Producer: Gremlin Graphics
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Shaun Hollingworth, Chris Kerry, Marcos Druroe, Peter Harrap

In Bounder you have a little bouncing tennis ball to play with - but you're not going to be playing tennis. The whole idea of the game is to guide the ball through screen upon screen of obstacles while bouncing along the pathway of hexagonal paving stones that scrolls down the screen. It's a platform game with a difference!

There are 174 screens altogether, split into ten levels - your little bouncing tennis ball is really going to have his work cut out for him. The most general rule is to avoid anything that moves, and only bounce on the hexagonal parts of the screen. This isn't as easy as it might sound because all manner of nasties have been put in your way. There are piles of jagged rocks, stone walls which have to be circumnavigated, not to mention the odd light scattering of broken glass which punctures even the most resolute of tennis balls on contact.

Apart from the rocks and glass, a range of mobile nasties patrol the playing area intent on burs in our little bouncing chum. Binoculoids whizz round trying to knock the ball off course; Moscita birds swoop down on you; Stickits, Chomper Domes and Exocets do their best to live up to their names... you must negotiate your way around them all.

A stock of seven little tennis balls is provided at the start and a life is lost every time you stray off the yellow pathway or mix it with the nasties. There are a few allies in the environment, however, and the whole world isn't set against ol' Bouncy. Landing on a square with an arrow in it supercharges the next bounce and the ball can stay in the air for twice as long as usual. Teleports warp the ball to the next teleport square, thus avoiding any nasties lurking in between. Mysterious question mark squares conceal surprises: landing on one reveals the secret, which may be some extra bounces for the Bounceometer at the bottom of the screen, an extra life or two - or a nasty shock may be in store...

At the end of each level, your tennis ball is booted through a goal and it's on to the bonus screen. You're presented with a screen full of question marks, each of which holds a worthy number of bonus points. The Bounceometer in the status area reveals how many boings are available to you on the bonus screen, and economical jumping is called for if maximum points are to be collected from the questionmark bank! An extra bonus is awarded if the ball lands on all the bonus squares on the screen.

During play, the ball bounces of its own accord, getting larger and smaller as it moves in relation to the ground - if left to its own devices, it ploughs onwards suicidally - so it's up to you to try and guide it away from certain extinction. If the ball does stray off the straight and narrow (although there's no straight but plenty of narrow in this game,) it plummets into the abyss below and a new ball pops up on a different part of the screen, usually where you least expect it.

One little yellow tennis ball is definitely dreaming wistfully of Wimbledon this year... it's much safer on the tennis court, even if you do get to hear some rude words.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q left, W right, L up, P down, M toggles pause, BREAK to quit
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: simple but effective
Graphics: very neat animation, smooth scrolling
Sound: jolly title tune plus spot effect
Skill levels: one, ten levels to game
Screens: 174

At first glance Bounder didn't seem to be a promising game, but things soon changed! I've got to give it to Gremlin Graphics for originality - I have never seen a game like it before. Once you start off, bouncing all over the place, it becomes quite addictive, operating your ball and dodging low flying birds and other weird looking nasties. Okay, so there's only one colour per level, which some people might find a bit off-putting and dull, but the fast scrolling makes up for the lack of colour. Gameplay is quite fast so you don't get bored: there's no way this one can get monotonous. Bounder is a game I can recommend.

Bounder is just brilliant. I would say that the overall gameplay is definitely the best out of the three machine versions I've seen and the graphics are up to the very high quality that I've come to expect from Gremlin. The game idea is very old - a platform game - but the new angle put on the view of the action gives a whole new dimension, literally. The presentation is excellent, with good packaging and an excellently drawn title screen - there's even a little ditty to accompany the scrolling messages below the menu. The graphics consist of lots of very detailed baddies and goodies. Bouncing around is animated brilliantly, and the addictiveness is greatly increased because of the bonus screens which can improve your score tremendously. The great playability means you'll be coming back to this one long after you bounced your first ball.

This was one of the Commodore games that got played in the ZZAP! office next door by everyone. It has lost some appeal in the conversion onto Spectrum but it's good fun nevertheless. The graphics are fairly good, and the playing area is very complex so it's often quite hard to tell what is going on. The characters are all very nicely drawn and animated although they do tend to blend in with the surroundings a little. The sound is about average I suppose: there are a few spot effects during the game and a very nice tune on the title screen. Generally I'm not one hundred per cent impressed with this one, but it is quite playable and addictive.

Gremlin Graphics
£7.95

There's been a string of games recently featuring all manner of balls, some good, some bad. All round. Let me rephrase that. All round, Gremlin Graphics' new offering is definitely one of the good 'uns - and it's very different.

You've got to move Bounder, a tennis bafl with more bounce than Samantha Fox, around an obstacle course consisting of crazy paving. But if you misjudge a bounce and stray from the slabs into the trees, water and quicksand your ball gets a puncture and explodes. And Bounder, unlike a cat, has only got seven lives.

And that's not the half of your problems! There's a whole menagerie of meanies to contend with - Binoculoids, Chomper Domes, Moskita Birds and Pterries to reel off a few of the peculiar names in the instructions. Avoiding them is a whole new ball game. You can try a few fancy aerobics but I always came a cropper that way. The 'try-an-alternative-route' tactic is much the best bet for the uncoordinated.

But every cloud has a sliver lining! Many of the aliens you come across will actually give you a bonus - but it's trial and error sorting out the good from the bad and the just plain ugly? Copyright cans are very useful but you wont get these until the later levels. You can also gain a mystery bonus by bouncing on slabs bearing a question mark though it's very hit 'n' miss: you could end up by losing your balls - as well as your marbles! On the first level, two of the question marks will give you a bonus of six and two balls respectively. Another will kill you outright.

Once you've managed to keep on the straight and narrow and dodged all the nasties you'll still have to negotiate some very long jumps. Slabs with arrows on will give you a little lift but you must make sure your timing's right.

On completion of a level you're confronted with a Bonus screen where you have to bounce up and down on as many question marks as possible. Then it's off again on the next level.

The scrolling graphics are excellent - I only wish my ball control was as good. Control of Bounder is pretty realistic too even though it gets very frustrating when you keep bashing into mountains and having to go back to the beginning again.

Label: Gremlin
Authors: Quiet Bunch
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Clare Edgeley

Bounder almost gives you vertigo just to play it. Imagine you're in a helicopter looking straight down on the patchwork of the landscape and there's this ball bouncing up and down underneath. The ball gets bigger as it bounces up, disappears to a dot as it falls away, and rebounds up again.

The theme to Bounder is as old as the hills, yet Gremlin has presented it in a highly original way. Instead of the old bouncing ball off the platform routine, you play from on high - bouncing through landscapes of stone walls, mountain ranges and other unrecognisable landmarks. Your route is easy to spot - just land on the hexagonal slabs and you'll be OK. Bounce on anything else and it's 'Splat!'

There are 174 scrolling screens, chock-a-block with nasties and tortuous routines. Beware the missies, the moscita birds (the what birds?), the binoculoids, manic teeth in the shape of chomper domes and stickits!

After a few false starts you'll work out the safest route on each level and here the pause button comes in handy if you want a breather. You begin with seven balls and 40 jumps and pretty soon you discover they decrease and increase (respectively) at every question mark you come across in the terrain. These give mystery bonuses, and you are as likely to lose ten jumps as gain two balls when you land on one. It's a question of luck. The arrows you find are more useful and enable you to take longer jumps over the jumbled landscape terrain below.

Though a joystick makes life easier, the keyboard gives greater control and, it seemed, extra bounce for both forward and backward moves.

At the end of each level is a simple bonus screen - mostly an excuse to amass huge scores. When you get to this screen just bounce around landing on all the question marks, each of which is worth a certain amount. There's nothing to avoid, and it seems to be purely a matter of luck as to how much each question mark is worth. Very hit and miss and very boring.

Contrary to my initial expectations, I found Bounder to be quite addictive and not the walkover I expected. The vertiginous view and bouncing ball make for an original format. And the dratted ball never seems to land exactly where you want it to. It's quite fun learning how to control it, whizzing around and trying to leap on to the arrows and question marks in the more inaccessible parts of the screen.

Bounder's the type of game which is great for a little mindless relaxation - good in short bursts.

Ten Great Games Compilation
Amstrad, £9.99cs, £14.99dk
Spectrum, £9.99cs, £14.99dk
C64, £9.99cs, £14.99dk

What an addictive nightmare this is. It's not just that it's frustrating, it's the fact that you can't stop playing it. The first problem is controlling the bouncing ball, which is like trying to manoeuvre a supertanker in a bathtub.

Then, as you merrily bounce off up the scrolling course, you go in the wrong direction and slap into a ball-bursting dead end. Not content with this the game may then put you back on a restart point where you've got no chance of surviving.

Just to cap it all are the unforeseen dangers and antibonuses that are so easy to hit, and you'll never know what hit you Nurse, the screens...

Gremlin Graphics
£7.95

Bounder is a conversion from a game originally released on the '64, which I am told was incredibly addictive in its original version. I haven't played the '64 version so I'm not going to try and compare the two, but I can imagine that this would be a highly addictive game if only the Spectrum version were a little easier to play.

The Bounder of the title is a tennis ball which goes bouncing over a landscape made up of square tiles, each of which has different properties. Tiles with an octagonal pattern marked on them are safe to bounce on, tiles marked with an arrow give the ball a boost and allow it an extra high bounce to get over certain obstacles, and tiles marked with a question mark give you various bonuses. Just about everything else is deadly to bounce on. Some of these deadly tiles can be bounced over to reach safety, but others are parts of walls which you can't bounce over and so have to be totally avoided. There are also a few airborne obstacles, birds and what took like flying aspirins, which are deadly on contact.

You control Bounder either by joystick of keyboard ('but if you haven't got a joystick you haven't got a chance - ha!' the onscreen instructions add helpfully), and can bounce in any direction as long as your progress is forwards. Trying to bounce backwards simply slows down your forward motion a bit. The screen gives you a directly overhead view of the ball as it bounces over the landscape which scrolls downwards from the top of the screen.

At the start of the game your ball begins its bouncing at the bottom of the screen which is line as this allows you to keep the ball low down on the screen and watch the landscape as it scrolls downwards toward you so that you can see the deadly and safe tiles as they approach. As long as you can do this the game is enjoyable and highly playable, and controlling the ball is tricky enough to keep you grasping your joystick nervously But, as soon as you lose a life the next ball reappears near the top of the screen and you simply don't have enough time to react before the landscape scrolls down in order to try and avoid instant death.

This is one of those games that can take a very simple idea and turn it into something infuriatingly addictive. It's well designed on the whole and the animation of the ball as it seems to bounce into and out of the screen is clear and elective. I have to admit that I've gone back to Bounder several times to try and have another go of staying alive past stage two but the way you can lose so many lives one after the other simply because the ball has appeared right at the top of the screen only to straight away land on a deadly tile is pretty irritating. If it weren't for that one factor Bounder might well have been a monster hit, but even so it's still good fun.