Relax on a leisurely cruise (missile)

Producer: US Gold
Depth Charge: £8.99 cass, £12.99 disk
Author: Emerald Software

Apparently The Deep is a conversion from a coin-op, in which case a) an old one, or b) one that bombed for possibly both). In it you're the skipper of a ship under attack from squid, jellyfish and octopi, not to mention enemy submarines launching mines and homing torpedoes.

For defensive reasons only, of course, you have eight depth charges automatically, slowly replaced after use. Blast enough enemies and a flag will float to the surface, collect it and a helicopter rushes to the scene. There are five types of flag providing diving bells, homing missiles, speed-up, smart bombs and energy bombs.

Once enough enemies have been destroyed a small icon flashes at the bottom of the ocean and pressing ENTER turns your ship into a diving bell. You must then 'dive, dive, dive', collect the icon and return to the surface to go on to the next level. There are three levels of mine-dropping fun (mind-dropping?) before the bonus stages. In the first bonus stage a large ship is heading towards you at full steam, your must destroy it with energy bombs. Succeed and you are then placed in a Missile Command-type situation where you use a cursor to aim a laser. You must protect passing ships by hitting the enemy laser beams with your own laser. This done it's back to depth-charging.

Clearly rather lacking in depth (sorry), this game suffers even more from appalling graphics: small blobby sprites wobbling unconvincingly across the screen. Actual playability isn't bad, but the price of passage is unacceptable.

MARK [35%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: primitive sprites, but decent scrolling
Sound: beepy title tune, simple effects

This is one of the most primitive-looking full-price games I've seen for ages. Sprites are simply animated, while colour is used in large blocks causing much attribute clash. Worst of all, collision detection is very dodgy - it seems to be character block instead of pixel. Sound is pathetic as well. The one professional technical aspect is the smooth horizontal scrolling of the well-drawn background. Even so, this is a strangely compulsive game, proving simple ideas are often best. Better presentation, faster action and a lower price tag could've made a flawed game good.
PHIL [52%]

US Gold
£8.99 cass
Reviewer: Sean Kelly

The Deep is, apparently, a coin-op conversion which comes aqualunging its way to the Speccy courtesy of US Gold. I'm not sure whether it's got anything to do with the film which came out years ago, but one thing's for certain, the game plays like it was written years ago. Read on...

You begin your life on the ocean wave as a ship on the surface of the water floating above the nautical equivalent of the M1, where submarines and squids plod about slowly below you. The squids insist on rising to the surface and smashing your ship up, while the subs sneakily stay below the surface firing homing missiles at you, or releasing surface mines which rise up and wait for you to bump into them and explode. But they're easy to dispose of, cos they move so slowly - simply drop your depth charges on them.

On occasion, bombing a sub sends a little pod floating to the surface which turns into a flag with a letter on. Your ship should scud across and collect it, thus releasing a helicopter to fly over, and drop another package.

Depending on what letter was displayed, you'll get one of five extra weapons.

As each flag only crops up occasionally too, you sometimes have to wait for five minutes before you get a pod to go on to the next screen, and believe me, five minutes is a long time for just moving left and right and dropping depth charges.

Anyway having raced through three or so of these screens, your ship then ploughs onto the next screen. But by this time I couldn't help thinking that perhaps this game should have been titled Deep Over Moscow, 'cos the graphics and gameplay were very similar to that game. And whilst looking to the past might be fine when it comes to 501's and the pop charts, there's no excuse for going primitive when it comes to computer games.

Your ship suddenly develops laser power in the next section, where you've got to stop the laser bolts being fired at you by four cannons on the sea bed.

This is the fastest of the sections I played, at which point the game moved up from boring to nearly vaguely interesting. Nearly.

After this, the game seemed to progress to the depth charge thingie again with different backgrounds, and my brain cells, realising they were in for another gripping treat, began leaping out of my earholes in their thousands.

This game defies description, it's not fast enough to be a shoot 'em up, and not intelligent enough to be an arcade adventure. I can't imagine why US Gold should choose to release this game? The standard of gameplay and graphics is literally years old, and although it is tedious to continually make comparisons, there really is tons of much better stuff around for two or three quid. Let your braincells keep their dignity, and don't bother.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £12.99
Amiga £24.99
Atari ST £19.99

A DIFFICULT GAME TO FATHOM

Nothing to to with the movie based on Peter Benchley's novel, killer whales, sea snakes, jelly fish and Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt don't even get a look in. The game is, however, a conversion of the coin-op of the same name from obscure arcade manufacturers, Woodplace.

Enemies in The Deep come in disappointingly conventional form - a variety of submarines. Nevertheless, they're more than a little dangerous, and should be stopped before they invade the good or US of A, or something equally monstrous.

The game shows a cross-section of the sea, its rocky floor at the bottom of the screen. Near the top, you guide a ship on the surface and release depth charges from it to destroy subs. Some release pods: collect one and a helicopter is summoned which drops an add-on device. Homing missiles, submersible pods, extra speed, smart bomb and increased depth charge power are available.

The game is formed from three short scrolling levels. At the end of each, a submersible pod is guided to collect a token from the sea bed. When three have been collected, an enemy mothership threatens.

In stage two, a ship slowly approaches. You have a short time to stop it with a projectile whose launch angle is determined by the fire button.

A peaceful convoy must be defended in the third stage: missiles are launched from the sea bed towards it and. In Missile Command manner, you use a cursor to halt them in flight.

The weak coin-op consisted of just long scrolling stages with a mothership at the end of each. Though in the conversion US Gold have added some new features and stages, the game remains an unexciting rehash of old ideas.