Reviews

Above average platform game for the not easily discouraged. Avoiding jelly monsters and tumbling rocks(?) that drain your energy, you must negotiate platforms and lifts collecting items for points and most importantly the key to exit the level. The fly in the ointment is the eagle that wonders round the levels and will carry you back to the start if it catches you. This is immensely annoying and often results in an ill-judged jump to avoid getting caught, In other words it's hard. I got to level 2 but there is a practice mode that lets you try out all levels which is cheating in my book! Controls are responsive and the graphics and sound are adequate. Worth a look if you think Manic Miner is too damm easy.

A classic from the very early days of the Spectrum. You control an anti-tank gun while tanks at varying distances travel from right to left in front of you. By raising or lowering the trajectory of your gun you can either immobilise them in their tracks or destroy them completely, but beware they fire back. Lots of options like rationed ammo make this a thinking man’s shoot-em-up and both graphics and sound are good for the period. Redefinable keys so you can use a joystick.

If you like strategy games with a hint of humour (and I do) then this is about as good as it gets. Written by the man who became paper-mache headed Frank Sidebottom (I kid you not), I spent many a happy hour trying to get that elusive No.1. You start the game as a rather bad band desperately trying to get into the charts. With lots of rehearsals and gigs you gradually become good enough to attract a decent manager and release your own single and get into the chart countdown. Do well enough and the major labels come knocking and the sky’s the limit. Pitfalls include your rival band (they nick your band members), drugs (you’ll find out) and Paul McCartney, but if you get that Documentary you could be on Top of the Pops. About time someone did a remake of it, because it’s a bona fide classic.

A strange hybrid of a game that borrows so many ideas, it almost becomes original. You play a Jetpac-like spaceman in a frenzy-type square room protecting jelly monster aliens as they make their way to your rescue ships. A large meteor splits into numerous asteroid-like boulders once hit, and to add to your problems, travelling along the bottom and sides of the screen are two laser guns that occasionally fire missiles at you in a gridrunner-like stylee. Once you have saved the required amount of aliens, you board your ship and traverse an asteroid belt until its back to rescuing aliens on the next level. The graphics are decent, flicker free and quite colourful, and the action gets quite hectic as you progress. A decent budget SEU that suffered in Crash from one of the reviewers taking an intense dislike to it.

Grotty little horizontal shoot-em-up.. You fight your way through waves of baddies to an end of level boss and thats it, apart from an annoying diamond-shaped thingy that kills you from behind. Looks like they spent more time on the digitized speech and flashy title page than the actual game. If you like this sort of game then it was done far better on the Spectrum by others.

I was never that keen on the arcade version of this game, but it’s a pretty good conversion. You’re a skateboarder going round a street landscape with ramps and water. You must score points to buy extra gear from stalls and avoid break dancers, cyclists etc. Then it’s off to one of four courses. The sound is the worse aspect, non-existent really which is odd as there’s a ghetto blaster round the border of the screen. The graphics are decent but totally monochrome unfortunately. Still your skateboarder moves fast and smoothly. A good conversion of a so-so game, with not much to it.

Oh dear…Having spent vast amounts of coinage on its arcade cousin, I had high hopes for the speccy version when it was announced. After all the original didn’t rely on brilliant graphics so it should be an easy conversion? Wrong! Basically, you’re a plane that shoots its way through waves of enemy planes over a scrolling landscape. There’s bonus weaponry from wiping out certain waves and you can do loop-the loops if you get into trouble. It has two problems. The sound which was an integral part of the original is rubbish. Ok, the speccy was hardly known for its sounds but then the original was hardly a nightmare to reproduce. Instead we get no proper tunes and vague farty noises for bullets. But the main problem is speed. Both you and your opponents travel so slowly that they are both easy to hit and at times impossible to avoid. Now even shoot-em-ups produced years before on the spectrum had managed a fast scrolling game and ironically even the bad speccy conversion of the sequel 1943 manages it, but this is a strictly plodding affair. The graphics are average, a bit colourless and the collision detection is unforgiving so no weaving between planes here. Its ok, but it you knew the original you’ll be disappointed, and if you didn’t there’s better, faster shoot-em-ups around on the spectrum

Unusual game where you control a bouncing ball sideways-on as it negotiates various obstacles including vacuum chutes that takes you back 3 or 4 screens to magnets that pull you up into the path of ball-bursting darts. The trick here is controlling the bounce, which depending on how you well you set it, will either bounce you over the obstacles or send you flying off the screen to be impaled on a spiky floor. The graphics are good and colourful, while the sound is adequate. A good little original game.

If you like original games with character then this may be to your liking. Basically a simpler atic-atac type maze game, you control a CND supporter with a flag - possibly the most bizarre game character ever – as she makes her way through the levels chasing Ronald Reagan before he pushes the nuclear button. In your way are policemen, soldiers and indestructible Maggie Thatchers! You can kill them with kisses and pick up extra lives. Your character is bit unwieldy, but the graphics are cute and colourful. I got down to level 8 but Reagan moves fast and is able to clone himself so you never seem to kill the right one. Good playable game.

A rather poor platform game where you collect objects and avoid monsters. You have to get all the objects in each screen before you leave or you won’t get the chance to turn into various animals that are needed to complete screens later apparently. I never found out. It’s not easy but the main problem is it's pretty bugged to my mind. Your man doesn’t always jump when you want, you can get jammed when you jump or are on the ladders, the walls and platforms seem rather un-solid occasionally, and sometimes you die for no reason at all. I swapped to keyboard from joystick but although the jumping got a bit easier, the other problems remained. It’s a shame really as the demo hints at many different screens to explore. The graphics are large though a bit undetailed and the sound is limited to when you die and the title screen tune. Anyone looking for an undiscovered gem to rival Manic Miner or Dynamite Dan will be disappointed and I’d say there was a good many average platform games that are more playable than this

Polished maze game where you play a bee that has to rescue his cousin from an underground ants nest. You need to collect pollen from flowers on the way to open secret entrances, but creepy crawlies will nick your pollen and drain your stamina. The graphics are colourful, very nicely animated and there’s a good continuous tune. Remember this was a big hit at the time but strangely this seems to have been the author’s last game.

Early game from Quicksilva where you control a speedboat pulling a water skier which has to negotiate around rocks, ships and sharks. And that’s about it really. The graphics are good for the time, and it gets hard quite quickly after the first few levels but it doesn’t really have enough depth to make you want to play more than a few times.

First of the Wally games but this isn’t an arcade adventure as such. Wally collects parts of a car placed on platforms in one room and takes them to be assembled in the other room. All this is against the time, and wheels and a moving computer try to thwart your progress. There are various models of car to build and the graphics are nice and large though suffer from the dreaded colour clash. Sound consists of a continuous version of the Laurel and Hardy theme tune which can be turned off if it gets annoying. A nice playable platformer but nothing at all like the later games.

You play an astronaut who has to move 3 boxes to positions on the bottom level using gravity against the clock. You can’t jump or fly, so you hitch a ride on erupting volcanoes which move you up levels, and you have to time these to miss or catch extending platforms. Various baddies shoot at you or patrol the levels and your only defence are bombs that have a delay to allow you to get clear. Graphically it’s ok and colourful, though the constant noise during play (it’s not a tune) gets a bit annoying. You can play any of the 15 levels which kills a bit of the addictiveness for me. It’s not bad, but it has similarities to the better Jetpac and I found it a bit easy for my liking

One of the better early spectrum shoot-em-ups. On WOS, it says this is based on Galaxians but there's actually an arcade coin-op game called astroblaster. You have to wipe out two waves of birds that fly left to right and up and down. Once they are destroyed, you must fly through an asteroid field and then onto the final screen which is a big meteor thing throwing out bombs. Then it’s back to the first screen with different aliens. The graphics are decent for the time and the sound is good with nice firing and spot effects. It’s fast, playable and certainly worth a look if you’re after a spectrum version of this coin-op although it differs slightly.

A real stinker this one. You play Oz of the TV show fame as you guide him through 3 screens of tedium. In screen one you have to lay bricks by steering your man left and right and up. Screen two has you in a bierkeller nicking drinks while avoiding barmaids. Screen three is a sort of mined-out where you have to memorize the route home avoiding police cars before the lights go out. You automatically move onto the next screen when you die. The graphics are terrible, magazine type-in standard with tiny characters and jerky movement, and the games attempt at the theme tune is laughable. The keyboard response times are awful – Basic code speed though it claims its machine code. Just avoid unless you fancy a laugh at the people who forked out 6 quid on the strength of the TV show

Riiiggghht…..no instructions on WOS with this one, but after bit of investigation, I’ve worked them out (ok I found an inlay on another site). I couldn’t get anywhere without them so pay attention. You play a diver swimming along 4 levels in an ocean. There are greens sharks and white fish to kill with your harpoon but your main task is to rescue a swimming man and a purply jellyfish thingy. Once done, the next levels have pearls to get, and mermaids to rescue. The baddies change and Neptune pops up randomly looking rather like an annoyed green witch. The graphics are rather on the odd side, quite large and colourful but a bit like teletext/ceefax. The sharks crumble to bones satisfyingly when shot and the crabs turn into crab paste. The sound has a continuous medley of tunes – again this is rather strangely done. Overall not a bad little game with a nice title screen. I found it enjoyably daft, but too easy once you know what you’re doing.

Rather simplistic decathlon game but no hammering your keyboard or joystick with this one. You just set the difficulty level in each event (1-10) and then raise or lower the effort put in. If you put it too high your man will run out of steam before the end and collapse, too little and your opponents will disappear into the distance. There’s running at 100 and 400m distances, the same events with hurdles to jump which is a bit more challenging, and a rather basic hammer throw. The animation of the runners is quite good but that’s about it for graphics. Both Daley Thompson and Micro-Olympics are much better unless you don’t want to pound your keyboard

Microdeal are a company best remembered for almost single-handedly producing games for the *cough* Dragon32 *splutter*. It’s a computer I mainly recall for the fact that 99% of its games were a lurid green colour (I’m guessing this was something to do with the computer and not because it was the pc of choice for the colour-blind programmer). Suffice to say, what is great on the game starved Dragon, may not be so hot on the spoilt for choice Spectrum. Arena3000 is a Berzerk/Robotron variant where your robot has to shoot the baddies and stop them in their tracks before they get you. Once you’ve disabled them all, you progress to the next room. In this version the walls of the room shrink the longer you play to make it a bit harder. The graphics are small and crude but it’s pretty fast and reasonably playable. The saving grace is the sound which is busy with nice effects. Now I’m quite partial to a game of Berzerk, but even in 1984 this was very old hat, and there were several better versions already available (Wild West Hero springs to mind). Certainly, if Microdeal were planning this as their big push into the Spectrum software market then they hadn’t looked at what was available already. Average if you like Berzerk but at least it’s not green.

Classy shoot-em-up/puzzle game sequel to the earlier Highway Encounter. You play a sort of dustbin shaped dalek that has to guide the ultimate weapon along a highway to its destination at the baddies base. On the way there are various aliens that will drain your energy if you don’t shoot them first, and there are 7 Terratons that you have to shove the bomb into that both activate the weapon and boost your energy. In addition, fiendish puzzles block your way which involves the use of barrels found strewn on the highway. The sides of the highway are electrocuted to further drain your power and the route randomly generates itself each time you play to make it more interesting. The trick is in manoeuvring the bomb and the Dalek which takes some getting used to. The instructions recommend the keyboard, but I used a joystick and sort of got the hang of it. The graphics are excellent, fast and flicker free and while it suffers a bit from the dreaded monochrome, the sides of the highway at least have a bit of colour. Sound is just a few spot effects. A difficult but entertaining game worth a look.

Bog standard search-for-stuff adventure budget game set in space. You have to search for randomly placed fuel cans to lift your old style moon lander vehicle while various aliens drain your power. Once done, you must then flick 4 switches to allow your ship to take off. There’s various places to recharge your flagging energy but the real sting in the tail is the one-way lifts that often stick you in areas where there’s no place to go and you have to abort the game. Some reviewers at the time claimed this as a bug but it’s obviously not, and you shouldn’t have used the lifts!(Eagle-eyed reviewers maybe should have seen the LARGE text scrolling over the title screen blaming someone for the traps. Hint, hint). Graphics are decent for the period, but not in the full price category and the aliens are a bit flickery but it doesn’t detract from the game. Sound is average. It’s not bad and once you realise that you can get trapped, and to think twice about where you go, its very playable

I'm a sucker for originality and this game had it for me. So much so that the money i put aside for Jetsetwilly got spent on this after i saw the crash review. I've never regretted that decision as half the school had tired of JSW after a month while i had this to swap! You are a helicopter pilot tasked with rescuing islanders from the imminent eruption of Krakatoa and protecting what looks like an oil tanker. In your way are V1 rockets and subs and you can be clobbered by the volcano. It could possibly be called a more involved scramble/defender but its nearer an earlier 2d version of Vortex's Cyclone. Even now it still looks different and while the graphics aren't top notch they were very good for the time with a nice erupting volcano, helicopter and a tanker, and the programmer was one of those who you could always recognise his games by the design of them. Downsides are the keys - from memory it had no joystick so you had to struggle with various keys for moving the rope up and down, laying mines etc.., which could lead to a bit of panic. But those are minor quibbles. Still a classic and if it had been on a major software house of the time with the advertising money it would be much better known and remembered.

Ocean’s version of the coin-op Missile Command. The programmer seems to have done most of Ocean’s early arcade copies before going on to better things (Antics, birds and the bees), and does a good job on this. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. There is also a pesky satellite that drops extra warheads, and some of the missiles split up further down and cause more problems. This is a pretty good version all told although there are no missile bases on screen to be destroyed, just a limit of missiles. The graphics are pretty basic, but so was the original, and importantly the crosswire controls are quick and responsive so you can anticipate when you launch your missiles to catch the failing warheads. The games gets faster, and the colours of the screen and the missiles change through the levels. You have a finite amount of missiles and you get a new city at 10,000. Difficulty 3 out of 5, easily got an extra City. Overall very playable, easy to get into and easier to play than some of the others but also a bit less authentic and lacking the polish the Anirog version has. I like it because it’s the only version which retains the strategy aspects of the original where the missiles take time to reach their target so have to be planted ahead of the warheads, so for that and the better keys, I have this as the best version for the spectrum with the Anirog version probably better if you have joystick.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

Silversoft’s version of the classic Missile Command. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Missiles reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. This version you get 3 missiles bases that can get destroyed so it is very easy to end up with no weapons to fire. There is a plane flying across to hit for extra points and a couple of satellites that not only drop more warheads but will come down and destroy your missile bases and cities. You get another city at 10000 points. The graphics are basic and you don’t get the nice expanding circle explosions of the original. The crosshairs move round quite well but every now and then so many warheads will come down so fast there is a not a hope in hell of stopping them. Other times you think your city is a goner but you can fire off some many missiles you somehow wipe the warheads out which takes a bit of the skill out of the game – half the fun of the original is anticipating where to fire your missiles so the enemy warheads get caught in the explosion while in this version you’re sometimes better off just manically firing at everything rather than aiming. Difficulty 3 out of 5. Got an extra city. Overall just out of the top rank of this genre because the Anirog and Ocean versions are more authentic, or playable.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

Back in the days before spectrum software companies had original ideas, the main idea was to port as many arcade clones as possible. This is Anirog’s version of the classic missile command. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. This version you also get 3 missile bases that can get destroyed so it is very easy to end up with no weapons to fire. There are planes that fire more warheads and satellites dodging around. You get a new city at 500 points, which isn’t easy to achieve. This is done by another programmer early in his career who went on to make a name for himself (commando, ghosts ‘n goblins) and he does a good job here. This again is quite a hard version and better with a joystick (the keys choices are awful!). You have to protect your missile bases as much as you cities although you seem to get a few more missiles than in Artic’s version. The graphics are okay, and your crosshair responds well. Its probably the most polished authentic version with good sound, nice circular explosions and your score appearing in big characters on the screen at the end of the level is a nice touch. Difficulty 4 out of 5. It’s a hard game, but if you can put up with the shocking cursor keys or have a joystick then this is probably the spectrum version you want to play. I preferred the Ocean version.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

Artic's version of the classic Missile Command. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. This version you also get 3 missiles bases that can get destroyed so it is very easy to end up with no weapons to fire. Now this is the HARD . When I saw you got a new city at 1000 points instead of 10,000, I thought they were being generous. Nope. I thought maybe level 1 was the hardest so I switched to 3. Barely lasted 20 seconds! You get only 30 missiles if all your missile bases survive and on the first screen on level 1, I counted 20 warheads to hit – no chance! The keyboard layout is awful but the controls are responsive. As with all these type games a joystick is better, but I feel this one would benefit most from using one, but it’s still fast and hard. Again like Silversofts version you can sometimes get better results just manically firing rather than placing your missiles which rather defeats the object for me The graphics are average for the period but with nice explosions and sound effects. Difficulty 5 out of 5 – no chance of getting an extra city. Overall a decent spectrum version if you still have the reactions of a 13 year old and like your games hard. Otherwise, try the Anirog or Ocean versions

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

Softek’s version of the classic Missile command. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. This version you only get one pyramid-shaped base, but there is a plane and a nicely drawn satellite. This is one of the poorer versions. The missiles just come down in straight lines and its slow and not much of the challenge. The graphics aren’t up to much and the explosions are brief flashes. Does allow you to put in your name when you get a hi-score and the keyboard lay-out is good, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that its far too easy and dull after a while and also not very authentic to the original. Difficulty 2 out of 5.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

Mikro-gens version of the classis Missile Command coin-op and by the guy who went on to makes the Wally games no less. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. This version has two missiles bases which for some bizarre reason you have a fire button for each one, because obviously there’s not enough keys already! You also get kamikaze satellites which will take out a base or a city.. Its pretty average overall, the graphics are nothing to write home about, and with the stupid controls its quite hard. You do get a hi-score table to put your name into. My main problem with it is the warheads and satellites exit the bottom of the screen and re-appear at the top so to clear a level you have to destroy everything unless you run out of missiles. Not very faithful to the original, and wouldn’t be hard apart from the silly keys. With the silly keys it’s pretty much 5 out of 5 on difficulty for me, and very much near the bottom of the pile. Maybe worth trying with a joystick, but as with a lot of these early games you get the impression no-one bothered pointing out to the programmer that god-awful keyboard lay-outs aren't going to help sales.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

PSS’ version of the classic coin-op Missile Command. The basic idea is you are in control of the defences of a row of cities under nuclear attack. Warheads reign down in vapour trails and you have to destroy them before they hit home. This version has only 1 missile base with a limited number of missiles and the usual satellite is replaced by aliens that fly across the screen and can attack your cities. The keys are laid out reasonably well but the graphics are nothing to write home about and the trails of the warheads just stay there after you destroy them. The warheads also can’t leave the screen so they just bounce off the side and descend at a different angle, and also suddenly alter course on their own. Can enter your name if you get the hi-score . Difficulty, 4 out of 5 - Got to level 9 – Didn’t get a new base (5000 points). Overall it’s pretty playable straight away but is probably the version furthest from the original so I’d put this mid-tier of the Missile Commands available on the spectrum.

Armageddon (Ocean)4
Missile Defence (Anirog) 4
Armageddon (Silversoft) 3
Earth Defence (Artic) 3
Electro Storm (PSS)3
Repulsar (Softek) 2
Cruise Attack (Mikro-gen)2

One of the very earliest spectrum strategy games, I rather enjoyed this as a kid. You play the owner of an oil company buying land to drill, surveying it, and if you strike black gold, setting up production facilities and pipelines to transport it, all the while avoiding random disasters like oil-well blow-outs and sabotage. Meanwhile, the computer opponent (Good old J.R. Ewing!) is breathing down your neck and in this game it's not long before one oil company is going to be taken over by the other. The Basic graphics are crude, the play is very simplistic, and a hell of a lot depends on luck with random disasters draining your money if it's feeling mean (Repairing a blow-out costs 20-30m, so with only 100m in the bank you soon run out of money). Saying that, there's something satisfying in hitting oil after spending millions drilling and i can still see why i regularly spent a hour or so playing it inbetween the arcade games. Overall still enjoyable, and one of those games where the basic idea has been updated many times over the years.

I bought this when it first came out, and it kept me occupied for a few weeks. You are the owner of a software house trying to be the new Ultimate. At the start you decide if you want to specialise in a certain type of game and also the general qualities of your software (originality, playability etc). Each month you have the options to write games, port to another computer, manufacture tapes, and book advertising. At the end of the month you see how well you've done with sales and profit. There is also a character called Honest Harry who can throw a few iffy games your way, but beware as sometimes the law catches up with you.

I'd say this game hasn't aged well, and suffers from menu syndrome where you become acutely aware you're just playing a repeating loop of options. The menu of one-off options to boost sales is particularly baffling (You can only get your games reviewed one time only? Really??). There's also the simplicity. You can't name individual games or make any development decisions about them. Once released you don't get reviews or any sort of feedback. They are just out there, and the individual success/failure of each game is anyone's guess apart from total sales figures.The only thing that seems to make much difference to sales is how much you spend on advertising, which is maybe not that far off real-life I guess, but even massively advertised games tended to fail if they were rubbish. I easily got to move into the mansion and despite things getting harder over time,I still ran at a profit before I sold-up out of boredom. It's okay, but to my mind, Addictive's Software Star is a much more detailed and involved game and is far better for it.

Apparently this was based on a coin-op called Arabian which i've never played, nor can I remember another spectrum version so maybe it wasn't much good to start with! On the 1st screen you have to collect the lettered jars spread around a ship in the right order so they spell ARABIAN. Stopping you are a bloody annoying bird, a cannon and an octopus. I got to ARABI and then had to watch a video run-through in the tip shop.

The graphics are big which means you really have to employ split second timing to avoid the unforgiving collision detection. Also climbing the ladders and jumping takes a bit of practice as its very exact, and once up, you sometimes can't get down without dying! It all has to be done in a certain order, at the right time and one mistake and you're back to the beginning - frustrating. Next its a sideways scroller on a river avoiding obstacles and that's as far as i got, although the demo shows more platform screens. Thing is, the Spectrum is spoilt for platformers with around 20 v.good to excellant examples, and probally the same amount of decent ones, so unless you want to play an average one with the hardest 1st screen ever i wouldn't waste your time. I only persevered because i wanted to get past the 1st screen to spite the programmer!