| Spectrum Software Scene |
ABYSS for the 48K Spectrum is a simple graphics adventure which is designed to test your reflexes as well as your mathematics. The idea is that you must cross a series of rickety wooden bridges over an Abyss surrounded by monsters which lurk in the shadows.
Each time you cross a bridge you are presented with a challenge which you must overcome before proceeding to the next bridge.
The test might be negotiating a maze using a complicated set of keys, avoiding giant rats, recognising a word in a split second, or doing some mental arithmetic before your time runs out. The sequence of the tests changes constantly and you need to be able to think quickly. If you play the game a few times, the answers will be increasingly easy to find, so it does not offer endless scope.
Nevertheless, it is a lively puzzle, with amusing responses from the computer, although in one case we suspected that it threw us into the abyss in spite of a correct answer.
Abyss is available from Cases Computer Simulations, London. It costs £5.
TEMPTATION Software brings the bright lights of Las Vegas a little closer to home with two games on one cassette for the 16K Spectrum. Fruit Machine is a faithful replica of the familiar pub game, complete with spinning symbols and nudge, hold and cancel keys. You can collect or gamble and your score is laid out neatly at the side of the screen. Fruit Machine cannot claim originality, nor does it offer the thrills of gambling for money, but the graphics are excellent and, within its limits, the game is presented professionally.
Black Jack on the same tape is a version of the card game, Pontoon. You start with £10 and lose or win 10 pence at each tussle with the computer. True to the rules of any gambling den, the computer as the banker has the edge over the other player in case of a draw, and you will probably see your winnings decrease steadily.
If you win a hand, you can choose to collect or try to double your stake. Black Jack does not hold the excitement of a genuine card game played for cash but the responses are fast and the challenge of trying to beat the computer is addictive.
The cassette insert explains the rules of both games clearly. Las Vegas is available from Temptation Software, Sussex.
SILVERSOFT is not exaggerating very much when it calls one of its new releases Mission Impossible. Something like a cross between Frogger and Lunar Landing, the game features a space vessel which has been sent to rescue a group of astro-miners trapped on Titan.
As it descends from the mothership, the vessel has to avoid a barrage of meteors, any of which will destroy it, and it has to drop squarely on a landing pad if it is not to crash. On the way up, a host of alien spacecraft bar your way but you can blast them with your laser, scoring points each time. Finally, connecting with the mothership is as difficult an operation as landing successfully.
The game promises 50 screens of ever-increasing difficulty but unless you are an expert arcade player you are unlikely to get beyond the first screen. Less expert players will find the game finishes very quickly and will have to wait for the title screen to appear and clear again before starting another game, which could prove discouraging.
The graphics are simple and it seems likely that only those with a taste for difficulty will find this a rewarding exercise. Mission Impossible is obtainable from Silversoft, London, and costs £5.95.
TERMINAL SOFTWARE calls it Vampire Village, a real-time graphic adventure. The scenario is that you are the mayor of Vladsdorf who has heard that a vampire threatens outlying farmsteads.
You start with a fund of £999 with which to hire villagers to help you locate the vampire and you must direct them in their search.
A map shows the village and the river which runs beside it and you can move each volunteer by using the cursor keys.
Pressing V will give you the words you can use and pressing P will show the player's position at any stage.
Unfortunately, the graphics are painfully slow and obtaining any meaningful response from any of the vocabulary keys is in most cases unrewarding, so that it is easy to lose interest in the fate of the trusty villagers before you get anywhere near the vampire.
Vampire Village can be obtained from Terminal Software, Manchester. The cost is £6.95.
A NEWLY-RELEASED batch of double-sided tapes from K-Tel includes It's Only Rock and Roll, with Tomb of Dracula on side two.
It's Only Rock and Roll is a strategy game in which the object is to become a pop superstar by earning £1 million and collecting three status symbols.
Among the options are choosing a name for the group, planning tours, hiring managers and selecting songs. Time, money and energy are your resources and you lose the game if you run out of any of them.
The odds are stacked heavily against you and neither the songs which the computer offers for your approval, nor the occasional news flashes which are intended to enliven the game - "Government taxes pop groups" or "Tony Blackburn likes Sinclair Swingers", for example - provide much of an incentive to continue playing.
A few graphics and more amusing responses might have improved this potentially appealing idea considerably.
Tomb of Dracula is a simple graphics adventure in which you attempt to find your way through a tomb haunted by ghouls and zombies and reach a staircase leading to Dracula's treasure. On your way, you must collect silver stakes with which to defend yourself and be careful to avoid the slime pit. You may find yourself repeatedly entering empty vaults and neither the story line nor the graphics is original enough to compensate.
Castle Colditz, on another double tape, is a slightly more sophisticated adventure, in spite of the fact that it has no graphics.
The location is the notorious prison fortress, from which you are trying to escape while collecting as much Nazi loot as you can to take with you.
The scene changes quickly - from bath-house to trophy room to mortuary among others - and there is an interesting variety of treasures and messages to spur you. Full instructions are given at the start and if you make a map as you proceed, your quest should not prove too difficult.
The second side of the Castle Colditz tape offers Battle of the Toothpaste Tubes. It is a shoot-out game featuring a tube of toothpaste from which you fire at the evil brush brigade and the serried ranks of mini-tubes below.
You must beware of the chattering teeth but can protect yourself with your fluoride shield. If you hit the handle of a brush instead of the bristles, your toothpaste will rebound.
Apart from the novel scenario there is nothing particularly original about a simple arcade game which should only please anyone who is addicted to pressing the fire button.
It's Only Rock and Roll and Castle Colditz are available from K-Tel International, London. The cost is £6.95 per double-sided tape.
BILLED as "the bugs bite back", the Work Force Doom Bugs for the 16K Spectrum promises you a busy time. The player takes the role of a tarantula trapped inside a grubber's lair. The way out is via a trapdoor at the centre of the screen and you must try to bore your way through it with the help of a nibble of honey to renew your strength at each attempt.
Meanwhile, the grubbers are reproducing at an alarming rate. When two eggs meet, a green bubbergrubber is hatched and if two green bubbergrubbers meet, they form a red grubber which will destroy you if you collide with it.
What with locating the centre of the trapdoor, nipping back for some honey, and trying to destroy eggs and grubbers before they team up to destroy you, escaping is an exacting task. The placing of the keys, which you cannot re-define, does not make things easier.
The graphics and sound are suitably frenetic and the action is fast enough to satisfy the most practised of arcade addicts. You receive points for eating grubs and a bonus for fighting through to the next level where the scene is a maze and the action even hotter than before.
Doom Bugs can be obtained from Work Force, Beds. It costs £5.50.
IN THE Detective for the 48K Spectrum, you must imagine you are a private eye who is trying to get through Dagger Alley to steal secrets from a mysterious safe. The game has 25 levels and if you reach the final level, which the insert warns is unlikely, you have 10 guesses at the combination of the safe.
The game starts with the detective being pelted by unexplained objects which could be bells or possibly cups; you score points by shooting at them but are threatened with extinction by old car tyres which gather together and drop on you if you do not move out of the way. The detective moves left and right along the bottom of the screen and if he disappears off one side he will reappear from the other.
The action is fast and even the first level is difficult but there is no explanation, either on the tape or on the cassette insert, as to what is happening, which detracts considerably from the interest of the game. Unless you are already firmly addicted to zapping anything in sight, this is unlikely to convert you. The Detective is produced by Arcade Software, Kent. It costs £5.50.
IT IS difficult to see why Visions set its Pitman Seven, an arcade game for the 48K Spectrum, in a South African mine, as that can scarcely count as a major selling point.
Pitman Seven promises plenty of action and excitement. Two teams of seven men are trapped underground and your job is to bring each one to the surface, despite a series of falling rocks which pursue the men along the shafts. You can climb ladders or drop through trapdoors and if you are lucky you might even be able to avoid the boulders by jumping over them.
If you manage to get your men to the top and to safety, you go to the next level, where waves of gas create an additional hazard.
The object is to collect a series of strategically-placed suits to protect yourself as you try to escape.
The concept of the game is yet another variation on the maze-with-hazards theme but the pace of the action is well-judged and the graphics are very professional.
The computer also offers some hard-hitting comments about your performance at the end of each mission.
Pitman Seven is available from Visions Software Factory, London and costs £6.95.
WE NOTE with regret that software manufacturers appear to be winding down their production of tapes for the ZX-81. The absence of ZX-81 reviews in this issue of Sinclair User reflects the scarcity of programs for that machine and not lack of interest on our part.
The ZX-81 still serves as an excellent and very popular introduction to computing and it continues to sell well both in the U.K. and overseas. It would be a pity if software houses were to ignore a substantial market of new users whose enthusiasm might well be reduced by a limited supply of programs.
We hope manufacturers will realise the importance of the ZX-81 and that we will be able to provide more reviews in our next issue.
IF YOU would like to learn to play chess, the Artic Computing Chess Tutor for the 16K Spectrum is a good way to start. The program starts with a visual display of the ways in which each of the chess pieces can move - only the Knight's move is a little difficult to follow. It then explains the rules and aims of the game and finally allows you to choose whether to play against the computer or to let the computer demonstrate a game based on your opening move. If you decide to play, you can choose from three levels of difficulty and the computer will display the book opening it has used at the side of the screen.
Chess Tutor is available from Artic Computing, Driffield. The cost is £6.95.
"NOW your computer can look after you instead of defending the earth," says the introduction to Diet Master, which aims to help you control your weight and plan a healthy diet on the 48K Spectrum.
The program is accompanied by a booklet containing the information about calories and the nutritional value of various foods and as you are asked questions about your age, size, build and activities, you are referred constantly to the book for background information.
The authors claim that Diet Master can provide a personalised diet plan faster than books could do but that is debatable. There are any number of books and charts covering the same material and it should be possible to plan a sensible diet for oneself by using them. But if you like to let the computer do the work for you, this is a clearly-explained and well-presented program.
Diet Master is available from Delta 7 Software, Leeds.
NEW FROM Kuma Computers is a Map of the U.K. program for the Spectrum. It allows you to see a 75-mile by 60-mile area of anywhere in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland and extends also to Calais.
The map shows only the coastal outline and as many towns and cities as Kuma could fit. The 75-by-60-mile window can be scrolled in all four directions in fine, medium or coarse steps.
When you reach the edge of the map, the program beeps and will not let you go further.
Besides being able to scroll the window, you can also search for a named town, find the distance between two points, find the latitude and longitude of any place, and copy the screen to the printer.
Everything you need to know about operating the program is contained in instruction screens. Typing 'H' always returns you to the Help page, which displays all the command instructions. Only valid commands are accepted and the program ignores all other key presses except BREAK. CONTINUE re-starts the program.
Also included is a balloon game in which you burn a limited amount of fuel to try and keep a balloon aloft as long as possible while you drift seemingly at random over the map. If you drift off the edge, you lose even if you still have fuel left.
The only problem encountered with the program is that nowhere did it indicate whether it was for a 16K or 48K Spectrum and there was no mention of the name Map of the U.K.
The program is about 17½K and the data is about 22½K of code so it takes a long time to load from tape. While a map program is certain not to be as exciting as a game, this is a very user-friendly program with no obvious bugs.
Map of the U.K. is available from Kuma Computers, Berkshire. It costs £11.95.
CHUCKIE EGG for the 48K Spectrum presents yet another variation on the Donkey Kong theme. Here the object is to negotiate a system of platforms and ladders, picking up eggs and corn on each level while pursued by giant ducks.
It is surprising that the ducks give you less concern than the ladders. Whether intentionally or not, the game makes it difficult to get on or off the ladders unless you are in the proper position. The slightest touch on the key might make you over-shoot your target and, as the ducks approach, you will find yourself unable to move out of the way.
The game also offers a jump facility but judging your leaps accurately is no easier than climbing the ladders. Nor is it any use thinking you can wait for the ducks to cruise past you because you are playing against the clock and might run out of time.
Each level presents new challenges, such as bigger gaps in the platforms on level two, and moving lifts on which you must try to jump on level three. Fortunately you have three lives on each level, which obviates the need to return to the beginning again each time you are mauled by a duck.
Even though the difficulty of using the ladders as an escape route slows the game considerably, Chuckie Egg manages to be highly addictive and has appealing graphics and sound. It is produced by A & F Software, Manchester, and costs £6.90.
AQUARIUS for the 16K Spectrum will remind any aspiring James Bond just how perilous life can be under water. You have to imagine that you are the commander of a frogman team whose mission is to destroy the death machines an enemy government has built in an underwater cavern.
At the beginning of the game you are given a secret colour code to remember, your eventual aim being to shoot at the colours in the correct sequence to wipe out the enemy lair.
You may find, however, that proceeding that far is an impossible task. You will be pursued by jellyfish, poisonous sea squirts and sharks, and if none of those gets you, you can be blown up by mines or entangled in deadly weeds at the bottom. You can shoot your way out of trouble, scoring points as you do so, but remember that the shark, which even after you have avoided it advances towards you from the other side, must be shot square in the head. To add to your troubles, you must remember to pick up oxygen tanks on your way or you will die from lack of air.
If you manage to survive the first set of hazards, level two offers a jagged cave to swim through, with an electric barrier at the end of it.
The number and awkward placing of the keys needed to play Aquarius present an additional challenge and you may find it easier to succeed in your mission if you use a joystick.
Aquarius is available from Bug-Byte, Liverpool and costs £5.95.
ANOTHER RECENT offering from CCS is Gangsters, a strategy game for the 48K Spectrum. As the leader of a gang in the U.S. in the prohibition era, your objective is to take over a city from other gang leaders. You start with a certain amount of money and a certain number of gangsters, and can invest in assets such as speakeasies, distilleries and casinos.
You can also use your funds for your personal protection and the bribery of city officials and must cope as best you can with unforeseen events, such as raids from rival gangs or being arrested.
It is even possible to go into murder mode and hire a killer to wipe out your rivals and a sub-plot concerning the search for the other hidden arms of the gangs is an appealing twist to the story.
At the end of a round, your monthly position is shown and you go on to the next month's tribulations, attempting to move up the player league table by increasing your income.
Gangsters is very similar to a board game, with the computer throwing the dice and keeping track of assets, gang members killed, and so on. The graphics are simple but the game is carefully-presented and there is plenty of variety to keep you playing. You can also choose from nine levels of difficulty.
Gangsters is available from Cases Computer Simulations, London and costs £6.
MANOR SOFTWARE calls its Scatterbrain for the 48K Spectrum a game of logic and deduction. The basic idea is that your brain contains a number of mental blocks which prevent you thinking straight. The first stage in eliminating the mental blocks is to launch mind probes to find them and the second stage is to fire surgical lasers to destroy them.
Locating the blocks is made more difficult by the fact that if your probe gets near them, it will go in an unexpected direction. If it hits one, the probe will disappear. Eventually, you deduce the position of the blocks from the behaviour of the probes.
The brain and its mental blocks are represented by a grid which looks very much like the old pencil and paper game of Battleships. You launch your probe by inputting the numbers of the side and column in which you think the block might be.
If you lose patience with elaborate instructions and a complex set of rules, the game is not for you. It starts with a seemingly endless succession of screens giving information which you must absorb fully to be able to play the game. If you are persistent and like a taxing puzzle, it should provide an absorbing occupation. It is for one or two people and there are nine levels.
Scatterbrain is produced by Manor Software, London. It costs £5.95.
TWO RECENT releases from Virgin Games are Rider and Angler, both for the 48K Spectrum. In Rider, you are an MI5 agent charged with a two-part mission. Stage one consists of parachuting into enemy territory and attempting to land on a moving motor-cycle. Thus mounted, you then move to stage two, which entails riding through a minefield to check the terrain prior to invasion.
You choose any level of difficulty from 001 to 007 and must avoid not only randomly-placed mines but obstacles which may cause you to crash. If you manage to stay the course you will be promoted.
The graphics in both stages of the game are lively and the second stage promises a fast and challenging ride. A major fault, however, is that if you crash during stage two, you have to go back to your original parachuting exercise. Extra lives for the motorcyclist would have made the game more satisfying, as the second part is the more exciting and difficult to master.
Angler could help confirm the low status of fishing as a spectator sport. In it you are at sea with your trawler, attempting to catch a variety of fish, all gaining different scores according to their type.
The trawler moves left and right and pressing any key casts the fishing line. According to the instructions, the length of time you keep the keys depressed determines the length of the line but, in the reviewer's experience, the line showed an infuriating tendency to stop short of any fish at which it was aimed.
The game features a scoreboard so that you can compete against your friends and a high score earns a certificate of merit. Fairly rudimentary graphics and slow responses, even if you choose an advanced level of difficulty, do not make it wildly exciting.
Rider and Angler are produced by Virgin Games, London and cost £5.50 each.
PHIPPS ASSOCIATES has produced a simulation program for the 48K Spectrum to teach the art of orienteering. The Forest is presented very professionally, with a map and a detailed booklet to accompany it. The program offers a pre-set route but you can also map your own course and use that instead.
The program is definitely not for novices. The booklet warns that you need a ruler graduated in millimetres and a protractor for measuring angles to participate. The graphics change to show your position as you move, taking into account the contours of the terrain and variations in bearing and length of step.
You use the cursor keys to move. The left and right arrows move you 11.25 degrees each time, the up arrow moves you forward for as long as you keep it depressed, the down arrow turns you 180 degrees to face the way you have come. Other commands allow you to check your bearings, see your control card, enter your code and check your time.
Unless you are an experienced orienteer, it is very easy to get lost and the booklet recommends you to keep track of all your moves as you make them.
Even experienced orienteers will probably be relieved to know that it is necessary only to arrive within five metres of the finish point marked on the map.
The graphics are simple but effective and the booklet provides very thorough explanations. The Forest is available from Phipps Associates, Surrey. The complete package costs £9.95.
IN CARIBBEAN Trader for the 48K Spectrum, you are the captain of a cargo vessel plying the Caribbean. Starting with your funds and a loan from the loan shark, your aim is to invest in various cargos such as tobacco, guns, spices and slaves and see if you can make a killing in any of four island ports.
Each time you set sail, a variety of things can happen to you - rebel pirates might board you and buy your guns, a police party might confiscate your illegal cargo, or a typhoon might force you to jettison everything on board. On the other hand, it might pass over without causing any serious damage.
Meanwhile, the prices of the commodities in which you are interested are fluctuating and the interest on your loan continues to rise. The game can be played on three levels of difficulty and in spite of very basic graphics, the lively story-line and a number of possible variations - many depending on the route you happened to be sailing - make it an addictive strategy game. Meeting the objective - becoming solvent - is not easy, which adds further interest.
Caribbean Trader is available from East Midland Software, Notts, and costs £4.95.
BILLED as "an inscrutable puzzle," Hanoi King for the 16K Spectrum is another version of that ancient game, Towers of Hanoi. You have three pillars, with anything from three to nine rings on the first. The object is to transfer the rings from the first to the last pillar in the minimum number of moves, remembering that a large ring cannot go on top of a small one.
The puzzle is easy when playing with three rings, much more difficult with nine, when 511 moves are needed to succeed. An 'L' option allows you to see a demonstration by the computer of how it is done.
The graphic representation of the game is very simple and there is no indication of how many moves are needed on the lower levels, something you have to discover yourself.
It is such a classic puzzle that it cannot fail to absorb you but more could have been made of it with better graphics and perhaps a more interesting scoring system.
Hanoi King is available from Contrast Software, Hampshire. It costs £4.95.