Reviews

Great conversion of the Tad coin-op. Does not get a 5 from me due to the lack of two-player mode and of the roll which lets you avoid enemy bullets, but apart from this, it is really well done.

This is in my opinion one of the absolute best arcade conversions on the Spectrum. It's so much better than the arcade original. Fantastic conversion from the Special FX team, good job fellas!

1989 Ocean Software(UK)
BY James Bagley, Charles Davies and Keith Tinman

I have to agree that this is an excellent conversion of the original in some aspects even better. I especially dislike the graphics, they seem too bulky and clumsy, and therefore I subtract a point on the rating, apart from that it's a great game.

Good arcade conversion that will provide plenty of blasting good fun.

Average yet coin munching beast of an arcade machine, gets a pretty decent conversion.

I'll give it 3 since the Speccy version even though brutally difficult still is actually easier than the arcade version which is pathetically difficult, and not that much fun once you get past about level 2, and use a credit roughly every 8 seconds.

But in the age of emulators I've discovered that the arcade is really not that fun, the levels are a bit crap, and the bosses are very unimaginative. I get the impression TAD weren't expecting people to ever get to the end of the game in the arcades, as the game actually becomes worse as it progresses.

Surely in that case it's not the Speccy's fault that it's version is actually also quite dull?

The main concern of Cabal is to fuse in a single entity, intellectual elements like carnage, total destruction and sheer annihilation. It attains this goal by summoning the typical Nietzschean figure of the Superman, similar to the one personified by John Rambo in the full-length film-essay "First Blood" (1982). Being such a skilled bloke, the main character of the game is potentially able to defeat whole armies, including tanks and helicopters - while dodging hissing swarms of bullets and grenades. Cabal, though, is critical about the theory of absolute subjectivity promoted by colleagues like Operation Wolf and Operation Thunderbolt, and support a more moderate position on the matter, defined as "view-from-behind". This means that, using the opportunity of free will, the main subject can actually moves along the scenario - but, still, it uses a crosshair to aim like the two above mentioned titles.
If the fire button is keep pressed, in fact, the control transits from the Superman, which stops, to the crosshair.
I remember that back in the day I bought Cabal. I wasn't displeased with it.
Its reasoning is sound and well structured. It is able to persuade that a scorched earth policy is the only possible salvation, as, after all, the great thinkers have always suggested, from Confucius to Bertrand Russell, via Mahatma Gandhi.
4/5