Reviews

With much hype, and presumably after listening to far too much U2 music, Softek rebranded themselves as The Edge. Given the amount of fanfare, there was much expectation around their launch titles of which this was one.

Psytraxx is essentially a clone of Ultimate's Atic Atac with the setting moved from a haunted castle to inside a computer. As such there are lots of things that look like circuits and electrical components around to make up the scenery.

Where Ultimate's game had lots of specials, and each area of the map had its own particular graphical feel, Psytraxx is just plain enormous with over a thousand screens although there's not really a lot to distinguish one from another. There's also the added irritation of constantly having to recharge your weapon.

The game is only a challenge by virtue of it's sheer enormity. I never even attempted to complete it as I knew that boredom would inevitably overtake me well before I even got close to the end.

1984 The Edge (UK)
by Andrew Beale and Jack Wilkes

The story goes something like helping Microbot collect parts of a giant microchip to make his escape from the enormous circuit board he feel into.

This was one of my first games and it was really a big disappointment. The game is too big for its own good, it has over 1000 screens and, maybe because of the authors laziness, they all look alike, so it becomes very boring.
There is no mention anywhere but our main character, the robot, looks very similar to 'Microbot', the previous game from this programming duo. 'Microbot' instead was a really appealing game, with interesting features, unfortunately 'Psytraxx' fails the maintain to standard.

A big and boring Atic Atac rip-off. Avoid unless you need a cure for insomnia.

This one is a superfast maze game à la Atic Atac, well reviewed at the time, but presently bashed and criticized, with an average vote of 4.88 in WoS from 8 users, and bad reviews on Spectrum 2.0 - but I think it's ok.
Very professional for 1984's standard, with very cutely designed and animated colourful sprites, fast run and fire action, keys to proceed through doors, teleports and decent sound effects.
It's got 1000 similar rooms? I don't care. It's a 3/5, and one of the best loading screens of the year.