Cheetah £24.95

Undoubtedly the best lightgun around but it's only available for the Spectrum and C64. Lightguns have never been much cop but this one really does work - and well.

There's software too. Cheetah have combined the gun with six Code Masters games to provide a high value package. Although just rehashes of old ideas, the games work well, with none of those nasty screen glitches that the recent Sinclair gun has.

The gun itself is also well designed. Since you're just pointing it at the screen it's unlikely to get broken. The only movable part is the trigger, which is responsive and gives an audible click.

DEFENDER YOURSELF

You may remember we reviewed the Sinclair Magnum Light Phaser a couple of issues ago. And you may also remember what we thought of it - good, but not that good. Now there's a new shoot 'em up contender in the lightgun wars - the Defender from joystick makers Cheetah. It comes with its very own specially penned selection of games too, this time written by those loveable CodeMasters chappies. We let our own Philip Snout loose with it for an afternoon.

Product: Defender Light Gun
Designer/Manufacturer: Cheetah Marketing
Price: £24.95

As we all know, lightguns are basically a fun, if limited, addition to Speccy gamesplaying. I mean, they'll never take over from joysticks as the best all-round game controllers, but a change is as good as a rest I always say, so it was as inevitable as a slap in the gob with a mullet (but not as red) that sooner or later one would become available for the Speccy.

First off the mark was actually the Stack Light Rifle years ago, but it was a bit crap. The biggie, of course, was the recent Amstrad/Spectrum Light Phaser. But that had its disappointments too, namely the rather flimsy construction and horrible black and white bars it splattered across Operation Wolf. This was one of a handful of games specially converted to the lightgun standard. The actual weapon was built by Trojan, best known for its lightpens, and it sort of showed. Nasty people around the office started describing it as "a lightpen with a handle on", which was a bit unfair, but that's the YS team for you. So it was only a matter of time really before joystick manufacturers started entering the fray (in fact it was only a matter of months which meant they must have had it planned all along) and the first of these to do so is popular joystick and musical funbox maker Cheetah Marketing.

The Defender is a nice piece of work. The moulded plastic body is dark grey with bright red handgrips. The design is quite modern and sturdy looking I s'pose, but still with slightly naff Buck Rogers-like tendencies. The handgrip is raked forwards to make it aim and hold, and weights have been added inside the body to improve the feel and balance of the thing. It certainly seems quite hefty and gun-like, unlike the feeble Sinclair.

Accuracy-wise the Defender seems to be pretty sharp. Most of the time I aimed at something I hit it, which means one of two things - either the gun is accurate, or the software is really good at reading the gun. (Of course the other thing it might mean is I'm flipping skill at using it!) You do have to be fairly square to the screen though, and not too close, or the focus of the gun goes all to cock. You'll hit everything on the screen with one shot, and that's no good if you need to be selective, like in Bronx Street Cop for instance (one of the games bundled in with it). So care should be taken, and a few experiments done, before you challenge someone to competition Unless you don't ever want to get to the second level.

THE GAMES!
(They made me deaf you know!)

There are six games bundled in with the Cheetah Defender, all specially written by the wacky CodeMasters (those Darling, Darling boys!). The games will be available on cassette to start with, with disk loading versions to follow.

JUNGLE WARFARE

An out'n'out Op Wolf clone. You scroll sideways through a series of backdrops, from airports to bridges and jungles, as a battalion of enemy soldiers, choppers and tanks comes into your sights. You must shoot them in order to stay alive. (Nah, you don't say!? Ed) Unfortunately, you have limited ammo, so splattering the gooks all over the landscape on rapid fire is fun but won't get you far. The graphics aren't too bad, and there's some impressively life-like banging noises as your gun goes off. I think I could do without the screen flashing every time you shoot though. It's not half as bad as the Phaser but a little divot of earth flipping up to let me know where I hit would suffice. Still, the game isn't too bad, just a little bit repetitive, and it's obviously the ideal sort of thing to use a lightgun for.

Overall: 60°

ADVANCED PINBALL SIMULATOR

Yegads, what's this? Pinball?! This is as good an example as you can get to show how odd the pairing of gun and games can sometimes be. What on Earth possessed the designer of this game to make it a 'shoot-at-the-flippers-'em-up'? It almost seems deliberately perverse!

What happens is you shoot at the plunger to eject the ball into the machine. Then you shoot at the flippers to punt the ball back into play if it looks like it's going to make a break for it. Just like a normal game of pinball really (well, sort of). Works okay though, and although a bit strange at first, the program does play a mean pinball!

Overall: 60°

F16 FIGHTING FALCON

This one is an Afterburner clone in which you shoot at all the incoming fighters and missiles, and shoot at your own F16 to make it perform what the manual calls "automatic intelligent evasive action". Hmm. Just looks like it bounces out of the way if you ask me.

The scenery scrolls by underneath you as you fly along blasting the poop out of anything that moves and a few things that don't Trouble is you don't get much time to anticipate a plane coming on to the screen, and, if you leave it too late to blow it up, it gets a chance to launch its missiles at you. There are four levels to the game, over the Sahara, Tropics, Arctic and Ocean. Okay, I s'pose, but not enough control over the plane for my taste. Another slightly peculiar use of the gun.

Overall: 55°

SUPERCAR TRANS AM

Hey, don't I remember something just like this by the late lamented Ultimate Play The Game about a million years ago? Trans Am it was called. This new CodeMasters version bears more than a passing resemblance to the old Ultimate smasheroo, but this time of course you've got God, or at least a lightgun, on your side. You steer by shooting steering icons and change from forward to reverse by zapping the car itself.

There are five stages to the journey going from LA to NY, starting at the California Beach, then moving on to the Rocky Mountain Pass, the Grand Canyon Jump, past the Great Lakes Stage, and finally on to New York City in Sight. It's a sort of arcade road movie really. I dunno, I found it really hard to concentrate on steering the car without bumping into stuff let alone shooting as well. All along the route men with guns try to blow your bum off, and usually they succeed. Not as good as the original, but it probably rewards persistence.

Overall: 56°

BRONX STREET COP

At last, a classic shooting gallery type game. You're a rookie cop on the Bronx street beat. In order that you don't wax some poor passers by in the process of blowing away... hem hem... In the process of apprehending a villain, you are put on the shooting range and presented with a couple of targets to shoot at. As they come up into the gallery you must decide whether they are legitimate targets or innocent bystanders. Brilliant.

Overall: 89°

BILLY THE KID

Not quite as good as Bronx Street Cop, but nearly. You get to blow tins off cactuses in the practice round this time. The cowboy at the side of the screen also throws a tin which you can keep aloft by shooting at it - if you're skill enough that is. Then you go on to 'help Billy The Kid shoot his way out of' various sticky situations. You only have limited ammo for the main parts of the game, but in the practice round you can put on the rapid fire switch and blast everything to ribbons. This is one of the funniest ways to play any of the games. Skill to Middling I'd say.

Overall: 76°

HEAD TO HEAD

So, how does the Detender stand up against the recently released Sinclair Magnum Light Phaser by Trojan/Amstrad? At first, it seemed the guns were compatible. This was, we thought, the idea. But whilst the Magnum gun worked with the Defender games, the reverse wasn't true. Jon 'Techno Flash' Davies was on hand at the time I tested them and his theory was that the Cheetah was being read by the games as if it was always aimed at the top right of the screen! Weird. Anyway, the possibilities for a standard are out the window unless someone makes a game which works with both methods, or at least can be selected.

The Defender seems much more solidly built, and the weights in it do a lot to improve balance and handling. Having played with the Magnum beforehand I really did notice how much heavier and more business-like the Defender is. It seems to be more accurate too, but that could just be the way the software itself reads the gun. The stupid problem of the Magnum causing huge white flashing bars across the screen has been solved in the Cheetah software, and all the games react much more smoothly. The games in the free pack are a bit samey in their presentation I s'pose, as compared to the varied range that comes with the Magnum, but this is to be expected as the games in the Defender pack all come from the same publisher. Also, the way the handgrip on the Defender is raked forwards, automatically pointing the gun level at the screen, differs with the Magnum's upright hold. This means you have to bend your wrist back ever so slightly to aim the gun. A minor quibble, but worth bearing in mind. The down side is that it takes less effort to keep the Magnum aloft than it does to hold up the Defender. 'Cos the Def is heavier, it makes your arm ache after a bit. But the Defender does have a rapid fire button, and this is brilliant fun, especially on things like Billy The Kid, when ammo isn't limited. The major plus for the Defender is that the lead is longer so you can get further away from the screen.

CONCLUSION

I prefer the Defender as a gun, and its games are good overall. My favourite must be Bronx Street Cop, with Billy The Kid a close second. I still don't know why they bothered to do it but the pinball game is pretty enjoyable (so perhaps there's the reason why). The Defender looks better, it's cheaper and in general seems to be much more fab than its only current competitor. Let's hope we see more lightguns using this same Cheetah standard, and even rifles or Uzi submachine guns. Watch this space (or another very similar).

Go ahead punk, make my day!!

Cheetah Marketing
Not Known
£24.95

Lean, mean and accurate... BLAM!! The new Defender light gun from Cheetah is here, and Richard Eddy takes an exclusive peek at the latest Speccy add-on that's aiming to rival Sinclair's very own Magnum.

It's a fact! The people from Wales are absolute boffins when it comes to producing Speccy stuff. There's the Sam Coupe from MGT, the Sinclair Magnum developed in Swansea by Trojan, and now Cheetah in Cardiff have a spiffing new light gun called the Defender, which looks like it's going to knock the Magnum into a cocked hat when it's released any time now. Mainly 'cos it looks dead good, but especially as it's a fiver cheaper at £24.95.

The Defender is the end result of a year's work by a group of Cheetah's top engineers, and it's just a smidgeon off being finished. Unlike the Magnum (featured in the August issue) it actually looks like a gun, rather than a space phaser, and is constructed to give the same feel as a real pistol with weight, trigger balance and precision. So remember - don't point this at your granny unless you're prepared to get into heaps of trouble!

The 128K/+2/+3 version is the closest to being finished, This connects to the Speccy via the Keypad/Aux port. A 48K version is also underway, and will connect via a joystick interface.

Unlike the Magnum, the Defender has the smart inclusion of a sliding autofire/function select switch. This, if the software suits, turns the Defender into a machine gun, or allows you to select different weapons on screen.

Until recently Cheetah hadn't seen the Magnum - but when they did get their paws on it, they thought it a tad primitive. They're now confident that their Defender is designed, and works, a lot better. Of course, the TV screen will flash when the trigger is pulled, but Cheetah say it shouldn't interrupt gameplay as much as the Magnum does.

Gameplay? Coo, yes! While Cheetah have been busy constructing the gun, best-selling budget house CodeMasters have been programming six super games to make the most of the Defender. And what are they all about? Read on and find out..

BRONX STREET COP
Author: Pete Williamson

It's tough on the streets... especially the streets of New York's Bronx area - unless you own a Defender! There's five levels to the game, starting with a training session. The action really hots up in the first mission, where you have to track down armed robbers and bump 'em off. More missions follow, each getting progressively more difficult as you face crazed muggers. evil drug pushers and other vile pieces of work.

SUPERCAR TRANS-AM
Author: Pete Williamson (prolific)

Jump in the driving seat of a V12 turbocharged armour plated flyer and prepare to race from the beaches of California to the skyscrapers of New York. You're armed with ground-to-ground and remote-controlled air defences. You decide the direction the car takes by firing at a right/left icon on screen. Sounds like a novel way of getting about.

ADVANCED PINBALL SIMULATOR
Authors: The Oliver Twins

A previous CodeMasters hit gets the light gun treatment with fast flippers, gates, barriers, bonus lanes, extra balls, a ball trap and loads more pinball features, and it's all controlled by the light gun firing at left and right flipper icons on the side of the table.

BILLY THE KID
Author: Gary Priest

Become the most famous cowboy of them all and load up for gun-slinging action from the wild, wild west. You can practice shooting cans hurled into the air, and then go on to to become a fully-fledged outlaw in a bank raid. Watch out for the Sheriff now, or you maybe challenged to wild west high noon shoot out - five paces, turn, fire and all that milarky!

F-16 FIGHTING FALCON
Author: Pete Williamson (even more busy!)

Four levels of 3-D flight combat. To defend your Falcon against the Soviet MiGs and 'copters, point the light gun at enemy targets and let rip with a barrage of heatseakers, sidewinders and heaps of other missiles to blast everything outta the sky! To avoid oncoming planes and their missiles, shoot(!) your plane to take evasive action.

JUNGLE WARFARE
Author: Jason Falcos

Level after level of hostile forces to destroy - tanks, 'copters, jeeps, crack commando snipers, enemy aircraft... the list goes on. It's taken from Super Tank Simulator (reviewed this issue), the action viewed side on with the scenery scrolling right to left while you shoot at a seemingly endless onslaught of enemy troops.