1984 US Gold (UK)
Your aim is to penetrate the enemy defensive powers one by one and capture the last standing enemy fortress.
The plot is played in 5 different parts (plus 1 repeated) which gives the game a lot of variety, but not enough. There's battles in sea and in land, making you feel like a super rambo, or just that unlucky soldier who foughts in all fronts.
This was a game I played a lot as a kid but not as much as Raid Over Moscow also by the same authors.
A slightly better sequel made it's appearence sortly after.
3,5 points
Beach Head was the european conversion of an american game, and it shows: there's all the american obsession for war in it. These are lots of military mini-games budled together as the various phases of a mission, so you can play different moments and aspects of the war: moving your fleet through a map towards some targets, going through a strait filled with missiles and obstacles, shootings of enemy jets in open sea, with subjective view, a sea battle against other ships, again in subjective view, a path full of obstacles and cannons through the beach, in your tank, toward the final battle.
Playability is ok, graphics too, sounds a bit bad. It's not all action, in fact, the sea battle section requires a little concetration, strategy and thought, especially if you're bad at maths [and I'm terrible]. The tank section is a real bore, the tank is cute, but awfully slow, and the avoiding of obstacles requires painstaking attention. This section really lower the vote, as I see it. The game was very good in 1984, very professionally done by the prolific David J. Anderson, but it hasn't aged terribly well. 3/5
The Spectrum version of the successful Commodore 64 game was coded in 1984 by David J. Anderson and Ian Morrison for US Gold.
It consists of five different stages, each one considered a true mini-game, a formula that was later used in Raid Over Moscow and its own sequel, Beach Head II, both improving the original idea. Acceptable graphics and an interesting 2-players mode to compete for the highest score.
The aim is landing from sea and defeating the enemy in a final battle where we must destroy a big gun with our turret. But previously we must control our ships in a hidden passage, avoid and shoot planes that launch bombs at us, fire and sink enemy ships controlling the degree of elevation of a cannon and landing tanks avoiding obstacles and enemy fire.
It's a game that hasn't aged well, the levels are too easy once you've played several times but it was impressive in the year it was released, becoming a best-seller.
