Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Andrew Glaister

Halley's Comet is speeding towards mother Earth carrying lethal bacteria cap able of wiping out all forms of life, according to the inlay. The game is obviously set in seventy six years time when Halley's Comet makes its next visit, because a highly advanced space ship has been dispatched to destroy the deadly germs that live on it. (The game turned up long after the real comet had been and gone!) The screen shows a view through the cockpit window of the shuttle with the comet shimmering in the distance and the stars scrolling towards the ship.

To begin with you assume the personality of the ship's onboard computer and have to deal with problems during the voyage - the trip is far from uneventful.

Every so often one of the five icons on the main viewscreen flashes to indicate that a problem has just arisen. Each icon leads into a subgame, played against the clock, in which the fault or threat has to be dealt with if the main mission is to continue. Meteor showers have a habit of knocking the antenna out of line from time to time, and it has to be adjusted until the maximum signal strength is regained.

Drifting off course sets off a defence system which releases homing missiles targetted on your ship. A Missile Command press fire when you're happy with its position type sequence then follows, and the aim is to limit the number of missiles that hit the ship, which changes colour from white through to blue before exploding when the shields give way.

Coffee supplies must be kept high - vital for the pilot's reactions. A flashing coffee jug icon leads to a screenful of icons which control the whole coffee making process. By moving the cursor around and selecting icons, the coffee system has to be kept in equilibrium, including the pilot's bladder, which has to be emptied with the 'P' icon lest it explode!

Now and again, rampant germs gain access to the ventilation system of the craft and have to be eliminated in another arcade sequence in which a moving cursor is used to release spiralling germ killers. Finally, a logic problem has a habit of cropping up in a section of circuitry, and it has to be sorted out by providing the appropriate inputs to light up a set of LEDs.

The little sub games cycle round at random during the journey to the comet, and if you manage to survive them all it's time to get on with the main purpose of the mission: eradicating the germbags that live on the surface of the comet. Destroy them all, and you can return to Earth a superhero and saviour of the human race. Take too many hits from the bugs, and it's game over.

COMMENTS

Control keys: redefinable
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: a bit slow to respond, maybe
Use of colour: restrained
Graphics: neat wire frame routines
Sound: raspy spot effect
Skill levels: one
Screens: six

Thinking of a proper game based on the visit of Halley's Comet must have been a pretty hard task, so Firebird must have decided to get a load of little games together and think of a common element. They failed. The Comet Game is an excellently finished game, but it suffers from lots of things that aren't well explained, such as the antenna alignment - you have to press fire on completion, else you just blow up! Firebird have probably made the best they could have of the astronomical phenomenon, but this game is too bitty and would probably be too hard for most people to enjoy.

Um. Halleys Comet is an excellent feature around which to base a game, but could someone tell Firebird that to sell lots and lots of copies of a game, and to get high placings in charts and things, you need a good game! The line drawing routines put Andrew Glaister's trademark on the game, but the repetitive sub-games get very boring after a while. I can see that the author has tried to make the game a good one, and I have to give him credit for that, but unfortunately it just doesn't seem to have worked out. When you have to start doing the same thing over and over again, it gets more and more tedious and 'got very bored of it.

Grr! The on screen presentation is very neat, but I was ready to throw a brick at the telly when it kept flashing 'YOU LOST' on the screen. Each of the little games contained in the scenario is passably entertaining, but no great shakes, and by the time you've played them over and over and have still got more to survive before getting to the comet itself, annoyance sets in. When you do finally make the comet, the final sequence really doesn't justify all the effort expended getting there. Sorry Firebird, this game is more Lukewarm that Hot.

Firebird
£7.95

Halley's Comet is a germ bag and its up to me to save the earth (yet again?). But The Comet Game is a whole different bag and I think I'll sit this one out and let the earth perish if its all the same to you.

En route to said celestial dirty snowball the astronaut is in a state of suspended animation, leaving the ship's computer to do the boring day-to-day jobs. It would be more fun to play the sleeping spaceman but instead you get to play the computer.

It's often been said that computers aren't actually clever but they're good at doing repetitive tasks fast. Human beings on the other hand soon get bored with repetition. This game is structured around the repetition of five simple arcade games leading to a final shoot 'em up. Yawn!

Quite what Firebird is doing releasing it is beyond me unless it couldn't resist doing a tie-in without having to pay royalties! The comet should now be winging its way back into space. I only wish it would take this game with it!

Publisher: Firebird
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Programmer:
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair

Firebird's gift for timing is impeccable. Just when all the fuss has died down and everyone's almost forgotten about Haley's Comet out comes Firebird with The Comet Game. Not only that but Haley's Comet serves only as an excuse for a space arcade bash.

A manned space flight is on its way to the comet. Why? Well here's where Firebird really have gone doolally. Apparently the comet's tail is made up of germ bags, full of yukky disease, which are threatening to contaminate the Earth as the comet shoots past. And the astronaut is on a mission to save the world from this great infection. Being a longish trip the astronaut is being kept in suspended animation.

The object of the game is to control the space craft's on-board computer during the flight and keep its human cargo alive. Attention must be given to four tasks: keeping up the ship's defences, maintaining communications with Earth, a bit of self-examination to keep your computer system running sweetly, and, most importantly, the coffee machine mustn't be allowed to get out of control.

The easiest job is correcting the bugs within the computer - a taks called Computer Argument. A column of LEDs - displayed on the left of the screen - must be matched with a pattern of lights on your circuit, displayed on the right.

For some reason, unknown to either us or Firebird, your ship is prone to missile attack. When the warning is given the screen turns black and your ship - which looks like a midget egg timer - is displayed at its centre.

The missiles approach it from the sides of the screen, leaving white trails behind them (vapour trails in a vacuum?) move the cursor to the head of each trail and press fire. The ship shoots photon torpedoes towards the cross hair and destroys any missiles in its path.

As you get nearer the comet the germ bags in its tail begin to attack your life support systems. They tumble around the screen like huge chunks of coal while you try to get your gun centred. The laser beam bores into the soft centres of the bags, spilling their puss-filled contents harmlessly into space. Cute it ain't.

There are several levels of bag destruction. As you get closer to the comet the number of bags you have to destroy increases by a factor of two every time you encounter them. They also move more rapidly as the level of difficulty increases. Don't move the cursor around too much when there are more than three bags. Keep pressing fire and you are bound to hit one of them.

All the time you also have to handle the communications antenna it needs continual readjustment and you must point it in the direction from which the signal from your command base - back on earth - comes in strongest.

The upper part of the display shows the circular dish of the antenna which pans left and right as you move the joystick in the corresponding direction.

The final, and most complex, task is coffee making. The human needs liquid refreshment during suspended animation to stay alive so you must keep the coffee making process going.

The coffee machine looks like a modern office dispenser. First, you've got to grind the coffee, put it into the pot and fill it with water - H20. You must then inject it into the human's system and keep the whole process ticking over.

A series of gauges show how well each of the tasks is being performed but the only one you have to worry about is the life support gauge. If the reading drops below halfway on the thermometer-type gauge your charge has had it and the game is over. You might also keep an eye on the P gauge. When its reading reaches the top of the gauge the human's bladder explodes. That's not good.

If you survive the onslaught of missiles, faulty circuits and exploding bladders the ship will enter the vicinity of the comet where the 3D graphics get pretty nifty and the germ bags get really serious. It's all over pretty quickly but it you are used to 3D shoot 'em ups you will be on home ground.

What I can't understand is: if the computer is so intelligent why can't it shoot down the germ bags at the comet's core and drink the coffee?

The 3D effects are good but the action is predictable.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Firebird
PRICE: £7.95

There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with germs developing at Firebird. First there was Gerry the Germ Goes Body Poppin' and now germ bags in space. Add Halley's Comet and what do you get? Yes, it's The Comet Game, Firebird's latest in the hot range, and an almost topical game (well, Halley's Comet has now disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere).

The bad news is that toxic germs, lethal to all life on earth, has been identified on the comet, and with huge lumps of ice travelling towards earth at 200,000 kilometres an hour, that spells bad news.

Your mission is to get to the comet, fly low and fast over its surface and blast the deadly germ bags into oblivion.

The pilot of the space craft sent out to intercept the comet is in suspended animation for the duration of the flight. You, therefore, play the part of the ship's computer, which must look after the pilot, cope with various emergencies which crop up - such as the Interplanetary Safeguard System which can be activated causing other planets to launch missiles at you.

If you make a rendezvous with the comet, the ship is placed in a low orbit and it's time for a spot of zapping at the germ bags.

Included in the flight to the comet is the intriguing coffee game. The pilot's well-being level must be kept as high as possible by drinking coffee.

This part of the game involved the unlikely command P. It does what you think it does. I didn't, and the pilot's bladder burst. It's an awful way to go.

There's nothing particularly wrong with The Comet Game, but then again, there's nothing to get really excited about.