Replaying all the games in the penultimate Your Sinclair (#92 Aug 1993).

[PeteProdge]

This is a completely original idea from me and not even vaguely inspired by anything else going on in this forum. (Er, what about @bluespikey's replaying all the games in Crash issue one thread? - Ed) Sssh!

Yes, as I was saying, totally original. (Grrr - Ed)

And I've gone for the penultimate YS, not the final one, because, well, the final one (and I don't really count the Retro Gamer free gift of YS issue 94 as canon, nice though it was) has no game reviews at all (albeit it does a massive list of all the ratings they gave to every game in all the previous issues).

TL:DR; this was the last of the holy trinity of the big three UK Speccy mags to review any games.

And this thread will be over pretty quickly really, because like @bluespikey, this is for game reviews only, in the order they appear in the mag, and the amount of them in the dying embers of the commercial era are... frankly lower than a Welsh residential speed limit. You could count the amount of releases on the fingers of a leper. Plus, they are all rereleases!

Helter Skelter by Audiogenic.

Originally from 1991 when it came out for £10.99, here it is on a £3.99 outing in the summer of 1993. Rich Pelley gave this 79%.

The early Nineties saw a glut of arcade puzzlers and also a rise in 'cutesie' platformers. This game, an original creation from Audiogenic, tries to marry the two genres, like it's the result of a focus group. There's no sign of an actual helter skelter and nor do I hear Ringo Starr shouting about blisters on his fingers. Unsurprisingly, this was also made for the C64 and Amstrad CPC, plus the Amiga and Atari ST. Surprisingly, a version came out for the BBC Micro! (Curiousity had me examine that platform's commercial history and I'm astounded that ended in 1993, same as the Speccy!)

Anyway, this looks and sounds professional. Sharp and smooth graphics and a David Whittaker tune in AY. No complaints there. You are a bouncing ball, the controls are simply left, right and, um, bounce. Not too dissimilar to Revelation Software's Astroball, but Helter Skelter's playing area is literally the screen you are on. And yeah, the password facility is nice to have, but there isn't much a game here. You have to squish a family of marauding sprites. The game has one particular sprite pointed out by an arrow, and sure, you can squish the others (usually by accident), but they tend to spawn into two smaller sprites. It really does help to squish in the order the game wants you to do. There's a bit of a Pang feel to this, as well as an essence of a Breakout clone.

However, as Rich points out, the learning curve for this practically non-existent, especially with a very unforgiving second level. That's where I fell out of love with this game. There hasn't been any serious planning for it. Still, at least it's not Elite's diabolical Hopping Mad (that's Wonderboy replaced some animated love beads thing from Anne Summers).

I wouldn't feel short-changed by this budget rerelease, that's a price point where it belongs. It's not full price fodder and I doubt it made an impact for 16-bit users. If this was on a covertape, you'd be pleased, but not ecstatic about it. Rich's rating and review is pretty fair to it. I feel it's worth 65%.

[RWAC]

You could probably play all the games in the last 10 issues before Bluespikey's finished with the first issue of Crash!

[PeteProdge]

Darkman by Ocean, rereleased by Hit Squad.

Another full price (£10.99) 1991 game getting a £3.99 lease of life on the budget shelves. This scored a huge 85% by James Leach back in 1991, but two years later, there is a massive drop as Jonathan Nash gives it a mere 22%! That is incredible. Does it deserve such a downgrade? Let's dive in.

Right, so by the late 80s and early 90s, Ocean had a successful template for a lot of their movie licenses. Go down the platformer route, have your player fight/shoot baddies who fight/shoot you. It worked very well for Batman and Robocop of course - lots of monochrome worlds to explore. In Darkman, there's a nudge towards colour, but at the expense of scrolling, as it's all push-screen exploration. The colour is indeed welcome. It's a similar situation on the Amstrad CPC version, whereas Commodore 64 users get natural horizontal scrolling.

The 16-bit computers have a lot more freedom in scrolling and in movement, as all the sprites, including yours, can move around freely on the ground. The NES version is quite different indeed, with it being being a multi-directional platformer of the style very common on consoles around this time, plus they throw in some daft bonus levels, including one that's a bit like Operation Wolf.

Anyway, back to the Speccy. It's rather repetitive, with two or three enemies all looking the same, blasting a bullet at you occasionally and there's sometimes an obstacle to jump over. You have to time your attacks on these gun-wielding villains during the phases when they're not shooting, which is quite generous really - simpler than Green Beret. On some screens you'll have a roaming dog, then there are these pointless screens where some floating stars - some at face level, some at foot level - will speed towards you, so you have to duck/jump as necessary, but a few are pretty unavoidable. Towards the end, prancing ninja sprites come up quite a lot but it fails to break up the tedium of what's quite a difficult level.

Then, with Ocean's penchant for a daft mini-game as a movie game's bonus level, you get to point your cursor at people and pick the one who looks like the photograph shown to you.

Now, level two harks back to the monochrome multi-directional ladders-and-platforms style of Batman and to be honest, it's a breath of fresh air. Very welcome at this point. It's a lot like how the NES version begins. However, I didn't get off this stage, but yeah, this was how it should have been from the start.

It's not a great game to be honest, a weak echo of the genius of Robocop and Batman, but I've enjoyed it more than Helter Skelter. It deserves 71%.