US Gold/Tiertex
£9.99/£14.99

China, 184 AD: an unhappy time. A blood feud between the Han Clan and the Kai Clan has escalated into all-out war. The Hans are the good guys, but there are only four of their warriors left - and you're one of them! Choose which of the four you play, each with equally silly names: Shang Fei, Lui Bei, Kuan Yu and Shao Yun. Now mount your trusty steed and lay into the Kai hordes with your R-Type inspired weapon (ie the longer the button is held the stronger the blow). Six horizontally scrolling levels of enemy troops armed with lances, swords and bows await you, all punctuated by end-of-level Kai Generals to defeat.

Dynasty Wars kicks off with a promising start: a good intro tune and static portraits of the heroes. But from there on boredom is just around the corner. The thing that strikes you first is the lack of colour - all graphics are monochromatic. The result is that the animated sprites are disastrously lost in the backdrops. Maybe Tiertex should be recommended to the army, they'd do a great lob camouflaging vehicles! The scrolling judders along and just adds to the 'why bother' feeling that emerges after thirty seconds play.

MARK [39%]

Dynasty Wars is one of those games that suffers from excellent presentation but has little playability. There are some really well drawn screens of the heroes you control, and greet graphics in between the levels. The actual game sprites and backgrounds are another matter though: they're small, undetailed and all in cyan monochrome - yukk! You have to strain your eyes to see what is going on, but you might as well not bother because it looks more like a circus act than a war! The horse you ride moves the same speed backwards as it does forwards, and when you try to shoot at someone the arrows or bullets go straight through them! A dire implementation of a coin-op shoot-'em-up variant.
NICK [50%]

US Gold
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

Da-daaa! Here's the one we've all been waiting for - the world's first scrolling horse-'em-up! And is it a load of manure? Neigh! in this case, four legs are certainly better than two. In fact, it'll probably shoot straight to the top of the Gallop chart! Dynasty Wars? It's my mane game! Last month's Megapreview should have set you in good steed, but I don't want to saddle you with something you're not going to enjoy so let's give it a thorough brushing down. I won't take too long as I've got to hurry back to Canter-bury tomorrow!

Ahem. The idea is that you're one of these eastern warrior types, mounted on a horse, and you've got to ride through eight scrolling levels killing other eastern chappies and collecting things. You've got four blokes to choose from - Shang Fei, Liu Bei, Kaun Yu and Shao Yun. Quite a line-up really. Your choice is made harder as not only do you have to find one with a name you can pronounce, but you've also got to weigh up their pros and cons. They've all got different characteristics, you see, so it's up to you whether you go for a brainy one or a muscley one. Then, of course, Player Two will also need someone to control (assuming, that is, there is a Player Two). It's one of those simultaneous two-player jobs, so it might be worth trying to work out some sort of 'matching pair'.

Put your horse into 'First' and off he'll trot. The landscape scrolls along to keep up, and everything's lovely. But suddenly, as if by magic, a whole load of baddies appear! Oh no! It's time to being your big rod thingie into play. With a defiant cry you bring your thumb down onto the Fire button, your bloke raises his stick and a little energy bar at the bottom of the screen starts climbing up. Release the button again and a jet of flame shoots across the screen, its ferocity dependent on how long you held the button down for (just like R-Type really). It's either that are you can just tap it, giving them a quick prod in the eye. Occasionally I found it tricky to actually hit anything at all, which may well be a slight glitch in the collision detection. Or maybe I'm just completely crap.

There are all kinds of baddies to deal with, ranging from little chaps with swords through to archers and even horsemen. And, um, that's it. There are only three kinds actually. But they're very nicely done. The swordsmen can be blown away by the truckload with no further thought, but the archers are a bit more tricky. They appear in groups, dot themselves around the screen and then start chucking hundreds of arrows at you. They're devils to get rid of too. And the mounted guys are another kettle of fish altogether. They get their own energy bars and everything, and a huge battle is guaranteed whenever they appear.

Oh yes, the things to collect. These include energy bubbles and extra weapons. The latter act as smart bombs, unleashing barrages of either firebombs or boulders on the enemy.

The graphics in Dynasty Wars are undoubtedly its big selling point. Those horses are corkers - their legs move properly and its amazing that no-one's done anything like this before. Horses are miles more fun than spaceships. And the backgrounds are pretty nifty too. Although they're massively detailed you don't tend to get lost in them like in some other games. Everything's in dullsville monochrome, naturally, but most of you will've resigned yourselves to this sort of thing years ago.

The problem however (here it comes) is that there isn't actually that much to do. I'm sure you known what I mean. One level is pretty much like another. And the same with the baddies. But, looking on the bright side, the two-player option is good fun.

It's a good conversion of the coin-op, the graphics are ace and the horses are currently the best on the Speccy, but whether or not you'll 'get hitched' to it is another matter. Worth very much more than a passing glance though.

Label: US Gold
Price: £10.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Shang Fei stands in the middle of a bridge brandishing his snake halberd (oo-er), and thousands of enemies are routed. Lui Bei is descended from Emperor Kel of the Han Dynasty. He swears to be brothers with Kuan Yu and Shange Fei to defeat Huang Ching. And they're the biggest jessie-boys of the ancient Orient - some of the characters in Dynasty Wars are REALLY hard!

Dynasty Wars is a fab conversion of a coin-op which I must admit I haven't played (I'm getting a bit old to spend my evenings hanging around arcades). But from what I've seen, it's a pretty skill conversion job, and while the full marvellousness of the inter-screen graphics haven't been retained, the non-stop violence of the game itself is well up to scratch (or up to slash).

It's basically a horizontally-scrolling hack'n'slash epic, but the gimmick is that while your opponents are largely on foot, you're on a thundering great horse, and equipped with a variety of lovely weapons including a death-dealing fire-lance. You might think this makes things too easy, but not on your bowl of noodles! The baddies bombard you with arrows, lances and axes, and on later levels (there are eight of them) you have to deal with horsemen, catapults and fireballs. The animation of your trotting horse is completely boss - the background scrolls along a bit jerkily until you reach the next killing-ground, then stops until you've cleared the area of peasant scumbags.

You can choose any of the four characters to play, but it doesn't seem to make an enormous difference. What does make a difference is if you're in two-player mode; it's a lot easier to turn the baddies into chop-suey if you have some help from another horseman.

Like an R-Type clone, your fire-lance is charged up by holding down the fire-button, waiting until a sliding scale indicates that its at the required level of blaziness, then it's discharged by releasing the button. It whips out over your head and blazes boiling death at the baddies - lovely! Trouble is, you have to be lined up properly with them - your horsey moves in and out of the screen, and you must be at the right depth to hit the target. This is the tricky bit. Get it right, though - galloping around to avoid arrows, lining up your shot and letting go, and the peasants tumble into oblivion.

Your strength and treasure are indicated by readouts on the top of the screen, and you can replenish them by picking up treasure-chests and other tokens. The only problems with DW are that the end-of-level nasties are nothing to split your chopsticks over, and each level is very much the same; the background graphics are nicely-detailed but monochrome, and after a couple of levels things get a bit tedious. A bigger selection of different weapons, more variation in the baddies or even the backgrounds would have made it a whole new bowl of crispy duck.

US Gold
Spectrum/C64/Amstrad £10.99

Fight off the clans of ancient Japan in the 8 bit conversions of the Capcom coin-op. There's a choice of four warlords to play, and after selecting whichever has the right combination of physical and magical strength, mount up and charge into oncoming hordes of foot soldiers, archers and cavalry. The Spectrum and Amstrad conversions are nicely done, though the visible playing area is quite small and the detailed sprites are quite difficult to make out against the like-coloured ground. The C64 version looks like it's played in a quagmire, though, with dull grey warriors rampaging about a mud-brown battlefield. For some reason, the unusual gameplay isn't instantly appealing, so unless you loved Dynasty Wars in the arcades this isn't really worth scouring the shelves for.

Spectrum Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99

Originally reviewed: TGM031.

The intro screen is the best part of the Speccy game, when the 'action' starts things go rapidly downhill. The main problem is the colour (or rather lack of), everything is monochromatic. This makes even the sharpest-eyed person wonder where the sprites have gone, and that backward walking horse is still there.