Reviews

One of the first real pieces of eye candy on the Spectrum as well as quite a good playable game into the bargain.
I bought this game (with Barmy Burgers) on the day I acquired my new Spectrum, and can remember to this day simply mouthing the words "Wow" once it started.

The "Softsolid" engine used here made for pretty much the earliest true isometric game on the ZX (and arguably ANY system for that matter). As it stood, the ability to change the viewpoint to any of four directions, was something largely never copied by other software companies, who later expanded upon the isometric genre.

The game itself is well up to scratch. Running around the city, climbing, jumping and blowing up ants can be rather fun. The game is well paced with each level taking both a little more thought and time than the previous, as the locations you need to access become more and more difficult to get to. The only real flaw with the gameplay, is that perhaps it is infact rather too easy, and with only 10 levels to complete not likely to provide a huge challenge for long.
The control keys also had a reputation somehow of being rather awkwardly positioned, but I myself never found them a problem, and like many other games, simply took getting used to.

This game is ZX history. Sandy White did something quite ahead of it's time with this game, and it therefore deserves its classic status.

A famous product of the cold war in computer gaming, this strategic war game did its best to shock the player into a realization of the consequences of a third world war. It presented a very real life scenario, with the armies of the Warsaw Pact and NATO poised face to face along the east/west German border, armed to the teeth with tanks, planes, chemical weapons and nuclear bombs...and worse than that, ready to start operations against each other.

The gameplay was simple, joystick driven (and therefore not time consuming to learn) and it subsequently attracted gamers with little normal interest in the wargame genre.
A novelty when the game was released, was that it required of the player (before being allowed to drop the bomb) the calling of a onscreen telephone number, where a recorded message would announce (above the sounds of screams and explosions in the background) " If this is really what you want, the nuclear authorization code is ...Midnight Sun " Spooky stuff.

The game is unusual in also having an "arcade" section in a war game which can (apparently) influence the directions of battles. This however is a poor addition to the game, with the sub-game itself being of little entertainment. It can at least be turned off.
Another thing of note, is that although this game was released on the C64 first, the ability to play 2 players (1v1) was new on the Spectrum, with Commodore owners having NO option to nuke their best friends clean out of existence.
Letting the computer play against itself is also an interesting option they added, and one that kept me watching for quite some time.

I loved this back in the day, and continue to enjoy this game today. A great war game for non war gamers, alongside being a real piece of gaming (and cultural) history.

This really is one of the finest strategy games on the Spectrum it has to be said. Julian Gollop, with this release, took the very best of the excellent "Rebelstar" formula he had previously gifted the ZX world, and wrapped it up in a graphical make over, and control system simplification. With these changes, it soon quickly became a game that brought non "strategy heads" on board to the delights of this space based classic.Even hard core shooter fans couldn't deny the fun to be had in firing rocket grenades into a room full of enemy troops, and explosive gas canisters. What a blast !

A great game for both 1 and 2 players, its 5 scenarios (plus few more released later) offer good variety and game time.
Much of the attraction is the way that every game plays different to the next, with the (sometimes dodgy)CPU AI, usually offering a challenging and unpredictable opponent.
The replay value is in trying different ways and tactics to obtain your objectives, and so the variety of weapons, amour and starting positions, allow the player to try out new plans of attack.

In short..it never gets dull.

Some very good news with this game, is that the Speccy version is by FAR the nicest of the 8-biters, and even the fancy music and more colorful graphics of the 16-bit releases, can't disguise the rather sluggish control system they had. IMHO.. the Speccy 48k (and more so the REMIX 128k) version is the best one there is !

Alongside Chaos, this is largely considered Mr Gollop's best work.. and for a very good reason.

A Classic.

Very good scramble clone this. A pretty early speccy game, and one of the first to show what a 48k machine could really do.
Plays pretty well, sounds great, and the ability to build your own levels, and the firework display, kept me coming back for more.

Im giving the vanilla Firebird zx Elite only a 4 I'm afraid.

Its my favorite game of all time, and by rights I should (bearing the amount of time i played it back in the day) give it a 5 easy. However these days its clear that speccy Elite doesn't stand up well to other versions.

Less ships, fewer features, and just not the same FEEL of the BBC and (I dare say it) C64 versions. It did the job back in 1985 sure, but in my book it was a wasted chance and could have been a lot better.

Elite 3 Novosibirsk is FAR more like it though..one of the best 8 bit versions out there.. but then thats another review :)

Now this is what I call an update.
We all know the standard Elite game, and this Russian (Eng Lang though) remix is just that. All the features of the original release are here, but what has been added takes this to another level.

Some examples.

Cargo ships now can carry defensive fighters. Ships and escape pods can now hyperspace away. Ships now dock at and leave space stations. Pirates and Police fight each other. Ships will scoop up cargo cannisters. Etc etc..There's many more gameplay tweaks features and extras. Now these things may not sound like much, but most of these things don't appear in ANY other Elite variant (although I do wonder if the writer had a look at ARC Elite at some point) and add massively to the feeling of flying in a "living" universe, which is what Elite is all about.

Throw in on top of that, a few new ships, some new weapons and equipment, lots of new missions, and a dozen other surprises for the average Elite fan, and it's a surefire 5.