Reviews

1984 Poppy Soft (UK)
by Stephen Crow

This is one of my most cherished games.
I played it hundreds of times, and still come back to it now and then.
Each level is different and demands a different kind of players attention.
Good details, superb smoothness and a fair difficult level makes the game really addictive. I only wish it was a bit longer.

Stephen Crow is highly regarded in Spectrum circles primarily for a series of games that owe a great deal of inspiration to Ultimate.

Wizard's Lair is the most derrivative - shamelessly plaigerising Atic Atac, and shows up a highly competent coder who lacks in original concepts.

This game is an early attempt at creating a unique game around his smooth moving sprites and slick gameplay, and it is a mixed bag, successful in its ambitions but sidestepping any truly innovative features that would have the game brought more longevity.

Its still a nice game, played in 3 stages with the third stage a creative platform game using lifts alongside power pill thingies that enable you to get back at the maurauding fiends that populate the screen.

It works with the smoothness of the early Ultimate games such as Pssst or Cookie, and will keep your attention until you've seen it all. Should suit high score chasers.

Section 2, seems over-easy in the first couple of rounds but becomes quite tricky. It is, perhaps uniquely for a game with a robot factory setting, patrolled by a 'killer canary' who will pounce if you are too slow. Any game with a killer canary automatically scores extra points, but in this case not quite enough to elevate the game from a 3 to a 4.

Three one-screen sections, with multiple levels of difficulty, for this early Ultimate-like arcade game by Star Quake famed Stephen J. Crow.

Smooth and colorful, and quite playable,
section 1 is some kind of Tempest mixed with Missile Command based on laser slowly getting at your egg, where your robot lies,
preparing for his robot life, followed by a trasitional second section, which takes you to the third, the most difficult one,
a sort of Panic mixed with Jumping Jack with Painter, with external elevators and holes.

Overall, it's not unoriginal, but the ideas are not fantastic neither, although nicely done.

It's not a bad one, anyway, especially for 1984.

This game is cute , but only averagely cute ... !!!

2,5 / 5 .

Factory Breakout takes place over 3 screens. Each screen plays differently but none of them are much fun.