IN THE darkness of space the Outsiders gather to launch a final attack on the free galaxies. The only way in which you can ensure their continuing freedom is to buy a copy of 3D Starstrike and track down these space cowboys who insist on zipping around the universe in X-wing fighters which look as though they have been high-jacked from Star Wars.

By that we imply no criticism of the program. Gamers who enjoy blasting space ships, and who probably still own a copy of Space Invaders, will enjoy it.

Take your position in the cockpit of a Starstriker and battle through the hordes of Outsiders, all shown in line-construction 3D which has become statutory such games, to the star base from which they launch their sudden attacks.

Once you have entered the base you must take your ship through a narrow passage, avoiding the ground defences and destroying the tops of towers which block your way. Once past the first stage it's on to the second where you must give a repeat performance.

The only aspect of the game which changes to any notable degree is the score. Thousands of points can be achieved, even on the higher levels, in a matter of minutes using the ultra-maneuverable cannons. The enemy, totally incompetent and probably blind, if the accuracy of their lazer bolts is anything to go by, happily shoot on and off the screen until they are shot down in a collection of little 3D pieces.

If 3D Starstrike had been brought onto the market a year ago it might have taken it by storm. Unfortunately it combines elements of other turkeys such as Terrahawks. That is a bad selling point especially since success is usually gauged by originality or programming prowess.

John Gilbert

IN THE archives of the most notorious prison escapes is the story of one, Monty Mole, who was slammed in the jug for borrowing a bucket of coal one cold night to warm his frozen paws.

"Monty is innocent", thought Sam Stoat and so he decided to arrange his best friend's escape.

Sam scaled the high walls of Scudmore Prison and went to sniff out Monty. Had he known of the horrors in wait he would not have set out on his mad caper, for guarding Scudmore were mad axemen, walking skulls and ghosts of past inmates.

Once inside, Sam set off to find the Governor's office where the keys to the cells were hidden. Finding the safe he picked a likely key and scampered towards the cells. More frustration followed as Sam could carry only one key and had to return for another each time he opened a cell.

The prison was a labyrinth, with some rooms to be avoided at all costs - solitary confinement cells, from whose confines death was the only escape.

Eventually he found the armoury and, now armed, he despatched many guards to their graves. There was also the phenomenon of the potion, which rendered Sam invisible. Afterwards he confessed that he got very worried when his stomach or head disappeared, which happened every time he ran into one or two of the nasties - the surroundings flickered and merged and lost all their colour and definition. Despite that, he recommended the escapade to all would-be gaol-breakers as a pleasant way of spending a harrowing few hours.

Clare Edgeley

WHILE to many the Falklands war is an episode best forgotten, to others it is a heaven-sent opportunity to unleash tedious games upon a vulnerable public.

The Falklands Crisis is described as 'a good combination of strategy and arcade'. It is neither.

You guide a white harrier jet across some peculiarly shaped green islands, shooting up enemy aircraft and installations. If you hit them a little cloud of smoke appears. If you are hit then you putt-putt-putt into oblivion.

Your aircraft can go up and down, turn left or right. There isn't really anything else to say about it. Oh, yes, - you get three lives.

BMX Trials features an equally uninspiring screen display in which a red bike accelerates across a jungle landscape - well, it's green at any rate - hopping over trees, huts, ravines and arrows. There are some bees and bubbles thrown in for good measure. If you run into anything then that object turns red, presumably from the blood of the deceased biker. Both games are awful.

Llainlan Software can be avoided at Dyfed.

Bill Scolding

THE ROBOTS are back in the latest game from Ultimate, creators of Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore. After four arcade adventures on fantasy themes, the wizards of hi-res graphics are plundering space again.

Alien 8 puts you in charge of a large spaceship carrying deep-frozen spacemen - 'cryonauts' - to a new planet. But alien life forces penetrate the ship and threaten to de-activate the refrigeration chambers. You, as the robot, must find the thermolec valve for each chamber to re-activate it.

Alien 8 is as close a copy of the very popular Knight Lore as a program can be. It uses exactly the same 'filmation' technique to show a 3D chamber in astounding definition, full of traps and objects to test and puzzles to solve. Your character can push some of the objects around, using them as platforms, and the 3D animation extends to your character disappearing behind obstacles.

Where the game improves upon Knight Lore is in the plot and problems. In the earlier game objects had to be taken to a central room, whereas now you must ferry them to 24 different crychambers to win. That extends the number of potential solutions enormously. The individual problems are much more tightly constructed and offer greater variety. In some rooms you must shift blocks around extensively to construct an appropriate stairway; in others the solution is apparently impossible unless you experiment, whereupon a key move may send blocks sliding or even vanishing to reveal your goal.

The general quality of the graphics is slightly higher, although using an apparently identical system to Knight Lore. The character moves a little quicker as well. Fans of the earlier game will need no urging to rush out and buy it. Those who have neither game should buy Alien 8 now, and find out what the fuss is all about.

Chris Bourne

WHY IS life so tough? There you are minding your own business, an ordinary human on the Clapham omnibus, when Hazel the witch arrives and turns you into a slimy toad.

Hazel has now imprisoned you in her island home and, naturally enough, you want to become human again and get back to Clapham. You must go through a series of transformations by using spells, potions and all other magical impedimenta lying around Hazel's dwelling. Warning - this won't be easy.

The game is a text adventure with superb location graphics. As you move around the rooms - whether you happen currently to be, a toad, cat, ape or whatever - you are shown in the position you have moved to - on top of a sofa, under the piano. In this sense the graphics are interactive.

The program is technically polished with a large vocabulary and about 100 locations. You can type in reasonably complex English and the input is very firm, allowing fast typing.

The plot is inventive and good-natured whilst the business of finding the correct things for your next change is quite tantalising. Change too soon and you may find you've missed something you could have done only in a different shape.

The Witch's Cauldron should be entertaining enough for the whole family. Splendid fun!

Richard Price

SOFTWARE Projects, a company responsible for bringing out more repeat plots than Dynasty, has done it again with a new space hero called Astronut.

He is a galactic Willy but without the bounce to get him out of trouble. His chums in the space freighter, headed for home planet CS, have thrown him out to collect resource blocks, blown from the ship in a meteor storm.

Luckily, the ship has crashed on an unknown planet, which has ladders and levels, so you do not have to swing around in space. You can also select which level you want to enter, unlike Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy.

The monsters include jiving robots, jumping green fish and spinning rotary saws. To destroy them you drop bombs but be careful as explosions have a time delay of several seconds.

When you reach a block push it down the levels to the ground and onto the flashing transporter pad where it will be beamed over to the ship. When you have placed one block on the transporter another will appear and you repeat the process.

The game is difficult enough, and high scores are a luxury, but when first loaded there are no instructions for travelling to the various levels or for getting into the game. You are not even told how to drop bombs, though with a joystick it is easy. An attempt should have been made to include minimal instructions.

John Gilbert

TERROR stalks the corridors of the spaceship Nostromo as the alien devours the crew members, inexorably, one after the other. If you thrilled to the haunting and genuinely scary movie, Alien provides an authentic recreation of the plot.

You control the crew of the Nostromo, by manipulating the characters through a series of menus. You can use a joystick to move the cursor to the various instructions. A plan of the three decks displays the current position of the character you are controlling, and reports beneath send messages concerning the status of characters or damage to the ship.

To win you must either herd the alien into an airlock and blow it into space, or destroy the Nostromo while escaping in the shuttle Narcissus.

As in the film, the characters have minds of their own and will behave accordingly, sometimes disobeying orders if they are too scared. Jones, the ship's cat, is an infallible guide to the nearness of the alien. Unfortunately, you cannot launch the shuttle without first rescuing Jones, and the cat only likes certain crew members.

Whenever doors or ventilation grilles are opened, there is a corresponding whoosh from the Spectrum, and an electronic tracker, when found, beeps if anything is moving in an adjacent room.

Although the graphics are symbolic, and the representation of the alien less than frightening, there is a tremendous tension in playing the game, and scope for extremely complex tactical decisions. When all you can hear are the sounds of the alien approaching, panic can easily set in.

Chris Bourne

THE rationale behind Lazy Jones has you as the laziest hotel cleaner in the business, avoiding managers and lethal cleaning carts by nipping in and out of the 18 bedrooms.

But you can forget about all that, because the real rationale of this game is merely to string together as many feeble versions of ancient arcade games as the Spectrum memory will tolerate. Behind most of those bedroom doors lurks a screen and joystick, and the next thing you know is that you're playing one of the many arcade games which you hoped never to clap eyes on again.

There are shoot-em-up games, platform games, centipede games - you name it, Lazy Jones has to play it. After a while you are preferring death from the hotel manager to another bout of 'Res Q' or '99 Red Balloons'.

The graphics are adequate and, to be fair, the game has a certain novelty going for it, albeit short-lived. What really frightens is that in the not-too-distant future, Terminal Software might be encouraged to launch Lazy Jones II in which one of the many computer games played in those hotel rooms is Lazy Jones I in its entirety.

This series could run and run. Aarghh!

Bill Scolding

DRIVE IN from Fantasy has not, as the name might suggest, anything to do with burgers and movies - instead it is set round a drive-in garage somewhere in space.

Dezzy's space ship is disintegrating. With no spare parts she finds an old drive-in where hopefully she will be able to find some rusty replacements.

The garage is a confusing jumble of rooms and objects, half of which seem to have little to do with the game. The object is to pick up spare parts which must then be assembled in Room 189 - the only room with a number.

Some rooms contain banks, swap shops and time machines which must be used if Dezzy is to survive.

You will come across the symbols of those facilities early on in the game but identifying each takes rather longer. Objects placed in the bank are swallowed and never seen again.

Certainly a game to tax your ingenuity and patience and one which might tempt you to throw your joystick away in frustration.

Clare Edgeley

WOW, you think, as soon as you've loaded Jewels of Babylon, what faberooney graphics! Don't get overexcited though - there aren't that many.

The setting would do justice to Desert Island Discs - a remote, tropical sea-girt spot with dunes and palm trees. Somewhere in the interior lie concealed the jewels of the title.

Promising? Possibly, but first try to get into the wee rowing boat. Enter boat? Climb down? No - it's got to be 'Climb into boat'. The interpreter is not hyper-friendly.

Once ashore you explore. There are a few objects littered about but it is possible to wander around like a total wally for endless stretches.

Endless perseverance may well get you somewhere but personally I play games to be entertained.

Richard Price

THE revolution in DIY adventuring begun by The Quill continues. Now you can add the icing to the cake and use The Illustrator to create location graphics which will give extra atmosphere and polish to your games.

This new utility program is specifically designed to be used in conjunction with The Quill.

Once the main menu appears your first task is to load the adventure database you have created on The Quill. Doing this initialises the drawing program and gives it the necessary information about the number of possible locations required.

If you have a previously prepared or unfinished graphics file those too are loaded. Again, a demo set is provided. Selecting graphics mode on the main menu then allows you to get down to the serious business of art. You can print the current pictures to the screen or amend them - this instruction is also used to start from scratch.

You're off. Two cursors are shown: the base cursor indicates where your current line is to be drawn from and the 'rubber cursor' can be easily moved around the screen to show the end point of the line.

The cursors are controlled by eight conveniently placed keys. Other single key instructions allow you to move the cursors to new points for separate bits of the drawing. Using this programming mode you can reduce a complex picture to a short series of key presses.

As with The Quill you will need to work carefully through the manual before you begin but there is a step-by-step demonstration which will convince you the program is highly user-friendly. All the processes demand no knowledge of programming - you will only need to be logical in your approach.

When you have finished all you need to do is save your database and graphics files. After that you can simply LOAD "" and auto-run your graphic adventure.

Richard Price

RIGHT from the opening screens of Brian Bloodaxe, which simulate your Spectrum failing to load the program, you know you are entering the upper atmosphere of lunacy.

Brian is a viking, who has been frozen for centuries in a block of ice. On thawing, he decides to conquer the British, who live in 100 screens of Jet Set Willy-style arcade action.

Objects are scattered liberally about the screens, and you will need to engage in some pretty dubious imaginative thought to work out their purposes. Monsters range from ducks to Daleks, Mad Scotsmen to Turkish soldiers.

Those objects, of which you can carry three at a time, can be used to block the path of monsters or to make extra platforms. They are solid, and do not fall when dropped, and thus provide a means of leaping across blank areas of the screen. Getting the correct objects to the correct places, is, however, a daunting task.

Brian Bloodaxe is not original in concept, but the only game we have seen based on the Jet Set Willy theme to match that classic. It will be months before a solution is found to the quest for the Crown Jewels, and there is much incidental pleasure to be gained from the large sprite-style graphics and colourful visual humour. Brian Bloodaxe is a pleasant surprise in a market which has become a little turgid of late.

Chris Bourne

SINCLAIR/Macmillan's latest offering in the Science Horizons series, aimed at 8-14 year olds, is a first rate simulation of weather forecasting.

In Weathermaster you are presented with a map of the British Isles. Pressure systems move across the map changing at half-hourly intervals. You are then asked to provide a weather forecast for one of the regions, usually about two days in advance.

When your forecast time arrives the computer shows how accurate you were.

The main object of Weathermaster is to become so accurate in your forecasting that you win all the regions of the country, no mean feat as central to the acquisition of skills in this field is the realisation that weather systems change at an unpredictable rate.

Those who are interested in weather projects would find Arnold Wheaton's Weather Station a useful tool for recording data. It is a dedicated database which allows you to enter data on a daily basis for up to a year.

The main strength of the program lies in its search facilities which allow detailed analysis of the data, over two fields if necessary, as well as over bands of data.

Theo Wood

ARTIC'S latest, Mutant Monty, bears a deliberately close resemblance to Manic Miner - a game which programmers have reproduced in almost every conceivable style and format.

The idea is to help Monty to reach the beautiful maiden, crossing the Pit of Eternal Slime and dodging innumerable aliens, sour lemons and other hostile objects, all the while scooping up piles of gold. Each screen has one exit to the next level, but all the gold has to be collected before he will be let through.

Monty moves very quickly on the horizontal levels but tends to rise and sink slowly in comparison, as if he were indeed swimming through slime.

Thankfully there is an on/off key for the music; the Spectrum version of the first few bars of the The Sting is played continuously throughout.

Completely unoriginal in concept the game is at least intriguing and frustrating to play - exactly the attributes its programmers planned.

Clare Edgeley

SOMEWHERE out there in the flatlands of video, ghostly tanks still crawl about their perpetual battlezone. Bazam by Alan Firminger has been launched to prove it.

In the wilderness of outline graphics, tank games have always reigned supreme. For Bazam, Firminger has stripped away all but the bare essentials of the game. A blue background represents the playing area, and the obstacles are all shaped like cones. A radar display shows the position of the enemy, and information on the type of tank opposing you is also displayed. Joystick controls are scorned.

Because Bazam is such a simple version of the game, it does have the advantage of speed. Most Spectrum tank games suffer from incredibly slow moving weaponry, trundling about the screen like some iron-clad monstrosity from the trenches of the Somme. At least in Bazam it only takes a few seconds to find your target.

Written, surprisingly, for the now almost defunct 16K Spectrum, Bazam is a genuine genetic throwback to an earlier age of arcade games. If you are into nostalgia, wear your best mindless arcade zombie grin and have yourself a ball.

Chris Bourne

NOW here's an odd one. Is Ziggurat an adventure or some other sort of hybrid game? Ziggurats were the multi-storey temple towers of the ancient Middle East and the game is clearly set in some such structure, although it has modern lifts and other artefacts in it.

Reading the insert won't tell you anything at all but it soon becomes clear that the aim is to escape unscathed from this labyrinth with as many precious objects as possible.

There is a vast number of rooms, each depicted in graphics but all looking pretty similar, except for the occasional special place.

Text is entered in verb/noun combinations and the interpreter is friendly enough.

It is not a highly verbal adventure and cannot possibly compare with more expensive productions. Despite that it becomes gripping purely because you want to get out of the maze and back into the light. Maybe it appeals to the reviewer's claustrophobic tendencies.

Richard Price

THREE years ago Kevin Toms designed the classic Football Manager. Not one to rest on his laurels, he has now released Software Star, a simulation of running a successful software publishers.

Your task is to make a pre-tax profit of £10,000 and achieve superstar status by consistently getting your games to the top of the charts.

You must make a number of monthly decisions - six, actually - which affect productivity, sales strategy and public relations, as well as launching new titles, deleting old ones and booking advertising space. Then you sit back and watch your games climb slowly up the Top 20.

Any resemblance between this simulation and real life is completely coincidental. You are permitted to develop and launch only one game at a time, and there is no provision for budget software or megagames.

Adverts appear to affect sales in the month that they are placed, and you cannot advertise software before it has been released!

On launching a product you are informed that the reviews have been 'appalling', 'excellent', etc; another great opportunity to lampoon the Gilbert Factor wasted! The one faint-hearted attempt at satire is the sly digs at other software houses - Perth Hut, Sigh On and Last Games. Ho ho.

Distributors, retailers and pirates all are conspicuous by their absence. You might as well be running a whelk stall.

If the Toms believes that Software Star is an accurate portrayal of life in the cut-throat games industry then Addictive Games might as well shut up shop now.

Bill Scolding

IT IS surprising that nobody thought of producing a game based upon the trials of Ulysses a long time ago.

Hellfire takes you from the hills at the entrance of a sacred temple, past the minotaurs which guard its inner sanctum and through a complex adventure maze where you are continually hounded and your only weapon is a mace.

The game involves three distinct tasks each of which leads into the next. On the first level you must jump on to hills, avoiding boulders and the stony stare of Medusa. Once inside the temple you must use the trampoline to move nearer the top of the screen and dodge in between the pillars to avoid the minotaurs. Each pillar will transport you to a different level of the screen until you get the sequence correct and enter the door at the top of the temple into the labyrinth where the fireball thrower and the reptilian assassin await your arrival with glee.

The small degree of skill needed to complete the first level is sure to turn players off fairly quickly. If the early levels had been more difficult to complete its graphics and plot would have made it a candidate for a number one spot in the charts.

John Gilbert

STRANDS of DNA are firmly connected in most people's minds with biology lessons, yet PSS has succeeded in basing Xavior on those tiny gene carriers.

Xavior, the last surviving member of his race, must find and collect all the strands of DNA which carry the make-up of his people from a subterranean storage complex. Only when that is done can he ensure the perpetuation of his race.

The game starts at the entrance to the cavern; Xavior enters and at once sees a shimmering blue orb in a corner of the room. He picks it up knowing that this will de-energise the doors to each room in the complex. However, the orb has only enough power to neutralise four doors, and though others can be collected en route it is wise to pick them up only when needed.

Your task is enormous - hidden in over four thousand rooms are a small number of DNA strands guarded by apparitions formed from pure energy. You have just enough time to run through each room before they materialise, but should you stop to pick up an orb or piece of DNA then they will do their best to neutralise you.

Xavior is the kind of game which leaves you panting in frustration, convinced that it is impossible to find all the strands of DNA and thus complete the game. The instructions state that the player must find the secrets to the orbs - an impossible task if, indeed, any secrets exist.

However, for those that like bashing their heads against a brick wall - this is the game for you.

Clare Edgeley

AN alternative to war is what Arcade Software calls its game Therbo. Picking your teeth is equally non-violent, but only marginally less boring.

YOU are a jet-propelled rugby ball along a corridor while the computer attempts to force the blazing bladder into the touchlines.

In the first stage you must shoot up 'shapes that move across the screen' as the cassette insert puts it, running rapidly out of invention but scoring points for honesty. In the second stage you get to try for goal.

The action is limited to scrolling back and forth in the middle third of the screen. Even on the 'expert' level it is possible to sit back while the computer happily allows the Therbo to wobble into its goalmouth. 'A cross between American Football and World War III' says the press release. That sounds like something worth avoiding as well.

Chris Bourne

ALTHOUGH the blurb on the cassette insert trills enthusiastically about tyrannical wizards, stench of death, lethal minions etc, Wizard's Warriors by Mastertronic is a straightforward two-dimensional maze game.

Your on-screen alter ego is a small figure armed with a laser rifle. The purpose is to move him around the grid despatching the wizard's guards who are also supplied with lasers.

When you've got rid of the visible enemies others arrive who can only be seen in direct lines of sight. The rest of the time they can be tracked on the rudimentary radar beneath the playing area. When those are all reduced to atoms an eagle must be slaughtered, then the wizard. Difficulty increases from screen to screen.

The game is an average shoot-em-up with no great distinguishing characteristics from many others. Graphics are pleasantly coloured but jerky. You won't need a great deal of strategic skill as the easiest thing to do is hang around with your back to a wall and wait for the rather unintelligent guards to stumble your way.

Richard Price

BLUE MAX, another dubious import from the United States, bears little resemblance to the real dogfights and bi-plane bombing missions of the First World War. You take your light aircraft up from a base which looks as if it is situated within enemy territory. The landing strips must have force fields around them as enemy attacks are sporadic and have little or no effect.

Most of the destruction wreaked upon your aircraft will occur because of your clumsiness in taking-off, landing or keeping altitude.

Rising on the airwaves is only one of your problems. You can release bombs on enemy outposts, tanks and rivercraft by pulling the joystick back and pressing the fire key, or button. If the bombs fail to drop at the correct time you will miss a scant opportunity to gain points.

One touch of realism is the refueling exercise which you should perform every time you sight a landing strip once every four or five minutes.

The bi-plane can perform 3D movements, such as wiggling its wings and casts a shadow on the landscape, but that shows buildings, tanks and shops to be flat as pancakes. Compared to TLL, for instance, Blue Max is clearly second rate.

The Commodore 64 version is impressive but the Spectrum version, although closer to the original, lacks some of its lustre.

John Gilbert

NO PRIZES for guessing that Bristles is a painting game - yes, all right it could have been a shaving, game, ho ho.

Right, grab the stick and guide the little housepainter round the house. Do it fast there's a very tight time limit. Be careful because there are dumb buckets, flying half pints, steam pipes and sundry other aggravating hindrances. There's also Brenda the Brat who sticks her nasty little mitts on your nice new paint and loses your score.

The house is shown in cutaway on screen with time indicators below. You use ladders and lifts to reach the various floors and the various nuisances will knock you back to the basement or deprive you of a brush if you collide with them.

Although there is nothing new about the scenario, the game is certainly ultra-fast and demanding on your reflexes. There are eight buildings with six skill levels for each, making a total of 48 permutations.

If you're into this sort of thing then sit back, switch your brain off and get sploshing.

Richard Price

QUASIMODO has returned to the computer screen in Hunchback II from Ocean to rescue the beautiful Esmerelda who is imprisoned in a tower.

The game is set in arcade style, with Quasimodo battling against all odds every step of the way. He has to jump and duck flying arrows, climb ropes, ring bells, leap stretches of water and generally have the agility of an acrobat coupled with the patience of a monk to overcome the insurmountable problems set him.

There are seven screens in all, each progressively more difficult - you have to collect all the bells on each screen before moving to the next level. Movement is fast, leaving no room for hesitant players. Working out the correct route can only be done by trial and error - timing is the key.

You have five lives in which to fulfil your task - no easy job. There are, however, one or two nice touches. Quasimodo can leap and change direction in mid-air - a great help when dodging cannon balls.

The game falls down on its graphics especially when compared to classics such as Knight Lore which shows exactly what can be squeezed out of the Spectrum.

Clare Edgeley

OH, DEAR. How many more times do us poor adventurers have to find and destroy the evil wizard?

Curse of the Seven Faces adopts the same old scenario by asking you to find the various items which comprise the average wizard's equipment.

The game is a text-only adventure. Tired story line apart, there are some positive features. The location descriptions are very full. Magic is used a lot and can be used to transport you from one section of play to another. Technically, the program is well produced.

Despite that, the game has little excitement as the puzzles are easy to solve. If you try to kill the Troll King with your small knife the screen simply tells you 'Nothing exciting happens'. Well, if I was a troll king I wouldn't take too kindly to being knifed. You begin to wonder whether the long descriptions have taken up space which could have been used for a spot of action.

All told, Curse of the Seven Faces is disappointing but attractively produced. It could well be regarded as a beginner's adventure.

Richard Price