Review by Stack on 11 Jan 2015 (Rating: 1)
One from the indistinguished Poole and Murray programming team (full softgraphy overrated at a lowly 4.51 on WoS) and nothing to delight in from a game that takes the concept of Moon Patrol and delivers a scrolling game with a motorbike replacing the buggy and trees and cars to jump instead of craters.
Suffers from a golden trumvirate of terrible flicker, hideous colour clash and dreadful collision detection.
Having to jump the trees that are not in the way adds a little bit of Spectrummy weirdness, a minor saving grace.
1985 Sparklers (UK)
by Roy Poole and Terry Murray
Desert Burner is obviously inspired by the classic arcade game Moon Patrol. With a different theme, more Earthly and no sci-fi involved. It as a sightly different approach since you can't shot up and you have to accelerate before jumping.
Personally I enjoyed playing it. Yes, it's full of bugs, including crashes, but it's also challenging, even very hard, at least initially, until you get the hang of jumping or firing. The cartoony graphics work fine with me, and it would be a very cheerful game if only not so difficult.
