Melbourne House
£8.99

It's not easy being an ogre. Not in this Arcadia coinop conversion, anyway. Come to think of it, it ain't that dandy being a dragon either! These are the two monsters that have been chosen to battle against each other in The Search for Roc's Eggs.

The eggs are hidden in the towns and cities of the eland of Darance, but there is a snag. To find the eggs you must smash and bash through the houses ant statues of each place you search. You can destroy the buildings in two ways: Hitting them has a quick crumbling effect, but setting fire to them with your bad breath is also a good Idea.

You can pick up objects from the demolished houses to help you grow stronger. Hamburgers increase your strength, and bolts of lightning increase your fire power. This could all be very easy if it weren't for those pesky people who aren't keen on you re-landscaping their towns.

The inhabitants do their best to stop you by knocking down your energy with large catapults and cannons. To top this, once you've captured an egg, the other monster fights you for it. Win and you keep it, and once five are collected, you're off to the volcano for the big one, a golden egg to complete the game.

It all sounds jolly good fun, but sadly Aaargh! is badly programmed. Playing it is like stepping backwards in time to the early Spectrum days. The main sprites are small and uninteresting, and the people are about four pixels high! Nice in real life, but on the fighting section I just laughed my socks off! (poooo!). The larger sprites for each monster are made by (wait for it) expanding the original small sprites! The multi-load just makes the situation worse. Avoid.

NICK [31%]

How's about this for a dire game? The storyline is fantastic; 'the monsters are on the loose... to cause chaos... to inflict terrible destruction!'. Honestly, it's not exactly original, is it? it wouldn't be so bad if Aaargh! brought some terrific new feature to the games playing world, but it doesn't. At budget price, it might just make the grade with average addictivity. The awful graphics and a nigh-total lack of playability make this a thorough waste of money.
MIKE [29%]

Virgin/Mastertronic
£9.99 cass
Reviewer: Jackie Ryan

Well, this game certainly had me screaming "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" at the top of my voice I can tell you. After the brill shoot 'em up fun of Silkworm this latest release from the Virgin/Mastertronic stable just doesn't measure up.

Converted from the 16 bitties, Aargh! could loosely be described as a kind of arcade adventure style beat 'em up. It could also be described as a lot of other things - most of them unprintable.

Aargh! is a one or two player affair in which you can take the part of either an ogre with halitosis or an 18 foot dragon. Both the characters are mean muthers who pack a solid punch and breathe fire (they're hot stuff for sure!). And the happy couple spend most of their time terrorising the townspeople of Darance island in their search for - eggs! Yes, yes, I know it sounds strange, but eggs are the monster's plate de jour, and if they can collect a little clutch of five, then they can go for the biggie - the golden egg that lies under the volcano.

To get these live eggs though, they must search through the 12 cities on the island, which range in architectural elegance from a primitive village of straw huts and wild west tort to a Chinese pagoda and Indian temple. They rampage through the cities, either beating up or blow-torching everything in sight, demolishing the buildings, eating the hamburgers and looking for the eggs. Once they've found one, it's on to the next city and so on.

It all sounds well and good so far doesn't it, Spec-chums? I mean, rampaging monsters are what our Speccies were made for isn't it? Well yes, but not when the rampaging monsters are limited to one basic task - knocking down buildings to see what's hidden inside them. And not when each level consists of only one screen on which there are about five things which need to be knocked down. And especially not when the monsters only have one life which is constantly being drained each time they're hit. When they do die you have to rewind the tape and load in that level again. 'Cos Aargh! is a multi-load I'm afraid folks, which hardly seems necessary since it only loads one screen at a time. It's this and the other features I've just mentioned which unfortunately make what could have been a game you might have persevered with totally unplayable. Aargh! might just have measured up in the budget market, but as a full price release its name speaks for itself.

Label: Melbourne House
Author: Binary Design
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

You know, I wondered why this, being the latest 16 to 8 bit conversion by Melbourne House, was called Aaargh! I soon found out when I loaded it. Here's the scene. Hmm hmm hmm, type LOAD "", press play, wart, beee dit, beee diddly diddly, oh good it's loaded. Aaaaaarrrgh!

You are a monster. No, not the sort your mother keeps calling you, but an honest to god great big hideous destructive monster, with a penchant for smashing down buildings and collecting rocs' eggs.

Play either an ogre or a dragon in your quest to find the mystical Golden Egg, hidden deep within the volcano. But before you race off to the volcano in a mad rush for the golden egg, you must prove your worth as a monster by terrorising the cities surrounding the area in which you live and collecting the five rocs' eggs.

Terrorising the cities is as easy as pie. You begin outside the city walls, looking in. The city itself is made up of a group of small huts, one of which, if you are lucky, contains punches in the direction of the city boundary and, as Def Leppard sang, 'the walls come tumblin' down'.

So step into the mouth of the enemy and set about smashing up their buildings in the search for the eggs. Punch the buildings to pulp, or why not burn them down with your fiery breath. However, it's only once you step into the city that you realise the menace that these puny people called humans really are. For one thing, they have massive cannons that cause rather a nasty amount of damage. Too many hits from one of those babies and foom. You're out of there. Oversized hornets also cause problems as they buzz, bite and do whatever else it is hornets are supposed to do.

Other challenge comes in the form of other players. You see, the game can be played two player simultaneous, and at times you can get into head to head scraps where 'there can be only one'.

Viewed as a pseudo-3D single screen walkabout thingy, you have to scavenge 12 cities of the world, all set against different backdrops. The funny thing is, and this is really going to make you laugh, the game is multi-load. Not any normal multi-load, but Really-badly-programmed-finnicky-sonofabitch-o-load (© Melbourne House) which means that at the start of each game, you have to reload level one, regardless of whether or not you got off it on your last game. Irritating or what?

The graphics are, well, alright. The sprites themselves are poorly designed, and as for the animation. Hmmm. The less said the better. The only really good thing I can say about the graphics is that I like the way the flames are animated when you breathe fire.

The game, as a game, is crap. Boring from the start, and successfully managing to consistently remain boring all the way through, Aaargh! manages to capture all the fun and excitement from the original 16 bit Arcadia trash, sorry, smash.

Melbourne House
ST, Spectrum, C64
Spectrum £9.99, C64 £9.99

In Melbourne House's conversion of the Arcadia coin-op, your goal - as an 18-foot scaly green lizard or a one-horned ogre with bad breath - is to capture the mythical Roc's golden egg.

This isn't as easy as it sounds. You're on an island with ten different cities (the packaging says twelve), populated by humans who'll do anything to sap your energy. There's also the local insect population, who like to feed on monster energy. Against this background of opposition, you've got to knock down buildings until the whole community is devastated and you find a white egg. Once this is gained, you fight your opposite number for the right to keep it.

All of the latest versions of Aaargh!, unlike the Amiga game now over a year old, have a two-player option. This means that pillaging whole communities, plundering their food and eating their menfolk a lot more fun, and fighting each other after each round is more competitive and enjoyable.

But the big problem with the game is that its incredibly easy. You can go through the whole game with little practice. and consequently the game rapidly becomes repetitive.

With two-players the game isn't so bad, because you've got each other to bash up. but solo players might find themselves getting bored after a while, especially as the computer opponent can easily be beaten with the same move.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Atari ST £19.99

REVENGE OF THE JAPANESE B-MOVIE

Based on those those brilliantly tacky Japanese monster movies starring such wonders as Godzilla, this first came out on the Amiga yonks ago, so technically it's an update, but long ago enough to make it a review as well... You are offered the choice of playing one of two monsters and having a stompingly good time with the hapless inhabitants of an otherwise peaceful island. These large beasts are a green Dragon and a nasty Ogre (a friend can optionally take the part of the other character), and they have a mission - a quest to gain the legendary golden Roc egg.

To get it, though, five lesser eggs must first be collected by stomping, ripping and chomping your way through 12 scattered cities scattered where the eggs are hidden. At the start only two cities can be visited, so pick one and go to it. As you mangle the buildings the puny humans wheel out a variety of weapons with which to try and dent your hide. Besides the humans there are hornets which zoom at you, as well as other monsters.

Depending on which monster you have chosen to play you can whack the humans' catapults or torch buildings with your fiery breath. Contact with any dangers knocks down your health meter, but it can be topped up by crushing buildings and grabbing any food found inside - or the odd tasty human will do it just as well.

Keep an eye on the power meter too, which tells you how much barbecue breath is left; the lightning icons provide a top up of fuel when found.

When an egg is found you take it back to your cave, but discover your rival is ready to fight you for it. When five eggs have been hoarded in this way, you can go to the volcano and attempt to claim the golden egg from its summit, then perhaps the humans can live in peace.

Very Rampage and Muncher-ish in its content, we loved this rip, mangle and maim game. Aaargh is instantly playable and contains enough monsterish mayhem to keep all Godzilla fans happy. The path to the golden egg is fraught with dangers, but we think that Aaargh will keep you playing to the end (and saying that word many times in the process).