and Quote programs, but this time begins with a ‘Family Tree’ task, so that the student has some appreciation of the reasons underlying the political tension in the play. The next program, Relate, focuses attention on the relationships between the characters, and these are displayed diagrammatically together with useful comments.

Any student working their way successfully through either of the literature packages would end up as a candidate for the black chair of ‘Mastermind’.

MATHEMATICS

Producer: Charles Letts & Co
Price: £11.50

Ten different programs are provided in this package, ranging from basic arithmetic and the use of a calculator to algebra, geometry and trigonometry. This ‘mathematics suite’, as Letts call it, comprises a summary of important theory points, screen demonstrations, user interaction where the power of the computer is under the control of the student (eg the drawing of graphs), and several quizzes where the computer marks the answers and demonstrates correct solutions step-by-step. The suite ends with an hour-long trial examination based on the common core of the GCE syllabuses, at the end of which the student receives a breakdown of performance. The notes suggest that this exam might, in fact, be taken straight away in order to highlight specific areas of difficulty which could be worked on.

Advice is also given to the student on how to use the programs in a revision scheme, and reference is made to the other Letts revision aids, such as the Passcards. Mathematics is a subject which lends itself well to computer assisted learning, and this package would be of great help to the serious student. It does, however, cover a very wide area of mathematical knowledge, so the student may find that certain programs are far too easy. A mathematics teacher commented that the area covered was, perhaps, far too wide, although some students might benefit from revision of the basics.

CHEMISTRY

Producer: Charles Letts & Co
Price: £11.50

The chemistry suite of programs is designed to test knowledge of basic facts, and to improve understanding of the underlying principles. The programs cover the following areas: atomic structure and bonding; periodic tables; formulae; chemical deductions; electrolysis; apparatus; acids; bases and salts; and organic chemistry. Several of the programs require the student to complete passages displayed on the screen as in the literature programs, and once again these are offered at 5 levels of difficulty and have a ‘cheat’ facility. The easier levels do little to test factual knowledge as the words omitted have nothing to do with chemistry, but I suppose the idea is to work up through all the levels so that the information becomes imprinted on the mind.

The Periodic Table program covers this area relatively well, but the next program Formulae and Equations is rather awkward to use, as the entry of correct formulae requires the use of both upper and lower case letters as well as subscript numbers which are located on the graphic keys. Deduce tests the user’s overall knowledge of chemistry by supplying clues about a randomly selected substance, while Elect covers electrolysis and ionic equations. Apparatus is an interesting way of giving practice in the selection and assembly of the most usual apparatus for the laboratory preparation of each of 13 gases, with the student finally being required to complete balanced equations. Acids, Bases and Salts comes in three parts: in the first, a descriptive passage has to be completed; part two asks for comments on the proposed reactions, and the third part shows how pH levels change during the acid-base titrations. The final two programs on organic chemistry, contain four descriptive passages for completion at various levels of difficulty, and require the identification of isomers, homologues and compounds.

The chemistry specialist who looked at this suite of programs for me felt sure that it would be reasonably helpful if used with other study methods, but commented that the content at times was rather lightweight and sketchy.

PHYSICS

Producer: Charles Letts & Co
Price: £11.50

The 10 programs in this suite cover topics such as motion, electricity, magnetism, waves, light, heat and radioactivity. A diagnostic section in the first program provides 40 questions, and the computer then reviews the responses and suggests a method of study. The questions can also be attempted under test conditions, and at the end the score and time taken are shown, together with the number of incorrectly answered questions.

Relationships, the program which covers a variety of equations, is rather boring, but then some aspects of studying are boring! The two Motion programs use attractive graphics to convey information on speed, velocity, acceleration, force, power, momentum and so on, while Light deals with reflection, refraction and defects of the eye. Radio simulates a range of experiments on radioactivity, but the selection and manoeuvrability of the elements in the detection experiment are rather slow. The Rutherford experiment shows very little, and omits one of its fundamental results — the back scattering of alpha particles. Waves and Elect 2 are multiple choice programs in which the computer provides a hint if the first answer is incorrect. Elect 1 uses a water model to help the student to understand current electricity, while Heat simulates heating and cooling experiments.

Once again, a great deal of ground is covered in this package, and good use is made of screen graphics. The student would find the test sections of particular use.

BIOLOGY

Producer: Charles Letts & Co
Price: £11.50

The programs in this package fall into two categories. The graphics based ones are built up by interaction with the user, so that understanding of the structure and functioning of the organs or systems concerned is deepened. In Loco for example, a clue appears on the screen, the correct answer to which begins the drawing of the skeleton. A similar technique is used in The Eye where a diagrammatic cross-section of the eye is gradually built up in response to correctly answered questions on the structure and accommodation of the eye.

The second category involves the application of a large body of knowledge — in Homeostasis the student should know how temperature, water balance, breathing rate and blood glucose levels are controlled in a mammal. In addition to those already mentioned, the program suite covers topics such as Variety of Life (the plant kingdom, invertebrates, arthropods and vertebrates), Nutrition in plants and animals, Food Webs in various habitats, Breathing, Blood, Circulation, Reproduction, and Genetics. The graphics are clear and are used to good effect but the content of the programs is perhaps lacking in depth for serious study purposes.

COMPUTER STUDIES

Producer: Charles Letts & Co
Author: Bourne Educational Software Ltd
Price: £11.50

Computer Studies is, of course, one of the newest subjects in the curriculum, and it is appropriate that this subject too has prompted Letts to issue a software revision package to accompany their other aids. A very wide area of knowledge is covered in this suite, moving from the history of computers and information processing, to revision of the architecture of a typical digital computer and the CPU, and then on to information on computer hardware operating systems. Some of the programs help the student to revise software development skills, while others are aimed at deepening knowledge of techniques fundamental to the subject such as the analysis of logic circuits.

The programs use a variety of learning techniques, ranging from passages which the student has to complete to multiple choice questions. In certain programs if wrong answers are given, the computer either provides a hint or displays the correct solution after a specified number of incorrect responses. Most of the programs commence with a menu from which the student may select an area of interest. High Level Languages for example allows a choice from: Expressions and Assignments, Branches and Loops, and Subroutines and Strings, white the very complex Number Systems program is divided into three different areas: 1) Binary and Decimal Positive Integers: 2) Negative Integers; Addition and Subtraction; 3) Octal and Hexidecimal.

The students who looked at this suite for me were quite impressed with the range of topics covered and felt it would be a useful addition to their study aids.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Apart from the problems in the Chemistry suite, the control keys are clearly explained and are easy to use.
Keyboard play: Very responsive
Use of colour: Simple but clear.
Graphics: Used to good effect
General rating: Revision programs like these are, generally speaking, only as good as the student using them. Used sensibly in conjunction with other study methods, they do have a useful role to play, but it has to be understood that, on their own, these packages will not miraculously ensure A grade passes!

ICON GRAPHIX

Producer: Audiogenic Software Ltd
Author: Icon Software Ltd (Terry Wiley, Ian Elliott)
Price: £9.95

Following the current trend towards icon driven graphics utilities, Audiogenic have released ICON GRAPHIX from ASL. This is being marketed as a powerful icon driven graphics and design tool and competes with comparable offerings such as ART STUDIO from Rainbird Software and THE ARTIST from The Edge.

The program cassette contains the basic software as well as a Microdrive compatible copy which can be installed on a Microdrive cartridge automatically once it has been loaded.

The screen of ICON GRAPHIX displays the drawing window surrounded by the option boxes. Pictures may be created in the drawing window using the tool icons grouped around it. Selecting (or changing) drawing tools is achieved simply by positioning the current tool over the box to be selected and by pressing CAPS SHIFT or fire on the joystick. The range of drawing tools to choose from includes felt pens of various shapes and sizes, sprays and brushes. All drawing is done in the current pattern and there are 34 patterns to choose from. If that’s not enough, existing patterns may be edited to create your own patterns.

A magnify facility with a simple pixel set or reset facility can used for detail work. Corrections can be made with the Rubber tool or with the powerful Undo routine, which cancels the effect of the last function selected. Push Page provides access to hidden parts of the screen. Special drawing functions provided are Elastic Line, Box, Circle and Ellipse.

Usually, the picture is drawn in black and white first. Then the colour mode is entered, which displays the palette of colour options including Bright and Flashing and colour can be added to the picture. Once Ink and Paper colours have been selected, the Pen tool is used to fill in the attribute characters over the existing pattern.

A screen dump routine allows screen pictures to be immortalised by printing the 24 screen lines to a ZX or Alphacom printer; pictures and documents may be saved to tape or Microdrive cartridge for later use. Pictures are equivalent to Screen saves, while documents also include any new patterns generated.

ICON GRAPHIX performs very well and is very userfriendly. The various drawing options and tools are located at the bottom edge of the screen, with the large selection of pattern boxes spread around the edge of the drawing window. The current pattern is always displayed in the bottom right corner and to change the current pattern this box must be accessed and CAPS SHIFT pressed. In colour mode the top line of pattern boxes is replaced with the colour palette.

Several important functions and facilities found in most graphics packages nowadays are missing from ICON GRAPHIX. Cut, Paste, Copy and Move facilities, which would allow screen details to be duplicated or moved to other areas of the screen are noticeably absent. There are no special drawing modes for blending new designs into existing screen drawings using the logical AND and XOR functions. Serious screen designers will miss a screen dump routine for 80 column dot matrix printers, as the minimalist 32 column thermal print-outs are unlikely to satisfy them. Despite these omissions ICON GRAPHIX is a handy screen creating tool which could prove to be a lot of fun to use.

TOOLS AND COMMANDS

FELT PEN

Drawing is done with the current pattern. Several shapes and sizes of pen can be selected by accessing the Shapes box.

SPRAY

The spray does not plot a random pattern of dots on the screen, but draws a fuzzy blob of the current pattern.

BRUSH

The brush provides the normal fill operation. Mistakes may be corrected with the UNDO command.

BOX

The pencil is used to point to the first diagonal and by pressing the CAPS SHIFT continuously the rectangle is dragged across the screen until the desired size is obtained.

CIRCLE

The circle or ellipse is shaped by fixing one corner, dragging and then releasing. The ellipse is proportioned to fit inside an imginary box between the first fixed corner and the current arrow position. A circle is obtained with an imaginary square box.

LINE

Line draws a straight line from a fixed point and can be used to draw approximated curves by successively releasing the CAPS SHIFT key to reposition the fixed point and join lines.

RUBBER

Rubber erases the current area covered by the square rubber icon. Finer erasures should be accomplished with a fine pen and a white pattern or with the magnify facility.

PUSH PAGE

Push Page moves the drawing window around to uncover areas of the screen covered by the option boxes including the two lines at the bottom of the screen.

UNDO

Undo undoes the last screen function and restores the condition previous to the last execution.

CLS

CLS clears the screen.

NEW

New clears the screen, restores the current pattern to black and reselects the joystick or key board. As this function cannot be undone, the program requires a confirmation before proceeding.

PRINT

Print dumps the 24 screen lines to the ZX or Alphacom printer.

SHAPES

Shapes displays a tray of 16 different pen shapes with the current pen shape marked with a ring. A new shape is selected by pointing and pressing CAPS SHIFT.

MAGNIFY

Magnify enlarges a portion of the screen pointed to by the arrow cursor. This is useful for detail work, where individual pixels may be set or reset or the whole magnified part erased with the rubber tool box.

EDIT PATTERN

Any unwanted pattern may be selected and the current pattern box ‘pressed’. The pattern design appears in magnified form in the screen centre with a life-sized sample above it. Pixels can be set or reset and when the pattern is satisfactory, the OK box can be clicked.

COLOUR

To add colour to the picture, the COLOUR box is selected. A palette of colours appears at the top of the screen with 8 ink squares, 8 paper colours and Bright and Flash strips beneath the ink and paper squares. The tools available in colour mode are the PEN, which is used to fill in attribute squares with the current colours, and PUSH PAGE, which pushes the colour squares around to match up previous design pushes. CLS restores the colours to black and white, UNDO restores the colours after a CLS or undoes the last colouring and NEW returns to ordinary drawing mode, saving the colour attributes to memory so that the saved picture can be loaded back later as a normal coloured screen.

LOAD AND SAVE

Load and save may be performed on Pictures and Documents. Picture is equivalent to a SCREEN including the colour attributes and a Document is a picture including any new patterns.

COMPILER?

Last month I looked at Ocean’s Laser BASIC — a set of graphics extensions to ZX BASIC — and mentioned the fact that a ‘compiler’ for the extended language was promised. The Laser BASIC Compiler has turned up, and it’s very, well, interesting.

For your £9.95 you get a crushproof plastic box, an eight page A5 manual, and one cassette. One side of the tape contains the compiler, ‘runtime routines’ and a loading program. On the other side there is a compiled copy of the Laser BASIC demonstration package. Curiously, many of the effects do not seem to to have been accelerated by the compiler, and some of the others are now noticeably more flickery.

The press release we received with the program says that the Laser Compiler will turn Laser BASIC into ‘fast machine code’. The packaging is less forthright, promising only that ‘compiled programs run typically twice as fast as their interpreted equivalents’. In the manual this is toned down still further to ‘probably only a factor of two or less’. You are allowed to sell compiled programs to anyone, and purchasers do not need the Laser BASIC interpreter.

LASER DRILL

The LASER Compiler is not easy to use. For a start, you are not allowed to load it while the main Laser BASIC system is in memory, so you have to save your program, reset the Spectrum, and re-load the BASIC before you can load the compiler. You also have to clear 6K of memory before you load the compiler, or it won’t work. The program really should do this for you.

Once the compiler is loaded you set it off with a RANDOMIZE USR command. The system overwrites your original BASIC as it works, and it ‘gives up’ as soon as an illegal command is found, spitting out an error message. You have to re-load your BASIC, correct the problem and try again for every single error, one by one. This is irritating even if you’ve got Microdrives — with cassettes it is mind-numbing, especially as not all of the error messages are listed in the manual.

Luckily, the Laser system doesn’t impose many restrictions. You’re not allowed to use calculated line-numbers in GOTOs, GOSUBs and RESTOREs, CLEAR is prohibited and array dimensioning works in a slightly different way — arrays are pre-built to a fixed size if possible. Microdrive data files are banned, but other Microdrive commands are allowed. There’s no program text after a compilation so LIST, MERGE etc, obviously don’t work.

The compilation process is very, very fast. Benchmarks compile in the blink of an eye and a 300 statement program was processed in under three seconds. I didn’t find any bugs in the resultant code, but — as we shall see — that is hardly surprising.

The code can be saved and loaded in the normal way, but the listing has disappeared, to be replaced by a dummy PRINT, a RANDOMIZE USR call, and a couple of lines containing all the DATA and DEF FN statements from the original program. The ‘compiled code’ is stored invisibly thereafter.

The tape-twiddling is not over once the program has been compiled. Believe it or not, you can’t use the compiled code when the compiler is loaded! You must first load the ‘run time’ routines that process Laser BASIC commands. These routines have to be loaded in place of the compiler.

TIME TRIALS

This elaborate procedure meant that I was not able to perform all the usual benchmarks, but I did try a simple IF test. A loop that took 39 seconds in ZX BASIC ran in 28 seconds when compiled. This was a very disappointing result — much slower than any other Spectrum BASIC compiler.

I decided to try the Laser Compiler on a ‘real’ program — a game listing from a now-defunct magazine. The program was written in straight-forward BASIC, where it took, on average, 39 seconds to generate a maze. In ‘fast machine code’ — Ocean’s term, not mine — it took 35 seconds. In other words, the Laser Compiler made no useful difference to the speed of the program.

I tried a few other tests and they confirmed my impression. This ‘compiler’ was just making a few minor changes to the format of the program and ‘hiding’ the listing to make it look as if it had been compiled. I analysed a ‘compiled’ program file and discovered that it contained all the normal program text, keywords, variables and all — you could read the listing straight off the screen, and there was no sign of any machine code.

The re-ordering of data and definitions makes little difference to the speed of the code. The only other changes seemed to affect line-numbers and IF statements, where (I assume) addresses rather than numbers were used. This is not, in itself, a clever trick, since a program to do the job was listed in Your Computer magazine over a year or so ago. Beta BASIC does something similar when processing loops.

I can’t recommend the Laser BASIC ‘Compiler’ to anyone. It is expensive, hard to use and — in the final analysis — almost useless since it makes little difference to the speed of most BASIC programs. It is most short-sighted of Ocean to launch this program on their new ‘IQ’ label. It is not a compiler at all, in the usual computer-programming sense, because it uses the same tokens as slothful ZX BASIC. There’s no sign of the ‘fast machine code’ generation promised in Ocean’s press release.

The Laser ‘compiler’ may be useful to those who want to market programs written using the Laser BASIC interpreter, but I can’t believe that there will be many of them, and the package does seem to introduce extra graphics flicker. The run-time system should have been part of the Laser BASIC package to start with.

LENSLOK

A couple of months ago I explained the details of the Lenslok security system in CRASH. That explanation obviously came too late for Firebird, who seem to have made a mess of their implementation on Spectrum Elite.

In principle, Lenslok is a good system — it is easy to use, cheap, and it works, as long as the display is at least ten centimetres wide and the user looks directly through a properly folded lens.

The software industry desperately needs a way to stop home copying. If Lenslok — or a similar system — fails, then all honest software buyers will suffer as a result. Unfortunately, Firebird seem to have made several mistakes, and Lenslok isn’t universally loved, if the contents of Lloyd’s postbag are anything to go by!

The first mistake was to install Lenslok wrongly on some copies of Spectrum Elite. It is quite impossible to use one production copy that was sent to CRASH, unless you deliberately ignore part of the instructions.

Before attempting to use the lens to unscramble the pattern of dots displayed on your screen, you have to let the Lenslok system know the size of your telly screen. Rather than type in the appropriate measurement, in inches, cubits, nautical miles or whatever, you adjust two lines on the screen until they are a known width apart — the width of the lens holder, which just happens to be 100mm. The computer keeps a count of the number of pixels between one line and the other, so it can convert from pixels to millimetres (on your telly) with ease.

WRONG SUMS

Unfortunately, Firebird got their sums wrong. A mistake in their code means that you have to set the lines substantially wider than the instructions would have you believe. It is not too difficult to do this, if you use the scrambled display of the letters ‘OK’ to work out the correct setting, but you fail completely if you do just what you’re told.

Firebird have owned up to a different problem, which makes the system completely unusable in some cases. Lenslok uses the lens as a key and the software as a lock. Codes in the program produce graphics which can only be read through a particular lens. Firebird have shipped the wrong lens — the wrong key — with some copies of Elite.

There are millions of possible lenses, just as there are millions of possible keys for most locks (except the one on the Editor’s van, which could be opened with anything sharper than a milk-bottle). If you use the wrong lens, the ‘lok’ stays shut.

You can check your copy of Elite by prising the small transparent lens from its orange plastic holder. Unless you are needlessly violent, you’ll find two small tags projecting from the side of the lens. If there’s a letter ‘A’ on the lens, all is well; but if there’s a letter ‘B’ you’ve got the wrong lens, and no amount of peering at the screen will decipher the scrambled display.

Firebird will replace a type ‘B’ lens if you send it back to them. They’ll also send you a free game as compensation for the time you’ve wasted.

I hope that Lenslok survives these problems, because it has a lot of promise. It would be a great shame if people were put off the idea because of teething problems. Whatever happens, we’ll keep you posted.

MULTIFACETTED DEVICE

Romantic Robot’s MULTIFACE ONE follows in the footsteps of earlier FAST-SAVE interfaces such as INTERFACE III and MIRAGE, but incorporates extra facilities. It provides an automatic SAVE facility for cassette, Microdrive, Wafadrive and various disk drive based Spectrum systems, features a Kempston type joystick interface and has a composite video output connection.

These three ingredients improve the performance of the Spectrum by providing a more versatile storage interface, a port for the obligatory joystick and a crisper screen picture. MULTIFACE ONE supports the OPUS DISCOVERY and BETA disk interfaces directly and other drives can be accommodated by saving programs to tape in a manageable format. These can then be loaded without MULTIFACE ONE into the computer and copied to disk.

The unit plugs in as usual onto the edge connector; the joystick is connected to the 9 way joystick plug on the lefthand side and the video cable to the phono plug on the righthand side of the interface. With a Microdrive system the MULTIFACE ONE should be plugged in at the back of the INTERFACE 1 unit, but all other storage devices, WAFADRIVE, OPUS and BETA, must be connected to the extension port of MULTIFACE ONE. All software functions are initialised by pressing the ubiquitous red pushbutton.

The joystick interface is Kempston compatible, which means it is port mapped to address 31. The joystick function can be checked by pressing the red button and then SYMBOL SHIFT and A which should cause the data values to appear at the bottom right of the screen when the joystick is waggled. For the BETA disk interface the Kempston joystick interface must be disabled as it interferes with the disk drive operation. This is done by opening the rear cover and cutting a wire link close to the joystick connector.

The video output is not generated by MULTIFACE ONE, but is taken directly from the Spectrum’s edge connector. This means some Spectrum owners may not find any signal on the output of their unit as it seems some machines do not have the video signal available at the edge connector. Some Spectrum owners may find the signal very weak and noisy and see no improvement in picture quality. The familiar dot crawl will persist, as the video signal is generated from intermodulation of the colour carrier frequencies required for the standard PAL video signal. The quality of even a perfect PAL composite signal will never match that obtained with the separate RGB signals, but composite video provides an improvement in picture sharpness at least.

MULTIFACE ONE from Romantic Robot. The magic red button helps you save your cassette programs onto fast storage media and there are a few other goodies included in the package.

The save facility is obtained by pressing the red button. This can be done at any time, regardless of the program running. MULTIFACE ONE freezes the current program and displays a list of Options on the bottom two lines of the screen. EXIT provides an exit from MULTIFACE ONE and the program. This allows you to study, alter or customise the program but only on the condition that the computer doesn’t crash on exit, which depends on the existence of standard system variables. RETURN gives the control back to the current program. SAVE initiates the save routine for screens or programs. POKE provides a facility to POKE and PEEK any part of the Spectrum’s memory.

Selecting SAVE generates a prompt for the file name, which can be 9 characters long. If only ENTER is pressed the program automatically enters RUN. With the BETA drive the name is 7 characters long and ENTER on its own will provide the name BOOT.

Once the filename has been selected a menu appears: SCREEN saves a screen on its own; PROGRAM saves both screen and program and is the default setting. Then you need to specify the device you want to save to which can be TAPE. CARTRIDGE, WAFER or DISC. MULTIFACE ONE automatically detects if OPUS DISCOVERY or BETA is connected and follows the correct procedure. The program or screen is then saved to the selected storage device.

Programs are always saved in four parts; a BASIC loader, the main code, the screen and the operating code. MULTIFACE saves the contents of the computer (the RAM IMAGE) in a compressed form. There is an abort facility at every stage of the process — BREAK brings you back to the current menu. In most cases MULTIFACE ONE need not be present to reload the programs it has been used to save. The only disadvantage is the distortion of the top third of the screen, which usually gets updated by the program anyway.

Typically, a 16K program occupies 53 sectors (about 13K) and loads within 10 seconds on a BETA drive. This compares favourably with the MAGIC BUTTON facility of the BETA itself, which saves the whole 48K, without compression, onto 192 sectors. If you want to save space you have to name the file and copy it to another disk so that several programs can be stacked. MAGIC BUTTON only operates with empty single sided formatted disks. MULTIFACE ONE can store up to 24 16K programs onto a doublesided 40 track disk without renaming and recopying files,

MULTIFACE ONE has 8K ROM for its own software and 8K RAM as buffer area. The RAM can be used to store data and machine code routines, utilities, tools and so on, if required. The RAM sits below the screen area and must be paged for access. This can only be done in machine code.

MULTIFACE ONE performs well with all the storage devices listed. The compression technique assures economic saving and fast loading of any program. The system is well protected against erroneous usage with different error reports for the different systems. An extra facility, JUMP, should be implemented quite soon and will allow users to JUMP to a specific location in memory and execute code beginning at that address. Useful if you have a Disassembler lurking in memory, perhaps... Extensions to the PEEK and POKE functions are also planned — at present the facility only works in decimal notation, but the upgraded unit will offer a Hex display option and be capable of revealing the contents of the Z80 registers. Direct compatibility with the Kempston KDOS system is also planned for the future. In all, a worthwhile buy, especially for owners of fast storage devices.

Franco Frey

Multiface One
Producer: Romantic Robot
Price: £39.95

WORD MANAGER

Producer: Oxford Computer Publishing
Author: Francis G. Miles
Price: £12.95 Tape/Microdrive/Opus Disc Drive Versions, 19.95 Kempston & Watford Electronics SPDOS versions

Tasword II has been out for nearly two years now. During that long space of time it has pushed aside a number of attacks from other word processing programs with the greatest of ease. But fears are growing for its safety as market leader, as Oxford Computer Publishing (creators of Art Studio) bring out a new offering called Word Manager. As soon as Word Manager arrived, it was out with my printer and disc drive to see if this challenger was really going to topple Tasword II off its (by now warm) perch.

As a dedicated Tasword II user — I’ve had a copy since it was first released — I was pleased to see that OCP understand that Tasword II has got a firm hold on the Spectrum Word Processing world and there are lots of Tasword files sitting on cassette already. Thoughtfully, OCP have included a facility in Word Manager which allows you to LOAD Tasword files into their word processor with the greatest of ease. Only the slightest amount of editing is needed — a few words which may have got joined together in justifying need to be separated.

OCP have also given great thought to the compatibility of its product with the peripherals it controls. When loading for the first time you are presented with an option of setting up Word Manager with the built in machine code routines (17 to be precise) for your printer. If your printer interface is not included in the menu then don’t despair — if you can’t implement your own machine code routine, get in touch with OCP for assistance.

Fast access backing store peripherals are also taken into consideration with a host of different versions of the software available to complement your hardware and if you’ve got a Microdrive or OPUS disc drive then you don’t have to pay any extra (but the OPUS drive does provide BASIC microdrive compatibility).

When compared with Tasword II knock for knock, Word Manager has a large number of extra features and extensions which, to my mind, give it the edge over the current market leader. It is a more flexible and more powerful wordprocessor in the final analysis:

THE FEATURES

Insert Mode: Insertion of characters without overwriting. Insert mode can be switched on or off.

Fast Edit: The cursor can be moved around word by word and page by page.

Deletion: Allows a letter, word, line, block or paragraph to be deleted all commencing at the cursor position. You are also allowed to change from deleting to the left of the cursor to deleting letters to the right of the cursor.

Moving Blocks: Text blocks of any size can be marked and moved or copied to the present cursor position very rapidly.

Moving Cursor: The cursor can be moved to the start/end of text, and last cursor position when re-entering the text file from menu. It can also jump to the start of the present jump and the start/end of the present paragraph.

Hatch Codes: Can produce new paragraph marker or tell the program not to justify this line. A hatch code can also be placed to tell the printer to start a new page, ie add one to page number displayed and produce a blank line to separate it.

Address Codes: These are placed when using OCP’s Address Manager with Word Manager, and mark names, addresses and telephone numbers.

Script Search: Searches the script for a specific word/letter. You can also delete all occurrences of a word/letter in the script from the beginning or from the cursor position. The word/letter selected can also be changed for another if you wish.

Tabulation: The TAB function allows the user to vary the column that the cursor returns to when entering a line, this is useful when preparing tables. A Do Not Justify hatch code has to be positioned at the beginning of each line otherwise ‘your table will be completely screwed up’ as the manual puts it.

Justifying: Justification (spreading the line out along the screen to produce an even edge to the text file) only occurs when a paragraph is completed. You can opt to justify a complete document, and can put hyphens in the words split over two lines. Left or right hand margin justification can be selected.

Miscellaneous: Text can be centred on a line; words can be swapped round — eg I am becomes am I; blank lines can be inserted.

GETTING HARD COPY

The printer applications are very impressive and allow the user to change the width of the printed line from 1 to 128 characters. Line width should be adjusted before you start, as it tends to muck up the justification if done halfway through writing a script. The screen line simulates the printer, stretching the 80 columns of the printer over two screen lines, which I found very hard to get used to — but it seems to work alright.

The Printer menu allows you to have single or double spacing between printed lines. It also allows you to use continuous paper or single A4 sheets to print on. The script can be printed in its entirety or from the cursor position, and output stops when a block marker is encountered. Page numbers can be printed in the centre at the top or bottom, or at the top right hand corner or they can be left out altogether. Page numbering can commence at any number.

PRINTER CODES

Unlike Tasword II, Word Manager uses ASCII symbols for printer codes and not the easy to use preset ‘graphic’ symbols. This can get awkward if you want a lot of different styles in your text file, but should present no problems when writing letters.

One problem I found in my version was that I couldn’t print the infamous pound sign on the printer while using Word Manager, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere!

MULTI-TASKING

Word Manager also features a very clever fast/slow print option which simulates multitasking (doing more than one thing at once) when printing. This means that you can choose to have the text printed and if you see any mistakes in it during printing you can change them by editing the text at the same time, then print it out again.

FILE REPORTS

I was very impressed with Word Manager’s comprehensive file report facility, which gives information on the current cursor position, memory (in characters) used, memory remaining, and the all important word count which is very, very useful for us reviewers. None of these features exist in Tasword II but an extra piece of software can be bought which will add them.

SUMMING UP

The main thing that strikes you about Word Manager is that it doesn’t justify or word-wrap at the end of every line which is confusing if, like me, you’ve been using Tasword II for ages. Also, I was a bit unhappy not to be given a small ‘window’ at the bottom of the displayed text telling me the line/column my cursor was at. The cursor doesn’t flash, and I found life a little confusing at times...

Overall, Word Manager is a much more professional word processor than Tasword II. It contains more features and is a very flexible piece of software. I feel it falls down a little, because in nearly every case you have to access some sort of menu to use the extra or expanded features. Despite this, I feel that Tasword II has finally met its match with this very professional word processor from OCP. The package includes a detailed manual — nearly fifty pages of explanation — and a freebie copy of Address Manager for 32 column printers such as the Alphacom and ZX Printer. All in all, a tasty package. Tasword II watch out! The Word Manager has come to take the words out of your mouth.

JOBS FOR THE BOYS

would like to turn my thoughts this month to a matter which has been on my mind for some time. As I go about my everyday life I meet people, both young and old, who are surprised at what I do for a living and are then interested in just what kind of a world games software is. In particular, they marvel at how young programmers are, and at how easy it is to enter the field. These are factors which the average CRASH reader will be very familiar with. What deeply concerns me is not the youthful nature of this industry, nor the lack of job security for established programmers, nor the ever increasing standards of new software and the exacting nature of today’s programming. No, none of these things worry me and neither should they worry you. However, what should most certainly worry you is that you live in a society that ignores computer software for these very same reasons. We live in a society where people are more concerned with losing their jobs than entering new ones, more concerned with showing deference to employers than telling them what’s what (unlike Japan where workers are actively involved) and where factories are closed rather than improved or, heaven forbid, rebuilt.

Recently much time and space has been devoted in the media towards youth opportunities and careers, much more than in my day when there were far more career openings. All the old nonsense is still there about analysing your best skills, aptitudes etc etc. What use is this advice if it leads a pupil down a road where there are no jobs and where it is nigh on impossible to work on a self-employed basis in the field?

With all due respect to old people, the future of Britain as a trading nation lies with the young of the country. Young minds can be turned to useful occupations or be left to wander in a confused vacuum. The answer does not lie in better careers guidance. The answer does not lie in creating artificial work or forever raking up age-old teenage problems. The answer is to encourage high technology and to train young people in how to use it.

LORD OF THE RINGS

Melbourne House, £15.95

Ever since The Hobbit was released by Melbourne House, games players everywhere have eagerly awaited the computer version of JRR Tolkien’s greatest work, The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit computer game was widely regarded as one of the best programs to run on a Spectrum and even now it still stands as one of the best adventure games you can buy. Its lasting appeal can be attributed to its immense intricacy of plot and the high competency of its programming. Lord of the Rings, dealing with the story found in the first part of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, sacrifices some of the programming panache of The Hobbit in order to offer as wide an entertaining medium as is possible on a Spectrum. Pictures are relatively infrequent, and where they do pop up, are nothing to get excited about. The program is undeniably slow and the glaring white background to the text gives the impression that Philip Mitchell has been too busy with his own pet project to see the great lengths to which other software houses have gone to impress with their presentation.

You might now think that this review is about to concur with one or two others which have fallen short of praising this new adventure. Not so. Considering the enormous efforts made to make this game deep, intricate and entertaining, one can overlook the minor irritations in presentation, speed and debugging and applaud Melbourne House for a very courageous and worthwhile effort in bringing such a monstrous project to fruition. In short the game succeeds in doing what it set out to do, entertain, and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest let’s see what you gets for your money. As with The Hobbit, you get the corresponding Tolkien book, The Fellowship of the Ring, which is the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This Allen & Unwin paperback is more than just a sales ploy as it contains important background and clues to your quest. Furthermore, it contains maps of The Shire where you begin the adventure, and the whole of the western section of Middle Earth by which you can gauge the threat emanating from the east. An impressive booklet of very full instructions is also included, which serves both as an introduction to the game and as a broader intro to the whole world of adventuring. It is a most lucid and palatable guide and does a superb job of introducing quality adventuring to the novice. The game itself spans two cassettes. On each is a challenging adventure on the A side along with its beginner’s counterpart on the B side. The beginner’s games, like the booklet, are simply superb, introducing the concepts and challenges to be found in the games proper in a very informative manner.

The story behind the game will be very familiar to Tolkien fans but probably be pretty confusing to those who have never picked up on the books. It is the Middle Years of Middle Earth and Sauron the Great, master of the evil realm of Mordor, has tricked a great Elvensmith into teaching him the craft of making rings of power. Deep within the bowels of Mount Doom he forged a ring to rule all others. By a circuitous path the ring came into the possession of Gollum who fled with it to the Misty Mountains and the dark caves that ran beneath them. Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit, found the ring in the goblin’s den and kept a hold of it by outwitting the pathetic creature. Bilbo returned to The Shire with the ring, and for the last time, used the ring’s curious ability to render the wearer invisible before handing it on to his heir, Frodo Baggins. The ring causes some strange side effects however, making its owner overjealous. Gandalf, a fatherly wizard, warned Frodo of the malevolent nature of the ring. Making too much use of the ring would see its owner fade into a ring-wraith. Bilbo retired to Rivendell to the east, and the ring was entrusted to Frodo, whose struggle to keep the ring safe from the servants of doom is told in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The adventure begins with Sam, Pippin and Frodo at Bag End, Frodo’s home in Hobbiton. Merry awaits the party at his house in Crickhollow to the east, by the western bank of the Brandywine river. Now, if the computer game carried on just like the book there would be little point in playing the adventure. The Beam programming team have cleverly devised a plot which has enough in keeping with the Tolkien work to justify its name, but not so much as to make playing futile. There are new paths, new situations and novel twists which will ensure that a thorough knowledge of the books alone will not give an easy victory. At no point is knowledge of the books assumed, although thorough reading is recommended, if only to gain insight into the fantastic world of Middle Earth.

The first striking feature of the game pops up right at the start, when you are offered the option of playing up to four Hobbits during the one game. The characters of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are up for grabs, although the booklet warns that it may be easier to begin with just the one character. Indeed, the beginner’s program settles for Frodo only. Even in the beginner’s program there is still plenty of scope to influence the behaviour of your Hobbit companions via the use of the influential and highly effective SAY TO command. Often the likes of SAY TO character ‘HELLO’ is sufficient to draw most characters into conversation. As in most commands which are used often, the programming team have thoughtfully provided the abridged form of (GANDALF) ‘HELLO’ as an option.

Many of the problems you face will be impossible to unravel without the help of other characters, some of whom will only be helpful if you adopt the right tone or ask the right questions. Your fellow Hobbits will, as a rule, follow your lead and can be made to do most useful tasks as with SAY TO SAM ‘CLIMB TREE’.

Playing the game you find the booklet isn’t kidding about playability. Your active control of characters in combination with the computer’s habit of intelligently keeping the action moving along when you are not controlling things is one of the perfectly enchanting aspects of the game. The program really does its level best to act intelligently at all times.

Going beyond the beginner’s program you might like to play the game with friends, each on taking on the responsibility for one furry-footed Hobbit. The commands BECOME PIPPIN or I AM PIPPIN, or simply PIPPIN, will swing the game round so it is played out through the eyes of Pippin until it is changed once more. To show who is playing at any particular time, and to indicate which Hobbits are present with you, the screen uses a layered effect whereby the top layer has I AM FRODO etc along the top with his picture, while down the sides are the pictures of any other Hobbits present. Lower layers show the pictures of Hobbits not currently present in the same location. This use of layers slows the game down — with every new location the layers are re-sorted to reflect any splits or meetings in the groups.

When arranging parties to tackle specific problems it might be worth remembering that Pippin is the most agile, Sam the most sturdy, and Frodo the smartest. Sam, being Frodo’s devoted friend, always tries to stay close to him. During the course of the game characters suffer weariness from the constant struggle and their strength declines. The best remedy for low morale is a good meal and a rest, but if the Hobbits should chance upon skilled healers or magical herbs this helps them endure the fray even better. In combat, Hobbits are generally thought poor fighters as they normally live cheerfully peaceful lives in the relative seclusion of The Shire — so they should not be thrown into the midst of gory battle.

Towards the end of the booklet an abbreviated vocabulary gives some insight into the 800 words used by the adventure. The rules which govern the use of Inglish (first used in The Hobbit) are related at length and are informative enough to guide even a newcomer to the delights of adventuring. The program is very good at asking for clarification of any input about which it is not sure.

Two features from The Hobbit have been retained in this game. Mapping in The Hobbit could become pretty unreliable owing to the structure of the game, and so it is in this case. The other feature of The Hobbit retained is the need to be ever careful and watchful over what and how many items you are carrying. In addition to adding weight to your burden, some objects increase your effective size, which can lead to trouble when negotiating a small door or tunnel. Liquids cannot be carried without a container and you must ration your acquisitions to just those you can manage to carry.

Lord of the Rings took over 15 months to program. After waiting for so long people may initially be disappointed with the result. The game is slow, the pictures are rudimentary, and, due to the glaring white background for the text, this adventure is almost unplayable on a colour TV. The prose is strangely stilted with descriptions which tell of objects within objects and upon objects, in a very dry and dreary manner. The dubious examples of humour in the game detract from such an auspicious work and there are times when you’re not quite sure whether something is supposed to be humorous or not, like, were there really photographs in the original as found described in the first frame? Having said that, the game features a very good and informative EXAMINE command, a super friendly vocabulary which gets just about anything you want to do done, and it takes the interaction of characters to new heights in adventuring.

On the whole, despite unfavourable reviews from other quarters, this adventure is worthy of a Smash as it reveals enough features to place it above the usual release. In particular, its friendly vocabulary and its options on character play add to the standing of an already monumental work.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: not difficult
Graphics: to be honest, poor
Input facility: well beyond verb/noun
Response: slow
General rating: a highly commercial and entertaining game

Atmosphere

9

Vocabulary

9

Logic

9

Addictive quality

10

Overall

9

THE NEVERENDING STORY

Producer: Ocean Software Ltd
Author: Ian Weatherburn, Simon Butler, Fred Gray
Price: £9.95

‘A boy who needs a friend finds a world that needs a hero’. So goes the caption at the top of this story which follows the theme of the film about Bastian Balthazar Bux, a boy who discovers a dusty old book on the shelves of an antique bookshop. The book is titled the ‘The Never Ending Story’ and chronicles the ever changing fortunes of the people of Fantasia. Bastian takes the book and, blowing the dust from its jacket, reveals the cover depicting Auryn, a silver and gold medallion symbolizing the strength of Fantasia. On reaching school he avoids his teachers, climbs into an abandoned attic and settling himself down on an old rug begins to become absorbed in this compelling tale. Their Empress is weak and the peoples of Fantasia are badly in need of a hero. Cairon the physician tells them of a small boy, Atreyu, who is the only person who can find the saviour of Fantasia. You take on the role of the hero Atreyu. Only through your endeavours can the kingdom be restored to its former glory.

The main characters are familiar from the film. The three travellers, Rockbiter, Teeny-weeny, and Nighthob are on their way to see the eternal, ever youthful, Empress ruler of Fantasia at the very top of the Ivory Tower. Gmork the Werewolf, the main servant of the dreaded Nothing, will range all his powers against you, the one person who can stop his master from destroying Fantasia. Morla, the Ancient One, is an enormous earth-covered tortoise who lives in the Swamps of Sadness. Two animals are of particular importance to Atreyu. Artax is the faithful steed of Atreyu while Falkor, the huge white Luckdragon, will lend assistance to anyone who carries Auryn.

Never Ending Story is an unusual adventure in that it comes on two cassettes with a pre-game side to be loaded before the games proper. Each of the three games has a different backdrop along the top of the screen onto which token graphics are placed to represent the objects you are carrying and the companion who accompanies you. Confirmation also lies in the text of the location description and inventory. Up to five objects can be carried at one time and they are displayed at the top right-hand corner of the screen. Any companion, such as Falkor or Atrax, who is with you will have their picture appear at the bottom of the object display area. Larger illustrations for locations or events appear in the top left. Breaking the screen up in this way is rather novel and certainly works well.

Never Ending Story is a very professional piece of software with really good looks. The pictures that represent the different locations, objects and characters are of a very high quality. It’s debatable whether the game would really have needed so many parts were it not for the inefficient programming. Also, some location descriptions partly scroll off before you’ve had a chance to read them — very irritating and unnecessary, and the input has a tendency to ‘auto-repeat’. The lack of an EXAMINE command is quite a serious omission, as without such a command a game lacks depth. At the crystal/telescope problem a powerful EXAMINE command would have been extremely useful and would have added to the player’s enjoyment and sense of participation in the game. Taking the first game as an example, there don’t appear to be too many problems to solve; three to be exact. Apart from the crystal/telescope problem I can only recall how to get past the thorn bush, and how to get past the multi-coloured desert. However the game is good fun to play and the solutions to the problems are logical and reasonable enough. All in all an enjoyable romp through the fantastical world of Fantasia.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: not so difficult
Graphics: very good
Presentation: very pleasant
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: fast
General Rating: Well worth playing.

Atmosphere

7/10

Vocabulary

7/10

Logic

8/10

Addictive Quality

8/10

Overall

7/10

THEIR FINEST HOUR

Producer: Century Communications Ltd
Author: John K. Wilson, Nicholas Palmer
Price: £9.95

Their Finest Hour is an icon driven strategy game out of the same mould as Century’s previous release, The Fourth Protocol. That game was based upon the best seller by Frederick Forsyth and this game has an equally auspicious background as it finds its setting amongst the brave World War II pilots who inflicted Germany’s first defeat of the war in the Battle of Britain.

Game design was by Nicholas Palmer, author of ‘The Comprehensive Guide to Wargaming’, and he has brought his love and knowledge of the genre to the computer screen with true military precision. The game is eminently playable and as your interest in the heroic exploits of these flying aces increases so you find yourself becoming more and more absorbed with the task of halting and eventually turning back the northward advance of- the Luftwaffe over southern England.

This game scores on all fronts: design; looks and playability. Design is centred around two map scales — one a small-scale map showing southern Britain where dots represent radar stations, air bases and nine ports, and the other providing large-scale maps showing much smaller areas (eg Devon & Cornwall) where dots inside squares are air bases from which you launch your aircraft, anchors are ports, and five dice-like dots are the radar stations which scan the skies for the approaching German air force. Around the edge of the map screen are the main icons such as anti-aircraft flak, plane allocation to the ten air bases, and repairs to installations at the beginning of each day.

You can alarm bases and direct planes during the day which leads you off into sub-menus where relative strengths can be increased or decreased. For example, the Alarm Sub-Menu gives the choice of putting the crews of an air base on hut, cockpit or plane alert where each represents an escalation in readiness for the approach of Goering’s forces from the south. The computer knows which air base you wish to alter by an ingeniously simple method. A cursor glides over the map screens and you place it over the air base, radar station or port you are interested in. You can then use the icons around the sides to alter flak cover (which starts at two anti-aircraft guns per site), plane allocation to bases, or alert status for bases, or you can just request information via the information icon. This last feature is a very useful one as in such an involved game — constant updates on information on both your own movements and those of the enemy forces are vital. Reports on enemy aircraft are not just plonked into your lap; a strong thread of strategy runs throughout the game and in this case the accuracy of reports on enemy movements is governed by weather conditions and the watchfulness of the radar crews and ground observers.

This is certainly a good-looking game. The maps are geographically accurate representations of southern Britain while the icons for such diverse operations as tape, keyboard/joystick, plane allocation and repairs are pleasing to the eye and reveal delightful detail. The icons are driven by whizzing a cute pointing hand around the edge of the maps with the SPACE key and selecting with ENTER. Sub-menus and bulletins are flashed up onto the screen in a very neat fashion in keeping with the looks of the game as a whole.

Not only is the game playable, it also has that rich blend of strategy which will ensure it is played long and often. Right from the start you can choose how fast time passes by selecting the clock icon and selecting a pulse rate between 1 (impossibly fast) and 255 (where every move can be scrutinised to the last). 30 is thought an expert’s speed and 150 time enough for the anxious.

The attacking German forces are made up of ME109’s, the main German fighters, ME110’s the fighter bombers, and the HE 111’s, JU 88’s, DO 17’s (Flying Pencils), and the JU 87’s (Stukas) which are the (progressively lighter and faster) bombers but the heavy HE 111’s and JU 88’s do the most damage. The numbers of these aircraft types will vary each time you play and so you will look afresh each time at the initial Intelligence Assessment with its superb picture of Winston Churchill (his picture on the loading screen must be the best I’ve seen on a Spectrum).

The battle begins on August 12 and can continue until September 21 when the British forces win if you haven’t already been defeated. After each day’s play Churchill calls you from his bunker to inform you how the War Cabinet assesses your progress. If your losses are severe Churchill asks for your resignation.

There are many strands of strategy running throughout the game. Well rested pilots are more then a match for the Luftwaffe, so early interceptions of the enemy forces should be on the highest rating of aggression (ie 6 from the choice 0-6). An aggression factor of 0 on your part sees your pilots intimidated by combat and they return to base. If the pilots are tired, and it’s worth noting that when in the air they tire very quickly, it is probably better to avoid combat unless the enemy force is composed more of heavy bombers than swift fighter craft.

After lunch each day your pilots will be tired and you should recall the most exhausted to base. Squadrons at the end of their tether should normally be rotated to Scotland, especially if the weather forecast is bad, making enemy raids less effective. You may decide not to alert some squadrons in the morning so as to keep them fresh for afternoon interceptions. Care must be taken to ensure German raids do not catch RAF planes on the ground. Squadrons on cockpit or runway alert can get themselves into the air quickly, but unalerted or hut-alert bases run the risk of being caught hopping. However, the higher the alert the more tired the pilots will become so it is not such a good idea to go on too high alert too early.

The Luftwaffe goes mainly for radar installations and airfields at first, trying to crack your defences before they attack the ports and soften them up for invasion. Because of this it may well be a good idea to harden up defences (via the flak icon) along the southern coast radar stations, as it is these which give you the earliest detection of the advancing forces. Needless to say, should all your south coast radar stations become damaged, you are almost blind to the advancing forces, save the occasional ground observation. Your best planes are the Spitfires; they are slightly faster and more effective than the Hurricanes.

As with all complex games this one has its fair share of bugs. At one point in a game I had more planes destroyed during combat than actually existed and this resulted in having P762 planes left. Also, on destroying an entire German force, I was then constantly attacked by zero planes. The way the game stops whenever a message is up on the screen is, to me, a negative point as it gives valuable thinking time during which the players can collect their thoughts and coolly work out the best strategy. This is a luxury not afforded the strategists during World War II. Perhaps the combat algorithm is just that bit askew. During battle you can have the situation where one Hurricane (slower than the Spitfire) holds at bay a considerable German fighter force. The rate at which the pilots tire is a great cause for concern. During just one morning pilots become tired and can actually reach the end of their tether. All the while the advancing German pilots seem to keep remarkably fresh and just keep on coming at you!

Nicholas Palmer wanted to devise a game which gives the player the claustrophobic feel of crouching in a command centre struggling with insufficient material. He has constructed the game so that the computer controlling the German forces, far from being a passive opponent, exploits weaknesses in your defences intelligently. The strategy element varies from game to game, from day to day, and from one battle to the next. The one day option is very useful as the main option takes a long time to play. Because the strategy element is so pervasive the game becomes really absorbing and can hold your interest for a considerable period of time — the one game can last days or even weeks. I think Their Finest Hour is a superb strategy game and a worthy successor to the popular Fourth Protocol.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: choice of pace
Graphics: excellent
Presentation: excellent
Input facility: icon-driven
Response: fast
General Rating: Very good.

Atmosphere

8/10

Logic

7/10

Addictive Quality

9/10

Overall

8/10

THE WORM IN PARADISE

Level 9, £9.95

The Silicon Dream trilogy, begun by the text-only Snowball and followed up by Return to Eden, is now completed with The Worm in Paradise. Being the third part of a trilogy, this game is guaranteed a lot of sales but the game will make perfect sense without playing the other two, and it has enough worthy features to recommend it on its own.

The story takes place on the planet Eden, one hundred years after the time of Snowball and Return to Eden. You are a citizen of Enoch megapolis, the first and smallest of the domed cities which support Eden’s population of half a billion people. There is no contact between the human populations inside the domes and the world outside, so rumours of alien life forms on the planet are rife. It is said that flying saucers are regularly seen and that intelligent moles live in deep tunnels.

The game takes place during the reign of the third Kim, and Eden is run as a benevolent bureaucracy. This is the paradise of the title, where the silent majority live in the peace created by full employment, no crime, good housing, and more entertainment than is possible to enjoy in a lifetime. There is no way to challenge the system, but what right-thinking individual would want to?

The politics of Enoch are curious and take Reganomics to their logical conclusion. Governments can theoretically run at a profit, extorting no taxes from their citizens but getting income from such sources as fines for criminal offences. This involves tight controls on services and routine supervision of the populace to catch trouble-makers. Millions of robots, immune from corruption, work tirelessly to run the state as the Government wishes. Robots do all the important work and most of the menial jobs. It is difficult to tell whether humans are the leisured aristocrats, or the pets of robots.

The Enoch Police naturally enough turn in a profit. Fines rather than imprisonment, rewards to informants, summary justice to cut court costs, and fines on every small vice ensure a steady stream of money towards the long robot arm of the law. Enoch hospitals also make a profit, partly by the re-sale of body parts to ageing recipients and partly by charging for in-patient care. Making medical advice freely available via computer and minimising the time patients spend in hospital helps to turn costs into profits. In the larger scheme of things the people of Eden, originally intended as a source for future colonists, are left with no further role to play as the robots and machines mine every asteroid and hollow out every moon in their path, and build people on site.

The story behind this adventure is much better than the normal hotch potch which accompanies other games. The plot has real depth and relevance, a bit like the famous Star Trek TV scripts. As with Star Trek this game has a fair sprinkling of humour to sweeten what is quite a bitter task, that of changing an inhuman bureaucracy into a society where humans are worth something beyond just being robot fodder (that is, if I got the gist of the plot right from the amount of the adventure I completed).

You begin within a dream where you find yourself in a garden. Following the worm you feel pleased with yourself for getting somewhere whereupon you suddenly wake up! It becomes clear that you have been dreaming in a pleasuredome and, leaving your visor aside, you can begin the adventure proper — unless you were dreaming of a dream within a...

The Worm in Paradise evolved alongside a 12 month enhancement on Level 9’s very own adventure system. Standard features include a 1,000 word vocabulary, a very highly advanced English input, memory enhancing-text compression, the now familiar and very much appreciated type-ahead, and multi-tasking so a player need never wait while a picture is drawn. To be honest, the graphics take imaginative skills a bit too far and most of the pictures can only be described as poor. The story, descriptive depth, vocabulary, and the many sophisticated features go to make Level 9’s latest a really good adventure game.

COMMENTS

Difficulty: no push over
Graphics: imaginative, but poor
Presentation: good
Input facility: sophisticated
Response: fast
General rating: excellent

Atmosphere

9

Vocabulary

9

Logic

9

Addictive quality

8

Overall

9

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The two games reviewed this issue posed quite a problem. Both are very good. Both were written by people who obviously care very much for the hobby of wargaming. One was written as a straight board-to-computer conversion (if such a thing is possible). The other tries to take advantage of the computer’s inherent visual qualities in terms of presentation — not to make it gimmicky, but simply to experiment with a new approach to wargame interaction. So I had to get my priorities in order.

Wargaming as a hobby has been suffering for some time. Many people say this is because the hobby appears inflexible to outsiders. Is producing a computer wargame that acts like a board wargame giving people what they want, or is it just preaching to the converted (for want of better terminology)? On the other hand, are new approaches to wargaming just fads which however pretty, are unlikely to attract new people to the hobby? Indeed, do they deter wary afficionados of the genre, despite the qualities such games may boast?

Or am I missing the point? Is computer wargaming becoming a new hobby in Its own right? Could be, could be...

DESERT RATS

Producer: CCS
Author: Robert T. Smith
Price: £9.95

RT Smith won acclaim for his last game, Arnhem. His latest work, Desert Rats, outclasses Arnhem in terms of both scale and quality. Arnhem depicts a single battle, massive though it was in terms of the men and equipment deployed by both sides. Now Mr Smith has returned with a truly massive game covering the history of the North African campaign in a series of scenarios which range from a seven turn introductory game based on the British Battleaxe offensive to a six hundred and twenty four turn game depicting the conflict from Pommel’s arrival in the Spring of 1941 up to his departure at the end of 1942.

There are no skill levels as such, but the matter of game complexity is dealt with in an innovative way related to the status of Malta. There are three different ways Malta’s importance can be portrayed. The first is the historical setting, where Malta is used successfully by the British to increase their own supplies and cut off those of the enemy. The second, Operation Herkules, assumes that the Axis forces capture Malta and as a result their supply levels increase greatly during the latter half of 1942. The third option does not allow the British to use Malta — or assumes that Axis suppression was severe enough to negate the advantages offered by Malta — thus constantly increasing supplies reach the Axis forces.

The game can be played by one or two players, and in the one player game the computer can play either side. As usual, the excellent rules book is crammed with historical notes as if the author is urging you to test the validity of his game. Indeed, the booklet often provides an insight to good strategy and is worth reading even by those familiar with the historical context as a whole, because the information it contains is so relevant to the scenarios presented.

The sequence of play allows the British player to order his forces first, with the Axis player following. Movement and subsequent combat are handled simultaneously once both sides have issued their instructions and play proceeds to the next turn. As usual, reports are always available and the same variety of combat and movement modes as those found in Arnhem are employed successfully here.

Apart from the standard move/fight options available to a unit, the British player has the option to GO TO PORT at the rate of one unit per turn. The order allows British units to travel from Tobruk to Alexandria, or vice-versa, as long as Tobruk remains held by British forces.

Units are mainly in the form of brigades, battalions and HQs. Italian units are only depicted as divisions. Unit symbols are clearly marked for easy identification and each side has different representative colours. For those using monochrome monitors, Axis and Allied forces have opposite facing units and British units are also shown in outline.

The screen consists of four areas. The largest of these shows the map of the region over which the battles were fought. A small window in the upper right hand corner of the screen shows the date and time (the game is not ‘real-time’ however). Below this is a dual purpose window displaying order options and messages and finally, at the base of the screen, the identity of the unit currently being ordered is displayed.

Stacking rules are also employed, allowing balanced groups of units to make concentrated moves upon the enemy. Incidentally, as losses are inflicted on units, they may actually change their designation and become parts of other units — but such things are handled in a fairly straightforward manner so as not to burden players with too much irrelevant detail.

Logistics play an important part in the game. Various kinds of movement and attack orders deplete the supplies of units to varying degrees. The supply rules in this game are the most complex I’ve dealt with for some time. Unless attention is paid to the depletion of units’ supplies, you will soon find yourself up a proverbial gum tree!

Although the game plays in a similar fashion to Arnhem, it is reassuring to see that the author has decided not to rest on the laurels of his previous creation and has modified the rules system so the actual battle sequences play faster and yet more confusingly to add realism. The effect works well and enhances the feeling of tension prevalent throughout the game.

There are six scenarios in all. The first five are in chronological order whereas the last one attempts to cover the entire campaign. To be honest, there was no way that this last scenario could be played in time for the review schedule but from playing the others, I can only say that it looks very tempting indeed. To play the campaign to its conclusion would undoubtedly require several sessions at the computer. To master this game would probably require even more time. The only way to win the scenario is to destroy all the opposing units. At the same time, your own losses must be kept low. This is the only major point of contention I have with the game. As the author himself points out in the historical notes, the Axis powers withdrew before they suffered total annihilation and even then, inflicted massive losses on the Allies during the campaign. The other scenarios however, each have their own victory conditions and all of these reflect the difficulty of the actual situations.

One other area, not so much an inaccuracy as an omission, is the lack of airpower on either side. This can be accounted for, however, when you consider that rarely did the RAF or Luftwaffe have any decisive affect on engagements, and as the author himself reminds us in the designer’s notes, there were some limitations imposed by the lack of memory — an incredible amount is packed into the game.

But this does lead me to the final point. Whilst the game excels in some areas, I feel that Mr Smith may have bitten off more than a Spectrum can chew. It may seem unfair to say this as the author is evidently a most capable programmer and a dedicated military historian. But the designer’s notes are full of excuses for the things he couldn’t put in — all because of the limitations of the computer rather than his limitations as a programmer. Perhaps a modular series of games would have worked better. Air support rules could have been added for the sake of completeness. The scale could have been one that better suited the game and Mr Smith’s apparent wishes. Then the Spectrum would have had a classic series of wargames, I’m sure.

What Desert Rats does offer is a massive game that strives to retain every historical point of accuracy despite limitations and ever present compromises. Perhaps these criticisms should be laid at the producers and not the author himself. Perhaps other factors prevented a series of games from being developed. Whatever the reasons, Desert Rats is a superb game that could have been even more substantial.

Presentation

89%
Clearly laid out but a little cramped on the screen

Rules

97%
Well developed and written.

Playability

85%
Unwieldy for the total beginner but otherwise there should be no problems.

Graphics

60%
Let down the game a little through the ambiguity of some terrain features on the screen.

Authenticity

90%
In his attempt to cover the entire campaign in one game, the author may have missed the importance of other factors. Accepting Mr Smith’s priorities however, the level of accuracy is very high.

Value for Money

87%
Nothing innovative here — but a superb application of the conventional wargaming concept nonetheless.

Overall

88%
Massive in scope, but begs the question of the importance of originality and clarity of presentation. Will appeal to hard core wargamers looking for a new challenge.

THEIR FINEST HOUR

Century Communications, £9.95

Different stages of combat readiness allow interceptor forces to be prepared with the utmost efficiency. Use the pointing finger to select between options

In the wake of PSS’s highly acclaimed Battle of Britain, Century Communications, better known for their series of computer handbooks, have published an icon driven simulation of this famous conflict. The game was programmed Fourth Protocol style by John Wilson, but designed by veteran board wargamer, Nicholas Palmer, author of the definitive The Comprehensive Guide to Board Wargaming. The result is the most fascinating computer wargame yet to appear on the Spectrum.

It’s hard, in fact, to know exactly where to start praising the game as it excels in so many areas. The packaging is medium format ‘bookcase’ style, containing a cassette and instruction leaflet. ‘Leaflet’ really fails to do justice to the excellent rules slip. From a potted history of events that led up to the battle, you are taken systematically through the different rules and given guidelines on play at each stage. Diagrammatic summaries of the icons used in the game make the straightforward play techniques even easier to grasp for the beginner. Finally, a section of notes from Nicholas Palmer explains the philosophy of game design used.

On the other side of this ‘leaflet’ is a map of the southeast of the UK and part of occupied France. The map shows airbases, anti-aircraft installations, radar stations and ports, as well as major cities the Luftwaffe might attack. This supplements the map presented on the screen during play.

The game has a pulse rate feature used to set the speed of the game. The rate can be varied between 1 and 255, meaning the game can be finely tuned to individual taste: it can be set up to suit a wide range of tastes from those of the player who likes to analyse a game in fine detail as if it were a solitaire board game to the player who wishes to test personal reactions and ability to make fast crucial decisions. The clock can be paused for necessary breaks in play when the game doesn’t need to be saved, or temporarily speeded up during certain times of relative inactivity. Once the pulse rate has been set it remains the same for the greater part of play.

As with its obvious competitor, Battle of Britain, Their Finest Hour allows the player to select single day or campaign scenarios. The single day option is perhaps the best start point for the beginner. Once the instructions and nature of play have been thoroughly digested, the player can progress to the full campaign and decide how best to set the pace of the battle. In the one day scenario, victory is assessed at nightfall when the attacks have ceased. In the campaign game, at the end of each day’s fighting you are summoned to Winston Churchill’s command bunker where he assesses your progress. It is possible (though very difficult) to deal a crippling blow to the Luftwaffe during a single day, in which case victory will be yours. If you have managed the forces particularly badly, Churchill asks for your resignation. Otherwise, he merely assesses your progress so far, and play continues the next day. You may decide to quit at any point during the campaign game, and victory is given to whichever side has performed best.

Intelligence reports are crucial for planning the initial defence. The type and number of aircraft available to the enemy are detailed at the start of the game, and although the numbers may differ each time the game is played, subsequent RAF losses are always measured against this first intelligence report. The Luftwaffe has ME109 fighters, ME110 fighter bombers, HE111 and JU88 heavy bombers and the medium DO17 and JU87 bombers at its disposal. British air defence is made up entirely of squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes. The author acknowledges that Beauforts, Defiants and the like also had a small part to play, but for the purposes of the game he chooses to ignore them. This has no detrimental effect on the game as a simulation.

Whilst monitoring incoming enemy attacks the player has the option of setting the level of flak, and can order different levels of alert for pilots. Alerts can be made locally or set to bring an entire region’s interceptor force into action. Seriously fatigued pilots may be sent to Scotland for rest while new pilots are brought in. More experienced pilots are worth treating as well as possible under the circumstances, as they have the greatest effect on the enemy when in battle. Repairs may be carried out on those airfields which have suffered an enemy attack. If these repairs are intensive, they return an airfield to operative status quickly, but during the day that repairs are being carried out the field is vulnerable to attack.

When a German airborne unit is successfully intercepted, the player is asked to supply an aggression factor. Minimal aggression causes the RAF pilots to break off the attack before casualties are suffered, whereas a high aggression factor results in relatively high losses on both sides. If an enemy squadron consists entirely of fighter aircraft, it’s best to save your pilots and break off the attack. If it’s mainly a bomber formation, then the opportunity to damage it as severely as possible should be taken. Germans gain victory points with successful raids on ports and cities. Successful Luftwaffe strikes against radar bases eventually result in severe blind spots occurring in the defensive network, which can lead to your downfall.

Forces may also be moved to respond to differing strategies from the Germans. On some occasions, the Luftwaffe might make sporadic, small attacks on varying targets; alternatively they may try to smash your opposition in one fell swoop. The variety of strategies that may be employed by the computer make this one of the most compelling games I’ve ever come across. Having now played the game several times, I have not yet been able to anticipate more than the simplest of actions on the enemy’s part.

The way in which the icons are used is very neat. All the possible actions are clearly set out before you. Pressing the wrong key doesn’t always lead to a major mistake — you can usually get out of it without any particular problem. Sometimes a message appears such as, ‘Already in flight, Sir!’ if you try to scramble an airborne unit. Full combat results appear in messages which list the numbers of each type of aircraft lost by each side in a particular engagement.

The game lacks the optional arcade element present in Battle of Britain and is inferior in one or two aesthetic points (such as the way the radar screen could be scanned in the PSS game) but instead the player has a brilliantly implemented simulation which does full justice to the historic events it represents. The talents of John Wilson and Nicholas Palmer have been used to the greatest effect. To my mind, the combination of their abilities has resulted in the finest wargame currently available to Spectrum owners.

Presentation 88%
Beautifully effective — and useful too!

Rules 94%
Excellently devised and explained

Playability 92%
Icon driven commands take very little getting used to

Graphics 94%
More in the way they are used than in technical complexity, they are excellent. Even the loading screen has an amazingly executed picture of Winston Churchill

Authenticity 96%
Once a good pulse rate is set and the campaign game is played, the qualities of the game as a simulation really stand out

Value for money 95%
Compared to others of this ilk, very well priced

Overall 96%
Sheer brilliance

2112 AD

Producer: Design Design
Price: £7.95
Author: Graham Stafford and Stuart Ruecroft

Apart from being a thirteen year old rock album, 2112 AD is the title of Des Des’s latest game for the simple reason that it is set in that year. London, in the scenario, is not the fair (?) city we all know today but in fact a massive computing complex dedicated to running the entire country. Everybody is free from participating in menial tasks as robots have been designed to do all the dirty work. Everything is tickety-boo until some naughty hackers go and play around with the system.

Now the supposedly benevolent computer is turning into a digital dictator, using the robots it designed for peaceful purposes to impose its reign of terror. Your task is to locate all the pieces of a Switching Code and insert them into the computer in the correct places. Ten of these are scattered around the complex. You have an electronic companion called Poddy to help you achieve your quest.

The game uses icons for control. These are displayed at the bottom right corner of the screen. There isn’t enough room for all of these to be displayed at once so selecting a particular icon changes all those currently shown. To the left of the icon display area is a scrolling message screen used for both game and help messages.

Apart from a Help icon which sends information to the message window when selected, icons allow the control of Poddy, the carrying and use of miscellaneous items collected during the game, the ability to check the current status of both man and dog (or modify each within certain limits) and game options such as joystick selection. Double clicking an icon returns you to direct control of your character on the screen.

Graphics are somewhat akin to those employed in such games as Tir Na Nog as they use hi-res single colour graphic backgrounds upon which the characters move about. The main difference is that each room is a different screen. The characters may also walk into the foreground so the screen scrolls up and down to a degree. As the characters may also move behind objects on the screen, any that are likely to seriously obscure the view, disappear at opportune moments.

Most of the other characters in the game tend to be mechanical in nature. As these are controlled by the malfunctioning computer, the most harmless looking robots have a habit of hampering you at every opportunity. Items may be placed in their way to stop them or if you have the first aid kit, you can often rectify any minor damage they inflict. For effective control of Poddy, he must remain within the immediate vicinity and this tends to slow you down somewhat until you become accustomed to controlling two characters. Also Poddy must be kept fully powered. There are various power points enabling this but if you neglect him, his usefulness inevitably suffers. Likewise, the main character must be kept fit so it becomes necessary to keep an eye open for food.

The game begins in the central location where the Code ROMs have to be placed. To ensure that they are being collected in the right order, when one is found it should be dropped in this room. If it appears in the special cells it is correct. If it falls to the floor, i t has been returned too soon. It doesn’t take long for things to get complicated.

With your faithful robo-friend Poddy you stroll through the cityscape in 2112AD, a game from Graham Stafford of Design Design

CRITICISM

“This game resembles Cuchulainn’s adventure sagas in only the most superficial respects. It has some good original ideas and an interesting approach to gameplay. Although it takes a while to get used to the idea of dealing with two characters and a series of special function icons, once this familiarity is acquired, it becomes possible to get totally immersed within the game. However, the pace of action is such that unless you found the speed of Marsport satisfactory, you may well decide that this is a little slow for your tastes. Personally, I found it enjoyable to be able to appreciate the animation whilst dealing with the thought provoking problems the game provides.”

“Oh dear! I’m the sole hope for humanity — well the UK anyway — in this game. DD have made a good job of the icons and the animation and scrolling are both very smooth. The lack of sound made a big impression on me, though why, I’m not sure. I don’t think this one holds any major surprises, but it is better than the standard, run of the mill game. I think Graham Stafford could have done better, because the storyline has a lot of potential. It’s the first Design Design game I haven’t been mad on. The graphics, despite being smooth, don’t seem to have anything over those of On the Run. You’ll have to pull your socks up Design Design — I wouldn’t want my favourite software house getting a bad name.”

“I first saw 2112 AD screens a few months ago from a very shy and retiring Graham Stafford and couldn’t wait for the finished version with a robotised Poddy. The first thing that struck me was the way the screen was set up — a sort of cross between Filmation I and II, which creates a tremendous effect with smooth movements and detailed animated characters. Everything, except moving, is done via icons which are large, detailed and easily recognisable. All the things you can pick up could come in useful, and my problem was deciding what to keep and what to give to Poddy. (Don’t forget, if you give him too much to carry, he slows down). Lots of pretty graphics and great games with little sound seems to sum up Design Design — and it works most times. One of my favourite games to date.”

Ahh! You’ve left Poddy behind. 2112AD from Design Design

COMMENTS

Control keys: selectable layouts
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: limited on screen but effective on icons
Graphics: very good resolution and animation
Sound: none
Skill levels: 1
General rating: good animated adventure.

Use of computer

89%

Graphics

85%

Playability

82%

Getting started

83%

Addictive qualities

81%

Value for money

83%

Overall

83%

ARC OF YESOD

Producer: Thor
Price: £8.95
Author: The Thor team

After the runaway success of Nodes of Yesod a sequel has finally arrived from the Liverpudlian demi-gods (Thor/Odin) in the form of Arc of Yesod. Once more the star of the show is the Rt Hon Charlemagne ‘Charlie’ Fortheringham-Grunes, the man who battled bravely against the black slab Monolith in Nodes. Though he battled bravely Charlie lost the contest, and the Monolith teleported off-world to escape destruction. Luckily the ionic destruction caused by the Monolith’s hasty departure allowed it to be traced to its place of origin: Ariat, a strange alien planet.

Earth is still in danger — if the people of Ariat manage to download the information gathered by the Monolith, they will no doubt take advantage of the detailed knowledge it contains and attack Earth itself. They are believed to have constructed a massive battle cruiser capable of taking out most of the Galaxy. A shuttle, hurriedly prepared, transports Charlie to Ariat. Once again Charlie has been charged with saving life as we know it — his job is disarm and destroy the Monolith before the Ariatans can retrieve the information it contains.

Paradropping onto Ariatan soil, Charlie finds himself skulking on the outskirts of the city where the Monolith is held. He needs to find some way of reaching the device... the game begins.

Charlie’s best line of attack is to get underground and travel to the Security Centre via the large network of caverns and caves that nestle below the city. The surface view of Ariat shows the city in the background set against the night sky. As Charlie moves off the left or right of a screen, a new screen flicks into view. Small manholes are dotted around the city, and Charlie must use them to gain access to the subterranean world in which most of the action takes place.

Charlie is an agile fellow, who can leap and bound quite deftly in the low gravity environment of Ariat. ‘Jump’ sends our hero skyward into a forward somersault spin, to land firmly on his feet. In conjunction with the left and right keys, this is Charlie’s main method of transport — useful when moving around the ledge filled caverns of Ariat. With a few well-timed sproings and cavorts it’s possible to negotiate most of the constructions and obstructions found underground. A teleporter system exists within the labyrinth, and Charlie can zoom between locations by stepping into one of the strategically placed teleport units.

Apart from static obstacles, there are mobile nasties that take some dodging. A whole range of strange and weird beasties can be found in the caves, and some nasties float in the atmosphere, while others trog about on the floor. The floor-trogging species of baddie tends to be pretty indestructible. If Charlie walks into one of them he’s bounced all aver the cave interior. Airfloaters disintegrate when touched but, like the ground animals, contact with one costs Charlie some of his essential life energy. He’s got four lives, each if which is lost after too much energy has been sapped encounters with aliens. A little sine wave pulsing up and down next to the life counter shows how much of the current life’s energy remains, and the readout becomes smaller with each clash with the flora and fauna.

A Sphere, or Electronic Mole, fights on Charlie’s side. The Sphere is released from Charlie’s backpack and can be controlled left, right, up and down. While the Sphere is under your control, Charlie remains immobile. This gadget is a worthy ally, capable of despatching the nasties by bashing into them. It can also open the secret passages that lie behind some walls by bumping into the masonry which conceals them. Charlie’s armoury contains Smart Bombs that wipe out most of the baddies in the current cave on detonation.

Charlie needs to gather up eight crystals before he can have ago at dealing with the Monolith — the poor chap’s certainly got his work cut out...

CRITICISM

‘There really isn’t a lot of difference between Nodes and Arc. The changes are few and far between — most notable is the enhancement on the graphics: the animated figures are larger and more detailed and the quality of the actual animation is a great deal better than in Nodes. Arc is quite a jolly game, nevertheless, interesting to play and enjoyable to map. Most arcade adventurers will surely enjoy this challenge. Even so, owners of Nodes might well feel a little cheated if they shell out ten quid for a game that, in effect, they already own.’

‘ ‘Brilliant’ sums up my opinion of Arc of Yesod. The graphics, as in Nodes, are great with loads of detail and no spared colour. Sound is a little on the meagre side, maybe, but the intro music is a real ear-opener, especially when amplified. In look it’s very similar to its predecessor — Charlie hasn’t aged a bit — and the game is both playable and addictive. I missed Brookside to play it, a real sacrifice! The packaging is very good and the blurb summarises Charlie’s experiences in Nodes rather well. It just goes to prove that follow-ups aren’t always worse than the originals, as has happened in some cases recently.’

‘I think I must have overplayed Nodes of Yesod because I’m not very impressed with this one. Graphically, this game has the same sort of backgrounds and characters as Nodes. Your man is the same fellow as in Nodes, although his little companion has changed. All the graphics are large, well drawn and well animated and there is very little colour clash. The sound is a pleasure — a lovely three channel simulation in the tune with the title screen and a few burps and beeps during the game itself. Gameplay is exactly the same as in Nodes, so it can’t be called original. If, like me, you’ve got Nodes and have become bored to death with it, I wouldn’t bother with this one. If, on the other hand, you are Nodeless I strongly recommend Arc as you’d find it very playable and addictive.’

Inside a cave full of animated nasties. Watch out, Charlie, time’s dragging on and there are crystals to collect.

COMMENTS

Control keys: 1-0 to change control between the Sphere and Charlie, alternate keys on bottom row for left/right, Q-P Sphere up or Jump for Charlie, A-L Sphere down or drop Smart Bomb, ENTER to pause game
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor and Interface II
Keyboard play: fast, responsive and accurate
Use of colour: cleverly conceived colour scheme avoids colour clash
Graphics: pretty backdrops coupled with excellent animation creates a pleasing effect
Sound: great, but muted — title tune, but not many game effects
Skill levels: 1
Screens:
General rating: A great little game, very much the follow on to Nodes of Yesod — maybe too similar.

Use of computer

91%

Graphics

93%

Playability

92%

Getting started

91%

Addictive qualities

84%

Value for money

86%

Overall

89%

THE BATTLE OF THE PLANETS

Producer: Mikro-Gen Ltd
Author: Chris Hinsley
Price: £9.95

Arch rebel Zoltar’s quest for galactic domination has caused him to attack a universe containing five planetary systems. A group of young superhumans pit their craft, Phoenix, against Zoltar’s Spectran forces. Only the G-Force and their ship Phoenix can prevent Zoltar from destroying all life in the universe under attack.

You control Phoenix. Chasing and destroying enemy ships in space, you also have to fight it out on the surface of planets when Spectran landing craft start eliminating citizens. Once on a civilised world it’s possible to refuel, repair and re-equip Phoenix by docking with fuel and repair ships. Zoltar’s forces only land when your ship is in the same spacetime as them, so the amount of mayhem they cause is limited to some extent!

The Phoenix is equipped with two weapon systems: laser cannons and neutron torpedos. The laser cannons tend to overheat and stop working if they are used continuously, and there’s a finite quantity of energy in the laser cells. Phoenix begins with ten torpedos and fully charged laser cells, and must refuel and repair when armaments run low.

Warpgates allow travel between planet systems — find one, drive into it and a map of the universe pulls into view. The five systems are numbered, and a quick tap on the appropriate number key warps the Phoenix to your destination.

Status information can be called up into a window at the bottom left of the display, where information on your main power unit, shields, torpedo stocks, laser system and the neighbouring planet can be called up. Learning to flick through the displays is important if you are to monitor the state of play during the mission.

The main area of the screen acts as a cockpit view over which a long range scanner system is imposed. A three dimensional view of space as seen from the ship’s bridge employs vector graphics to display planets and enemy craft, with stars moving towards you at a rate governed by your ship’s velocity. Two sights are provided: the square neutron torpedo sight remains static in the centre of the screen, while a mobile sight is used to target lasers and steer the ship. Icons representing enemy craft, warp gates and planets are overlayed onto the cockpit view covering an icon with the mobile sight allows you to drive towards the object it represents. The icon disappears when the corresponding ship, gate or planet appears on the main viewscreen.

Some of the enemy craft can be despatched with a few laser hits while others need a couple of torpedos to reduce them to scrap. When you’re close to an aggressor your shields take a hammering — a hit on an unshielded section of the hull spells instant death.

While you are in the vicinity of a planet, a request for Planet Data reveals the number of enemy landers that are on the surface and the status of the population. If your ship is in the area when a planet’s population is eliminated, you die too, so looking after the citizens is more than a noble aim.

To land on a planet, simply head straight for it, and you arrive on autopilot. The view of a planet’s surface is presented with a line-drawn horizon that scrolls left and right as you move. Lines parallel to the horizon move towards you to indicate forward motion and speed. The landers are squat, tank like machines which shoot at you while you shoot at them. Fuel and repair ships are represented by spanner and fuel-can icons until you get close, when they become revolving geometric shapes. To dock with a maintenance ship, just drive into it.

You’ve only go one life to play with in space, so drive carefully!

CRITICISM

‘I was an avid fan of the BOTP series, and I think I’m going to be a fan of the computer game. I’m glad the game doesn’t use the ill-fated Mikro Plus, because the higher price would surely have devastated its chances of success. The game is similar to Elite and Station graphically, but doesn’t seem to have the scope of either of those. It’s good if you want a blast ’em up with minimal intelligence required, and the game is good fun in a general sense, though I wouldn’t recommend you rush out and get a copy right now.’

‘Battle of the Planets is a sort of Elite without all the hard work of thinking and planning out your strategy. The presentation of the game is very slick and it contains lots of colour without the clashes. The game is nothing like the T.V. series and gets quite boring after a while because it is so easy to stay alive. The long range scanner is thoughtfully arranged and very useful because it is ‘on screen’ all the time which makes locating Zoltar and his chums quite easy. Both sequences (planet and space) tend to lock up when lots of things appear on the screen, meaning a constant speed is hard to maintain. I thought that the planet sequence was a bit too like 3D Tank Duel — not a very good copy at that. Given the simplicity of the game, I feel it’s a bit overpriced.’

‘I started getting a bit fed up with this game as I read the ‘operating manual’ while it loaded. The instructions are unclear and potter into gibberish every so often. The onscreen instructions were difficult to read and only give ‘Z’ as the torpedo fire key. Z-V works fine! Then it was out into space to do battle. Somehow, I just couldn’t get the hang of controlling the game with the keys, and firing the torpedos accurately while steering the ship with a joystick had me beaten. The action can get a bit frantic at times, with all the controls that you need to fiddle with — it wouldn’t be so bad if the Phoenix had a crew, but you’re on a solo mission ... still, it’s not a bad shoot em up.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: O/P, U/I left/right, Q-T up, A-G down, B-SPACE fire, 1-5 select scanner, K/J increase/decrease speed, Z-V fire torpedo
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor
Keyboard play: responsive, but can get tricky
Use of colour: colourful display windows
Graphics: fairly speedy wire frame 3D
Sound: opening tune, then firing noises
Skill levels: one
Screens: five planet systems to defend
General Rating: Not a bad shoot em up quest.

Use of Computer

79%

Graphics

75%

Playability

69%

Getting Started

69%

Addictive Qualities

73%

Value for Money

68%

Overall

71%

BENNY HILL’S MADCAP CHASE

Producer: Dk’tronics Ltd
Author: Don Priestley, Steve Jerrard
Price: £6.95

In the game inspired by the TV series, Benny Hill has decided to volunteer to help his neighbours do some chores. Benny’s friends aren’t there to explain what he’s up to and passers-by tend to assume he’s a thief trying to make away with other people’s property. Well meaning folks noticing Mr Hill dashing around with chattels do their best to catch him. You control Benny and it up to you to finish the three different chores he has to complete, each within a time limit.

The display format is similar to that used in Don Priestley’s earlier game for Dk’tronics, Popeye. The characters on the screen are large and most of the shapes for the background and foreground are squareish and conveniently placed on character boundaries to avoid colour clash. Benny can move left and right across flip screens which are presented in a pseudo 3D: the player sees a side-on view of Benny and his surroundings. Each screen has three horizontal ‘levels’, one behind the other, and Benny can hop between these levels, ‘into’ or ‘out of’ the screen.

The objects in Benny’s world are rather like flats on a stage — each one sits on one of the three levels to the screen. If Benny is travelling along the screen in line with an obstacle, he must hop to another screen level to avoid bumping into the obstruction. Collisions cause Benny to fall to the floor and he loses time. Just to make life more tricky, the street signs and lampposts on certain screens have a habit of shifting between screen levels while Benny is somewhere else. His pursuers can also be encouraged to bump into things, with a bit of nifty footwork, in which case they stagger around for a while seeing stars while birds twitter!

To complete each of his three chores, Benny has to collect objects from the fifth screen and take them to the first screen, running a gauntlet of ever-shifting hazards on the way. People also chase him, and if he is caught the object he has in his possession is returned to its start point and he gets a stomping from the irate member of the public.

Twenty points are added to the score displayed at the bottom right hand side of the screen for each item safely deposited on the first screen. Points are lost for each stomping Benny endures and for collisions with the scenery. Gathering up all the objects and delivering them within the time limit, shown by a counter which ticks down relentlessly, earns bonus points: the time remaining is added to the score and Benny moves on to the next job.

Benny’s first chore is to gather in the washing for Mrs Harras, taking it from the clothesline to the laundry basket. A woman, looking remarkably like Bob Todd in a skirt, chases Benny as soon as he’s collected a piece of clothing. When she’s on the warpath an arrow in the status screen flashes a warning message: ‘Watch Out!”. The second part of the game sees Benny gathering apples for Mr Bramley while being hassled by a farmhand and a tractor, and the third task involves collecting jumble for Mrs Bargin and avoiding a couple of over zealous Bobbies.

CRITICISM

‘This is a strange little game, but it is very playable and addictive. Graphically, Madcap Chase is excellent, each character is large, well animated and has many facial expressions. As with its ‘parent’, Popeye there are very few attribute problems. Sound is well used although I did notice the lack of a tune on the title screen. There’s a little more to this game than just running back and forth from one end of the playing area to the other, as the scenery — telephone boxes, trees, lamp posts and the like — changes position when you pick up or drop an object. At first I really enjoyed playing this one but it gets very monotonous after a short time.’

‘Quite a good game, with neatly drawn big, bulky sprites which are very easy to identify. More sound would have helped. The game is set in a street, with lots of objects lying around. I loved it when Benny hit something or the lady chasing him had a fit. Once you get into the game it becomes more and more interesting and fun to play. It is so playable that it’s easy to get hooked. A good game, well worth getting.’

‘Benny Hill’s Madcap Chase uses the same colour masking routines as Popeye, but the effect produced is not nearly so good. The screen contains a lot of colour, but also a lot of clashes and blocky characters. Dk’Tronics seem to have got a faster game in Benny Hill, but not as much thought has gone into presenting the whole screen, and the gameplay is a bit unresponsive. When I first played this game I was quite pleased with some nice touches — like the woman jumping onto Benny, and the way he leaps about, but after playing the screens right through (very easy) there was no lasting effect on me and I didn’t want to have another go. The first two levels were easy, but the last one was much too hard. Joystick play was impossible, as I kept hitting the fire button which resets the game. Good first impressions, but no lasting appeal for me!’

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2, Dk’tronics (!)
Keyboard play: reasonably responsive
Use of colour: cleverly thought out
Graphics: large, and different
Sound: blips and thumps
Skill levels: one
Screens: fifteen

Use of Computer

71%

Graphics

84%

Playability

83%

Getting Started

83%

Addictive Qualities

69%

Value for Money

75%

Overall

78%

THE CAVES OF DOOM

Producer: Mastertronic Ltd
Author: Mr. Chip Software (Robert Sansom)
Price: £1.99

The evil Lord of Doom is a bit averse to strangers snooping around his planet. Understandable really, but when most people would tell the odd explorer or two to shove off, this guy casts intruders into a pit and leaves them to die. He’s not called the evil Lord of Doom for nothing you know.

Oblivious to the nasty nature of the planet’s master, you decide to do a bit of exploring on Doom. Predictably enough, you are captured by the denizens of the evil Lord, and are left to die, deep within the bowels of the planet. It’s all a bit perturbing really.

After going through heavy bouts of feeling sorry for yourself it soon becomes apparent that the best plan is to try and escape back to the surface where your rocket ship awaits. Obviously it’s not that easy. Numerous sentries are stationed around the Dark Lord’s underground citadel. Some are intelligent, homing in on your body heat, while others patrol mindlessly along their designated paths. Be warned, a sentry’s touch is deadly.

Locked doors bar your route to freedom, blocking the main passageways back to the surface. There are five different types of door, and each needs to be opened with a key which matches the colour of its paintwork. Keys are to be found knocking about the citadel and are picked up by flying over them. One of the keys is a composite object, split into three pieces; all three parts must be collected before the key works. Seven bits to collect in all.

You get around the caves using your jet powered backpack. When you fly, the whirr of jet thrusters resonates around the cave. The only real drawback it has, is that it’s not very economic on fuel. Luckily, ample amounts of this wonder mixture can be found and collected within the subterranean caverns. Strolling over a purple fuel canister tops up your tanks and moves the bar gauge at the top of the screen to the right. Economy driving — trogging along on foot — doesn’t use any fuel, but it is a little slow and you are more likely to get totalled by attacking aliens when you’re on foot.

Each cave occupies the lower part of the screen with the upper area reserved for important information relating to status, lives remaining and score. There is usually an exit on at least one wall of each cave, and as you fly/walk through it another screen flips into view. Dodging the mindless nasties successfully comes with practice, but the homing baddies present more of a problem. They look like white stick men and zoom towards your location with a frightening fervour. You have eight lives to start with, and some quick learning is called for... Your man is unarmed, so the nasties have to be avoided rather than killed, and points are awarded for progress.

Those of you having difficulty with certain screens, or the game as a whole will no doubt leap into the editor supplied. This most handy of utilities permits the playing area supplied with the game to be remodelled, or completely destroyed and rebuilt. In edit mode, the cursor remains stationary while the landscape scrolls behind it. Keying 0 deposits a building block selected from the menu of 255 components under the cursor.

The editor gives access to an infinite number of DIY games, and is perhaps the ultimate cheat mode. But are you sprite enough to cheat death in Caves of Doom the honest way?

CRITICISM

‘Caves of Doom is a pretty good platform game with straightforward but good graphics. There’s not much sound — a little more would have made for more cheerful play. A fast, jolly platform game which I found fun. I enjoyed the editor, too — it added an extra dimension to the basic game. You should get your money’s worth of fun with this one.’

‘Although Caves is not bad, maybe it would have been better value in combination with another, similar program on the tape for £1.99. The cave designer is nice and easy to use but it doesn’t add to the game. I found it did the opposite: instead of enjoying the frustration at a given point in the game, it’s all to easy to edit out the problem altogether. Generally, this is not an excellent program, but better than average.’

‘A couple of years ago I would have been really impressed with this game as it has lots of screens and even a screen editor. Nowadays, it’s below average, and even for a cheapo game it’s not brilliant. Playing the game is fairly straightforward: just fly around and collect the fuel pods for points and try to get all the keys. Graphically, Caves of Doom isn’t good, the characters are small, undetailed and jerky and the backgrounds are too colourful and often garish. Nevertheless, there is a strange sort of addiction about this game — you’ll play it when you’re bored with everything else and then get really addicted to it. The screen editor is very strange and takes time to get used to, but once you do, it’s very useful.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: O left, P right, A up, Z down, G start game, E to edit, 5, 6, 7, 8 to move cursor in edit mode, J/K backwards/ forwards through character set
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Cursor, Fuller
Keyboard play: responsive, well laid out
Use of colour: a bit garish at times
Graphics: simplistic
Sound: jetpack noise only
Skill levels: one
Screens: 40
General Rating: A fun little game.

Use of Computer

65%

Graphics

49%

Playability

58%

Getting Started

66%

Addictive Qualities

57%

Value for Money

62%

Overall

58%

COSMIC WARTOAD

Producer: Ocean Software Ltd
Author: Denton Designs (Simon Butler, John Gibson, Roy Gibson, DCS)
Price: £7.95

Deep within the bowels of the Castle Rygellian, far below the Holy Torture Chambers, is the Slime Beast’s Department of Abduction and Foreign Queen Abusement. Here lies the Queen of the Cosmic Wartoads, the leader of a brave and truly cosmic race of honest and good-some toads dedicated only to truth, justice, mom’s fly pie and the toadican way of life. Kidnapped by the Rygellian Slime beasts, she has been transmuted to the ghastly (to War-toads) form of a human female.

Understandably, the War-toads are incredibly narked by their brave leader’s demise, so a crack toad is sent off on a rescue mission. Time is not limitless, since the queen is tied beneath a murderous SLUDGE SAW that descends slowly but surely towards her helpless form. It has fallen upon you to rescue your queen, since you are the the bravest of the cosmic wartoads — a Toad among toads.

The path to the Slime King’s lair is not a mere hop across the lily pad: you have to cross the perilous RYGELLIAN TIMEVOID. In the void are the eight pieces of the COSMIC TOOLKIT, a menacing compilation of deadly machinery capable of dismantling the sludge saw if you get to your Queen in time. The kit is most awesome and contains an assortment of amazing goodies including an Intergalatic Whisk, a Chronosynclastic Stanley Knife, a pair of X Ray binoculars, a Stellar Fish, a Death Ray Smutt Gun, a 3 Million Megawatt Light-bulb, a Cosmic Axe and a Zippo Lighter.

Whilst in the time void you take the form of Cosmic Willy, a tadpole creature that acts as a cursor. Each square within the eight by eight grid which comprises the timevoid is a time node. Your journey starts in the top right cell of the void and the idea is to reach the Queen at bottom left. You can only move to adjacent nodes in the grid — it’s no good trying to make a mega leap straight for the Queen’s location.

Each node has to be travelled through before you may use Cosmic Willy to transport you to the next. To get through a node all the nasties that live in the time vacuums that lie behind the node must be killed with your Constant Recoil Alpha Pellet gun. A node may contain up to four time vacuums, each one full of nasties which have to be defeated before you can re-enter the time grid and move to another node. There are three different types of nasty to be found within time vacuums, with each vacuum containing just one variety. You get to pit wits with Slime Masters, Sludge Slugs and Frenzied Flies during your travels and when you enter a node a window opens on the screen and you enter a sub-game in which you do battle. As you inflict damage on the nasties, your Toad Points increase. Conversely, as the Rygellians score hits on you, the Slime Points tally rises.

During battles with the nasties Wartoad may be assisted by Ultrasonic Robot Defenders. Each time you clock up 1,000 Toad Points one of these beasties appears in the playing area automatically and can delay some of your enemies by seizing hold of them for a while — how long a while depends on the difference between Toad points and Slime points. Toad must stand still to shoot, and he can only fire forwards, so you must move him to the appropriate location before blasting away.

Status displays on the border of each game screen indicate how the battle is progressing, and the nasties themselves change colour to let you know how close to winning you are. The most powerful nasties are the red ones. Then, in descending order, are the magenta, yellow and white versions. To defeat the nasties you must keep shooting until they go white, and then shoot some more! All they have to do to win is score enough hits on you to move them up a colour whereupon you lose a life and have to start that node again. Toad has three lives — when he loses all three he is reincarnated at the top right node and effectively restarts his journey. Meanwhile the Sludge Saw has got even closer to the Queen...

The Slime Master homes in on you and his touch is deadly. Escorted by his fawning minions, the Slime Pawns, the Slime Master himself is loathe to attack a Cosmic Wartoad preferring to send his cohorts on the attack. Wartoad can move within the playing area in the four basic directions, followed round by the nasties. Each time you despatch a cohort or score a hit on old SM himself, you get closer to victory.

Sludge Slugs come mobhanded and cling to the top of the playing area, out of range, dribbling slime at you. Every so often a slug (or two) lets go and falls to the floor. You’ve got to zap the slugs as they fall and avoid being slimed or hit by a falling invertebrate. In this subgame Toad can only scamper left and right but he can protect himself from falling slime and slugs by shooting them.

Frenzied Flies appear in a swarm, bunched together in the top left hand corner of a time vacuum. Attack squadrons of four insects leave the main mass and go for Toad, who must blow them away before they drain his energy. Once again, he can move in four directions.

Parts of the Cosmic Toolkit can be found in time vacuums — all Toad has to do is walk over them and add them to his collection. Keys which give you access to the Roads to Nowhere and Somewhen can also be collected in a similar manner. These roads provide a means of hopping from one time vacuum to another (and hence travelling between nodes which are not adjacent). Four pairs of nodes are linked together by the roads, and they appear as red squares on the timegrid at the start of the game. When you collect a key, one of the pairs of linked nodes unlocks and changes to white on the grid and you can ‘jump’ between them.

Other squares within the void are also colour coded. Green shows the node currently occupied while purple means that a power node sits at the end of that node’s time vacuums. Once the nasties lurking [at the end of] the vacuums behind a purple node have been eliminated, Wartoad will automatically be transported to the LILY POWER WINDOW where the Constant Recoil Alpha Pellet gun may be recharged. A bar at the bottom of the screen show the gun charge remaining — if it reaches zero three lives are lost, and it’s back to the start node, toad.

After completing a node, a scene showing the queen held mercilessly below the sludge saw appears with the saw moving just that bit closer. The sludge saw takes an hour and a half of real time to complete its descent, during which time you need to collect the Toolkit and arrive in the node where the Queen is held captive. Failure spells death for the Wartoad Queen and a ‘Nice legs, shame about the face’ message reveals itself. So, there it is. Are you Toad enough to take the challenge?

CRITICISM

‘After Frankie this has to be Denton’s best to date. Though markedly a Denton product, with windows, icons and other such paraphernalia, it wasn’t actually their design. The game itself is very neat indeed and though many of the sub-games are quite mindless they’re great fun. The scenario and instructions on the accompanying inlay provide nearly as much entertainment as the game itself. Whoever was responsible for these certainly has a slightly unstable sense of humour. Graphically Cosmic Wartoad is very nice, and the main sprite is cleverly animated, though a little colourless. The windowing system works very well and isn’t as obtrusive as Denton’s previous attempts. Cosmic Wartoad is a very good release indeed and is well above the usual Ocean standard. Denton fans will love it but it’s appeal should spread to many other gamesters.’

‘Yet another game by Denton Designs and boy is it good! The only way of describing the game is by comparing it to Frankie — if you can imagine a load of totally original sub games all combined to make one game then that’s the nearest you’ll get to Cosmic Wartoad. The graphics are generally big, colourful and very detailed, as you would expect of Denton. There is very little sound besides a sort of tune on the options screen. This is one of those games which proves quite difficult to start off with but if you persevere with it then it doesn’t take long before you’re hooked. My only real gripe with the game is that the instructions are not that good. One of Denton’s best!’

‘There’s an awful lot of instructions to this game and the scenario is well complicated. It took me a while to read and digest the inlay and I still had to play for about half an hour before I fully understood what was going on. Maybe I’m a bit dim... Once you get to grips with this game, however, it’s really neat — and frustrating. I can see it’s going to be a while before I crack the problem and rescue the Queen. Essentially there are three arcade sequences, each of which is a compelling game in its own right, and there’s an overall strategic element to the game. The graphics are good, especially the animation of the Cosmic Wartoad himself — if you don’t move he just sits there and blinks at you. Lots of nice touches add up to a compelling game.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: defined at start of game
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Protek, AGF, Fuller
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: bright and cheerful, avoiding clash
Graphics: large detailed Toad sprite, some excellent animation
Sound: minimal, odd noises for shots and screen changes
Skill levels: one
Screens: three sub-games, plus time grid and Queen Screen
General Rating: A good game, which can be tricky to get into. Worth the effort.

Use of Computer

90%

Graphics

91%

Playability

84%

Getting Started

85%

Addictive Qualities

92%

Value for Money

89%

Overall

88%

ENIGMA FORCE

Producer: Beyond
Price: £9.95
Author: Denton Designs

It’s been a while coming but finally, the long awaited sequel to Beyond’s famous Shadowfire is here. Having captured him at the end of the previous game, the Enigmateam is transporting wicked General Zoff across space in the Enigmacraft to face the Emperor’s music. As the ship passes a nearby planet on the Imperial border, Zoff concentrates his psionic powers on the ship’s guidance system causing it to crash. When the crew gain consciousness, Zoff has disappeared.

The planet is Syylk’s homeworld and at the moment, its insectoid inhabitants are fighting a war with reptiloid troops loyal to the evil Zoff. These nasty creatures also have some ships on the way which, at some indeterminable time, will annihilate the planet. Controlling the Enigmateam — Zark Montor, Sevrina Maris, Syylk and Maul (the observant will have noticed that Manto has been written out of the script) — you have to locate the leader of the insectoids, make him your ally, find the only space worthy vessel in the reptiloid area and recapture Zoff as he tries to reach it. Simple.

Well, not quite. Commands have to be issued to the team and enemy troops have to be dealt with — all in the available time limit! Zark Montor is the team leader (and main character). Syylk is the second in command — a heavily armoured and incredibly fit fighter with a pathological hatred of Zoff. Sevrina Maris is the markswoman and locksmith of the team. Finally, Maul the robot, adds slow moving but heavy firepower.

Unlike its predecessor, there is an action display area at the top of the screen. This shows the interior of the underground complex into which the Enigmacraft has crashed, depicting not only the team but also the various allies and enemies in an isometric perspective. Like Shadowfire, there is a series of icons by which the characters are controlled in the lower half of the screen. The control procedure usually consists of selecting a character, and then selecting a command icon for that character. Up to five different commands may be ‘stacked’ for each character at any time. Miniature versions of the relevant icons are shown beneath the character’s icon when this happens. Possible actions include four directional movement, picking up or dropping objects, and two different types of combat. A character’s status can also be checked from the icon table along with other game ‘utilities’ such as making a character reload a weapon, activating an object (usually explosives), quitting, pausing and the like. When a character is to reload a weapon, you must first select a magazine of ammunition from the objects carried area. Only the existence of ballistic ammunition is made clear but other types exist within the complex. There are some object icons about which the manual says little except that you should discover their uses for yourself. One of these is a red fish... It would appear that some may be useless.

A particular character may be selected to be put directly under the player’s control with the mindprobe icon. In this mode, the character may be moved about using either keyboard or joystick control. Actions are limited to movement and combat when this option is selected but it allows rapid deployment of the character which may be necessary.

The screen uses single colour graphics on a black background. The colour shown depends on the character under icon control. Sound effects support the actions of sliding doors, firing of weapons etc, and there is also an introductory theme tune.

Your mission awaits...

The playing area colour alters to indicate which character is under control — in this case Zark Montor (red). Most of the characters are in one location here.

CRITICISM

“Controlling the characters takes some getting used to and this inevitably means the first few games are likely to be unsuccessful. Once you get used to the controls, the pace is fast and the adrenalin is soon flowing. Somehow, I still feel that the icons are a little gimmicky and unwieldy but this will probably not deter those already addicted to Shadowfire. An attractive feature is that the game is playable in its own right so it really doesn’t matter whether or not you bought the prequel. The opening theme is really well constructed and the redefined character set used throughout the game is an effective finishing touch. I think the game would play best with a joystick. Otherwise it’s useful to have thirty fingers.”

“I can honestly say that I didn’t like the thought of reviewing this game, as I didn’t get on with Shadowfire at all — there were too many different pages of icons and I found it a bit of a struggle inputting instructions quickly enough. There are no problems of that type in this game, however. After a few goes, getting used to inputting commands and practising fighting, this game began to grow on me. I’ve been playing it solidly for the last few hours and I can’t see myself putting it away for a couple of hours more, at least. Graphically, it is far superior to its parent; the 3D works very well and the characters are detailed and move around the screen very well. Sound is also pretty good, with a tune at the beginning and a few well placed effects during the game. Generally, I’d recommend Enigma Force to everyone as it is very addictive and immediately playable.”

“Shadowfire was an enormous step forward for icon driven games and now Denton Designs have launched the sequel; which proves to be a worthy successor. Enigma Force is best summarised as a combination of Shadowfire and their other hit game Frankie. Getting into the arcade/adventure is no problem at all and within a short while using the icons becomes second nature. Should you dislike using the icons then you can play the game by controlling the character of your choice with a joystick. My main reservation about Enigma Force is that it may prove to be a bit easy. It doesn’t take very long before you start doing quite well. On the whole this is a good game, much more arcade orientated than Shadowfire, that should appeal to fans of Denton’s other games.”

COMMENTS

Control keys: ENTER COMMAND (Top Row); UP (Second Row); Down (Third Row); LEFT/RIGHT (Bottom Row Alternate Keys)
Joystick: Kempston, Protek, Sinclair and Fuller
Keyboard play: Very fast
Use of colour: Well used on the icons, more simplistic on the game screen
Graphics: Very good use of graphic effects but character identity can become confusing if several are on the screen at the same time
Sound: Good theme and special effects
Skill levels: one
Screens:
General rating: Difficult at first but rewarding, may prove quicker to solve than you think at first.

Use of computer

88%

Graphics

87%

Playability

92%

Getting started

82%

Addictive qualities

86%

Value for money

87%

Overall

88%

FLYER FOX

Producer: Bug-Byte Software Ltd
Author: Software Conversions Ltd (Tymore, Gregory Carbonaro)
Price: £2.95

As a specially trained, crack fighter pilot, your mission is to escort a Jumbo jet through hostile airspace. Flying right behind the Jumbo, you can see the sky ahead and an instrument panel before you. The panel consists of a compass, a radar showing the relative height of any other aircraft within the vicinity, an artificial horizon which indicates the extent of banking manoeuvres and fuel and score panels.

A crackling radio informs you of an impending attack (which seems to use sampled speech) just before several other fighters appear on the screen. Missiles are the only weapons available to fight the enemy but you are fortunately equipped with an infinite number of them.

As the Jumbo receives damage, messages appear on the fighter’s console. If the damage reaches a certain level, the Jumbo plunges into the ground below and the game is at an end. If all the fighters are shot down before this happens, fuel is automatically replenished and the game proceeds to the next level. These are identical to look at but the enemy jets are far more deadly. They engage particular strategies intended to lead you away from the airliner so other aircraft can attack it without opposition.

When the fighters approach there isn’t much time to react so the best thing is to keep an eye on the sights. They flash when an aircraft passes through. If a missile is fired soon enough after this, it will lock on to the target and hit it regardless of how fast it manoeuvres away from you.

The airliner appears as a silhouetted cross-section in the sky. The problem with this is that all the other jets appear in the same fashion. What’s more, they usually appear in the same area of the sky and so lead to confusion as to which jet you are actually aiming for.

CRITICISM

‘This is an old game which would probably never have been re-released if it were not for a new Bug-Byte licensing deal. Unfortunately, its age shows. Graphics are neat but unremarkable and the sampled speech effects may have caused a stir in their day but have since been surpassed in terms of quality. Play is both repetitive and frustrating. The lack of variety in play soon results in boredom setting in. Hitting the enemy aircraft is also extremely difficult due to their incredible attacking speed. It really would have been more reasonable to have them moving more slowly on the first couple of screens. Finally, the fighter itself is far from easy to control and fails to respond well. This game would have been better forgotten.’

‘Flyer Fox is quite an enjoyable game, for a while anyway. At the price, it’s even better. The graphics aren’t so brilliant that they make your eyes pop out, but they perform their purpose. Shooting the airliner is a bit like annihilating the refugees in Zzoom — it’s fun, but doesn’t do you much good! I found the speech a little hard to understand at first, but once amplified through my mega-fab sound-booster, it’s quite realistic. For the money, despite its easiness, it is good fun for a while.’

‘Flyer Fox is the type of game that could be very addictive and playable if only the controls didn’t mess it up completely — they are slow and unresponsive. The idea of the game isn’t very original but there are some very nice touches such as the very good speech. The graphics are fairly run-of-the-mill, undetailed and shabby. Apart from the speech, the effects are poor. The slowness of the missiles means that careful aim has to be taken which is a hard task because of the strange controls, so it’s very difficult to get anywhere in this game. However, I do think Flyer Fox is well worth the two and a half quid that Bug-Byte is asking for it.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/Z up/down; I/P left/right; V-M to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Protek
Keyboard play: generally a bit soggy
Use of colour: average
Graphics: below average
Sound: poor effects but reasonable speech synthesis
Skill levels: progressive
General Rating: Not bad for the price, although the program’s age shows in lack of polish.

Use of Computer

53%

Graphics

58%

Playability

62%

Getting Started

52%

Addictive Qualities

65%

Value for Money

70%

Overall

63%

FOOTBALL QUICK QUIZ

Producer: Rothmans/Cassell
Author: Peter Dunk
Price: £8.95

As you can imagine, Rothmans Football Quick Quiz is a football quiz program. It boasts 1,000 questions on all aspects of football FA Cup, League Cup, personalities, trivia — in fact it tests just about every avenue of football knowledge.

Up to four people or teams can be quizzed together, and at the start a list of eighteen footballing subjects is displayed. Once a choice has been made, the appropriate section of the program loads and then information on the number of players and their names needs to be input.

The computer acts as quizmaster and can present questions in three ways: Assigned; Three In A Row and The Race. Alternatively, the Full Quiz option is a mixture of the three styles of quiz. ‘Assigned’ is the most basic of the three options. The computer asks each player in turn a question and gives four different answers numbered 1 to 4. Using the appropriate number key, the player chooses an answer — a correct response is rewarded with a little fanfare and ten points are added to the player’s score. If the computer is given a wrong answer, it points out the mistake and reveals the correct response to that question. Players are given a twenty second time limit to answer their questions — take too long and the computer assumes you don’t know and gives the answer. After a certain number of questions the player who has scored the most points is proclaimed the winner. If there is a tie then, a tie-breaker question is asked.

In ‘Three In A Row’ the game-play is the same, except a bonus of twenty points is given if a player answers three questions in a row correctly. ‘The Race’ has everybody scrabbling for the keyboard. When the Race option is chosen the computer asks everyone to define a ‘claim’ key for themselves before the game starts. The computer puts questions onto screen with a twenty second time limit. The first player to press his ‘claim’ key is given four seconds to answer the question. The correct answer wins ten points, but a wrong answer results in ten points being removed from the claimant’s score!

CRITICISM

‘As my football knowledge is limited to Hereford United, this program doesn’t appeal to me at all. Sound and graphics are not “over-used”, although there are a few tunes here and there (possibly to wake you up). The loading screen is really something else — I haven’t seen anything as bad as this for ages. The unfortunate footballer depicted looks like he’s been in a fatal accident and they’ve sewn his limbs back in the wrong places. In fact, when I first saw it I thought it was an anaemic lollipop standing on a giant beach ball! On the whole, I can’t see four intelligent people playing this game for longer than ten minutes without falling asleep. But then, if you’re a football fan, you might just see it a little differently…’

‘Despite being a total non-footballer, I found this game quite interesting — but will it have a wide appeal range? Unfortunately, the quiz didn’t hold my attention for too long. To me, the twenty odd different subjects didn’t seem particularly different! The game itself is extremely simply presented and is basic down to a point of dullness — there are no graphics and the sound consists of a few doleful poopoopbeedoops. The program is terribly overpriced — you could buy the Football Yearbook instead, and still have change. If the price was knocked down, it would be a touch more appealing but as it stands it may only to appeal to a few ardent soccer fans, and ‘may only’ are the operative words.’

‘I quite look forward to seeing football-related computer games. Now I’ve changed my mind. Rothmans Football Quiz is a very simple, non-frilly question-and-answer game. Each set of questions has to be loaded from tape — even if the part you want is in memory! The contest is very simple and would probably be ideal for a very young person. The program is obviously written in BASIC and consists of some very stupid errors routines — like if you press the BREAK key you have to wait a few seconds for it to tell you that you pressed BREAK, then you have to load the whole section again. Rothmans Football Quiz is a very un-userfriendly program without any good features and not even a redesigned character set.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 1-4 to choose answer, Z, Q, P to claim question
Joystick: none
Keyboard play: unresponsive
Use of colour: not inspiring
Graphics: just a dire loading screen
Sound: minimal
Skill levels: one
Screens: four different quiz options
General Rating: A very poor question and answer game which probably won’t even appeal to soccer fans at the price.

Use of Computer

23%

Graphics

N/A

Playability

34%

Getting Started

51%

Addictive Qualities

26%

Value for Money

14%

Overall

21%

FORBIDDEN PLANET

Producer: Design Design
Price: £7.95
Author: Simon Brattel

After a lot of trogging around, space baffling and generally flying through rectangles in Dark Star, the hero of that game (you) now needs to collect a message from the Forbidden Planet. It’s not any old message though, oh no, this message is the Evil Lord’s message. A message from a being still evil but no longer lord, this is the state of affairs he wants to change and by using his message he should be able to reinstate himself in power. The Evil Lord’s message is a statement so devastating that it proves he’s the only one fit to rule, so it’s rather important he isn’t in possession of it. Since it’s such a really valuable commodity the Evil Lord has split, encrypted and distributed the code throughout a heavily garrisoned world the defences of which are near perfect.

Fortunate, then, that your fighting equipment is the very best to be found. The ship you fly is controlled similarly to the one in Dark Star but due to the increased graphic prettiness of its lasers is far superior. A decoding computer is also supplied for the decryption of any code pieces collected.

There are three types of enemy structure dedicated to your destruction. The first and most obvious are the tower structures firing laser pulses your way. A pulse can be dodged or destroyed with a modicum of talent. To put a tower out for the count a fair splashing of laser light is needed. Once well and truly trounced they retract into the surface. Guided missiles are most deadly, these are very hard to dodge and need a good zap to stop their hull-piercing activities. These are often launched from pole structures rising from planetary fortresses, that instantly retract into their housings once the missiles are on course. Third of the death dealing alien structures are the squat versions of towers that launch laser pulses your way. Hefty amounts of laser fire should neutralise these outposts.

These are the actively aggressive defences. Just as annoying, if not even more so, are the passive lines of defence. Within various areas of Forbidden Planet your ship’s movements are strictly limited by the plasma ducts and force field networks. It is possible to totally ignore the field structures, but it’s really the equivalent of flying through brick walls.

The player’s interface with the real world of Forbidden Planet is achieved using a highly sophisticated scanner. This represents various objects with coloured vector graphics. The main action takes place over the planet’s surface. Points of light on the planet surface convey the main feeling of 3D experienced. Very handy is the scanner’s ability to show a representation of the various holes in the constraining force fields. Using the directional keys you move a gunsight around the main display, as the gunsight moves the attitude changes to follow the gunsight. Also for ship control a simple speed adjustment system is supplied. Two keys, one for an increase in velocity and the other to decelerate.

Each time your ship is hit there is a corresponding decrease in energy, and running out altogether ends the game. The health and condition of your power banks are constantly displayed via the krell meters along the lower part of the visual display. Another quick way to energy depreciation and death is flying into the invisible force walls. Every wall does have a hole in it, though, and this is highlighted by the ship’s computer, a clever piece of machinery that also shows any scenery behind the holes. The enemy are aware of your computer’s sophistication and set up dummy holes in the dislocation zones. Flying through here instead of taking the course through the correct force gap also gives your shields a fair battering.

A map screen is supplied to give details of your location and direction. The scope of the map is a little limited though it does contain a key. Your position is marked by an arrow that points the current direction you are taking. Any nearby code stores are displayed on the map screen and if you do get into a screen containing such an item, flying into the object releases its contents to your ship’s computer.

Unluckily the the original message was fragmented into quite a few parts. Retrieval of the whole is extremely difficult but if you do manage to end the game you need to return to the start position. Also worth mentioning is Spectacle II, another program contained on the tape along with Forbidden Planet that needs a password to access it. No doubt Design Design will eventually release the password. What you will find is as yet unknown but it’s likely to be entertaining.

Fast moving 3D graphics astound and amaze in Design Design’s FORBIDDEN PLANET Not power pills, but Pacmen indicate your energy level in FORBIDDEN Planet as you try and collect the pieces of code

CRITICISM

“What has Simon Brattel been doing for the past year? Anyway Forbidden Planet has been a long time coming and it is definitely worth the wait. The graphics are in the same vein as Dark Star but they have been improved upon and also in this game you get noises all the time you are playing. Forbidden Planet is fun to play but it does take a while to get into. I’m sure that after a few goes most people would be addicted. One of the better features of this game is the hi-score table which responds just like the one in Dark Star. Also the define keys option allows you to program as many keys as you want to do what you want, for instance, it’s possible to program a key to fire, go up and go left at the same time. On the whole this is a very enjoyable game, though initially similar to Dark Star, it proves to be very addictive. Definitely one for any Dark Star freaks out there.”

“Okay, everyone, if you didn’t like Dark Star there’s no way you’ll like this. All it is really is an up dated version of it. But updated all the same, it’s still very good. I liked Dark Star — in fact I still play it from time to time, so I think Forbidden Planet is great. I noticed the front end has been reduced a bit, but I still enjoy the moral pleasure of seeing the colourful explosions after having totally obliterated an alien.”

“This follows on from Dark Star, and if you didn’t look at the inlay you might think it WAS Dark Star. There’s a new storyline and a few extras thrown in. The map is good, and colour is used very well — really splashed about in places, and there’s plenty of sound, with good explosions and firing noises. I found the game wasn’t all that addictive, and a bit of a let down overall.”

COMMENTS

Presentation: entirely definable as to key and function
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: excellent
Use of colour: greatly improved on Dark Star
Graphics: more of them too, fast vectors
Sound: un-Brattelian, which is to say there is some
General rating: A good follow up (perhaps with some reservations), and a fast, intricate shoot em up in the classic vein.

Use of computer

94%

Graphics

85%

Playability

86%

Getting started

87%

Addictive qualities

84%

Value for money

90%

Overall

86%

M.O.V.I.E.

Producer: Imagine
Price: £7.95
Author: Dusko Dimitrijevic

Early in 1985, Dusko Dimitrijevic invested in a one way plane ticket from Yugoslavia to this country. Confident that he could sell two computer games he had written to Bug Byte and thus fund his trip home, he arrived in Liverpool to discover that Bug Byte were no more. Dusko had a problem.

Fortunately, he managed to track down one of the directors of Bug Byte, who advised him to see Ocean. Ocean bought the games from Dusko, and used them as promotional freebies. Before he went home, the Yugoslavian programmer spent a little time with Ocean’s programmers, picking up tips and hints on programming and getting a feel for the type of games Ocean wanted.

Six months passed, and then M.O.V.I.E. arrived in Ocean’s offices. The game was snapped up, and appears on the Imagine label. Dusko Dimitrijevic should be able to afford return tickets in future...

M.O.V.I.E. is based on a New York gangster theme, and puts you in the shoes of a Philip Marlowe character. You’re a private detective who’s been hired to recover an audio tape from a gangster’s HQ. First, you have to find a girl, who will lead you to the mob’s base — but to make life that bit more difficult she has a dead ringer, a twin sister no less. The bad sister spells trouble, with a capital T. The first major task in the game is to find the right girl, then it’s a matter of following her and protecting her from harm on the way to the Boss’s hideout.

Set in New York, the game begins with your character in an office in the Big Apple. Suddenly, business becomes brisk. It’s time to leave, and take a closer look at the neighbourhood. Along the bottom of the screen there’s a row of icons used to control the trenchcoated private dick. Pressing the fire button puts the icon selecting cursor under the control of joystick and keyboard — another press on fire selects an icon. At the start of the game the cursor rests over the Move icon — a footprint — and it’s possible to move in four directions around the room you’re in. All the locations are monochromatic, presented in the three dimensional view that has become familiar with Ultimate’s releases, and games such as Fairlight and Sweevo.

Some of the objects found in locations can be shoved around — like chairs and tables. Others can be picked up and dropped using the appropriate icon, or even thrown. As you follow the girl, she’ll ask you do things for her, or fetch things, like a whisky. Bottles and bags come in handy when your guide needs bribing!

High on the list of priorities for any self respecting gumshoe is a gun. Once you’ve found one, the Gun icon comes into play, and a row of bullets appears above it. Each time a shot is fired a bullet disappears from the display. At last — you can waste people — but once the ammo runs out, all you can do is hurl the weapon at a baddie’s head. It’s time to find another gun.

The playing area encompasses several buildings, interlinked by streets in which dustbins and packing cases as well as the odd telephone booth can be found. The mob realise what you are up to, and heavies lurk in some locations waiting to give you a bad time. Some just punch — and using the Punch icon, you can fight back — while others pack a mean shooter. Getting too close to a bullet spells curtains, and your trenchcoated figure dissolves before the game returns to the start screen.

As an aid to communication, the Speech icon allows conversation by inflating a speech bubble above the figure of the Private Investigator. Type in what you have to say, and consider it said. The other characters in the game won’t accept direct orders but can be friendly and sometimes downright helpful after a bit of verbal. (Don’t be tempted to make improper suggestions to the mini-skirted girls — they reject your advances.) Some of the doors are guarded, and you’ll need to pop the password into a speech bubble to get through. It’s possible to guess some of the passwords, but persuading the girl or other characters to let you have passwords is an important part of the game.

As you collect useful items, they appear in an area of the screen above the icons. A cursor points at your latest acquisition and if you want to throw something, make sure the cursor (controlled by its own icon) is pointing at the right missile. Sometimes you need to lob objects at things in a room so they can be moved within reach. The zigzag Throw icon sends missiles bouncing round the room, and a little practice is needed before throwing becomes accurate. Lobbing a bomb is very satisfying — when it comes to rest it explodes into the words “Bom” and wastes anyone in the vicinity!

At the end of the game (or after quitting with the A icon), two scores are presented. One score indicates the number of rooms visited as a percentage of the total number of locations in the game. The other, on a scale from 0.00 to 0.99, indicates how many tasks you have completed during play. It ain’t easy being a shamus, Mac...

In the Anteroom to the Auditorium. Don’t get any ideas about that safe — you can’t get into it!

CRITICISM

“There’s lots of fun to be had exploring the locations in M.O.V.I.E. — nearly two hundred in all — and the detail in some rooms is very pleasing. Clocks tick and tape recorder spools whirl. The animation on the girls is really neat: they wiggle along enticing you to follow very convincingly. The icon control system is straightforward enough, but it can get a bit tricky at times when you need to enter a location which contains a gun-toting baddie — you have to flip from Move to Gun icon very quickly to get a shot in. The girls begin in a random location, so each time you play the game is a little different. Overall a great game, with lots of atmosphere. It’s a shame there’s not more sound, though. Should keep anyone busy for quite a while, solving the puzzles it contains.”

“WOW! Great graphics, the same viewpoint as in Knight Lore, Alien 8 and Fairlight, but with ‘real’ objects with which you can identify, like armchairs, crates, TV’s etc. They’re not just fantasy objects. The game is quite original, presenting a fair challenge. The graphics far surpass the other game elements. I won’t do the obvious thing, and say they are ‘filmic’, but excellent they are. Sound is a bit sparse, little beyond footsteps, and maybe the use of colour should have been a bit more adventurous. For me, M.O.V.I.E. keeps Imagine, of Yie Ar Kung Fu and Mikie fame, well up at the Ultimate level.”

“I decided to don my raincoat and CRASH hat for this one. ‘Brilliant’ was the first word that came to mind as I entered a very posh American type tower-block office, a quick look out of the window and I thought I’d better dash, so I ran out of the room and promptly bumped into a very suspicious looking coffee table. I proceeded and found an un-fingerprinted gun — might come in useful, I thought. I was right... Imagine’s first step into the monochromatic world is a success — in my mind anyway. M.O.V.I.E. is the most enthralling game I’ve every played. The scenario is a classic one, and one that I’ve never seen implemented before in a proper arcade/adventure game. (Mugsy was strategy, before Ed starts getting letters.) Everything’s fabulous — the graphics are amazingly detailed and realistic, the game goes at a very sinister pace, a cursor with inertia and a parrot that repeats everything that you say. Stop watching those old gangster movies and jump in to one via your Spectrum and a copy of M.O.V.I.E., game of the year so far, for me. Now leave me alone and let me get back to finding this twin sister.”

Out in one of the Alleys which link buildings in M.O.V.I.E., following the moll. The garbage men don’t appear to be collecting this week.

A comfy living room, not far from your office in M.O.V.I.E. Look closely — there’s a gun here, ready for the taking...

COMMENTS

Control keys: 1 to 0 fire, Q to P up, A to ENTER down, Caps X V N Symbol Shift left, Z C B M SPACE right
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: responsive, once you get the hang of it
Use of colour: monochromatic locations
Graphics: detailed, and well animated. No wait between screens for rooms to be drawn
Sound: only footsteps as you stump around
Skill levels: one
Screens: 199 rooms
General rating: a neat development on the 3D theme with a very different scenario

Use of computer

90%

Graphics

95%

Playability

93%

Getting started

91%

Addictive qualities

92%

Value for money

94%

Overall

93%

MYLA DI’KAICH

Producer: Global Software
Price: £2.95

Though it may sound like something that you would plaster all over a shish kebab, Myla Di’Kaich is a space age supermarket stocking goods that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Quite a few of the things for sale would even be most dangerous if it wasn’t for the comprehensive security systems. In fact a lot of the things for sale are dangerous since the comprehensive security systems have failed. Not only that, but all the life support systems have gone down, the warehouse robots are dangerously loopy, and the escalators and travelators are none too sane. It doesn’t really matter does it, I mean it’s not your problem is it? Well it wouldn’t be if it weren’t for your ship being in a sad state of repair and the only place to get spare parts is from Myla Di’Kaich.

Oh dear. Double unluckily, the spare parts needed are distributed very sparsely throughout the large area that the store covers. Since the life support system has gone AWOL, a space suit is needed to prevent sudden asphyxiation. The major hassle of shopping in Myla Di’Kaich is avoiding having the robots rip open your space suit — you only have four supplied originally and once you’ve run out the game is over. The oxygen supply is none too infinite either. A bar underneath the main playing section shows how much oxygen is left. Luckily various oxygen dispensers are placed in some of the stores rooms.

Once inside the store and on the hunt for pieces needed to put the ship back into action, you soon find the control method of your little chap very similar to that of Jet Set Willy. For those of you unfamiliar with JSW (have you been unconscious for the last two years?) the main character can run left and right. Holding down the jump key in conjunction with a direction button causes a jump either left or right.

Travelling around Myla Di’Kaich is a bit awkward as seemingly solid platforms are prone to collapsing beneath you and apparently harmless ground often bursts into agitated life. There are often many lifts on the different screens and, though sometimes unpredictable, they are quite easy to use. A word of warning, if a lift travels too high with you on top it’s possible to be crushed beneath a platform above. It’s also quite easy to unwittingly stand underneath a descending lift and get converted to yucky splat.

Building up a knowledge of the map is quite important, it’s all too easy to walk through a hole in the floor and fall to your doom. It’s a pretty of strange game really, but then with a name like Myla Di’Kaich what do you expect.

CRITICISM

‘To say the least I wasn’t very impressed with this one, it seems to have many of the qualities of early platform games including the lack of playability and addictiveness. I think it would have been greatly improved if the graphics were less colourful and larger, as they are however, it is difficult to play for any length of time as the garish colours and small characters make playing very hard on the eyes. As for the game itself I think we have all had enough JSW look-alikes to last us a lifetime.’

‘Global seem to have got the idea that if you can’t think up a title for a game, why not call it something no one will understand: how about Myla Di’Kaich?! (Only joking chaps, of course I know what it means — I think). Anyway, enough of this frivolity. if I hadn’t been told about the game, and just shown a screen shot or something, I would have said it was a follow up to Wet Set Jelly. But no, the graphics are miniscule, none more than 2-4 character blocks but they are well animated all the same. The screens don’t have names, which makes it difficult to remember routes and things. If you’re one of those cut-off-from-society people still playing JSW, then wake up because you might like this, if you threw that game away twelve months ago, stay well clear of this one.’

‘After reading about supermarkets and rubber band motor drives in the inlay, I thought Global Software might at least have come up with something original. How wrong I was. I thought maze games were dead and finished, but apparently some companies can still make money with them. Myla Di’Kaich is no different from any other platform game, and reminds me a lot of Farenheit 3000 from the Firebird range of cheapies. You are a very small jetman surrounded by, amongst other things, baby jetmen and some of the nasties you meet are quite well animated — especially the opening pyramids. Everything is much too small, however, and the lack of size combined with single colours means the graphics don’t have an astounding effect. Unfortunately, this is a very plain game on a pretty dead subject where virtually every possibility has been explored — except perhaps for mentioning supermarkets in the inlay.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: alternate on 2nd and 3rd rows for left and right, bottom row to jump
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive, and simple layout
Use of colour: messy
Graphics: well animated, but tiny
Sound: poor tune and effects
Skill levels: 1
Screens: 50
General Rating: Aged format provides nothing new and the low price doesn’t make up for the fact.

Use of Computer

45%

Graphics

49%

Playability

44%

Getting Started

46%

Addictive Qualities

41%

Value for Money

47%

Overall

44%

N.O.M.A.D.

Producer: Ocean Software Ltd
Author: Simon Butler, Ian Weatherburn, Roy Gibson
Price: £7.95

It is a time of crisis, a few centuries in the future. Talos, a giant man-made asteroid spins slowly through space, spreading evil in its wake, crushing any opposition and generally creating havoc. At its helm sits one man, the really horrible, nasty Megacriminal, Cyrus T Gross — a man so dastardly that not even the Galactic Law Enforcement Agency can bring him to justice.

In desperation, the rulers of the few remaining worlds that are still free bought a contract with the Nemesis Organisation, a tough bunch of humanoid and robotic mercenaries. Can Nemesis rid the cosmos of Mr Gross? A plan is drawn up — a solo space commando is sent to penetrate Gross’s heavily armed homeworld and destroy him. You control a N.O.M.A.D. 471 (Nemesis Organisation Mobile Attack Droid) assigned to the mission.

Entering the immense city complex on the asteroid where Gross has made his home, you find yourself in a strange environment, with weird machines and mysterious contraptions filling a maze of passageways.

The game is played from a plan view, which gives no feeling of depth — in this respect, it’s rather like Sabre Wulf. The route to Gross’s lair is a very twisty and dangerous one. Your journey is made even more hazardous by the flick screen display employed in the game — you can never see what is coming next as you move off one screen. Four levels of the heavily defended city have to be negotiated before N.O.M.A.D. gets close to Gross.

N.O.M.A.D. has twin guns which fire powerful shells: useful against the TALOS defence systems. The little droid’s control system is similar to the control method used in Asteroids. First you need to rotate through the points of the compass until you’re pointing in the right direction, and then apply thrust to move. N.O.M.A.D. has a lot of inertia, so trundle around with caution — it’s easy to go blundering into trouble. Reverse thrust is available if you need to slow down in a hurry.

Gross has made sure that the route to his HQ is a well fortified one, and hazards lurk at every bend. The city walls are bristling with guns activated by your presence, and sometimes they’re surrounded by magnetic walls — Magnetrons — which drag your metal body towards them. There are robotic guards too, which suddenly appear and make a suicide run towards anything they reckon is hostile, you especially. The most dangerous part of the city’s weapons system are the heat seeking missiles. When these are activated they home in towards you at high speed until they either hit you or are destroyed.

Gateways activated by switches mounted in the walls of the complex connect the sections of the asteroid. Brushing against the switches generally opens doors, but the maintenance droids that look after the asteroid are terrible, and some switches don’t open the right doors ...

As you move through the passageways destroying the defence systems a counter on the right of the screen keeps tally of your score — the faster it spins, the better you’re doing. You begin the game with four lives, and when one of the nasties scores a hit you lose a life and N.O.M.A.D. is reincarnated a few screens back along the maze.

Even if N.O.M.A.D. manages to negotiate all the heavily defended passageways and arrives at the Inner Sanctum, you can be sure that the Arch Baddie Gross isn’t going to come quietly — a shootout to the death ends the game. Let’s hope the goodie wins through!

CRITICISM

‘This is a very neat game. Great touches abound, thank heaven, because without them it could have been very boring. It took me a while to master the control system for N.O.M.A.D., but the way it spins and bounces off the walls is excellent. Colour is used abundantly, and sensibly too! I thought the scoring system was brilliant, though it takes some time to build up a lot of points. Basically this game is well worth a look, because I found it addictive, enjoyable, and generally good, but for the price.’

‘N.O.M.A.D. is a very good and colourful shoot em up/maze game, with lots of enemies to stop you in your tracks as you trudge around Gross’s heavily armed homeworld. The inlay really sets the scene as you jump inside your N.O.M.A.D. and you get a comprehensive run down of what you are about to encounter and what you’ve got for and against you. The scenery is very detailed and colourful, with lots of interesting things to look at as you bounce around. The controls of the N.O.M.A.D. give a good feeling of inertia and I found myself constantly swinging and swaying in my chair as I played. This is one of Ocean’s better current releases and represents quite good value for money at £7.95.’

‘Although N.O.M.A.D. is rather simplistic it’s highly enjoyable to play. The control method with its inertia is really nice and allows you to skid about the place while taking pot shots at the enemy. Graphically it’s excellent with some really interesting backdrops. It’s funny really, how this, one of Ocean’s better games, has been released without any sort of hype or fuss, with only one or two adverts heralding its appearance, perhaps the shape of things to come? Anyway, the game is great fun, and to my mind, only just misses the CRASH Smash it deserves.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: R, U forward thrust, D, J backward thrust, Z, M rotate left, X, SYMBOL SHIFT rotate right, 5, 7 fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: a bit awkward
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: attractive, neatly done
Sound: usual firing noises
Skill levels: one
Screens:
General Rating: An neat game.

Use of Computer

78%

Graphics

87%

Playability

79%

Getting Started

78%

Addictive Qualities

82%

Value for Money

77%

Overall

79%

RAMBO

Producer: Ocean Software Ltd
Author: Platinum Productions (David J. Anderson, F. David Thorpe)
Price: £7.95

With the wide publicity given to ‘Rambo’, few people can have failed to hear of the all-fighting, invincible character brought to the screen by Sylvester Stallone. Ocean, catching on to the Rambo bandwagon, have now released their binary interpretation of Stallone’s blockbuster. The plot of the game follows that of the film quite closely.

John Rambo is a veteran of the Vietnamese war; a jungle fighter drafted back into service to perform a reconnaissance mission to a Prisoner of War camp. His instructions are to gain entry, take some photos and get out without either engaging the enemy or being noticed. If Rambo is spotted, it would jeopardise the prisoners’ chances of rescue and could lead to their deaths.

In the film, our hero begins his adventure by skulking into the camp and manages to stick to his orders until he spots his old war comrade, Banks, tied to a bamboo cross. Unable to leave his old pal dying in the sun, Rambo disobeys his orders and rescues his friend. The enemy, of course, spot this, and much blood splashing, carnage and mayhem is the result. Swiftly, Rambo returns to the helicopter that airdropped him, and makes the pilot fly back to the camp for a quick and successful attempt at rescuing the prisoners.

Then, pausing briefly to tackle an enemy gunship that tries to blast them out of the sky, Rambo and the rescued prisoners fly to Thailand. Well that’s the theory and, if you complete the game, that’s what should happen.

Rambo is a Platinum Productions game and is front-ended with their familiar options screen. Keys can be defined, although S starts the game, and skill levels can be set. The playing area occupies the left two thirds of the screen, with the right hand portion occupied by a combined inventory and status area.

The jungle scenery scrolls around our hero in the action screen. The viewpoint from which the game is played is above and behind the hero, creating a pseudo 3D effect. Rambo can move around in the eight normal joystick directions but may come to halt when he reaches the edge of the jungle.

Rambo is not the only person in the jungle — it’s full of enemy soldiers sneaking about. This is a combat game, so Rambo’s inventory keeps a track of his ‘kills’ as well as displaying the weapons he collects. Starting off with knives and grenades, Rambo can collect other weapons on the way. Apart from the knives and grenades, you may find other weapons lying about on the jungle floor including a bow and explosive arrows, a machine gun and a rocket launcher. All the weapons have a seemingly endless supply of ammo, but only one weapon may be used at a time.

Grenades are quite deadly but the noise does tend to attract the baddies to your location, whereas the knives are silent. If you throw a knife in the direction that Rambo is facing, any bad guy it travels over is killed and your score increases by ten points. If, on the other hand, a baddie should shoot or stroll through you, you don’t survive the encounter. All the same, the man is tough: you get four lives.

Rambo starts his mission outside the enemy camp and must get inside via a small entrance on the right hand fence, rescue Banks by running over him and then run to the helicopter which is due north. The helicopter then needs to be flown to the large H landing pad in the jungle from where the hostages can be liberated using the rocket launcher. On the trip home, with the helicopter filled with the good guys, a gunship attacks. The view is similar to the jungle and camp scenes, but a helicopter replaces Rambo in the playing area.

CRITICISM

‘After Commando comes Rambo, which is similar in many ways. As I got into the swing of things, shooting and blowing things up while dodging bushes etc, I found it was a reasonable game. The graphics on the loading screen and in the game itself are really good and detailed but a bit dull when in comes to the colour section. When you die in the game you get a realistic rendition of the US National Anthem. Not bad, overall.’

‘And so, in a blaze of exploding grenades and bazookas, John Rambo hits the Speccy (I hope it didn’t hurt...) in the officially licenced game-of-the-film from Ocean. I haven’t managed to see ‘Rambo’, the movie yet but from comments handed down in school the game doesn’t match it. In look, it is very similar to Commando, but it’s not as playable. Some neat tunes express themselves well, and there’s a small high score table. Overall this is quite a good game, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes trying to totally obliterate any enemy when the odds are a mega-million to one. Well, a thousand anyway... Hmm. Maybe ten...’

‘Not as good as Commando, but a very good film tie-in for the price — and it has something to do with the film, which makes a change! The screen area is a bit too small for a good shoot em up, which is what Rambo really is, and tends to scroll from side to side constantly which gets very annoying. Rambo runs around in a very Commando-like style, with trees and bushes all drawn in detail. (I found I could blow some of them up with the exploding arrows and hand grenades). It is odd the way our hero is always carrying a machine gun — even when he hasn’t picked it up, and it would be a good touch if Rambo actually carried weapons on-screen when he picks them up. There are some good touches — like the way you use a knife to free your fellow soldiers and the use of a helicopter to rescue others. I wouldn’t advise you to buy Rambo as well as Commando, but instead of it. It adds an extra dimension to the arcade game while retaining a number of similarities.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: status screen pretty, playing area rather drab
Graphics: good scrolling and detail
Sound: very good tune, reasonable effects
Skill levels: 3
Screens: 3
General Rating: Doesn’t quite match the hype perhaps, but offers some good arcade playing.

Overall

79%

Use of Computer

82%

Graphics

81%

Playability

80%

Getting Started

82%

Addictive Qualities

78%

Value for Money

79%

Overall

79%

SIR FRED

Producer: Mikro-Gen
Price: £9.95
Author: Made in Spain

Sir Fred is a fairy tale about brave knights and damsels in distress. So to start in the way of all good fairy tales: Once upon a time there was a wise old king who ruled over a happy land. Except for one thing, the evil Hugh D’Unwyt, an evil dude who’s stolen away the King’s fair daughter. Since the kingdom is usually such a happy place, the bored Knights are all off on a quest for the fabled gold lame string vest. A hero is needed and the only knighted personage left in the kingdom brave (or stupid) enough to take up the quest is the aged and corpulent Sir Fred.

The princess is holed up in the Castle Feare, stronghold of D’Unwyt. When the Baron stole away the King’s daughter he knew that trouble would be on its way, so his castle is extremely well guarded and near impregnable to a lonesome Knight. Undaunted by his daunting task, Sir Fred decides to try and battle his way to win the hand of his fair lady.

The way to rescue the princess and become a hero is to collect and shrewdly use certain objects. Unlike a majority of arcade adventures objects are placed in a different place each time you play. Though mapping the game is still quite easy, placing the objects isn’t. Though not random there are fifty six different permutations of the where the different items essential to your quest will appear.

Sir Fred himself is an action-packed spritette capable of many actions and looking remarkably similar to something out of a Mordillo cartoon. When you start, all Sir Fred can do is run and jump. His running style is quite a bit more realistic than most and has actual inertia. Holding down left or right doesn’t boot Sir Fred straight into top gear — instead, he gradually speeds up to top whack. Change direction, and the Knight’s heels stick into the ground and little sparks fly off as he reaches zero speed. You can run into problems (literally). If you run Sir Fred at full tilt down a flight of stairs, for instance, he’s more than likely to end up flying head over heels down them.

Objects are picked up with the select key. Along the bottom of the screen are a number of boxes that can contain an object. A blue box highlights the window currently under your control. To use an object press the use key and the blue boxed item will come into use. On some of the weapons only a limited period of use is permitted, so a little countdown appears above the window and decrements every time the object gets used. If the counter gets to zero then the object is no longer in Sir Fred’s inventory.

Different objects can add to Sir Fred’s abilities. Pick a sword, and the knight is capable of being a swashbuckling swordsman if you add some neat control effort. One of the weaker weapons is the the stone that can be thrown — another good one is the bow and arrow.

What makes Sir Fred different to most of the Miner Willy’s and Wally Week’s of this world is his ability to interact with the background. There are pools that he can swim in, ropes to be climbed and cliffs to jumped off, all easily accomplished with up, down, left, right and fire. Action packed Fred, invulnerable he isn’t. Running on a limited energy supply, Sir Fred has to try and avoid bumping into various nasties and making silly mistakes. All these silly activities are damaging to Fred’s energy band, shown at the bottom of the screen. Only one energy band is supplied and if it reaches zero then the game’s over. Nasties you’ll encounter are of a fairly common sort: things like snakes, fish and rats, all moving along preset patterns.

The puzzles and tasks to be accomplished are of a fairly complex sort. Just like any arcade adventure nowadays Sir Fred’s world is shown in flick screens, with lots of medieval-type backgrounds in this case. The more of the castle you visit, the better your end percentage. Near a hundred percent is needed to rescue the princess and what a daunting task that is.

Sir Fred shins up a creeper on his way into the castle in Mikro-Gen’s SIR FRED

CRITICISM

“This is an excellent arcade adventure with lovely graphics. The main character is fab, and looks like he’s been lifted straight from a Mordillo cartoon. The animation on him is incredible for such a tiny character as he swims, swings and runs through the castle and its lands. The game is a tricky one, and there are some pretty nifty puzzles to be solved before the Princess falls into your arms. This game really appealed to me, who cares about an ancient storyline when a game is as good fun as this?”

“Dear Oh Dear! How many times have we had the “rescue the beautiful princess from the wicked knight” story before? I must admit, though, that the inlay is very well set out, with a very poetic poem to set the scene. The game is similar to JSW, but has superior graphics. The man, Fred, jumps, swims, runs and walks in liquid animation, and is capable of making bigger jumps if he takes a run-up. If you run one way, and then change direction, little skid marks appear at his heels. There are better platform games on the market, but this one is nice enough. It may appeal more to younger girls with all this talk of fairytale knights and princesses...”

“This is an interesting departure from the Wally series. It is still an animated adventure with lots of objects to collect and many locations to use them in. The screens are well designed and very colourful, with the usual Mikro-Gen attention to detail. The character of Sir Fred is smoothly animated as he runs, swims and climbs. The only problem with playing this game is the controls. Though only six controls are needed there are great troubles with getting your jumps right and it takes lots of practise to use the ropes without falling off. I enjoyed playing this game and would recommend it to anybody who enjoys the Wally games and would like to try a slightly more advanced game.”

At the top of the creeper, the valiant Sir Fred perches on a ledge. Lightning zaps through the sky and your hero has to leap onto the middle cloud — that’s where he can use a lever to open a secret trapdoor which leads into the castle

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston and Cursor
Keyboard play: very fast and responsive
Use of colour: some attribute clash but otherwise tasteful
Graphics: pretty backdrops that are very detailed plus a very action packed sprite
Sound: no tune but nice spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: 36
General rating: A great platform adventure that’s quite novel

Use of computer

83%

Graphics

92%

Playability

90%

Getting started

86%

Addictive qualities

91%

Value for money

89%

Overall

91%

SPITFIRE 40

Producer: Mirrorsoft
Price: £9.95
Author: Conversion by Mr Micro

Mirrorsoft’s latest release allows you to take to the skies in the cockpit of a World War II aeroplane — the Spitfire, in case there’s any doubt remaining! The game first appeared on the Commodore, nearly a year ago, and has now been launched on the Spectrum. It’s the summer of 1940, and you’ve just been posted to a Spitfire squadron — a whole world of adventure is about to open up before you...

At the start of a session in the air you have to load a flying Log into the program — you can choose one of the pilots presented on screen or load in details of your own experience if you’ve already got some flying time in. The next task is to select which of the three modes you wish to use, choosing between Practice, Combat and Combat Practice. Practice puts you on the runway and gives you the opportunity to get to know the feel of the plane by allowing you to take off, fly around and land. In this mode there are no enemies present — it’s very much a case of having the ‘L’ plates on.

The two combat modes pit you against enemy fighters. Combat Practice puts you in the air directly behind an enemy aircraft, and you can practise your gunnery technique. After a couple of enemy fighters have been destroyed, the opposition starts to get smart, behaving more like they would in a true war situation, twisting and turning to avoid your machine gun fire. Sometimes they loop the loop and end up on your tail and start machine gunning you! You’re alerted to an enemy behind you by the plane appearing in your rear mirror — a nice feature which adds realism to the simulator.

True Combat mode puts you in an ongoing war situation. Starting on the airstrip you have to take off, find the enemy using the map, and fly the Spitfire for real, engaging the German pilots in dogfights. Once you have intercepted and shot down the enemy intruders you have to return to the airstrip and land safely. If the mission is a successful one then you can save your experiences to tape as a Log before going out on another interception run. The Log can then be reloaded as a flight history the next time you decide to take to the skies.

This Air-ace simulation features two separate screens, the view from the cockpit and the instrument panel, which have to be used in conjunction to fly the plane — a press on the space bar toggles between the two displays. A map screen can be referred to while you’re flying to help you find the current position of the enemy planes. The main map shows the South East of England with your plane marked in red and enemy fighters in black. If your Spitfire is inside one of the three squares drawn on this map, you can examine the ground below you in greater detail by pressing the N key.

The game can be controlled entirely from the keyboard or from keyboard and joystick, in which case your joystick controls the Spitfire’s ailerons and elevators, mirroring the stick displayed on-screen, and key-presses are required to activate other controls such as landing gear, throttle and rudder.

The instruction booklet contains all you need to know about flying the Spitfire in the game, and offers a fair few tips and hints on techniques for survival in the air. There’s also a potted history of the Spitfire itself, and a brief introduction to the theory of flight as well as a short section on aerobatic manoeuvers.

If you do well then promotion is awarded according to your flying experience and the number of kills you achieve. If you do really well it is possible to rise through the ranks rapidly. Who knows? You could become a Group Captain with a string of medals including the VC, DSO, and DEC. Then you’d be ready for Mirrorsoft’s next release... a game all about that famous Ace, Biggles!

Flying along with the greatest of ease: The runway appears through the cockpit window

CRITICISM

“Fast, fun and playable are just some of the great things about Spitfire 40. Zooming around the screens... er sorry, skies, and blowing up all the enemy planes in sight is a challenge. The best simulation in years, with detailed screens, and great mobility as planes come up behind you. To start the plane at first was a bit hard, but as I got into it the problems were quickly overcome. Once I’d taken off, flying above the ground twisting and turning was great fun — an exciting game. If you get bored with trying to be an air combat hero, you can always try landing for another medal... Overall, a truly brilliant simulation.”

“Bang on, Whizzo and Chocks Away — a great game! The instruction booklet supplied gives excellent details on all the aerobatic and combat manoeuvres you can perform. Despite the fact that I’ve never flown a Spitfire (!), I think I can safely say this is a pretty accurate simulation, considering the limitations. The facilities for combat and combat practice are very useful, as is the save game facility allowing you to build up a record of missions. The graphics are excellent, but the explosions could have been a bit more realistic. The plethora (LMLWD) of control keys may be a bit daunting at first, but once you get into the feel of it, it’s great. I doubt that this will appeal much to those who are opposed to flight simulators, but if you’re not one of them, get Spitfire 40 — there’s a good arcade element in there too.”

“Well, I suppose the Spectrum version had to come eventually. Mirrorsoft have certainly done themselves proud, with one of the best flying simulators on the Spectrum to date. The most pleasing part of this flying simulator is that the cockpit is simple and only contains the essentials. The flip/full screen option between the cockpit and instrument panel is put to good effect, and adds to the panic realism when getting into a good old fashioned dogfight. Perhaps a little more effort could have been put into the front end of the game, maybe using more colour or a redefined character set, but it does contain some good options, like saving a log book and choosing a Spectrum Plus or Minus set up. The thing that swung the balance away from the years old Fighter Pilot is that Spitfire 40 allows the player to fly in a more competitive situation, with better confrontations with other planes — this is mainly due to the choice of the old Spitfire over the modern jet plane. Spitfire 40 is definitely the game to be bought now if you want a flying simulator.”

Flying along with the greatest of ease: The map screen — there’s no enemy planes out to play today!

COMMENTS

Control keys: Spitfire Joystick: P up, L down, A left, S right, SHIFT or ; to fire. Z/X rudder left/right, Q/W increase/decrease power, F flaps, G landing gear, B brakes, M and N map control, SPACE to toggle between screens
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: fine, once you get used to the controls
Use of colour: tasteful
Graphics: very fast and realistic, excellent instruments
Sound: mainly engine noise and firing
Skill levels: one
Screens: two, plus maps and menus
General rating: An excellent simulation which should appeal to arcade players too.

Use of computer

90%

Graphics

91%

Playability

88%

Getting started

93%

Addictive qualities

91%

Value for money

91%

Overall

90%

THREE WEEKS IN PARADISE

Producer: Mikro-Gen
Price: £9.95
Author: The Wally team

Another issue of the magazine, and another Wally game to review. This time the title of the game has to rate as Mikro-Gen’s worst pun yet. The game features three of the Week family on a tropical island so the title is Three Weeks in Paradise (gedditt?).

The main character in the game is the ubiquitous Wally Week and he’s got the responsibility of rescuing Wilma and Herbert from the Can Nibbles tribe. The Can Nibbles are a nice bunch except for their predeliction for human flesh, Wilma and Herbert are on the menu. As with most Wally games the idea is to collect a number of objects and get Wally to use them in a cunning way to achieve his aims. As might be expected, Wilma and Herbert are both well guarded: Wilma is trussed upside down, hanging from a tree and guarded by a witch doctor, while young Herbert is sitting in cooking pot with two ferocious lions standing either side.

The controls are of a standard Wallyesque type with Mr Week being able to jump and move left or right. The A key is an interesting addition — its function changes depending on your location and inventory. The first use likely to be made of A is as an IN key. On some screens there are other ways of moving onto another screen, apart from the IN key. Some of the alternative exits are quite obvious or are labelled, others are a bit more obscure. The IN key is likely to cause big headaches to most map makers.

Wally is able to carry two objects at once with the items shown on a small window at the lower left hand corner of the screen with the keys 1 and 2 used for dropping or picking up the objects. Once picked up and inside a window, a small text description appears in case you can’t quite recognise Mikro-Gen’s visual interpretation of some objects. Also along the bottom half of the screen is a life counter, where each of the four lives is shown as a skull and crossbones. Next to lives are a couple of skeletons, having no apparent use at all — the only thing they do is tap their feet after long periods of Wally inactivity.

As ever with Mikro-Gen, the solutions to the problems in the game are of a devious but logical nature. On the beach it seems impossible to cross without losing a life because of the quicksand. However a pair of flip flops should help your dilemma, as once they are wrapped around Wally’s feet the quicksand can safely be traversed. Most of the problems follow this sort of format.

You are not up against the clock in this game, despite the cannibal’s hunger the only danger is from a variety of nasties flitting about on different screens. There are bats, lions and even snails to dodge. Also there’s no energy bar, bump into a baddie and you’ll lose a life. After all the lives are lost, the usual Mikro-Gen analysis of performance is presented, together with a percentage of the game completed score.

A jungle scene from THREE WEEKS IN PARADISE. Wally is under the tusks of a giant jumbo.

CRITICISM

“Wally’s back again in style this time. With his hanky on his head, he tries to liberate Wilma and Herbert from the evil clutches of the natives. I loved this game. It was so playable and once you thought you had it made, another world was opened up to you. (Try jumping into a seaside scene). The graphics are very good and nicely animated and the sound is good. This would keep me happy for many a wintry night!”

“Five Wally games must be pushing it, I thought, as another superlative loading screen materialised — started on the game, all ready not to give it a good review. No. The game is good, very good indeed. The graphics are very ‘Wallyish’ and I loved them. A really nice tune plays as you scamper around the tropical locations. The packaging is colourful and neat and the instructions, while short, tell you all you need to know. The problems set in the game are PROBLEMS. My overall impression was that this is a professional package, containing another very professional game. Just don’t do what I nearly did: dislike it because of the star.”

“Mikro-Gen’s last release was a bit of a disappointment. Three Weeks in Paradise is the logical follow on to Everyone’s a Wally. The graphics are excellent, just like the previous Wally games. This time the puzzles seem a bit more devious but I’m sure you brainy lot will have them worked out in no time whatsoever. In this game Mikro-Gen have included some nice features like the music on/off key and the colour on/off key which determines whether Wally merges with the background or not. All in all, this is another excellent Wally game which should appeal to most of you.”

Passing along a jungle track, Wally has to avoid the giant flies.

COMMENTS

Control keys: O/P left/right, A in, 1/2 pick up/drop, 5 pause, Q to jump
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: fast and responsive
Use of colour: ingenious attribute control minimizes clash
Graphics: the sinclair user who produced these pictures really is an ace art fiend and doesn’t need any scolding
Sound: excellent spot effects, but annoying tune that can luckily be turned off
Skill levels: one
Screens: 31
General rating: Another game for Wally fans everywhere

Use of computer

92%

Graphics

95%

Playability

91%

Getting started

88%

Addictive qualities

94%

Value for money

91%

Overall

93%

TWISTER, MOTHER OF CHARLOTTE

Producer: System 3 Software Ltd
Author: Sensible Software
Price: £7.50

Twister is the name of a demon from the depths of hell. Apparently she’s one of the worst. Together with her horde of unspeakable nasties, she intends to ruin mankind once and for all. Out of the world’s 4.5 billion population, you have been chosen to fight for mankind’s survival. To do this, you have to travel through your own subconscious in order to gather various sacred symbols that will enable you to vanquish Twister and her mob of killjoys.

The first section involves jumping across a series of platforms as they approach and collecting the objects that appear on many of them. Whilst you are attempting to do this, Twister’s twisted minions appear above you. To avoid their wrath it’s necessary to shoot them down using psychic weaponry with which you have become equipped whilst collecting four special suits of cards that appear while you’re fighting.

The next section has you travelling down a gridwork corridor and again you must avoid the demons. This time characters of the word of Ultimate Power have to be collected. The next corridor is walled but is otherwise similar to the last screen except that signs of the Zodiac have to be collected. If success is achieved here, a jet pack appears on the back of your character and amidst dramatic bolts of lightning, he rises from the corridor. At the top of the screen, the Evil twister appears as a snake wrapping itself around a planet. Demons must be eliminated before the triangle of truth finally materialises. If that’s touched in time, the warhead of the psychic bolt displayed at the base of the screen begins to flash. A direct hit down Twister’s throat is necessary to kill her and you only have one chance. Time your shot well...

The objects appear one by one every time you shoot a demon. Touching one allows you to pick it up. However, two objects cause either a loss of energy or the loss of the last object to have been picked up. One of the useful objects is a triangle of darts which gives extra firepower when collected.

The layout is simple enough. At the base of the screen an energy bar indicates current strength whilst the number of shots remaining are also displayed. At the top of the screen, any important objects that have been collected are shown. The background is black with yellow platforms approaching from the void, becoming larger as they get nearer.

CRITICISM

‘Despite the rather inane plot, this proved to be an enjoyable shoot em up. It’s not too difficult to get quite far in the game so perhaps expert blasters will find it lacking as a challenge. Even so, the sprites are well drawn and animated, often being quite imaginative and amusing. One of the corridor screens is very much like Atari’s old Tempest game but otherwise there’s a reasonable degree of originality to be found. If you’re after a fast, fun arcade game then this could be just what you’re looking for.’

‘Twister Mother of Charlotte is one of those games that I can’t get my teeth into at all. The graphics are very good, there are many detailed characters and the forward scrolling of the platforms/stepping stones is brilliant. The sound is fair with no tune on the title screen and only a few spot effects during the game itself. I just about managed to get onto the fourth screen after about half an hour of play so it shouldn’t be too hard to complete, if you can be bothered. The best thing about Twister in my view is the colourful front end which is quite entertaining. If you like fairly simple games with lovely graphics and no brain ache involved in playing then I recommend this game.’

‘Although the scenario is all a bit daft, the game itself is quite a neatly presented shoot em up with lots of interesting monsters to avoid or shoot. The scrolling playing areas which zoom out at you lend the game a fair old pace, and leaping around collecting the right objects while avoiding the wrong ones and killing the nasties can get frantic. I enjoyed the Twister, no matter who Charlotte is!’

COMMENTS

Control keys: left/right O/P; S to jump; A to thrust; X to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor
Keyboard play: reasonable
Use of colour: unimaginative
Graphics: beautiful sprites, good forward scrolling
Sound: rather limited
Skill levels: 1
Screens: 6
General Rating: Enjoyable if undemanding.

Use of Computer

72%

Graphics

80%

Playability

74%

Getting Started

74%

Addictive Qualities

68%

Value for Money

69%

Overall

71%

WILLIAM WOBBLER

Producer: Wizard Developments
Price: £9.95

William is a very strange looking character indeed. The bendy legs and arms with a short body but very long neck and a boggle-eyed, reptilian head would definitely make him stand out in a crowd. Except that William lives in a world where such abnormalities seem to be the norm. Pink clouds hang in a blue sky above pink and yellow trees that are dotted between craters. The whole place is riddled with cave networks ripe for exploration by William.

Hence the plot for the game. William has to wander around the cave systems trying to piece together ten clues in an attempt to solve a puzzle. William can climb, jump, duck and walk to achieve this. Scattered around the caves are objects which when used properly help him to achieve his goal. Keys open up hitherto inaccessible sections, or even allow William to return to places explored earlier. Certain objects need to be carried in order to access game features such as having to find and carry a disk before you can save a game. An inventory of objects is available by pressing ‘I’. When William uses an object, it appears in his hand automatically.

Strange looking snakes, flying toad-like creatures and mysterious blobs also hinder William’s progress. Touching any of these results in the end of the game. William Wobbler provides you with only one life. William also suffers from aquaphobia, if he enters water he sinks never to reappear! A useful item is some kind of ladder that allows William to reach higher levels. He’s rather a large chap and can’t jump that far.

William himself is made up of several sprites so his head can wobble up and down on his long neck whenever he walks or jumps. Other creatures are made up of single colour sprites. The background uses limited perspective to add depth to the view and is drawn using hatch-worked and block colours.

Very little in the way of a proper scenario is provided because Wizard have made this a competition game. The first person to collect all the clues and subsequently solve the puzzle will win a mystery prize said by Wizard development to be worth £1,000. The Commodore version of the game has been around since about October last year but according to Wizard, nobody has solved it to date.

CRITICISM

‘I think someone’s tried to copy Tir Na Nog and made a complete hash of it. William Wobbler is a pretty boring fellow, slow and obviously a mute as I didn’t catch much sound coming out of the speaker. It’s nice and colourful but this seems to have caused a lot of attribute problems. The total lack of instructions makes starting off very hard, so I’m afraid Wizard are going to have to do a little better than this to book a space in my games playing sessions.’

‘Wizard certainly seem to have put a lot of effort into the packaging of this one. The first impression of the game is reasonable, with a very nice animated Bill (of wobbling fame). Unfortunately, the bad points of the game seem to make more of an impression as you progress. The lack of sound takes an element away: I think a continuous tune would have made it more fun to play, and the single life makes it frustrating. You can wander for hours, and unless you save the game, can be forced to re-start again just for coming into contact with another life-form. Colour is used profoundly, but this makes for an abundance of clashes. An admirable first effort from Wizard, marred by the bad points which, although few, spoil what could have been a good game.’

‘William Wobbler is a different kind of arcade adventure which we Spectrum owners have never experienced before, and it’s not bad. The graphics are very colourful and as a result the screen is full of attribute problems but other than that the graphics are reasonable. The game itself is very playable and, if you like the approach, is reasonably addictive. If you like arcade adventures but nothing too tough then this one will probably suit you but I think that the asking price is a bit much. The problems are very devious but with some brain power it doesn’t take long to get involved. Overall, quite a good game with the emphasis on arcade rather than adventure.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z/X left/right; K/M up/down or duck; ENTER to jump or pick
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: straight forward and responsive
Use of colour: lively enough but too many attribute problems
Graphics: good, inventive sprites
Sound: poor
General Rating: Some good ideas and reasonable gameplay, marred by a few faults.

Use of Computer

66%

Graphics

61%

Playability

61%

Getting Started

67%

Addictive Qualities

56%

Value for Money

55%

Overall

59%

WINTER GAMES

Producer: Epyx/US Gold
Price: £7.95
Author: Sentient Software/US Gold

Wrap up in your bright red skiing gear, don your skates and go out on the piste courtesy of Winter Games. Yupsirree sporting fans, the latest Epyx/US Gold sports simulation prematurely brings to your Spectrum’s screen seven of the events which will feature in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.

The events fall into three categories: skating events, figure, free and speed; skiing, hot dogging, the jump and biathlon; and finally sledding — bobsled. All these events won’t fit into memory together, and two loads are required. The package includes a double-sided cassette with three events on one side and four on the other. Each side can be loaded independently.

Once a side has loaded an extensive options screen is presented. Using this, you can change the game controls, see the world records and choose the number of players participating — up to four people can compete together. Events can be practised, and it’s possible to compete in single events or run through all the events loaded from one side. When the game has been set up to your satisfaction you’re asked to input your name and play begins.

SIDE ONE: Ski Jumping, Hot Dog Aerials and Speed Skating

Speed Skating involves a 30 mph dash over a smooth glassy surface. The screen is split horizontally, each half showing two skating lanes and competitors race against a computer-controlled pacer on their half of the screen. The idea is to whizz off as fast as you can once the starting signal sounds, in an attempt to get to the finishing post first.

To control your skater, all you have to do is press left and right rhythmically in time with your skater’s legs, quickly at the beginning to build up speed, then slowly and smoothly to keep the speed up once it has been attained. A bar display on the right of the lanes gives a speed readout. Naturally, the player with the fastest time wins the race.

The Ski Jump sees you at the top of a long runway, and the ground looks far, far away. Pressing fire starts the journey down the slope, and another press at the end of the runway makes your skier leap into space — mistime this, and the skier takes a tumble. If the jump is timed right, then the screen changes, revealing the skier’s flightpath as he falls towards the landing slope and stopping area. In the upper right hand corner of this screen a little window shows the skier’s posture in the air. To make a good jump, you need to watch this window, correcting the skier’s faults in mid-air. Up unbends the skier’s knees, down stops the skis from crossing and left and right is used to adjust the angle of forward and backward lean. If corrections aren’t made then presentation points are lost, the skier doesn’t travel so far and a crash landing is likely, and more points are lost.

The distance jumped is multiplied by three and added to the presentation marks to give an overall score. Each player has three attempts to notch up a good score before the winner of the event is announced.

Hot Dog Aerials is the third event on Side One. In this crazy event a skier has to whizz down a short runway, take off and perform as many stunts, somersaults and kicks as possible before landing safely. Like the Ski Jumping, the skier is activated by a press of the fire button. Once in the air, six directional controls select the stunts that can be performed. Since the jump is a short one there’s only time for two stunts — any more and the hotdogger is likely to land head-first! Points are awarded for the difficulty of the stunts performed: the more complex the routine, the higher the points. Once again, you get three attempts but, in this skiing event, a panel of international judges award points, which are then averaged.

SIDE TWO: Figure Skating, Free Skating, Bobsled and The Biathalon

The two skating events are very similar indeed and have identical control methods and graphics — in Figure Skating seven compulsory moves have to be made whilst in Free Skating it’s up to you to choreograph your own performance.

The Figure Skating event lasts for one minute, and skating against the timer, you have to complete a program of seven movements. Your skater is shown in the centre of the screen with the crowd scrolling past in the background. A timer ticks down during your performance.

Figure skaters are capable of eight different moves, including skating forwards. Practice and experimentation are needed before you become proficient at these events. Learning which move can successfully follow on from another without risk of your skater taking a tumble is vital. When a minute is up your skater takes a bow and a score is given. Points are awarded for successful movements — awkward movements and falls cost points.

Free Skating looks and plays identically to the figure skating, only there is a time limit of two minutes. In this event the overall object is to make three successful attempts at the seven moves. Once again, points are won for each movement completed and lost for mistakes and falls. The highest possible score is a six, no matter what your overall score.

The Biathalon is the most strength sapping of all the events... with a .22 calibre rifle over your shoulder you have to endure ice and snow as you race against the clock over scenic landscapes pausing for a spot of target shooting on the way. The course consists of several flip screens showing slopes, flat stretches and the four target boards. Each target screen contains five targets and a sight moves vertically over each one in turn. Your athlete’s pulse rate, monitored by a flashing heart on the bottom right of the screen, affects the steadiness of your aim. You get one shot at each target — aim carefully as a miss adds a five second penalty to the overall time for the event.

Fluent left/right movements on the joystick or keys moves the biathlete across the snow on the level and uphill stretches. If you go too fast he slips; go too slowly and it takes ages to build up a good speed. Digging your ski sticks into the snow adds speed on the downhill slopes. At the end of the course your overall time, less penalties, is displayed.

The final event on Side Two puts you in the driving seat of a bobsled. In order to retain control of the sled you have to steer left and right in the bends. The screen is divided into three, with the biggest area taken up by an aerial plan of the course. Once you start racing a red line creeps down the course showing your progress, helping you to anticipate bends. The second screen area gives a view of the track as you belt down it, and is the most important screen since it allows you to gauge whether the bob is being oversteered or understeered. If you don’t steer the sled properly then it tumbles over. The third screen is the timer which you race against... and as in real life fractions of a second count.

After every event Gold, Silver and Bronze medals are given and points awarded accordingly to the medal winners. After all the events have been played on one side, the player with the highest points is acclaimed the champion of the games.

Winter Games also has a World Record facility. If you get a record during a game then it’ll automatically be included in the record tables which can be viewed using the option screen. Unfortunately the table can’t be saved, but at least you can note down your best efforts, or throw down a challenge to your chums. Don’t be too disappointed if you can’t find the Opening Ceremony mentioned in the large instruction sheet — the programmers couldn’t quite fit it in, and an Errata slip should come in the package apologising for this omission.

The ski-jump opening screen in the US Gold/Epyx WINTER GAMES. What a pretty backdrop... have you got the bottle to let go of the hand rail and start your high speed run?

CRITICISM

“Seven events in only two loads for only eight quid can’t be bad. I wasn’t impressed with the menu and medal screens, but the game itself is very good with beautiful backgrounds on most of the outdoor events. Side One is the best graphically, with sound on the events too, but Side Two features four events — it’s hard to decide which side to play. All the events require a fair amount of practice, some more than others — the skating and ski-jumping, for instance, need a lot of accurate joystick or keyboard control and split-second timing. Every event is of very high quality, and just when you think you’ve gone as far as you can, you find some other special move. With the snow gently descending in Ludlow, I’m glad I can get some skating practice in!”

“I reckon this must be the best sports game to date, with the possible exception of Hyper Sports. Seven excellently portrayed events make for great fun, and because of the constantly appealing challenge about beating the record, or trying a different event, this is a highly addictive piece of software. Some of the events take some getting into, others are instantly playable but the difficulty still remains. The instructions are very long and helpful, telling you everything about each event, and detailing a history of the Winter Games as well. Epyx seem to have succeeded where Electric Dreams failed with their Winter Sports. I think the name similarity could confuse, which would be very unfortunate. I now live in hope of seeing a Spectrum version of Summer Games (I and II). Over to you US Gold/Epyx.”

“The cover looks great and the games inside are mega-great. All these highly dangerous winter sports can now be played in the comfort of your own home without the risk of breaking bones! The seven different events kept me glued to the keyboard for hours on end. The graphics are lovely throughout, with beautiful lodges and scenery — David Thorpe (see ON THE COVER, Issue 17) has done a great job. Some of the games are really fast — you need to be really quick with your reflexes. All in all, a great package.”

The hotdogging section from WINTER GAMES. Fancy your chances with a Daffy Duck next time? The judges reckoned your second attempt wasn’t too bad. GO FOR IT!

Cameron (our photography person) tries his hand at a bit of Speed Skating in WINTER GAMES. Get the joystick going, Cam, and build up some speed!

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: nice and easy
Use of colour: good
Graphics: very good, especially some of the backdrops
Sound: some good tunes
Skill levels: one, improve your scores!
Screens: one for each event, two for the Ski Jump, and a course made up from three flip screens for the Biathlon
General rating: An entertaining and challenging sports simulation — one of the best on the Spectrum.

Use of computer

90%

Graphics

93%

Playability

92%

Getting started

92%

Addictive qualities

95%

Value for money

90%

Overall

93%

YABBA DABBA DOO!

Producer: Quicksilva Ltd
Author: Taskset Ltd
Price: £7.95

Fred Flintstone finds himself at the dawn of history, Before Bedrock. He is a bachelor, and you have to help him create his caveman’s paradise so he can woo and win Wilma. At the beginning of the game, the landscape is barren but work is in progress... Bedrock is being built and Fred wants a home.

Fred begins on a plot of land littered with rocks and a sign saying ‘home’. All the small rocks are useless and must be taken to the pit where they can stay out of harm’s way. Picking up a rocklet at a time, Fred earns fifteen points when he heaves it into the pit marked ‘tip’. When his building plot is empty, Fred can collect the larger rocks and drop them there — sections of his house appear as if by magic, and two hundred points are added to the score for each large rock deposited.

There are, of course, several complications. Various prehistoric animals knock Fred over when they encounter him, while others nip his heels and pterodactyls drop rocks on his cranium. Fred’s state of health is shown by two slabs of stone at the top of the screen, which are nibbled away by pecking birds. The first scale denotes Fred’s energy level — whenever he runs, energy is burnt up. When the scale reaches zero, Fred can’t run any more and needs a rest or a meeting with Wilma to revitalise his flagging spirits. The second display shows the number of bites received from pterodactyls, turtles or dinosaurs, and indicates how much of the current life remains. Lives are displayed as tally marks below the two scales, and up to eight lives may be selected from the option screen at the start of the game.

The game is played against a backdrop of mountains. Fred can move left and right across screens which flip from one to the other. Bedrock consists of a number of streets running parallel to the mountains, and pressing up or down while Fred moves off a screen causes him to move one street closer to, or further away from, the mountain range.

Once the walls of his house are built, Fred needs to go to work in the quarry to earn money so he can hire a dinosaur to help with the roofing work. Once he’s earned enough loot a dollar sign appears on the screen, and our prehistoric hero can nip to Dino Hire and lease his assistant. With the roof in place, the last task is the addition of a chimney, after which the house is complete and Fred can look for Wilma to try and encourage her to embark on holy matrimony.

Meetings with Wilma during the home-making stage boost Fred’s enthusiasm for his work and Wilma’s love for him — shown by a beating red heart on the right of the screen. Each time Fred finds Wilma, he gains 1,500 points. The faster the heart is beating when the desirable residence is complete, the better Fred’s chances are of persuading Wilma to join him.

While Fred is working away, his neighbours are busily constructing Bedrock — a 5,000 point bonus can be collected by finishing before the rest of the town is built. In order to get about, and find those useful large rocks Fred could really do with a car. The good news is there’s a car lurking somewhere in the game for Fred to use.

CRITICISM

‘Despite the lack of colour, the characters in the game are well drawn and reasonably well animated. The only exception to this is the car which makes Fred shrink every time he gets in. The game is very difficult as avoiding the various hazards requires no mean amount of dexterity. Having said that, I found it quite enjoyable to play once I’d got used to the controls. I wouldn’t call Yabba Dabba Doo a classic because apart from occasional humour in the way the cartoon has been adapted to the computer, there are too many repetitive procedures. Still, it provides a challenge and a bit of fun. If you’re a keen fan of the cartoon, you probably will find the game worthwhile.’

‘I had my doubts about whether the Flintstones series could be converted successfully to a computer game. I think I can safely say that Yabba Dabba Doo! is a great game: Taskset have kept the spirit of the Stone Age throughout surprisingly well. Within a short time I had really taken to this one, now I can’t see myself putting it away for quite a while. The graphics are largish, jolly, detailed and all the characters are recognisable. The sound is fairly run-of-the-mill — a nice tune on the title screen, and a few burps and rasps here and there. The only niggle I have about this game is that it may be a little easy to complete, so it might not have much lasting appeal for good games players.’

‘I found Yabba Dabba Doo! a very addictive game — playing it to the early hours of the morning. Although graphically I found it not too astounding (the animation of the creatures is not too hot, but they are very detailed), its shortcomings were made up by its sense of fun and user participation, with lovely features like driving the rock car and going to see a film at the drive-in. Building the house for Wilma before the rest of Bedrock is complete is very hard to do, as the other people (I never really saw any) don’t have to clear their sites. I felt a bit on my own in Bedrock with no other cavemen/women in sight, except Wilma. No Barney I’m afraid to say. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of a full length Flintstone theme tune. I’m an avid viewer of the TV series, and will be an addicted player of the computer game for a long time to come.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: O/P left/right, bottom row to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair
Keyboard play: quite responsive
Use of colour: simple, but effective
Graphics: well drawn and amusing
Sound: very nice intro, but otherwise sparse
Skill levels: up to eight lives
General Rating: A good game, great for Flintstone fans.

Use of Computer

77%

Graphics

77%

Playability

78%

Getting Started

79%

Addictive Qualities

82%

Value for Money

80%

Overall

81%

ZORRO

Producer: US Gold Ltd
Price: £7.95

With a swish of sword and leap and a bound, Zorro arrives on the Spectrum after a brief sojourn on the Amstrad and Commodore. For those of you not terribly au fait with early Hollywood attempts at adventure and excitement, the legend runs thus:

It’s very simple really, Zorro is really 18th century Los Angeles equivalent of Batman. Defender of the innocent, scourge of evil, dreadnought of chicanery, you know the sort of thing. Anyway, Zorro is innocently strolling down the boulevard when his keen super hero eyes spot the evil Colonel Garcia abducting a fair maiden. This is not the sort of thing that Zorro allows to go unnoticed but it soon becomes obvious that there’s no way of catching up with the bloated villain so a plan must be decided upon. First on the agenda is the retrieval of the fair lady’s handkerchief that she carelessly dropped during her kidnapping. The overall plan is to get to Garcia’s jail and release her. To do this quite a few essential objects need to be collected and the first is the handkerchief.

Zorro is in fact one the now numerous arcade adventures, the sort where you have to collect an object to be able to get another object and so on until your ultimate aims are met. The important items designated for collection flash and are picked up by just passing over them. These are automatically added to the inventory. There are other artifacts around the different screens. These can be picked up, but only one item may be held at any time.

Zorro’s repertoire of movement is quite broad. In classic arcade adventure style he can go left, right and jump. Fighting is also possible and more than probable when you encounter some of Garcia’s henchmen.

The view of Zorro’s immediate area takes up nearly all the screen. As Zorro passes off one side of the screen another view flicks into the scene. The main difference between Zorro and other arcade adventures is its ability to have the main character happily interacting with the background. Most of the different aspects of the background scenes can be employed in the most heroic of fashions. There are curtain rails that can be clambered along, trampolines to be bounced on and various other active props and pieces. The problems presented though are not the sort to be wholly solved by a deft hand and a quick eye. To get to greasy Garcia’s stronghold a number of complex and not immediately obvious puzzles need solutions. The main obstacle is the underground cavern system. It’s through here that the apparently useless items that have previously been collected (eg the damsel’s handkerchief) can be used as keys to get past normally impassable doors.

CRITICISM

‘So, the valiant swordthruster of television fame strikes the Spec, eh? A lot of strategy is needed to get anywhere in this game. To me, initially, it was far too hard to make any major progression through the screens and if I hadn’t had to write this review, I doubt I would have persevered long enough. The graphics on most of the screens are quite good, and Zorro himself walks, jumps, fights, and bounces around in quite a respectable manner. The loading screen is nothing special, and more could have been made of the game generally. It’s good fun to play for a while, but then gets a bit tedious for my liking.’

‘At first sight Zorro seems a little like Bruce Lee but don’t be taken in by first appearances. Zorro isn’t half as playable or compelling as Bruce Lee. The tasks are very logical (get key, open door) so the game will be fairly simple to complete after a little thinking. Graphically this game is sub-average, the characters are jerky and the backgrounds are often a little garish. The sound is poor with an awful tune on the title screen and next to no spot effects during the game itself. Generally I wouldn’t recommend this game as for eight quid it just isn’t worth it.’

‘En Garde Monsieur, or should that be En Garde all tape buyers. If US Gold had kept up to their good standards Zorro would have been a good, addictive game, it turned out to be a waste of time, and not all that good. The graphics are small and some of the screens need a lot of time before you pass on to the next. You would have more fun watching black and white episodes of the films on the box than you would playing the game.’

COMMENTS

Control keys: 2/W up/down; O/P left/right; Z to activate
Joystick: not stated, though options available
Keyboard play: good
Use of colour: limited
Graphics: above average
Sound: poor
General Rating: A good idea with some nice touches, that fails eventually in presentation.

Use of Computer

64%

Graphics

59%

Playability

54%

Getting Started

54%

Addictive Qualities

55%

Value for Money

52%

Overall

53%