Producer: Mastertronic
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Binary Design

This is BINARY DESIGN'S second futuristic ice hockey game: Xeno was the first, and now Hyperbowl makes its appearance.

The action takes place in an area of space viewed from above. Two players attempt to propel a large puck toward their opponent's goal line by colliding with it or shooting it. A point is scored if the puck passes over the line at the end of the pitch and two points earned if the puck enters the central goal.

The game lasts for five minutes, or until a player earns nine points. When a player scores, play returns to the centre of the field with the scorer facing away from the puck.

At the start of the game players select a ship from the ten available. Some move faster or accelerate quicker. Some fire homing shots, while others fire in a straight line.

The screen shows a segment of the pitch and includes a scanner which reveals the whereabouts of the ships in relation to the puck. This information is vital in the two player game - if your ship goes flying out of the game window, the only way to get it back is to use the scanner displays - the window is always centered on the puck.

Playing against the computer, there are three skill levels. If you win a game, you go onto the next round and face a tougher opponent. Win five games on the trot and you're the champ!

COMMENTS

Control keys: Player One: Q Accelerate, A Stop, S Rotate Left, D Rotate Right, X Fire. Player Two: I Accelerate, K Stop, L Rotate Left, ENTER Rotate Right, SYMBOL Fire.
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: monochrome action area
Graphics: a little basic perhaps
Sound: minimal
Skill levels: three
Screens: 32

I'm not too pleased with Hyperbowl - it's another game which gives me the impression that it was rushed at the programming stage. The idea Hyperbowl is very good although a bit more variation wouldn't go amiss. The front end is excellent but things start to get a bit tatty during the game. Controlling your ship is relatively easy, but blasting the ball about the place is tricky as it seems to move randomly no matter how precise your aim is. The graphics could have been improved greatly: with only three objects they could at least look right... Given the price, this isn't a bad game but I couldn't play it for long.
BEN

The screen looks a bit plain but the scenario is good and the game is very playable. The presentation is excellent. Unfortunately the sound is poor. The game lacks tunes and is accompanied by a few 'futt futt' noises. The rules are very simple, and the pitch layout's not very complex. But this is what makes the game so addictive and exciting to play. The two player option is excellent if you can find an opponent of equal ability. Hyperbowl is a perfect budget game and well worth the asking price.
PAUL

MASTERTRONIC have done a fair job with this one. The chance to select ships is very neat, and the whole game is very well executed: neat presentation with a good loading screen, nice packaging, and a highly attractive if sluggish title screen - in fact everything you don't usually see Ina cheap game. For £1.99, you get stacks of gameplay, and lots of addictive qualities; it might become boring in the distant future, but it has a lot more potential than many games five times its price.
MIKE

Mastertronic
£1.99

Futuristic sports are all the rage, and have you ever known Mastertronic let an opportunity slip? Course not. So here's Hyperbowl, not to be confused with Firebird's similarly named Hypaball, previewed in the YS sports feature. A 35th century version of ice hockey, it sadly leaves out all the interesting aspects of that extraordinary sport - the bad language, the funny clothes and, of course, the sickening violence. Instead you just bash a ball around, trying to score goals against an unnamed opponent. Not that you have to bash it yourself. Remember, this is the 35th century! No, you climb into your Class 1 Trident spacecraft and fire with your nose cannons. You'll soon pick it up!

You can choose any of ten different ships, each with its own special strengths and weaknesses. By trial and error, you should eventually find one that suits you best. Then it's just a matter of propelling the ball towards your opponent's goal. Bounce it off his goal-line and you get one point. Hit the goal itself and you get two points. The first to nine wins.

There's really not much more to it. Practice helps, as with any game, but I'm not entirely convinced that many people will stay with it for as long as that. The graphics are fairly primitive, so there's nothing to distract you from the mundane nature of the game itself. Still, it's a cheapie version of other, far better games, and if you haven't got the dosh, it's a perfectly reasonable substitute.

Label: Mastertronic
Author: Steve Hughes
Price: £1.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Hyperbowl is another one of those Mastertronic games which manages to create a new idea out of a couple of old ones. In this case Asteroids meets American Football creating a game which could have been called Footoids or Asterball but wasn't, thankfully.

Remember in the olden days when computers only had two graphics and spaceships just looked like triangles? So it is with the Hyperbowl playing screen. Two triangles, or similar geometric shapes, do battle on a playing area which consists of black, with the occasional dotted line dividing the blackness into large squares of emptyness. Beyond being a poetic concept it has no function in the game except to help you get a rough idea where you are.

The game is simple. You use your geometric spaceship to barge or fire a puck across the opponent's goal line. You get one point ordinarily, or two if you manage to push it into a line that marks the middle section of the goal. Obviously the other ship is going to be blasting and barging the puck in the other direction. Like Asteroids the ships, lacking friction, are somewhat difficult to control - it takes a while to build up momentum and, having got moving, it is very easy to hurtle at zillions of miles an hour straight past where you wanted to go.

Vital to having any idea about what is going on is a scanner which fills the right hand section of the screen - this shows you where you are, where the other ship is and where the puck is. I managed to survive for a while on idiots level, but clearly thrashing the thing on sensible skill levels will be very difficult indeed.