REPLAY

D'you know what I got for Christmas? Nothing. But you don't care, you're only interested in Replay.

Ocean
£14.99 cass 128K only
061 832 6633
Reviewer: Steve Anderson

Good grief, don't tell me that Ocean have had a change of heart and have released a game based on the Michael Keaton film, The Dream Team? (Er, not that we know of, Steve. Ed) Oh... Well, it must be an official USA Olympic basketball game, because they were called The Dream Team. (Ye... er, nope Sorry. Ed) I guess that means its a compilation then. Bah. that's no fun!

THE SIMPSONS - BART VS THE SPACE MUTANTS

Hurrah! It's the return of the spikey-headed jaundiced youth to the Speccy. It seems like only yesterday when everybody in Britain went Simpsons crazy, whether they had a satellite TV or not...

If I remember correctly, seeing as I haven't got my back issues to hand, James reviewed the game last year and thought it was pretty darn good. But how does it shape up now? Well, it's still good fun. It took a curious route, as games go, because its based on the NES game of the same name (funnily enough), and it plays just as well. As with any NES game, there's a nice simple plot - Space Mutants are planning to take over the world by making lots of things purple, and you as Bart have to disguise the purpleness and thus overpower the Mutants. Lovely. Quite why purple was chosen is beyond me, though! (I thought it was something to do with the legendary purple people eater. Ed) The graphics are nice, Bart looks dead mischievous and it's all very colourful. There are also puzzles a-plenty, but I didn't notice much in the way of sound, so it must have been pretty crap. I liked the noise his can of paint made though, if that's any consolation.

In all - dead funky, but not really Megagame material. There's not enough variation to satisfy my cravings, as with almost any NES game. Mind you, it's still good clean fun though!
83%

TERMINATOR 2

This is going to be hard, but I want to try and get through this review without falling into the obvious Arnie phrases that would otherwise write half the review for me. It's going to be tricky!

James reviewed this as well, if my grey matter is in order, and gave it a good rating, but I'm afraid it's time to question his sanity!

Sure, the graphics are fabulous, the animation spot-on and the sound satisfying. I did indeed proclaim to Jonathan, "This music's quite a good rendition, isn't it?" I admit to enjoying the sound effects in the fighting parts, and laughing out loud when Arnie died. But isn't it about time that Ocean did a film conversion in a different way? (Erm, but they've stopped making games for the Speccy, Steve. Ed)

Yes, its multiple sub-game time! And to be quite honest, I've had enough of them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but ever since Robocop Ocean have made their film licences in exactly the same manner! Not only that, but after the horridly easy first part you get catapulted into the much harder second part, and I'm not sure that's really a good idea. So much could have been made of this licence, I reckon it was wasted.
65%

WWF WRESTLEMANIA

Steroid-enhanced muscles ahoy! You too can be a greasy, sweaty bloke pretending to fight another greasy, sweaty bloke in the middle of a large square of canvas in WWF Wrestlemania. Bring along a sleeping bag and a large food supply though, I waited almost 47 days for it to load.

Now, I know Jonathan has reviewed this elsewhere in this issue, so I hope our reviews don't clash too much, but I actually quite enjoyed playing this. The sprites are really fast and well animated and the characters respond well to your movements. Having said that, when the two wrestlers get in a lock you have to waggle your joystick until your forehead bursts (or something), and I hate waggling. Worse still, if the other wrestler decks you, you have to keep hitting the fire button to get up! Ouch...

Anyway, you've got a fair few moves at your fingertips, from wimpy punches to bouncing yourself off the ropes at high speed into your opponent or standing on a corner post and launching yourself onto the other guy's head. Hours of family fun, eh? The moves you can make depends on the wrestler who you choose to play at the start. There's Hulk Hogan™, the Ultimate Warrior™, the British Bulldog™ and Captain Lard™, and they all wrestle in their own way. Captain Lard deep fat fries a cooked breakfast to try and block the opponent's arteries, for example.

Not a bad game at all, if you can forgive the multiload system. I haven't played any other wrestling games, so I can't compare them, but this was funky enough for me!
78%

As compilations go, this is the second best out at the moment (after the Codies' Super All Stars). And in case you were wondering, don't. You might get lost.

Label: Ocean
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £10.99 Tape, £15.99 Disk
Reviewer: Garth Sumpter

Christmas can be a difficult time of the year. OK, there's lots of food to eat, lots to drink and the consumer research people reckon that despite the recession parents are still spending wads of cash on their kids' prezzies (not to mention what Santa brings of course). However there are problems.

For a start, younger brothers and sisters seem to get considerably more annoying during the festive season... Whingeing, whining and annoying the dog with their allegedly 'safe' Tomy toys is generally the order of the day. Meanwhile older brothers and sisters are all restless and bad tempered, peeved off with their fifteen bottles of Hai Karate aftershave or their book tokens and generally being sad people. Then, to make matters worse parents insist on watching Harry Secombe or 'Gone With The Wind' instead of 'Return Of The Jedi', if indeed they let you near the telly at all and try to make you wear that ugly, green barbed-wire jumper knitted by your ancient aunty Beryl.

Yes, life can be tough! But you've always got your Speccy to keep you company, ever faithful and true. So, unless those visiting relatives have got some cash to hand over in exchange for their finger breaking hand shakes or sloppy, lipstick kisses, what better way to spend the time between meals and compulsory family monopoly periods than playing a few good video games. And they don't come much better than on this Dream Team compilation.

Terminator 2, Bart Simpson Vs The Space Mutants and WWF Wrestlemania were all originally released in the latter part of 1991 and have done well as full pricers ever since. They received two SU Gold awards and an SU Silver between them so they're bound to measure up. But, for those who aren't familiar with any of these titles an explanation is in order.

World Wrestling Federation wrestling is one of the biggest crazes to hit the UK recently. With larger than life characters and almost ballet perfect moves these American wrestling giants have had people glued to the television and rolling with laughter ever since Sky TV started beaming the programs in. Then, last Christmas, WWF came to Spectrum and proved a weighty formula.

The game involves choosing between three famous WWF wrestlers (and all round good guys). Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and The British Bulldog and fighting it out to win Wrestlemania against The Mountie. Sgt. Slaughter, Mr. Perfect, The Million Dollar Man, Ted Debiase and The Warlord. The moves include thumping kicking, throws, pins, clotheslines etc, and the action is fast and furious.

Graphics in WWF are monochrome but each wrestler is very accurately represented. The ring takes up most of the screen so there's not much in the way of background graphics and the characters tend to disappear when they climb up the ropes. However, with good controllability, reasonable accuracy and an all action two player mode WWF is well worth having.

Bart Simpson Vs The Space Mutants is a bit of a star on Speccy. It looks almost exactly like the NES version of the game and in my opinion plays better. The plot involves a terrible contingent of space mutants who have taken over Bart's home town of Springfield, inhabiting the bodies of its good citizens with a view to building a super weapon and taking over the world. Luckily though young Bart can see them through his X-ray specs and thus hopefully, with your help, avoid them and foil their plans.

Littered throughout the game are objects which the aliens need to complete their task of world domination and Bart must get to them first to succeed. There are five levels of fun with a vast variety of aliens and some pretty nifty puzzles.

Graphics are super and the Bart sprite, although transparent, is delightfully accurate, even down to his blinking eyes. Playability is good too, if a little difficult at times.

Terminator 2 is a strange game. There are seven levels in all, three beat 'em ups, two car chases and two piece-it-together puzzles. The three fighting levels involve you controlling the T800 while engaged in hand to hand combat to save the world with the T1000. This is easier said than done and you have to master big Arnie's kicking, thumping and head-butting moves to defeat the enemy. Unfortunately these levels aren't very exciting as you don't get to run about the place with guns or the like but they do require skill.

The car chase levels are by far the best fun with plenty of speed and mayhem to keep you happy, while the puzzle levels are the quite intriguing - you have to piece together Arnie's robot face and arm. Not an easy task even for the Skynet defence computer!

Overall this compilation has to score highly. It contains three of the most important and largest selling Speccy games of the last year complete with all the original instructions and. Importantly, all on separate cassettes, so there's no faffing about trying to find the right tape position etc. If you want to buy someone a present and know that they don't already have one or two of these games then the Dream Team will bring a smile to their faces and no mistake.

ALAN:
My choice for the Christmas Stocking too! WWF and Simpsons both received over ninety percent when first reviewed in SU while T2 gained a creditable eighty four, although I think it was over marked at that. However none of these titles are available as budgets yet so this compilation represents tremendous value.