Reviews

Quite probably isometric gaming at its best. The puzzles are really well designed, the graphics are silly but draw you in and the map itself is huge so you'll be playing it for ages. There really isn't anything wrong with this game at all.

One of the finest RPGs seen on the Speccy: a huge game, with great variety of monsters. None of the puzzles are really anything special, but my set of hand-drawn maps of the whole game still inspire warm nostalgic feelings whenever I find them.

Superbly programmed, with graphics and sound that pushed the boundaries for the time, but these days the gameplay is shown up as being more than a little lacking.

While this is good, I've never quite thought it to be as good as it is made out to be. It's fun, but it's not actually that well designed: the spells are remarkably unbalanced and it's all just a little bit too random for my taste.

Another game which I never quite though was as good as its reputation. Not quite sure why on this one - I played it lots, but never really got in to it. Maybe it's just the frustration of having to do the first 13 levels all over again because you died on the 14th (or whatever). That said, it's still very playable.

Obviously, the game which spawned twenty thousand imitations, and they rarely bettered the original. That said, there are flaws here: the gameplay is a bit too slow, and the puzzles are all a bit samey after a while. It's still a very good game, but it's just not as good as (say) Head Over Heels.

An isometric game which did more than attempt to be a better Knight Lore, and comes off very well for that decision. The atmosphere of the game is perfect: exploring the camp and getting to a new area was always a great thrill, and the puzzles are well thought out and logical.

While this is nominally a football game, Jon Ritman's admitted he knew nothing about football when he wrote it. While this may sound like a bad thing, it isn't: it's now designed to be a very playable game, rather than an accurate simulation of football, and succeeds incredibly well at that.

*The* classic space trading-combat game: there's very little wrong with it really, especially given the limitations of the humble Speccy. Combat is wonderful, and the grind up through equipment doesn't really feel that bad. Docking can be a pain at first, but it's not actually that hard after some practice. Many hours of my youth were sunk into playing this one, and I don't think they were wasted either.

Wonderful beat'em up which works equally well with either one or two players. The levels are nicely varied, and the whole thing is well balanced, with the possible exception of the scoring system which heavily encourages just whacking people with the weapon.

At first, this looks like another isometric shooter, but you rapidly discover it's got a significant number of tactical elements: should you grapple an enemy for their kit, or blow them up? If you take the powerful weapon, will your drive system support it? Disruptor shield, or save your power? The combination of the action and tactical elements work together really well, making this an almost unique game.

The little egg can be the subject of loathing, but I tend to other end: Dizzy is a good, playable arcade adventure, and certainly excellent value when you consider it cost you less than a pint would these days. Some of the game design is a bit ropey (most notably the collapsing bridge: screw it up once and it's game over), but there's really nothing to complain about here.

A game with really no redeeming features at all, except possibly that I got it "free" on a YS cover tape. It's nothing like rugby, and it's not fun either. And as I discover from WoS, it was written by the same person who wrote the infamous World Cup Carnival. No surprise there then!

The game which started a whole era of god games, and one which, while probably better on other platforms, still isn't bad on the Speccy. Very little is lost in the conversion from the "big boys", and it's still wonderful to see your city grow from a little village of just a few blocks into a sprawling metropolis.

At first sight it's a vaguely interesting puzzle game, and that's what it remains. However, it doesn't really change as the levels progress, and there's not enough to it to make it worth playing for an extended amount of time these days.

My enjoyment of this may have been somewhat ruined by the fact that I got it on a compilation without any instructions, but I really don't think so.

It's simply a badly written platformer.

I bought this with my hard-earned pennies as a kid (after reading good reviews of it in the mags), and remember being remarkably disappointed. It's not really anything other than a poor Alien 8 knockoff, lacking both anything innovative in the game design and the finesse that Ultimate applied to their games.

Quite possibly the very best compilation ever to appear on the Spectrum: two absolute classics (Head over Heels, The Great Escape), three very good games (Wizball, Arkanoid, Cobra), two good ones (Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Yie Ar Kung Fu) and one which certainly isn't bad (Short Circuit). All that for a tenner - what more could you possibly ask for?