Reviews
Reviews by YOR (1923)
This is controversial but I find this to be overrated. The graphics flicker constantly and the gameplay is too annoying as with even the softest kiss of the other bikers your speed drops completely to zero. When you look at Merv Estcourt's classic Deathchase and then look at this game I am always left wondering what the hell went wrong with this. Massively disappointed.
Classic game this, set the standards for many. One of the most iconic games on the Spectrum and its place in gaming history is richly deserved.
Rubbish film and even more rubbish game. Far too boring of a game. The fighting prolongs longer than neccesary and I agree with Raphie in that level one seems to carry on forever. A definite bad tie-in.
Wasn't that bad a tennis game, it just got boring too quickly. Graphics are very nice but it wasn't long before I got bored with it because its quite slow. Shame really because it looked nice.
What a crying shame this wasn't released because I think Spanish Spectrum users would have enjoyed this like I did. Really good graphics to this one too. It would have been a hit.
It's Pac-Man which is all it needs to be. Quite slow and unresponsive but there are a lot of worse clones compared to this.
Loved this game back in the day. It probably doesn't set the world on fire now but to me this is still a faithful clone of Centipede.
Another iconic game on the Spectrum. Forget five out of five this is ten out of ten material. Absolutely fabulous.
I really like Judo but this is awful. It's impossible to do any throws no matter how hard I try and the graphics are attrocious. Completely dire and an insult to Judo. Was this meant to be a simulator? If so it's not even close.
Looks like a great game but ultimately the controls spoil it for me as it makes it much harder than it ought to be. It's a great pity because this deserves a better score.
Quite a nice game but rounds and even games can take far too long for some peoples liking. It would have been better if it was faster but saying that it's still nice to play.
Gryzor, 08 Jun 2013 (Rating: 4)
Very nice arcade conversion, in terms of greatness it just shaves over the crossbar but it's still good fun.
It's not bad but it's not great. Perhaps I am missing something but I didn't get into this, I found it quite slow and tedious and I felt a better job could have been done to this. Maybe I'm just being mean but my experience with this was not a pleasant one sadly.
Bog-standard game with no playability. Sabrina's huge knockers will leave you tempted but it's not worth it. Avoid.
Zynaps, 08 Jun 2013 (Rating: 5)
Fabulous shooter, probably my favourite on the Spectrum or certainly the one I had the most fun with and the best looking. Fantastic graphics and addicting gameplay. Brilliant.
Pitiful boxing game with rubbish controls and an awful rendition of Eye of the Tiger. This doesn't make the first bell let alone the last.
One of the dullest games I have ever played combined with some of the poorest graphics I have ever seen. For a game called Dream Warrior it sure looks and plays like a nightmare. One out of ten let alone five.
This is highly rated among World of Spectrum visitors but to be honest this is largely overrated. The graphics are really nice but the horrid controls that turn on me pretty much all the time makes this a bit unplayable. Looks nice but the controls ruins its chances of being great.
This always looked like a great game but it's intense difficulty made it too frustrating for me too enjoy it. I guess you can still call this a conversion faithful to the original.
I found myself addicted to this game back then despite having not seen the movie until much later in life. The first part was excellent, the second not so and it became a bit of an anti-climax. Worth playing for the first part alone.
The best football game on the Spectrum. No contest, most of them weren't even close to it.
I certainly didn't find this to be as great as most people do but in all it's still a really good game worth playing.
It's alright really. People say it's great where it isn't and people say it's crap where it isn't. It's alright, quite fun but quite tedious too.
Another game I didn't see as great compared to many but it's still good. Little too prolonged for my taste but still quite enjoyable.
SQIJ!, 08 Jun 2013 (Rating: 1)
Does this really need a review?
As a Table Tennis game it's pretty accurate and graphically it's quite nice but this was just too frustrating and confusing for me. But not that bad a game though.
Snare, 08 Jun 2013 (Rating: 4)
Very enjoyable game with compelling, challenging and addictive gameplay. I was really impressed with this.
It's got the fundamentals to be a great game but it doesn't quite make it, it tires rather quickly and it all becomes rather redundant. Also could never work how music is downloadable on World of Spectrum but the game doesn't appear to have any.
Another game where I didn't see the charm most others did. Graphics are nice but I found the fighting quite dull and repetitive with the only notable feature being you could behead your opponent. Take that away and you have a mediocre fighting game. Not bad by any means but not that great.
A challenging game with many thrills. Excellent gameplay accompanied with incredible music. This is a winner.
Tries to be Sabre Wulf and falls quite badly. Was worth a punt for being free at the time but it was unredeeming and not very charmful.
While not looking so hot now, back then it was very much ahead of time and left me breathless. It was quite a thrill to play and really enjoyable, too bad age has took its toll on it. Still a cracking game regardless.
It looks fantastic but in all honesty I always found this game too boring to enjoy, it failed to motivate me everytime I played it. I also found the title music quite appalling. Sadly it's not for me.
Fabulous arcade conversion though it can be a little too easy. Still it stands out as a quite quality game with plenty of charm.
A truly fantastic game on the Spectrum. Superb graphics and sublime gameplay makes this a fine piece of work. Two thumbs up.
A brilliant programme has itself a quite horrible unplayable pile of junk. Fans like me will feel disgusted while newcomers are better off watching this rather than wasting time with this garbage.
The arcade version was very overrated but the Spectrum version is really enjoyable. It is so much better in almost every aspect. Quality!
Out Run should have been a classic but its poor sense of speed destroys any chance of that. It ain't all that bad though as it can still be quite enjoyable, it's just a shame it isn't more than it ought to be.
Very nice game with such compelling gameplay. Very addictive too. Great fun this one and well worth a look.
Reaper, 09 Jun 2013 (Rating: 2)
Quite a dull Ninja style with some quite tasteless foul language in it. The norm nowadays but back then it was unheard of and really isn't clever. No thanks.
I always found Amaurote to be a very enjoyable game. Tough to get around at times but its gripping and compelling gameplay always left me coming back for more.
An accurate arcade conversion which looks and plays nearly identically to the original. No sound ruins it though and makes it a little boring as a result. Still doesn't take away that this is a quality conversion.
Essentially the same game as Star Wars but with 128K sound being the massive improvement. Being too much like Star Wars drops a point though it's still an improvement and still worth playing.
This has lovely colourful graphics and a pretty nice concept but the controls especially the jumping becomes a little too fussy and you could end up falling consecutively and quickly lose energy. Not all bad though.
It's a nice shooter with great graphics but it lacks power-ups and can either be too difficult or too short. Not quite brilliant but still really nice.
Poor rail shooter game that almost completely lacks the fun seen on Operations Wolf and Thunderbolt, as well as possess the poorest graphics. A miss.
A huge letdown. Poor graphics and even poorer gameplay leads this to complete disaster. Absolute rubbish.
Not totally rubbish though it is well far from good with its poor gameplay. This could have be a good quality game if only for that. A lot of time is needed for this game though you are not going to spend a lot of time on this anyway. A pity as the pretty graphics deserve much more attention.
Fabulous game, easily one of the very best racers ever. Hours of fun and enjoyment. Sheer genius.
While not the best conversion out there it sure is just as playable and just as fun. Always full of enjoyment and thrills.
Splat!, 10 Jun 2013 (Rating: 4)
Quite a nice fun game that is simple to play yet challenging to progress and so very addicting. Very enjoyable.
On first sight this may remind you of Barbarian but it is actually a horrible playable mess. There's another minigame with it which might well be even worse. Even the music is bad. Just an awful game.
2088, 10 Jun 2013 (Rating: 3)
It's quite nice but repetition kicks in quickly and it looks aged for 1988, looks more like a 1984 game. Still quite nice though.
Very nice Bond game with a number of gameplay varients. The game though is completable inside 10 minutes and can be too easy once familiar with it.
A simply glorious platformer with great graphics, superb in game music and a lot of gameplay thrills. Wonderful.
One of the most bizarre concepts in any computer game. Doesn't quite work out well but at least they tried something different.
The cassette inlay makes this look like a demolition derby and its loading screen makes it look like a driving shooter but it is none of these and instead it's a boring driving game combined with a running shooter type game with nonexistant gameplay. Very misleading which leaves not very amused.
As a bike racing game it's alright and quite fun but the computer can cheat and spoil your fun. The course designer was a nice feature included but it be long before your excitement drains out. Not all bad though.
A very tedious and dull game with almost no gameplay. The game released by Crysys which I can presume is said like crisis and that is what this game is.
Being someone who wasn't a fan of Full Throttle the last thing it needed was a sequel, especially one that is even worse. I never said I hated the first game but I can easily say I hate this game.
It's quite a nice game with great presentation but it's a bit too repetitive and I found it a bit too easy in that I went round the levels and back to level one in about 18 minutes. Not all bad but Special FX and Joffa did much better than this.
Despite having a brilliant Tim Follin title tune the game is nothing more than a weak Combat School clone with very little enjoyment. Such a great shame.
Don't get me wrong, Pitfall 2 is a great game, this is just a really bad port. The gameplay has high annoyance with his dreadful jumping which makes it very difficult to progress. This should have been better.
This is a classic game but the Speccy version leaves a lot to be desired. Monochrome graphics strips away its cuteness, Wonder Boy resembles my 8 year old son Rocco but here he barely resembles anything human. As well as that its horrid frame rate and terrible scrolling spoils its charm. Very poor and very disappointing.
This ticks all the boxes to be a mega game but is let down badly by its wayward gameplay which makes this nearly unplayable. It's hard to control, hard to keep the ball and hard to pass or score, if only for that this could have been brilliant. A big disappointment.
Quite a novel footie quiz game that might keep you entertained in the long run but only if you are a fan, otherwise you are best ignoring this one.
An uninspiring game that becomes a dragged out boring affair almost too quickly with hardly any sense of gameplay. It didn't make me mad and instead left me calling for bed.
In the common opinion of best arcade conversions on the Spectrum this one is very overlooked, probably because it doesn't meet to people's taste, but I found this to be very enjoyable and somewhat addicting. Fair enough this isn't going to top the bill but for me it's certainly one of the most enjoyable arcade conversions on the Spectrum.
This is pretty good but it gets far too repetitive too quickly. It's a game you can play and get into almost instantly but it's far too much of the same to take seriously.
A movie licensed game that should have been great but is letdown by the quite uninspring gameplay in the later levels. Still it is great to try out and has a wonderful music score. A really good game but a shame it can't be more.
A quite dull game with hardly any redeeming features apart from pretty nice title music. Its uninspiring boring gameplay makes this a waste of your time within the first few minutes. Not worth your time at all.
An absolute disaster of a football game. Movement of the players take forever and trying to kick the ball never mind score a goal is down to luck. It's far too slow, sluggish and confusing. This was a lot of money wasted.
I like these type of games but this doesn't do it for me. Far too random and far too short. It's hard to enjoy this one.
While outshone by its sequel IK+, this is still an excellent fighting game with plenty of charm and some of the best use of speech in a Spectrum game. This is top quality.
IK+, 07 Jul 2013 (Rating: 4)
While a good game in its own right I personally feel it misses quite a bit of the charm from the first game and its true feel is stripped away. I prefer the first game. The music though is fantastic.
Absolutely spendid game. Very addictive and great fun. A genius idea.
This is one of the most intriging, interesting and amusing games I have ever played. Very original and very fun. It's always a blast playing.
For me this is one of the finest games on any system. Superb in every level. The music is also one of my favourites. Just magnificent.
This is rather good with nice colourful graphics and a good 128K soundtrack but the gameplay I found to be too confusing and you often rely on luck. Still quite fun though.
A quite simple and straightforward game ruined by poor control response and a rather needless quiz-type minigame. Seems quite fun at first but that quickly dies out. A great pity.
A title which had much promise and anticipation turns out to be very flat. This should have been a massively mega game but is instead a cringeworty mess. I don't think its the worst arcade conversion on the Spectrum but it sure was one hell of an anti-climax.
A bingo game replaces numbers with letters and takes all the fun away along with it. Rather than normal bingo you have to go through the alphabet backwards and then determine which of the six cards was filled first. Lacks any sense to have any lasting appeal.
A quite accurate conversion of what was always a mediocre shooter. Like the arcade version there's nothing special in it and has little variety. At least it's accurate, just not a lot of fun.
A very nice platformer with bright colourful graphics and a simple and well implamented gameplay concept. Quite impressive.
This wasn't a great port but it was better than the other home computer ports, namely the C64 version. Although that had far better music as the music in this version is garbage. This isn't that great but compared to the other it is hands down the best.
I personally found this game pretty lousy, the arcade game wasn't a great game but had at least a bit of enjoyment but this for me had little fun in it and was left more disappointed with this.
Far too bland and time consuming to take seriously. Lacks any sense of enjoyment. Three laps would have been more reasonable rather than twelve. Seriously avoid.
911 TS, 22 Jul 2013 (Rating: 2)
This had potential but that is quickly drenched by a lack of enjoyment due to a difficult course that's too unplesant to play over and over to complete. Not a fine game in the Elite archive.
Jetpac, 22 Jul 2013 (Rating: 4)
Simple, effective though easily repetitive. Still a fun game all the same.
A nice game with an original concept designed to frustrate but leaving you coming back for more. Pretty good fun.
This game is beyond a joke! Clearly this was made to mock the Super Mario Bros as the main protagonist (going by Raphie's review) is Pablo Pablo much like Mario Mario and he collects coins like Mario does, but rather than enjoyble it's made to be as intentionally bland, boring and monotonous as possible. This should never have made a YS tape.
Flak, 22 Jul 2013 (Rating: 1)
Terribly unplayable shooter where you can't seem to hit and they never seem to miss. This deservedly sits on the worst games page on World of Spectrum.
A quite fantastic game with gloriously addicting gameplay. A must play.
Good humourous fun that all fits well. A fine piece of sillyness.
While not as addictive as the original it still holds enough charm to be an enjoyable title.
Mediocre Zaxxon clone let down by dodgy graphics and clumsy gameplay.
1999, 26 Jul 2013 (Rating: 4)
Quite a nice shooter this. Wasn't expecting much but was expecting much much worse. Didn't think I'd wind up liking this but I did.
The best beat em up on the Speecy. It's got everything needed to be a true classic. It's one of those were 5/5, 10/10 and 100% isn't enough it's so good.
While it's not an outstanding game they managed to make this more playable than the arcade game, and that deserves credit.
They really went backwards with this title. They took away much of the good stuff from the previous titles and replaced them with rubbish moves and a ridiculous plot. What the hell went wrong?
Chaos, 26 Jul 2013 (Rating: 5)
One of my favourite games from my collection. A superb game that is utterly addictive and chunks of fun. Absolute brilliance.
Fascinating idea paid off superbly with its marvel gameplay. Good fun.
Not a bad racing game but the narrow screen made it just too awkward to me, if only for that it would have a great game.
This is a great breakout game which still provides a lot of charm today. Sadly though it's better on the C64.
Stela, 29 Jul 2013 (Rating: 4)
A highly amusing game rewarded for its original gameplay.
A poor shooter that stands as nothing other than a weak conversion of a C64 favourite.
A crap arcade game gets a conversion that's a lot worse, giving me more reason to dislike this game.
As a pretty rubbish arcade game this port was never going to stand out amongst the crowd but its boring gameplay is combined with rather unflattering graphics.
Highly addictive and fun game. Worth a play.
Exolon, 29 Jul 2013 (Rating: 5)
One of the Spectrum's greatest games with the finest graphics you can find. Lovely!
Skyway, 29 Jul 2013 (Rating: 2)
Tries to be Exolon and doesn't come close. Well the graphics are nice but the gameplay's a bit bog-standard comparing the two.
Not quite a bad game but no sound during the game kind of spoils the fun.
Very lovely graphics in this but I found the gameplay a little too tame.
Terrific game, great gameplay and tons of fun.
An ambitious idea spoiled by rather crude and shabby gameplay.
As accurate a motorcycle racing game can be. Perfection.
Horrible film licenced game. Predator is a great film but this does nothing for it. Atrocious.
Not a particulary great game but it's thankfully so much better than the first game.
Fun, addictive and brilliantly designed. One of the best 16K games ever made. Absolutely marvelous.
Nice idea but let down by slow gameplay.
Booty, 30 Jul 2013 (Rating: 3)
Nice enough game but gets iritating too quickly for me.
Enjoyable Mappy-style game. Might fall dry after a while but still good fun.
Pippo, 31 Jul 2013 (Rating: 5)
Fantastically fun game. One of the best games I've ever played. Excellent stuff.
Though easily repetitive it's a good game you easily play and come back too.
XOR, 01 Aug 2013 (Rating: 4)
It was about time that I review the game where I got my name from, kinda. The name being in caps is inspired by this game but let's just say YOR is apart of me in more ways than one. For me I think this is one of the most challenging games ever assembled, maybe too difficult at times, but it always left me intrigued to play it very often. Great game that leaves me many a memory.
A faithful conversion of the Atari arcade favourite. Highly accurate and very playable.
Very well programmed game that deserves to be listed as one of the best arcade conversions on the Spectrum.
This is really good fun. Its gameplay is great that will keep you going and this has a brilliant rendition of Time Warp on the 128K version. I really enjoyed this one.
Not remotely terrible but certainly lacks thrills and won't have you excited for too long.
A really dull and quite pathetic arcade conversion. Not worth playing.
Cabal, 03 Aug 2013 (Rating: 4)
Good arcade conversion that will provide plenty of blasting good fun.
Not a resounding driving game. Controls are too awkward and the other cars are too unbalanced. Not fun at all.
A horrible game supposedly based on Tom and Jerry. The graphics are horrendous and the gameplay is shambolic and almost non-existant. An insult to cartoon lovers.
A weak shooter with not a lot riding for it in terms of gameplay and can only be seen as quite a dull experience. Interesting title music though.
This isn't a bad game and is quite enjoyable in parts but how it won the Golden Joystick for best original game is beyond me.
I can see what the author was trying with this game, a fresh concept, something new and different. The problem with this is it doesn't work well and the gameplay is quite flawed. Original concept yes and it can be considered tongue-in-cheek but the gameplay is far from fun and it almost makes no sense. Pity.
This is such an abstract game with almost no playability and no enjoyment at all. Simply pathetic.
Though I personally enjoyed this game and would love to give this a higher score it is simply far too repetitive to take seriously. If only for that this would have been a superb title.
A bland game with lackluster gameplay. There are far more better Gremlin games than this.
This is nearly impossible. Far too difficult and frustrating to enjoy. You die too easily here.
I personally found the Joe Blade series boring, redundant, repetitive and extremely overrated. I never found any appeal with this game. And I have to say the music from Target Renegade's Gari Biasillo is dreadful. Very uninspiring.
Similar to the first one but twenty times worse. It's even more monotonous and tedious. What a waste.
Probably the best game in the series as I found a bit of amusement with it plus its title music is the better of the three, but it's still mostly the first Joe Blade game which isn't a lot of fun. Very overrated series of games.
Poor graphics and choppy gameplay ruin what could have been a promising arcade conversion.
Not bad but I found this to be too slow to enjoy properly.
Decent enough platformer. Slightly misses the mark in greatness but it's still nice to play.
Not a game I particulary enjoyed playing. Despite the different game modes it lacked any kind of thrills and got redundant quickly.
Tetris, 16 Aug 2013 (Rating: 2)
Too hypersensitive, very frustrating, not a lot of joy.
Xybots, 16 Aug 2013 (Rating: 4)
Surprisingly playable arcade conversion. Wasn't expecting much from this but I was impressed. Worth playing.
The presentation is really good with a lovely opening sequence and nice music but the gameplay is dreadful. It's so jerky with horribly detailed sprites that's really a slight for sore eyes. It has the nice music playing during the game but it doesn't save the game much.
One point for the intro and one point for the tune. Everything else is bog standard.
Just as pathetic as the movie itself. Absolute bog-standard.
A marvellous Tetris game that's so much better than the Mirrorsoft release. Everything is better and the gameplay is great fun. The finest Tetris game on the Speccy.
A nice ninja beat-em-up which also plays like a maze with a touch of puzzle element. Also has some nice dark music playing throughout the game. Pretty enjoyable.
Looks pretty but it's next to impossible to play. Could have been a great game if it wasn't for its brutal difficulty.
Charmful pool game with nice gameplay and a frame designer to keep you entertained. Good fun.
Really fun game which not only plays like Star Wars but better too.
Rubbish volleyball game, crude and shoddy gameplay makes this unappelling for new and avid fans.
Vixen, 09 Jan 2014 (Rating: 2)
An unflattering game with drone gameplay and no lasting appeal. The only reason this was popular was its raunchy artwork, suppose they needed a way to market and sell their rubbish product and they suceeded.
Zorro, 09 Jan 2014 (Rating: 4)
An enjoyable game that while not the greatest game was always a favourite of mine. Nothing special in retrospect but still a classy game in my book.
Klax, 09 Jan 2014 (Rating: 5)
A wonderful example of how an arcade conversion should be. Sublime, perfect and just as good as the real thing if not better. Vastly overlooked for the title of best arcade conversion on the Spectrum.
To be honest I always felt this as a shooter was quite bland. It's not bad but I always felt this was missing something to be considered great especially compared to Zynaps. Fabulous music though.
Quite a nice enough game but suffers from very complicated gameplay which I found very frustrating. But I suppose that's the whole point of a realistic feel. It's quite clever that way but too complex to give it a higher mark.
A pretty dull experience this one. Nothing rewarding about endless wondering for next to nothing. Decent music during the game is the only faithful thing about this game which is saying something.
While a quite amusing concept the game itself is anything but. Far too slow, far too much of a colour mess. It's a pain to look and play. It's title music though is fantastic, pity no-one credited for it though.
This version is popular among many but I personally found this hard to enjoy. The fast scrolling and dreadful colour scheme is very offputting and creates confusion within the gameplay. Never liked it for those reasons.
Compared to the original this is more like it though it still possesses some flaws in the gameplay. Despite that the graphics are much better and the addition of 128K music and speech is very rewarding. Great upgrade.
A completely unplayable dud which to be frank I am very surprised that at it isn't among the top 100 worst games on World of Spectrum. Everything with game is so wrong. Progression is so nearly impossible you can almost compare it to SQIJ it's that bad. 0% quality and 100% pathetic.
Really enjoyable game this one. Good graphics and simple, straightforward gameplay. Nothing outstanding but there's enough in it to provide a good deal of fun.
Not very appealling at all, the gameplay is just too much of a bore to me. Graphics aren't the best either, not attrocious but the sprites are very odd for a game written in 1990/1991. Not for me this one.
Nice graphics in this but the game itself is pretty unflattering and quite boring, it didn't take long for me to feel fed up with it. It also has awful music at the title screen. The graphics alone are the reason it doesn't get a 1.
The idea is an ambitious one, the result though is a poorly implemented program with zero enjoyment. Chaplin fans would have bought this and I am certain they felt ripped off. What a mess.
Why did this game make the Top 100 games list from Your Sinclair readers? It's terribly impossible because of the dreadful jumping. Getting out of the first screen is a task in itself. A disaster.
An absolute tripe port, not a single rewarding feature at all. It's developed by the same company who done the awful 720 port four years earlier and they clearly didn't learn their lesson. Horrific!
R-Type, 14 Jan 2014 (Rating: 3)
I honestly had a hard time liking this one, the game's difficulty is too demanding that makes this tough to enjoy all the time. Apart from that this has among the best graphics on any Spectrum game. To be honest if it weren't for the graphics I may have given this a lower score. It's considered one of the best by many, but for me it's not quite there.
Boxing games on the Spectrum didn't really work, but this is one of the rare exceptions. This is just great fun, played this for hours endless on my 48K years ago. Of course the limitations are there but for me it does a good job capturing the proper feel of a boxing match, something I've failed to see in many other Spectrum boxing games. It's very limited, but it's also very, very good.
This deserved to be better than what it is. The graphics are wonderful, the presentation is superb, the gameplay though is very slow, sluggish and choppy, the framerate is very bad, not helped by its brutal difficulty. If only for that this game was destined to be among the very best. Pity.
It's a great idea and proven to be extremely popular with Spectrum users, but I just don't get it. There are occassions where I get selected but never used, I do so well in training and still not get pick, I score two goals and still I'm dropped, it seems too random to me, maybe that's why it's popular, but I don't get it. Perhaps I'm missing something but I didn't really get into this. An original idea, but too random to get into.
Never got into this game, seems far too fussy to take seriously. The shooting levels were nice but any sprint events were a pain. I also didn't appreciate that there was no keyboard option for player 1, so I had to always play a 2 player game just so I can use the keyboard with player 2. Not terrible but not overly playable.
What I do agree with is this game is very well programmed and the speech is fantastic. What I don't agree with is controlling your car can at times by very awkward and can be at times quite frustrating. Chase HQ is good but a shade under brilliance.
What the heck is this all about? It's a complete mess in every department. The graphics are bad, the music is absolutely dreadful and the gameplay is a pain. Probably Ocean's worse game in my book along with Highlander.
This could well be the worst game Ocean ever released. You can't do anything in this and it's near impossible to win a match. Some of the worse gameplay in any game let alone a Spectrum one.
Tapper, 18 Jan 2014 (Rating: 3)
The arcade game is very good, the Spectrum version isn't so bad as it's still good fun but the graphical sprite/colour clash spoils it as it can be very difficult to determine how many are left in one row. Another low for the game is the music is awful, you can't even call it music. It is O Susana played at about a thousand pitches too low and is quite an ear rape. Best to play this on mute. Still a fun game but its flaws halt any chance of legendary recognision on my book.
Probably Hi-Tec's worst game and what probably spelled the beginning of their end. Simply nowhere near as good and playable as some of their other games and just when I thought Jonny Quest was their worst game it's beaten.
A very colourful and enjoyable game. Not quite a classic but it isn't far from it. Very charmful and a treat for Turtles fan at the time, and for some even now, I certainly enjoyed this more than the Xbox 360 game.
The original arcade version is a classic and I was hoping the Spectrum conversion would provide the same enjoyment, but it didn't. It's not that bad of an arcade conversion, it's certainly better then some of the US Gold conversions, but I felt it lacked the charm of an enjoyable game, especially compared to the first game. The graphics are horrifically terrible compared to the first one also. A big disappointment.
Zzoom, 19 Jan 2014 (Rating: 4)
This was loads of fun back then and it's still good fun now. It's simple, efficient and effective.
This is another one of US Gold's crap arcade ports. Graphically better than the others but the gameplay is very unflattering with fussy controls. The arcade version isn't so hot but I would play that a million times over this.
This could have been special if the gameplay was more balanced and less awkward. Too frustrating for my interest.
Comparing this to the original this is more like it. More enjoyable and overly playable. A far better sequel which makes a change.
This came in two. The first side was an adventure like game that was pretty flat while the other side was a standard football game but a lot worse. So two games for the price of one and neither of them are worth playing.
Hydra, 19 Jan 2014 (Rating: 1)
Ultrasensitive steering and an awkward shooting system makes this one a hidious unplayable mess. And it's an arcade conversion as well, probably one of the Spectrum's worst.
In definite agreement that this was Dizzy's best game. The other sequels tried to enhance it while taking away the charm of the series in the process. This to me is the perfect Dizzy game.
Though I found this a little too tough at times I do agree that this was a great fighting game. At the time it was simply a league ahead of the rest and it's still a good way to pass time by. I prefer this game to IK+.
A lot of cricket games just relied on text during matches, and it's just as well because when there were action in it it was usually rubbish and this game is a good example. The gameplay is just very poorly implemented and hardly resembles cricket at all. You can hit the wicket but still not be given out and the ball only rolls on the ground yet you can be caught out. As bad as the England team. Rubbish.
What in the heck is with this game? Crazy concept, suppose you can't blame the author for attempting something new, but the gameplay is horrific. Nevermind touch the explosion as Jay states but touch any portion of its aftermath and you're a goner. Clouds kill too. I give up. What a shambles.
Not great, but it's not like it's another poor US Gold arcade port, there's actually some enjoyment in this and for me it's the best of the Indiana Jones games. Pretty decent I'll say.
Probably the better of Indy's games graphically but the gameplay seems a little off to me. Compared to Temple of Doom where its enjoyment was limited but instant this one took its while and by the time it eventually got to that I had pretty much given up. What annoyed me the most was its title music, not only is it at a lower volume but its also pretty dire, perhaps that's the reason it's low. Deserves to be more than it is, a familiar tale sadly.
Probably the poorest of Indy's games. Graphics are backwards compared to The Last Crusade and gameplay lacks any sense of enjoyment. It does however posses a better title tune, a nice darker, atmospheric rendition of Indy's theme that I really enjoyed. But gameplay is what scores points, too bad this has little.
Attempts to match Decathlon and Hyper Sports but doesn't get anywhere close. An absolute nightmare to play. What were they thinking?
Motos, 20 Jan 2014 (Rating: 5)
Another brilliant game constantly overlooked for the best arcade conversion title. Simple and amusing gameplay combined with superb graphics and musical score. Excellent all round.
A very smooth and enjoyable shoot em up though let down a bit by the colours and the difficulty, in particular the "invisible bullets" people talk about, and sadly I agree it's a pain. But Flying Shark is still a sound game and certainly a lot better than most games of the same genre.
Would also like to take the time to join the others in congratulating The Dean of Games on 1000 reviews.
It's a simple game and a very annoying game. There's not a whole lot you can say about this to be perfectly frank, expect you'll either spend ages trying with hope of reaching the top or you'll quit within ten minutes.
While it was never going to surpass its original version the Spectrum version still holds its own to be quite a decent playable port as well as containing a wonderful title tune. Not a brilliant game but more than passable.
I actually found this to be quite decent, especially compared to the author's other games, the insult to judo Uchi Mata for instance. The one main negative is no sound which creates the boredom. But on the gameplay front I didn't find this one too bad, which surprised me.
This left me with a mixed feeling in that it doesn't really stand out as a great arcade conversion yet stands out as a decent shoot em up, despite playing a bit clunky and despite the dodgy tune. Not all bad though.
This is quite a nice game thats very playable but suffers from being too much of the same. But I expected this to be worse and actually liked it, so it's a moral victory for this game.
Superb fighting game on par with International Karate and Way of the Exploding Fist as well as its arcade counterpart. It also has a separate 128K version that's even better.
This is as bad as a cheap internet flash game that took about 10 minutes to produce, it wouldn't even have made a covertape it's that bad! It's hardly even a game, you're not even saving like a goalkeeper, there's no strikers, it's not a penalty shootout, it's not even penalty, but rather "penelty", it's nothing, and we PAID for this tripe!
This was originally planned for Weetabix who weren't happy with it, it doesn't take long to figure out why they weren't. Apparantly something falls from the sky and you've to dig a hole for it while bashing at something chasing you. Well I've never been able to hit it more than once before it kills me, nor have I been successful at digging a hole as I always seem to dig the wrong spot and it never allows me to dig at the right spot. It's so unplayable and is basically a shambles, and that is why Weetabix turned it down.
It's a nice idea, a clever one at that, but at times so much happens at once and it all gets a bit too confusing. At times you don't realise you have a bomb and blown yourself up while at other times you die far too quickly, pretty much as soon as the level loads you're blown up. Very annoying, very frustrating, too much for my interest. Top marks to the Japanese programmer who came up with the initial concept, it's just a shame this version had to be a letdown.
This is Galaxian? Absolute garbage! The enemies don't stop flickering, at all. And the hit detection is dreadful, hit him twice and he still sits there. Awful!
The only thing I can say about this is Raphie's right, it's Operation Wolf. Quite decent but a bit disappointing at the same time.
Always found this to be a nuisance as it's hard to control and can be quite repetitive. And The Hill is a nightmare. Not a game I would consider to be a success.
Without doubt one of the worst games in Spectrum history. Horrible graphics with poorly executed gameplay makes this unplayable from the start. What was the thinking behind this I wonder? And the cassette inlay reads "Part I The Arcade Game", I'd hate to see what the plans were for the other parts!
The colours are a negative for sure but this is still a pretty decent game. The speed is really good and it has enough to maintain a portion of entertainment. Could have been more if the colours weren't so bad but it's not too bad.
Tomcat, 27 Jan 2014 (Rating: 2)
While the graphics aren't the worse it is almost unplayable due to its horrible frame rate. It is as if the programmer tried to include too much causing it to be a choppy mess.
Such a bore I nearly fell asleep playing this. It takes ages to knock someone over. A game worth sitting at just the title screen as the music is really good.
Fabulous story concerning this, thanks for sharing Alex. It is a nice little game but as Alex says his late father wasn't all happy with it and I can see at least one problem as you can only enter words up to 8 letters long, so with the football teams you can't put in Liverpool or Newcastle for instance. It also feels a little brief. However it is a good attempt creating word search fun on the Spectrum, the author knew it wasn't perfect but couldn't face fixing it in case he made it worse which is understandable.
Gameplay isn't that great but the graphics are the main downer, they are horrendous. If more effort was made this could have been a great port but it looks and feels half-assed.
Loopz, 02 Feb 2014 (Rating: 2)
Thanks to Rebelstar Without a Cause for posting the game's guidelines on his review.
The gameplay is a bit interesting, works a bit like Pipe Mania only working around rather than from side to side, but the graphics make it hard to judge your moves, or to me anyway. It also doesn't take long for it to drone out. So it's a bit intriging, it just doesn't work so well. Pity.
Thankfully a much better game compared to Pac-Land. Just as fun as the original with great music to boot. Feels a little slow but it's still a quality port.
Dizzy's worst game for me, a supposed arcade game with bland gameplay and little joy. Stick to Fast Food or Kwik Snax for Dizzy arcade fun. What strikes me the most is the title music is miles better on 48K as it does on 128K.
It has a simple look which I shouldn't be too harsh with, but the fact is its controls are far too sensitive to enjoy this. I can't last longer than 15 seconds.
A badly implemented licence with bad graphics, shoddy gameplay and a dreadful tune. This and Masters of the Universe are proof Adventuresoft should have just stuck with text adventures.
A lot of The Shaw Brothers games were pretty decent, this one though is probably one of their worse. It's pretty difficult to control as they are at times unresponsive. Not much fun at all.
I can't believe this was actually released! It's almost as bad as SQIJ in that it looks unfinished! And it's confusing too, you move the genie around AND scroll the screen YOURSELF! What a big pile of crap!
Could have been a more enjoyable and playable shooter if your ship wasn't so fast and uncontrollable.
Not a very exciting game, one that easily and quickly gets dull and uninteresting. The only reason I keep going back to this is to hear the fantastic 128K music.
The graphics are quite nice and the title music is excellent but the game itself is a bit of a bore. It's no appeal to me if you just climb up ladders and avoid birds and fire from unbreaking opponents. The one battle I had reminded me of a much better version of Highlander but it quickly becomes a drag. I personally find this a bit overrated.
I can see what Adventuresoft were trying to achieve in expanding their library of adventure games, but this is perfect proof they should have stuck with making adventure games with text rather than with badly drawn sprites and minimal gameplay.
Dizzy's best arcade game, even if it's a tad easy to finish. The presentation and intro is brilliant. The whole game is Pengo and executed well.
A horrendous game, it just has disaster written all over it from the moment you start playing it. On par with Highlander it's that bad.
Nice idea and quite original in my eyes but a bit too confusing for my liking.
Quite a fun game, quite simple to play and pretty addicting too. Good music too, adaptations of Twisted Sister and AC/DC if that's your sort of thing.
Beebul, 25 Feb 2014 (Rating: 3)
Quite a simple game to play but tricky to master. Good fun though, expected very little from this game but I rather liked it.
Just a standard quiz game and no more, apart from the gimmick of restoring the phoneline to maintain world peace by correct answers. It's not much of a game and should only be played by quiz fanatics but it's not bad downloading it onto an emulator and playing for free, just imagine paying £11.25 for this!
I get it trying to be different but it's probably too different, too diverse and far too confusing to enjoy, at least for me.
What was the deal with programmers changing the plot and gameplay from the classic original? Chuckie Egg had it? Yie Ar Kung Fu had it and this has it. The original is a classic to many which I found a little too difficult, but it's still a charm to play and look at. This however doesn't do it for me, too much wondering around endlessly kills its fun. Should have stuck with the original format.
Absolute horrid sequel. No charm to this whatsoever, all the fun of the original replaced with bog-standard tripe. What the heck was the thinking behind this?
Much more like it! No fussing around and no pointless wonder, it's straight into ass-kicking fun. Although it does have the same controls issues the original did and a rather needless bonus game in which the awkward controls are too quick to haunt you. Despite that I enjoyed this much more than Fist 2 though I still prefer IK+.
It's a mystery to me as to why this was left unpublished, this certainly would have gotten rave reviews if released during the Spectrum's heyday, because it's very good. The illustration is very nice, really impressed the hell out of me and the scrolling is quite nice as well. I did happen to run into some inconsistencies with the controls but I still found this to be a good, addictive game.
High performance programs from Ariolasoft, lies! It's horribly outdated for 1985 standards and the gameplay on my end, after 30 minutes of playing, is almost non-existant. Poorly reviewed upon release and justifiably so. Horrible sack of crap.
Not a bad shooter, it's definitely playable but unless I'm doing something wrong the game is a bit impossible once your chosen weapon runs out as your default weapon is weak as hell. One life seems a bit unfair also. And pity the sound is so quiet, the music sounded very good. Quite good but its flaws tarnish this from being great.
It's hardly a game is it? Hard to think they were actually charging people for this. Software for the Future? Software for the Inept more like.
There's not much to say about this except it's a music quiz which is as you would expect. You answer music questions for a chance to guess a note in the mystery tune. It's easily repetitive but it's not bad overall, unless your pop music knowledge isn't up to scratch.
This game appears to be only playable with two players, so if your playing alone (like I did to review this) you won't get much thrills, and even if you play with a mate you probably still won't get much thrills. Shoot all your opponents lives away to win, once you do you're back to the title screen, it doesn't even look finished.
Not a good Operation Wolf clone, too slow to play and too hurtful for the eyes. The A Team is a better clone.
Slightly shows its age now and it's nothing more than a Pac-Man copy with food, but it's still nice to play once in a while.
Not a bad game though at times I found myself too confused with it and it seems deliberately unfair. Still it's quite original which I will give credit for.
Dizzy's arcade games are usually good, this one though is not. This is simply a poorer version of Toobin', which wasn't a great arcade game to begin with. This has far less joy than Dizzy's other arcade games and it's no wonder this never got its own separate release.
This was never a great game. The controls were abysmal and caused the game to be a big frustrating mess. Sadly the Speccy version replicates that.
I will commend Sbugetti Junction for its original gameplay of controlling a traffic cop trying to maintain traffic on a busy junction. It's just a darn shame it doesn't seem to have been implemented properly. The entire game basically has you frantically waving your arms around in different positions to pass cars through and there appears to be no end to it, making the game redundant at a very early stage. Such a shame as I was looking forward to playing this.
Despite taking so long to make I did rather like this game, seemed so simple to play and get into and was quite enjoybale. The random appearances of the enemies is what spoils it for me, they can pop from out of nowhere to kill you which is so annoying. Not a bad game though.
This felt rather weak compared to other Hi-Tec Hanna-Barbera games, and certainly compared to Scooby Doo itself. Besides I always detested Scrappy Doo anyway, he ruined Scooby-Doo for me and his inclusion and appearance was absolutely pointless.
Not only is it a bad idea but it's hardly snooker. The gameplay is just absolutely ridiculous. The table is set up HORIZONTALLY rather than vertical! And they just remain static all the time as one ball determines who wins the frame, less like Snooker and more like a soccer variant, whoevers side the ball reaches is the winner. And you paid 8 quid for this dong by the way.
Sure it's boring as heck but it's far more like Snooker than the other management game Snooker Manager, so much so that you can almost call this "realistic". Best to play this at a faster speed on your emulators.
The music I must say is terrific but it's too difficult for words, the narrow playing area is a joke, so too is putting half the power-up through the edge so that when you get it you die. A bit of a farce in all honesty.
Nice enough shooter and quite enjoyable but it seems to run at a horrible frame rate and move very slowly which rather spoils it a bit.
A poor effort of a soccer game with a fine example of how it shouldn't be played. They tried to "enhance" the gameplay and overcomplicated it. Thankfully Lineker's other games are better.
Quite a nice football game and certainly a lot better than a lot of other footy games on the Speccy. Far too easy to hit the bleeding crossbar though.
Not a footy game but rather a training skills games that sees you doing different obstacles. It seems to be in two parts, first part is press up, monkey bars, squat thrusts, monkey bars again and weightlifting, which is good fun. Part two is heading, and that's all I know because it's such a pain in the arse I've never got past it, and so it's not so fun, and it's game over. Good cop bad cop. The title music is excellent by the way.
SWIV, 10 Mar 2014 (Rating: 4)
This is tough, but it's also excellent. Wonderful gameplay, brilliant music, lovely graphics, loses a mark for being a little too tough, but nonetheless this is really well programmed. Shooter fans will love it.
There's not a lot to say about this expect it's a sports quiz game and it's rather good, unless you know nothing about sport that is. The digitised faces are nice.
Tujad, 11 Mar 2014 (Rating: 3)
Sort of plays like a human version of Cybernoid. Pretty nice and it's enjoyable collecting the pieces but the continuous noise will drive you mad. Best to play in mute.
I was very disappointed with Turrican when I bought it back in 1992 in raining Torquay, probably because I expected so much from it, or too much I guess. In truth it's not a bad game, the graphics are superb, but the gameplay I found a letdown even still now. It just feels like it's missing something, it doesn't feel quite right. It's not a bad game, I'm just convinced better versions exist. At least I bought the budget release rather than full price.
What's more disappointing than a disappointing Turrican? A sequel that's worse! The graphics are dreadful, the gameplay is identical and the controls don't work sometimes, you have to command him to jump like four times before he actually jumps. The one thing missing most from the first game was music, this has title music which is awful, sounds like it's fitting for a soccer game, made of think of Sensible Soccer for a little bit. I was disappointed with Turrican, I am pissed however with Turrican II. I'm glad I never saw this in the shops, would have been a waste of money.
The beginning of greatness from one of the Spectrum's greatest programmers. Joffa is still missed and always will be. I don't like to criticise this one so I won't except by saying the best was still to come.
This is just terrible! It never stop flickering which makes it difficult to see where you're meant to be shooting. Fans of this genre should not even waste their time on this poo!
Quite nice but its intense difficulty would put you off, and so too would the random deaths, I died once immediately after respawning down a hole, how unfair can one game get? In spite of this it's not bad at all. Its title music though I could listen to all day.
The jumping isn't right here, it's far too tough to time it correctly, he more than usually lands too short for me. The game itself can also be too short and you can lose your lives within seconds. Something tells me this was a rush job, but what do I know?
Always liked this game, not as good as the arcade game and not as smooth as WEC Le Mans but it's still very enjoyable that replicates the original well.
For me, this is the best racing game on the Spectrum. Everything is top notch and more so it's a lot better than the arcade version which I always felt was overrated despite looking so great. Another Ocean/Imagine gem.
Blaze, 15 Mar 2014 (Rating: 3)
I quite like the idea of this but it quickly becomes repetitive and the enjoyment dies out. There are a number of difficulty levels to choose from though so each one would provide some sort of challenge, especially the harder ones. But not too bad overall.
Borzak, 15 Mar 2014 (Rating: 1)
Everything in this game is a disaster! It's impossible to make any kind of progress with this and as of typing this review my head hurts badly because of it. Awful! Someone tell me how this isn't in the top 100 worst games list, because it belongs there.
A very good shooter with brilliant 128K music but your ship is quite a bugger to control, so I prefer to play with inertia turned off, makes things easier and more enjoyable for me.
An accurate respresentation of Galaxain. A worthy port.
Despite looking gorgeous the gameplay was too awkward for me. It's overcomplicated where if it was more straightforward it may have been more enjoyable. Shame really as the graphics are wonderful, but if its gameplay doesn't match it's hard to like no matter how pretty you look.
Quite a fun and enjoyable game, very simple and charmful, the main gripe I have with it is it quickly repetitive. But I enjoyed this game nonetheless.
An extremely disappointing game, feels like it was rushed and recycled, it feels like more could have been done to it. The fighting parts seem lazy and I was very surprised to see no shooting elements in the game apart from inside a van which is pretty much the driving level recycled. Even the music's crap. Horrible game, one of Ocean's worst.
Always enjoyed this game, it seems predictable as you keep playing it but I've always found a certain degree of charm with this game that keeps me playing regardless.
Looked good on first view but it feels a bit bland. Still it's a decent Commando clone, provided you use a joypad because the keyboard layout is awful.
Nice idea but I tended to get lost too easily even with a radar. Would be cracking fun with two players but not so much bliss with just one.
Not a bad Amidar clone but the unresponsive keys spoil its charm, if only for that it would be much more enjoyable.
Nice attempt to port the flicky footie favourite to a computer game but it doesn't quite work out well. Far too many times you are forced to play defence and try to "snookered" the opposition. It does require strategy and patience, perhaps a little too much and you'd be fortunate if you even score a goal. Brave effort but stick to the real thing.
A horrendous football game this, the colour clash is terrible and the music is dreadful while the gameplay itself is just laughable. And to think US Gold recycled this tripe for the 86 World Cup!
This is just inexcusable! The original was dire enough so how US Gold can even think of recycling it is beyond me. The practice mode is a bit of a welcome addition with sprites looking a little better but it's only practice and thus isn't near enough to save this disaster.
Too repetitive for my taste. Surprised they didn't try to reissue the mini game to make more money unless I've missed it.
Activision's earlier games resembled 2600 games as if they were straight ports, and some of them were attrocious while a few of them had a certain amount of charm in them, this being one of them.
Sanxion wasn't much of a classic in my eyes to be honest, so why they felt it needed to have a speccy remix is anyone's guess. It's no improvement from the original, if anything it's worse and makes me feel that attempting to enhance a certain C64 "legend" into Z80 was such a bad idea. The music is awful too, further proof such a conversion should not have been touched. A proper downgrade.
Lemmings is theoretically a great game and I really wanted to enjoy the Spectrum version, but this shoddy port doesn't do it justice though sadly.
A great example of a poor movie license game. Ocean had the best of them, they also had the poorest, and while this isn't the worst it's certainly poor. Very unbalanced and shoddy to play.
Gutz, 30 Mar 2014 (Rating: 2)
There's not a lot to say about this game other than it's quite poor and very disappointing, great title music to start off, then nothing, it's like a book has a great cover but no words, that's how I like to describe Gutz.
It's not bad, could have been better I suppose but it provided some enjoyment for what it was.
As awful as it can be. Ocean had quite a number of busts during its time and if this ain't on the top of the tree it's pretty darn close.
The arcade game itself is one I always found to be mediocre and repetitive, sadly the Speccy version replicates that. The only real thing going for this version is the terrific music.
Not bad but not great and hardly super either. The sound is very annoying and distracted me playing this.
Why on earth did it take me so long to play this game even if Activision have denied their games? Really wish I played this sooner in the pre-wife and children days because I'm hooked. Excellent game, full of thrills and joy.
My first review in about three and a half years and it's nice to be back. Having broke my foot in an industrial accident I decided to get back on the Spectaculator emulator and play these games again. I start off with this one because it's one everyone seems to have played and I never bothered to review it up to now. It's not as good as it was back when I played it, the traffic bit is annoying and the skiing part is somewhat bland but it's still a nice game and it has a great bit of nostalgia to it, even if Horace is more fitting for Halloween than Christmas.
Bubble Bobble could and should have been a great arcade port and fair enough the gameplay alone merits it being so, but the game's ugly graphics let it down badly. Also the sound when you jump is horrible too, it sounds like our protagonist is suffocating and gasping for air. And Tim Follin's rendition of the classic theme is nice but one of the sound channels is hideously off key which today makes it hard to listen to, back then you didn't notice nor cared but it's noticeable now. I shouldn't knock the graphics too much, but nicer looking games exist and one of them should have been Bubble Bobble.
Xenon, 22 Oct 2017 (Rating: 4)
It's a great shooter, certainly one of the better ones on the Speccy, but better versions exists. I hate that the music is constantly interrupted during the game but I suppose that was going to happen with only three channels. Imperfections aside this is still a cracking shooter to play.
I'm not going to attempt to top the fantastic review of dm_boozefreek so I'll keep this quick and to the point, it's horrible. There isn't one single redeeming quality this game has, it's dreadful in every aspect.
Troll, 22 Oct 2017 (Rating: 2)
The troll gets its own game, and let's face it it's not very good really. I get that they tried to make the very look different and original by having two platforms rather than one but it makes the whole game a confusing complicated mess and thus I never got far into it. Nice idea in being different but it doesn't quite work.
Looks horrid but the game itself plays pretty nicely. I'm not familiar with the arcade game so I can't compare but I fairly enjoyed this one at least.
I'm more familiar with Back to Skool and so I'll always prefer that game but this is pretty charmful too, I just can't help playing this and wishing I was playing the other game. If I played this one back in the day I would probably enjoy it more than I did but I didn't. Still it's a jolly game to play and you can still be a mischievous bastard and have great fun doing so.
Loved this game when I had it 30 years ago and it's still just as enjoyable today. Absolutely wonderful. If there was ever a game that deserved to exceed 5/5, it's this game.
This for me was a pathetic attempt to market a bland mediocre game. Apparently the James Bond license was acquired at the last minute when this game was already finished, probably to ensure it would sell. It ain't all bad, it looks pretty but the shooting can be a mess at times and it is far too short to take seriously. Wasted use of the license if you ask me.
This would have been a lot more fun to play in 1983, sadly it doesn't play so well nowadays, nor does it look it either. It good enough for a quick blast but nothing more than that.
This is one of those game I criminally missed when I had my Spectrum and I really wish I didn't. This is just excellent. It's great fun and looks fantastic too. I prefer this to the arcade game it's that brilliant.
In arcade form I much prefer Bubble Bobble compared to this. While this was still a pretty game I never saw the charm in it as much as Bubble Bobble, whose gameplay was much more simplistic and enjoyable. But on the Spectrum there is a significant shift in that I was mildly disappointed with Bubble Bobble over how it looked and sounded, whereas this was a work of art. It looks absolutely incredible with gorgeous colourful graphics and the gameplay I found to be much more fluid and enjoyable than the arcade version. This is proof that Bubble Bobble could and and should have looked better than it did, because this is magnificent. As far as arcade conversions go, some have been good, some have been bad, few have been awful and very few have been perfect, Rainbow Islands is perfect.
For me, the best tennis game on the Speccy and one of the best tennis games on any system. This is just wonderful.
A very accurate conversion of a brilliant arcade game. While the sound is inadequate and quite irritating, the graphics are beautiful, especially the backgrounds and the gameplay is perfect, exactly as you'd expect Bomb Jack to be. I will go on record and say this is probably one of the finest arcade conversions on the Spectrum and one of the best Bomb Jack conversions on any system, probably only bested by the brilliant Game Boy version. A lot of 5s for this game, and rightly so.
An absolute abomination if I ever saw one! This is horrid! Why change the gameplay completely into this horrible mess? The gameplay is what made Bomb Jack stand out and they changed it, and not for the better. Instead of flying across the screen collecting bombs we're now jumping onto platforms and killing enemies with a weapon, whether it's a sword or a stick I can't tell. And the graphics are atrocious as well! We had the pretty backgrounds and the nice use of colour in Bomb Jack 1 and now we have this murky look with enemies which I'm not even sure what they're supposed to look like. They took everything great from the first game and replaced it with complete crap. This is by far one of the worst sequels to ever exist.
It looks quite nice but it's far far too frustrating for my taste. It doesn't play particularly good and I frankly lack the patience for games like this. Not one I played before this review and not one I wish to play again.
It's well programmed and very accurate, but it was bloody hard too. But seeing that a lot of football games are crap, a nice squash game is very refreshing. And from the same fella who done Trashman too, that will be why it's so good.
This is just a bland Out Run for me. At least that game gave you a choice of which road to take, this has nothing other than drive straight at maximum speed and that's it. The other cars are very unpredictable too and tend to hit you randomly especially from behind. It also has the weirdest looking A I've ever seen, Stoge 3? Titus have far worse games so this has something going for it at least, too bad it ain't much.
I didn't really see as much appeal to this as others did but I will agree that it's a fun game, it looks great and will probably keep you entertained for quite a while. I just never got far with it and lack the patience to do so.
Bumpy, 24 Oct 2017 (Rating: 3)
Looks like something from 1986 rather than 1989 but the game itself is quite pleasant and enjoyable at least.
This was a popular game among gamers but I found this to be an unplayable mess. The car oversteers all the time and makes driving around the circuit and absolute pain in the ass. It was a brave conversion to do and it certainly looks the part, but it's just not playable. If not for the horrible steering this would have been much much more enjoyable.
Don Priestley's games always stood out graphically and this is no exception. But gameplay wise I usually get lost and run out of patience with them, this being no exception. But saying that it's still a very impressive looking game, I just need more patience with this.
It was too difficult for my taste but I agree it's very well programmed and I can see why it was so popular. Great graphics, fabulous music and excellent use of sampled speech, too bad I plain suck at it to enjoy it more. But I won't be too hard on it as it is a very well polished game with a lot of positives.
Just as frustrating as RoboCop and it isn't as good as well. Not terrible, just not as great as the original by a long way. Different developers, different ideas, didn't pay off. Pity.
The RoboCop series in games is just like the films. The first game is an excellent piece of programming, the second one lacked the same thrill and charm, this third one is a disaster. It's ugly, plays badly, scrolls too slowly, it's just a bad, bad game, as bad as the movie.
This was a great key-masher that caused great pain to fingers. I played this rather than Hyper Sports and that was a better game, but this is still great fun to play and it is the best of the Daley games. But running with your shot putt is very off and very wrong, perhaps a spinning motion was too much in that time.
Joffa Smith hated this game. While I don't hate it as it is quite a nice game, I can't give it as much love as some others might. I get why it's like Hyper Sports, because it was a rushed project, and it honestly shows. Still nice enough but give me Hyper Sports any day.
The weakest of the Daley games for me. Sure it has the added extra of the training, but it felt like it served no purpose as your performances largely relied on not how fast you hit the chosen keys to run, not how well you timed your jumps and throws, but by picking the right trainers. Picking the wrong trainers would affect your performance and thus all the hard effort you did at training was a waste of time. That alone removed the enjoyment of it for me, and thus I feel it's pants compared to the other two.
Gladiator, the arcade game this is based on, was pretty decent, this isn't too bad as well, but you can't finish it as the final boss is intentionally unbeatable. I would have given it a three but the fact that you can't finish it legitimately, that you have to cheat to win, just annoys me enough to make me downgrade its overall score.
I'm not massive on darts but I would watch the World Championships occasionally and I did watch Bullseye a lot when it was on, Sunday roast with Bullseye on the telly, that was the norm back then and we couldn't get enough of it. As for the game, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I always liked it and found myself coming back for more. Plus, every other Bullseye game I've played, whether on DVD or an app, has never come close to the joys of this game. So it's not perfect by any means, but it's the best you can play of Bullseye and does the job nicely.
I never really got into this as much I did with Bullseye. The games featured were confusing and poorly implemented. It's a nice idea, it just doesn't work very well.
The concept is an amusing one, but the gameplay is poorly executed for me. I never liked dual-screen games, Troll had it and I disliked it and now this has it and while it's less confusing it's still annoying and it's still not clever. I really wanted to enjoy this, but I didn't, and now I feel like a bastard playing this.
US Gold's arcade conversions usually leave a lot to be desired, but I tell you what this surprised me. It's very playable and it's actually good fun.
A largely unplayable game even with four modes in it. It also has a very dated look for 1990, it looks like it would be barely passible in 1986. David Whittaker's rendition of Axel F is the only thing going for this game, other than that there's nothing much going for this one.
This isn't bad, it's still nice enough to play, the problem is the original was a far, far, far better game. They changed too much of this for me. If it was kept to the same level as the original I might have been kinder but it's just another one of those sequels with fresh ideas and few working for it. Give me Trashman over this any day.
One of the better "simulator" games from Code Masters. It's good fun and simple to play. Good stuff!
Apparently this is required to be played with 3-D glasses and you have to shoot "enemies" that match the colours and in some cases the distance apart from each other, otherwise your laser goes straight through them. I don't quite know what this is trying to be, but it's barely trying to be a game for one. It's confusing, complicated and most of all, it's rubbish.
With a name like this you'd expect this to be some fun platformer or shooter featuring a girl with massive breasts shooting milky bullets at enemies, but no. Instead it's a text adventure and not even a good one. I'm no expert on text adventures and I'm not fond of them, hence I'll not usually review any, but there's some I'll have an attempt at and at least find some kind of amusement in it, this done nothing for me at all. If you're going to start playing text adventures, don't start with this one. It's said to be too crude for youngsters to play, but in truth it's too crude for anyone to play, and that's not because of its adult material but it's because it's shite.
A rather tainted entry in the Spectrum game archive given its origin. There's no mistaken that there was never a game like this one in its time, and it being crap is why there has hardly been another game like this since, if ever. It's just dull from the off and never gains momentum at all. I get why it happened but did it really need to happen? I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mastertronic rushed this just to ensure their deed was made.
I never managed to get into this, always got lost, always lost interest, but my it's graphically impressive. Some of the enemy designs are quite fantastic, the dragon for instance is an incredible sight. While the graphics are there it is just a shame it doesn't seem to have the gameplay to match.
Cobra, 28 Oct 2017 (Rating: 3)
As usual, it's a game from Joffa Smith that looks great. The gameplay however is a bit off. I found this to be a bit difficult and as a result I struggled to make any kind of progress in this and thus I never found much enjoyment in this. Had I'd played it back in the day perhaps I'd enjoy more of this, but I didn't.
This isn't a bad game really, it's just pretty bland compared to some of Hi-Tec's other Hanna-Barbera titles. Far from the worst like Jonny Quest and The Jetsons but doesn't rank as their best work either.
Enduro, 28 Oct 2017 (Rating: 2)
A decent enough port of the 2600 game but I imagine it's better there because this does nothing for me. You pass cars, and that's it. It never really appealed to me and I got pretty bored of this fairly quickly. Activision had great 2600 ports around this time, but this is far from one of them.
It's a quite enjoyable adaptation of the board game but the fact that you're able to get everything right without trying spoils the fun of it.
This was a fabulous little game to play back in the day and it still holds its own today even for looking pretty aged. It's one of those games you can pick up, play and get into quickly. Definitely worth the look.
It sure looks good I'll give it that, but I'm in agreement with the others, it's way too difficult to take seriously.
This is an atrocious boxing game that looks dated for 1989 and had some pretty god awful gameplay. And then Code Masters managed to scam us all by making a "Pro Boxing Simulator" out of this crap! So if low blows and referees falling asleep mid-fight is a "Boxing Simulator", give me a "Snooker Simulator" where you can poke your opponent's ass with your cue while he's taking a shot to put him off, or a "Football Simulator" where you can score an easy goal because the goalkeeper's having a shag behind the net. For this to be called "realistic" is laughable, but then for it to be re-released as a "simulator" is beyond a joke, but that's marketing for you.
The only thing crazy about this game is it's bug-ridden and some of the holes are overdoing it in terms of difficulty. The ball has a mind of its own as well. Five holes of this mess was all I could take.
This isn't bad, it's just tricky and a tad confusing, the amount of colour clash only adds to the confusion. Good for one go or maybe two, but that's all.
Another one of Elite's highly impressive arcade conversions. Just about as accurate as the original, even down to the difficulty. I was never ever good at this game.
I'm not really that massive on darts but I do like a good darts game, I actually had this game back in the day and I did quite like it. It looks superb and plays quite nicely too, even if the throwing seems a bit fussy at times and then I can win one match and then go no further most of the time. A lot of darts games here frankly look dong, but this one looks well enough to appeal to novice or even non-fans.
The music is sublime, but that's it. It's nothing more than a poor man's Space Harrier. But hey at least it was free.
Well isn't a pile of tripe or what? It flickers, it jerks, it stutters and it doesn't play right at all. Plus the "speech" is laughable. Giving it a 1 is kind, games like this deserve less. Now Get Eddie! Whoever this "Eddie" is.
It sure looks alright and the music indeed is wonderful, but the gameplay was just too fussy for me and I never enjoyed the higher and lower platform element to it as half the time he wouldn't do it. It's popular for some and I see why, but misses the mark for me. One I won't be going back to anytime soon.
A jolly game based on a jolly gameshow. Simple to get into and good fun.
Another simulator from Code Masters, and it's not really a simulator in essence. Nice idea but far too ineffective to enjoy.
Delightful quiz game. Well programmed and presented, plays very well and all in all something I always tend to go back to from time to time. Good stuff.
Not bad but some of the mini-games aren't fun and the computer is a clever git who never gets a question wrong. Because of this I can't give it a 3, it's just lazy coding if you ask me.
Saw Ashens review the C64 version of this and thought I'd try out the Speccy version, it's just as bad and hideous in every aspect but thankfully no music which was dreadful on the C64. But what an appalling excuse of a game.
Another game covered by Ashens on his Terrible Old Games You Probably Never Heard Of Series (albeit the C64 version), and my God this epitomises terrible. The idea is quite unique, but it's also quite bizarre. The gameplay is massively flawed, poor hit detection and you lost a life with one solitary hit which loses your entire progress. I never got past the first level on this, and to be honest, why would you?
Dear dear dear what has happened here?! What is it with bollocks sequels on the Speccy? This is another of those hideous sequels that has zero charm the original had. It looks horrible, plays badly, sounds awful, the music is appalling, this is simply a horrendous game.
180, 31 Oct 2017 (Rating: 4)
A lot of people say this is the best darts game on the Speccy, and you know they are probably correct. Unlike Wacky Darts which I had years ago where the throwing at times seemed a little wonky and unpredictable, here it's much much simpler and thus is makes a more enjoyable game. Wacky Darts looked better, but this plays more favourable for novice fans like me. I'm not big on darts but I liked Wacky Darts and I would have loved this game if I bought it years ago.
It says this is Berzerk on World of Spectrum but I think this is more Robotron, Cybotron, Robotron, get it? But whatever, it's not very good. I mean it's pretty fast but the constant sound that plays during the game will frankly make your head explode. Also the controls don't work properly at times, in one go the Z key for down didn't want to work but did so the next game, so that's the game's fault and not my keyboard. Level 4 is all I can manage in this. So this is pretty bad but it was an early game from Dominic Wood who went on to write better games on the Spectrum, so it's like they say, we all start somewhere.
These same guys also done The Light Corridor which was an excellent game so I was surprised to see the low marks on here and on WoS, but I get why now. The presentation is pretty nice and the music is excellent but the gameplay here is pretty bad, especially when you considered that there were basketball games out there that looked bad and weren't very good but yet played better than this game. This is slow and jerky, passing is a nightmare, stealing appears to be random and 3-point shots are sometimes counted as 2. Don't quite get the team names either, Chicago Mane and Los Angeles Hairless, no comment. I really wanted to disagree with the low scores for this, but I can't and I can only join in. It's pretty justified.
Golf, 31 Oct 2017 (Rating: 2)
I never managed to get into this. The instructions on World of Spectrum being in Chinese for some reason don't help.
Simply put it's like Operation Wolf but a bit shite. The cursor doesn't move quick enough for you to get all the enemies, shooting grenades is a hassle, shooting powerups is even worse because most of time you'll miss them. Don't bother.
This is LA Drugs Bust re-coded to feature the characters from Neighbours, for some reason. It was a covertape game from Your Sinclair so it's not a game you can take seriously, plus you're shooting Kylie and Jason which is a bit cruel yet partly amusing, you are shooting cameramen as well so it's not all taking the mickey, at least I don't think. There's no grenades being fired at you and you have infinite ammunition. And I have to say this was more fun than LA Drugs Bust, albeit slightly, given you have infinite ammo and so you can freely shoot everything at will, except the dog that is. But still, for what it is it's certainly more decent than Drugs Bust was so there's that. And this is also a better game than Neighbours itself was and that was a licensed game charging you much more money, so there's that. And this is more enjoyable than watching Neighbours as a whole, so there's that.
Arkanoid should in essence be an easy conversion to make, surely they couldn't mess this one up? Well thank God Ocean delivered with it. This is a sublime conversion. Every bit as good as the original and probably more. Excellent.
Not another crap sequel! What the hell happened? Arkanoid was so smooth and pretty and played like a gem. This however has ugly backgrounds that take up much of the screen and spoil the graphics, a glowing bat effect that is very off putting and it nowhere near has the same thrilling gameplay the original had. I said in my review for Arkanoid that surely they couldn't mess it up, while Arkanoid delivered the goods, here however, they can and they did.
I think it's safe to say Atlantis games have looked and played nicer than this. The graphics are dated for 1989, they look like they would have been the standard in around 1986, the submarine in particular looks pretty ugly, and the gameplay is pretty ugly too. The submarine sprite is big and some of the gaps are small, so there is a small margain for error here and at times it seems he moves too damn fast and hits a wall needlessly as a result. Also not liking that you have to rely on your pod to open gates and collect fuel as you can easily forget that and try and collect it yourself in your sub, doing so blows you up. Not impressive really.
I wasn't anticipating much with this game but I've got to say this surprised me. The speech is frankly ridiculous, it took me a few times to figure out what she was trying to say, but of course it's Dekorating Blues what else could it have been? But the game itself has a bit of charm to it and I was able to get into it, reaching level 9 before my emulator crashed. I was confused in that the level ended before I filled up the whole grid, but you don't need to, you just need your paint count to reach zero. It becomes bland after a while but given I expected much worse I was pleasantly pleased with this.
Pang, 01 Nov 2017 (Rating: 5)
Pang is a really nice and charmful game, very simple to play and easily amusing. It's one of those games I would have spent hours playing if I'd bought it back in the day. Good stuff.
What is it with some of these instructions on World of Spectrum being in Chinese? Are all of Artic's game like this? I didn't expect this to be good but I didn't expect it to be this bad. The jumping is just really terrible and avoiding the enemies to basically down to luck rather than skill. I've never managed to get out of the first screen as a result!
Nice idea behind this one and it's graphically good, but it was just far too confusing for me to get into.
What the heck is this mess? Is this supposed to be a game? It sure doesn't look nor play like one that's for sure. It's ugly, it's confusing, it's tedious, it's just horrific!
E-SWAT, 02 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
Words fail me. This is supposed to be a conversion of the Sega arcade game E-SWAT, but evidently it's nothing like it in any way shape or form. It's diabolically bad in every level. The graphics are among the worst on a machine code Spectrum game. The gameplay is equally as bad, the controls are not only unresponsive but uncooperative as well as he jumps when you don't want him to, then doesn't jump when you do want him too. Your gun doesn't fire on command as well and you can also get stuck on an enemy which uses up all your health until you die. What a load of tosh! People say Double Dragon is the worst arcade conversion on the Spectrum, that's a wonderful piece of programming compared to whatever this is.
This is a interesting little game. It's presented like a sci-fi movie presentation at the start complete with rolling credits. It looks pretty good but the gameplay is pretty naff. Freddy's jumping is a nightmare and caused me many a problem. It's all becomes underwhelming as you play on which is a shame given the intro. There's a part two also but I wasn't good enough to reach it. So it's a nicely presented game with decent graphics that's let down by some mediocre gameplay.
Known in the UK as Guardian Angel by Code Masters. This is simply appalling. The game plays much much worse than Freddy Hardest and it looks pretty bad too. Even the Commodore 64 version had monochrome graphics! At least Freddy Hardest had some redeeming qualities, this has none. I hate to say it, but it's another crap sequel.
iD, 02 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
A very interesting and intriguing game and one that will get your attention when you play it, it's just too bad that attention won't last long. I can never work this out and in the end it'll annoy you and bore you. Great at first, then it turns flat.
A quick google search will reveal to you that this was the very last ZX Spectrum game to be commercially released during its original publication. Safe to say it did not go out on such a high note. Now if you don't know Doctor Who is a LONG running series on BBC television which is still going strong today after it was revived following a long sabbatical. Now I have never seen any of the new Doctor Who episodes, the old ones were the best, the ones with John Pertwee and Tom Baker especially. Sylvester McCoy is our Doctor here and I always felt he was a shit Doctor Who so I probably stopped watching it at that point. This wasn't as bad as I anticipated it to be to be honest. He moves pretty fast which wasn't what I expected but the enemies are hard to shoot at and so you are better off avoiding them. The second level was too confusing for me and thus I played no further after that. Also, the rendition of the theme tune isn't that great as well. It's not terrible by any means, it's just confusing and not very enjoyable.
Sports quiz much like A Question of Sport which even had Emlyn Hughes on it, but it was largely ineffective and was a bit crap, which is what could be said about the game as well. David Whittaker's rendition of the theme tune is quite nice but that's the only thing worth raving about. It's slow paced, there's hardly any sound to it and this has the same mistake that other quiz games made where you can just progress through all the questions and get everything right without actually knowing a thing. Sod that, Question of Sport is miles better than this and even that wasn't a great game.
Inspired by Yie Ar Kung Fu it appears, it certainly doesn't do it justice that's for sure. The hit detection is way off, he can be nowhere near me and still be able to register a hit on me. The background's a bit alright, but that's about it for this game.
Well, for a game bearing the name of the world's best darts player at the time this sure plays like arse. Throwing the dart is so needlessly complicated and they have trouble staying on the board. And then when I hit a double to win it didn't register as a win and it was Eric's turn, he hits a double, it didn't register as a win, it's my turn again, I hit a double again, it's Eric's turn again and he gives up and does nothing, and so the game is now broken. What a load of bull.
This is quite fun once you get used to the controls. I had a nightmare with them at first and was prepared to give it a 2 but I played on a bit more and got used to it well enough to make it to stage 5 and had good fun doing so. So it can be fun but you will need to get used to the controls to enjoy it fully, if not you will struggle.
I was never fond of this on arcade, I always preferred the Super Mario games to this. Saying that, at least there is a bit of enjoyment in it, unlike in this port which is an ugly, clumsy mess of a game. And this was released a year after Donkey Kong and look how nice that looked compared to this. Mario's legacy in video game history is a rich one to say the least, but not on the Speccy it ain't. I don't think Nintendo will mentioning this game in its Mario archive any time soon.
Compared to Mario Bros, released a year later, this is more like it. It may not look completely the part but it sure does play the part. This proves Nintendo arcade games weren't a stretch too far for the Spectrum, Mario Bros was just a bad port. This is does Mario much more justice.
Kong, 03 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Three years before Ocean's official DK game there was this unofficial clone, and let's just say it's not pretty. Thankfully the official game is much better than this.
I can't remember if I had this as a standalone or in a compilation, but I did have this back in the day and never enjoyed it. It was very frustrating, probably too frustrating and it wasn't long before it was reset and time to play something else, something better I might add.
It's not a bad bike racing game but is nowhere near on par with TT Racer. I simply cannot get on with the screen tilting as you turn, that annoys the hell out of me. And also, why do all the other bikers zoom quickly past you at the start? I thought this was 750cc, instead it looks like they are 5000cc and I'm 50cc. I probably should give this a lower mark but I did enjoy it much more that I probably should have and thus I'll be kind to it.
I came across this game by accident when I discovered I had two files of this in my emulator, one as it is and the other reading Black Dwarfs Lair without the apostrophe. This isn't much of a game really, you're just wondering around chamber to chamber fighting the odd enemy, using magic that doesn't appear to do much, and that's it. And I managed to complete it first time round by moving to the lower chambers. So it's a very short game, written in BASIC and it is 1982 after all, so it's okay for what it is and there appears to be worse from this publisher, too bad this doesn't seem to be much of a game. Good for one go for curiosity sake I guess.
I remember a mate having the Amstrad version and it was brilliant, it had a great tune playing (which I have stuck in my head now) and it was great fun. So I was well pleased when I saw it on the Spectrum, instantly had to buy it, first thing I discovered upon loading, no music, I was bummed. But in fairness you still had the nice yet somewhat offensive gameplay in it, well I mean we're hitting grannies after all aren't we. It was still pretty nice to play and enjoyable nevertheless, but I always huffed at this game knowing my mate's Amstrad version was better.
Jaws, 03 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
I think I'll just stick to the movie thanks very much.
Deserves its place as one of the worse games on the Spectrum.
This was always going to be a tricky conversion to do, but I think they managed it well. It was never going to be perfect but it simply needed to be playable and enjoyable, and thankfully it is. It's always had a "one more go" feel with me.
Equally as tough to convert like Operation Wolf, but I have to say it's more ineffective. The problem is too much happens at once and that hampers the gameplay. Also, one of the things that I liked about Operation Wolf was that it told you how many enemies were in each level and as you play on how many were left, that's missing in Thunderbolt and I never got on with that. Though it lacks the charm of the original it's nowhere near as bad as some of the other sequels on the Spectrum. It's also one of the rare games on the Spectrum that has a better tune on 48K than on 128K.
Another of the Spectrum's notoriously bad games. Guide Riks (sic) van allong (sic) the road to the next gig. Dont (sic) hit any other cars, or you loose (sic) time, I think the lack of apostrophes and bad spelling sets the tone really, you know it's gonna be bad when this text greets you. The gameplay itself wouldn't be as bad as people claim it to be if not for the dreadful tune that plays throughout and gets old after 45 seconds as well as the fact that I don't think there's anything else in the game other than this, you "loose" time and that's it, you're never gonna to win and you're always going to damage the career of "Alternative Rock" regardless. Alternative released a lot of crap and this might be the worst.
Another of those arcade games I never liked and predictably I didn't find much love for the Speccy version either. Elite had some of the best ports on the Speccy and this certainly looks to be on par with the rest of them, but it's just too tough to get into. I never got very far in this even with nine lives.
Yep this is just a blatant and rather naughty rip-off of Hyper Sports' archery event. But saying that it's very decent and plays pretty nicely. But then it's Hyper Sports' archery and, well that's it, like that's the game, that's all there is to it. Still it's worth a go or two at least.
Never really liked the show and so this game wasn't going to appeal much to me anyway. But when you get same question back to back in quick succession and about six times overall then that spells trouble.
Its concept, very intriguing. Its message, very important. Its execution, very poor. It's a good thing to encourage youngsters not to do drugs, but it's an entirely different thing altogether when you choose to do it by releasing a really crappy game to spread that message across. At least make it present itself nicely, at least make it playable, this does none of those things. Never mind not doing drugs, I'll tell you exactly what this game taught me, never to play this shite again.
Another one of Code Masters' laughable "pro simulators". The course design mostly resembles a pitch and putt course but even they have fairways, unlike some of these holes. Most par 3's you can only par and hole 18 is a par 6, have you ever seen a par 6 in pro golf? Also, if you are on the green but far away from the hole you still get to choose your club rather than automatically putt. And if this is a "pro" Golf game he wouldn't need to shout FORE! before every shot would he? This is not as ridiculous as their "Pro Boxing Simulator", but it's pretty darn close.
A pretty poor Commando-style game. Hated the player sprite with the big patch of red surrounding him as he moves, surely there was a way to avoid that. The gameplay's pretty rubbish too. Not terrible, just not very good.
Copper, 05 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
This is a bit like Donkey Kong with the barrels and ladders gameplay. The game is dependent on the skill and speed you choose so it allows you to pick the one that suits best for you. The jumping seems a little off to me, you need to jump at precisely the right spot to collect the loot and at a faster speed and higher skill this can be a problem. And impossible speed is exactly that. It's not that great a game but it is the most fun I've had today with these reviews which is saying something.
I have to say I too found this to be an overrated game. Sure, it looks superb, but it's a very difficult game and even with 9 lives I struggled with this game. You need patience, lots of it, and I don't have a lot of it anymore. But I can see why it was a popular game with many. It's brilliantly programmed, it's just too tough for me.
By all means it's not a terrible football game, but it's definitely one of the easiest. You can simply run to the goal with the ball close to the net and press fire for an easy goal. I was able to win 9-0 as a result of this method. The player movement in the computer team is quite bizarre with the way they stick and don't seem to know which way they wish to go. You can also change the colour of the pitch but you are better off sticking to the default, the blue screen in particular is bad and looked corrupted even though it isn't. Not overly atrocious, it's no worse than World Cup Football and World Cup Carnival for instance, but most likely you'll play one match and then you're done.
Absolutely lazy programming! This is just A Question of Sport re-coded into an ancient music quiz that hadn't been aired in about five years by this point. Were Elite really this desperate to swipe our money from us? I'm very surprised we didn't see a Telly Addicts game with this concept next.
It's another sequel and it's another lacklustre one. Paperboy was a fun little game that was quite faithful to the original arcade game, not the greatest conversion but playable and enjoyable, this lacks the same charm. To call this a shit sequel or one of the worst sequels ever is harsh, it's not, it's playable to a degree and more fun than Bomb Jack II, it's just the first one was a far better game. Within an instant you'll be preferring Paperboy to this, this looks nicer but it just isn't as fun. So it's not a terrible sequel but it's still not a good one. I guess if you never played Paperboy you'll get into this but it's very hard to prefer this to the original.
This conversion was never going to work. I have seen glimpses of the arcade game but I've never played it so I can't say for sure whether this plays like the arcade version or not, but I know one thing, it doesn't play much like a game that's for sure. I can never get past the first screen with the clouds, you don't seem to have time to react to which way you need to look. What's the point of buying a game where you can't progress? Thank heavens I missed this one back in the day.
I would say another poor sequel but the first one was donkey shit so that wouldn't be correct. Whilst it's still not a great game in its on right it's streets ahead of the original and is much more playable. There's also some nice music from Rob Hubbard too, not bad for someone who hated the AY chip. So for once it's a proper sequel, albeit it's still not very good but it's at least better than the original game.
I pretty much expected this to be bad because Magic Bytes and Micro Partner are not good at games, you only have to look at Tom and Jerry 2 to prove that point. Those expectations were met within the first minute of playing this game. You're constantly interrupted with questions that have no meaning to the game at all and then you have a paralyse a traitor but I swear that when I followed him and paralysed him it said he was innocent and fined me for it! This game makes no logical sense at all. One of the questions this game asked me was "have you had any strange experiences lately?", yes, playing this game.
I actually used to watch wrestling back in the early 90's when we got to see it on VHS cassettes. There was something about it that appealed to me, the pantomime feel of it, good guys vs bad guys, the big time characters, Hulk Hogan ripping his t-shirt, Ultimate Warrior with face paint and running to the ring, Jimmy Hart with the megaphone, Jake Roberts with a snake, Brutus Beefcake cutting hair, it was enough to suck me in and leave me gripped and on the edge of my seat, especially the Royal Rumble events. Then it all got silly with clowns, a bloke from the future and Lex Luger being infatuated by mirrors, so I lost interest after that. This was a pretty ambitious licence for Ocean to take on. The programmers could be forgiven if they knew or understood little or nothing about the product, but they sure done a heck of a good job with this given their supposed personal limitations rather than technical. It's a very accurate representation of the WWF's style and presentation, the taunting especially. They could easily have made a pig's ear of this and make the wrestlers sound nothing like their real life counterparts, but they actually do, and that's an impressive feat. Yes, some of the character sprites are a little off, yes, some of the finishers make no sense, Hogan's piledriver for instance rather than the leg drop, but we knew this wasn't going to be perfect, just make it a playable game for WWF fans to enjoy, and they delivered. It probably doesn't hold up to much nowadays since it's so limited and all but it's still very enjoyable and good fun. And well played to the programmers for making this game stand out, they could easily have made a muck up of it and blame a "lack of knowledge" for it, but they did their best for it, and the results show.
Feud, 08 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
This is quite alright but I usually found myself just wondering around endlessly and found myself to be bored with this quite quickly. Also, my mate had this on the Amstrad and that had great music whereas this doesn't, and no music added to the boredom for me.
Pretty average fighting game really. Doesn't stand out but at least it can be a bit enjoyable, I just found the fighting to be a bit of a pain and jumping over arrows to be a hassle, and trying to avoid the arrows makes you vulnerable to enemy strikes anyway. Also the opponent is quite stupid in that he'll just duck or jump and make it much easier for you to hit him. I found this good for two rounds and then you'll be bored of it. I guess I'll never be cut out to be a Fighting Warrior then.
There's difficult and then there's this! It's as unplayable as you can get. Just how do you avoid what looks like either bubbles or rain drops? It's the same height as you and you can't crouch nor jump forward, unless I'm missing something and no instructions don't help. For this to have been published to begin with is laughable.
This was the only game among the top worst games on the stats page I had not reviewed yet so I thought I'd give it a shot and see for myself why it's so crap, now I know. Basically you can't lose, either drop one bomb or crash into a building and the city is annihilated and you win, pretty certain that isn't how Blitz works. Plus, I got to Tokyo and said to myself that there's a pun with this but I'm not going to use it, very next screen reads Hiroshima (deja vu), thanks for that Mr. Campbell I just said I wasn't going to do the pun and you've done it for me! And then when you've finished all the levels you get an out of data error message, these endings in Spectrum games usually weren't red hot but this takes the biscuit completely! This isn't even a game, it's just tongue and cheek and a bit silly.
Here's another one from Stuart Campbell of Nuclear City Bomber "fame" and according to WoS it's even worse, and it has a point because this isn't a game either. I have no idea what you're supposed to be shooting at but you are shooting at something and when you shoot something, like its head, it falls down to the chest area and so forth. I don't even know what the goal of the game is? Do they all have to fall to the bottom? Well if so you can't, because when you go to the ones at the far left or right of the screen it just scrolls and resets the screen and you start all over. So while in Nuclear City Bomber you can't lose the game, here you can't win the game. Oh, and you can't play the games either because they aren't games.
I admire the ambition of having this on computer game form, but it's painfully obvious it doesn't work. It makes the same mistake that other quiz computer games, Trivial Pursuit and Sporting Triangles being two games for instance, that it has you tell the computer whether you were right or wrong, and that kills the fun for me. Also, I can't draw for shit so I just let the computer do it for me.
I believe this was Konami's debut in the ZX Spectrum market as a publisher of their own games, and much noise was made when it was discovered that it sucked. The original arcade game isn't much to rave about but my God the Spectrum conversion was a complete bust. It's tough to stay alive as enemies and bullets come fast and you don't have enough time to react to them. Overall it was just a very dull game with little going for it. Konami weren't in the Spectrum publishing market for very long, I believe 1987 was their only year and there are only four games published by Konami. Whilst their games only just got slightly got better they were already off to a horrendous start with this car crash of a game and I guess from the beginning the writing was on the wall.
This is a rarity for Spectrum games, in that so many people are credited for it, although I wonder how many of them actually worked on the Z80 code as I suspect the credits are based for the multiple systems this came out on. But in spite of the many people supposedly involved they still couldn't produced a decent game out of it. While not the worst looking game it doesn't play particularly good and it's a bit too unfairly difficult at times to fully enjoy it. As well as that, one of the levels has one of the worst tunes I've ever heard in my life, proper ear-bleeding stuff. I quite liked the movie, but this game is a bit pants and it's therefore just another poor movie licence game.
I have never played the arcade game so I can't compare them, but surely the arcade game can't be as hideous as this is can it? This is absolutely terrible! It plays horrendously bad! It's got awful controls, awful music, awful hit detection, it's almost impossible to progress and it's even more impossible to just survive! The graphics are fine, nothing wrong with them, but the game is just terribly programmed. I feel I should give it a 2 for the graphics but then this game is so bad how can I give it anything but 1? As a conversion I can't judge it, but I can judge it as a game however, and it's simple, it's shite, and you know it's a bad game when it wasn't even released on US Gold's budget label.
Looks great but plays like a bore to me. Never found the charm in this one sadly. I'm sure this was great back in 1984 but it doesn't stand out to be much today.
Always did like this in the arcade, but truth be told the Spectrum version isn't the best conversion. The scrolling gravel tracks can be hard on the eyes, especially when it changes colour mid race. And getting close to the other vehicles was unpredictable, sometimes you'll be fine and sometimes it'll register a crash for no apparent reason even though you weren't touching them. Also, the game doesn't seem to want to make up its mind whether to play music during the race or not and it appears to happen randomly. It's quite good fun, but it's not without its flaws.
Shark, 09 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
This is just a dire shooter. Enemies take forever to kill and "special" weapons don't work half the time. Nice music at the start, but the moment you begin the game it becomes an anti-climax.
I feel I should give this a 2 but in fairness it's not a bad game but the constant union requests get in the way and affect full enjoyment. In the end you'll likely feel fed up and annoyed by the whole experience.
This game makes absolutely no sense at all. Can you even call it a game?
It's safe to say this doesn't work. All you do is select your 11 and then depending on the toss either select your batsmen or sort your fielding and bowling order. Then you just have the option of which batsman you send out next after a wicket or change your bowler after every over, that's it. You only see the scoreboard change and only see the action when a wicket is taken or the batsman scores a six. A least some text during the game would be lovely but this has none. Dire. The best part though is Noel Edmonds on the main menu screen, and that says it all for this game.
A game written twice because the first one, written by Paul Houbart of the horrible Breakthu incidentally, was so bad it had to be redone from scratch. This second version is well polished and certainly looks the part, but it's brutal in terms on difficulty as you only have one life and the chances are you are going to lose that life fairly quickly. It's not bad, I just wish I can go further in this game and see more of it.
Can this really be called a game? It's only one level throughout the whole game and you can finish it in less than a minute, after that there isn't much point in playing the game anymore.
This looks to be the only Harry Price game that is original. Alright it's clearly Gauntlet but I mean with original code rather than nicked from another game like all his other games did, unless it turns out to be taken from a game that's MIA or an unknown covertape from Yugoslavia that is. But for now it's an original game, and maybe we're seeing why Mr. Price spent his career stealing other people's games for a living, because he couldn't write his own games for shit. This is absolutely dire. It looks dreadful, plays like arse and what is he meant to be saying when he dies? I thought Freedom Fighter by The Power House had bad speech, this is dreadful. I simply refuse to review his other "games" no matter how bad they were as doing so would endorse the work of a man who made a living stealing other people's programs, they shouldn't be treated like games so they are better off being ignored as if they don't exist, fuck him. But seeing that this looked at least original I felt it was worth a look, and now I wish I hadn't.
There were a lot of Frogger games on the Spectrum, this surely ranks as one of the worst. It's unresponsive and slow and even getting a solitary frog home is quite the challenge as there are times were even after landing on the log I still hit the water and died. And they were charging £7 for this atrocity too. ZX Incorporated only done two games, I don't even want to play their other game after playing this.
I had forgotten all about this game and the nice pretty music it had, but within a instant of playing it its slowness reminded me of why I forgot about it, and now I don't wish to remember it for another 15 years or so.
Very well programmed and looks great, it's just brutally difficult and too much so for me. I too have never ever got out of the Jungle level. If not for that this would deserve at least a 4.
It's an intriguing theme but not very eventful nor pleasant. The gameplay is clumsy and doesn't play as well as Combat School. They tried to make this feel difficult and I think realistic but it comes off as ineffective to me. Part 2 was never released because Cascade left without a trace and seemingly folded, or maybe it was because Part 1 was just crap.
This was certainly one of the first shooters on the Spectrum. It's not bad for its time but it's clustered with big smudges when you fire at enemies as well as lots of colour clash and this can interfere with the gameplay. But saying that, for 1982 this sure puts a lot of games released years later to shame.
This is another of the Spectrum's notoriously bad games and is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever. You are a spider that has to eat twelve butterflies in a minute to survive or the purple spider eater, aka Purple Pac-Man, will eat you. With the game's very poor detection in that you will most likely go through the butterflies rather than eat them you'd be lucky to eat one in a minute rather than twelve. I don't even think it's even possible to get twelve in a minute, the most I've ever got is five and Ashens on his livestream for Stand Up to Cancer on YouTube somehow managed seven. But this is a classic bad game that has to be played to believe it. The fact that this was even published let alone sold in shops is astonishing.
There have been many bad arcade ports on the Spectrum, this might be one of the worst. The music is nice, I'll give it that, but it plays nothing like the arcade game. It plays at a painfully slow frame rate, the keys are unresponsive and half the time I don't even know who has the ball or where the ball is. It's also hard on your ears as well as your eyes, what on earth is with the sound in this game. I'm not sure if Stephen Wood was the programmer or graphics artist or what he did with the game but the cassette inlay states it was programmed by Quixel, who also done Licence to Kill which was a very decent game, so for them to program this disaster a year later is astonishing! This has to be among the worst arcade conversions on any system let alone the Spectrum.
This was self-published by programmer/musician Tony "Tiny" Williams of Sound Images, presumably because no-one picked it up when he set it to people for evaluation, and one look of it will tell you why. The backgrounds are ugly, in the way of the whole screen and makes the whole thing just about as unplayable as you can get. It shouldn't get a 1, it shouldn't been deemed awful, but like Raphie said, if you can't see anything, what's the point? It's no wonder Tiny released this himself because no-one else wanted to. £8 for a game you can't see? Yeah, I'll pass thanks.
This could have been a very faithful Rainbow Islands clone but its slow scrolling spoils the majority of the fun. It makes the jumping very awkward and hard to anticipate your jumps to avoid the enemies off the screen. It's not bad looking at all really, it just plays a bit arse and it doesn't take long for you to prefer Rainbow Islands.
Pinball games are generally difficult to convert into a video game, but I haven't seen many play as bad and as confusing as this does. You literally have no control of anything whatsoever as the ball has a mind of its own and the key layout for the flippers is so confusing, it certainly took me a while to figure it out yet I was still highly confused by it. But I did get a great laugh at the game crashing after pressing 4 while trying to work out the controls, should have read The Dean's review first, You'd think with four flippers rather than two that this game would be easy, believe me, it's not, nor is it good either.
Want to play a tennis game where you will find it difficult to hit the ball? This one is for you. If you want to play a decent tennis game stay well away from this. All the horrible memories of this came back to me instantly. Abysmal!
The music at the beginning is fantastic and I equally share the curiosity of who it belongs to as no-one as yet is credited for it. For me it's likely to have been done by Jas C. Brooke but I would also suggest David Whittaker and Rob Hubbard but less likely, but then it could be someone completely different and one of the guys credited for this game. It's most likely though that we will never know who was responsible for the music. While the music is great, the game itself however, while a nice idea, is a clumsy one and doesn't work as well as it ought to. It's hard to grab the ball and even more difficult to control your shots properly as usually it'll just hit the edge and bounce straight back at you and kill you. Simply put, Breakout is better off being played with a bat and nothing else.
If this game is trying to imply that this is "impossible” then they weren't kidding. This would have been more enjoyable if I bought it back when I had patience, and I used up my patience a long time ago. But it does look nice and I am sure it can be good fun when you get the hang of it, and it's quite different as well so I will give it points for effort.
Jetman, 15 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
This game can be thankful that votes no longer count on World of Spectrum because it will forever avoid going into the worst games list, precisely where it belongs. You can't seem to shoot the "morf" at all and thus you can't progress in this game at all. I probably shouldn't knock these type-in games too much but when they play as bad this one does and you can't seem to make any progression in it how can you not?
This is a clone of the Namco arcade game Sky Kid, and it's not even close to being as fun as it as I found it very hard to control and easy to lose all of my lives. Not fun at all. Also shares the same music as Panic Dizzy.
A mediocre arcade game gets a surprising decent conversion. Admittedly they didn't really have a lot to work with here, the one hope I had was for this to be more playable and fun and it kind of is though it won't take long for boredom to kick in. But it's better than the arcade version so all due credit for that.
There isn't much to say about this one, except it's like Asteroids and it's crap. That's all there is to this really.
Programmed by Big Red Software in their pre-Code Masters days and let's just say better things were on the horizon for Big Red, because this isn't very good at all. It looks ugly and plays even uglier. I've never got far with this game, it makes it hard to believe these guys would later write much better games for Code Masters. We all start somewhere.
The cassette inlays boasts "a psychedelic experience" but it's nothing more than a pretty lackluster shooter to say the least. Not much charm, not much enjoyment, not much fun. And they were charging £9 for this as well, ouch.
The front cover of the inlay is very misleading and makes you think it's an alien shooter, but it's just a mere Breakout clone instead. And I have to say it's a pretty nice one. It certainly looks and plays a lot better than Arkanoid 2 did and that was four times the price of this. It plays at a good speed though it probably gets too fast at times and too frantic with multiple balls on the screen at once. There's also good music as well from Sound Images though I'm unsure if it was Tiny Williams or Paul Tonge, could well have been the latter. Definitely one of the better Breakout games on the Spectrum.
It certainly isn't the worst game in the world but the scrolling is a pain and the keyboard layout is awful. Best to use a joystick with this one.
This only seems to work with a joystick as the keys don't work for me. Even then this isn't worth playing at all. The jumping that your ball is supposed to do doesn't work half the time and it just keeps going and falls off. First level was simple enough but after that the game turns into a maze rather than a puzzle game and a confusing one at that. Definitely was not amused with this in the slightest.
There's only one, wait wrong Saracen. No not the UK Gladiator getting his own game but a pretty appalling game from US Gold and the developers that later became Tiertex. Given the low ratings for this I expected this to be among the worst games ever, however to be honest it wasn't as bad as I thought it was be but it's still pretty pitiful. The graphics in this look like this game was lost in 1984, it looks horrible for 1987. There's hardly any sound and the game just becomes a snorefest very quickly. And the writing on the wall sums up this game perfectly, as if we could be bothered to read these messages during the game anyway. Like level 4 reads "LOCK-IN THE SOLDIERS.", what? I also found it amusing that pressing R causes you to seemingly commit suicide as you lose a life for doing so. And US Gold were charging you £7.99 for this turd as well. So as it turns out, there's only one, and after playing this thank heavens for that.
I can't steer this bugger at all. I always spin no matter what I do. It also looks quite hideous too. I've played this five minutes and I've had enough already! Awful!
This is one of the those games that I wish I can like but can't find a way to. It's one of those that I feel would have been more enjoyable if I bought it back in the day. I just found this to be tedious and the slow movement of my man didn't help, especially upon realising the enemies were quicker than me. Bullets only go a small distance too but thankfully it's the same for them too. The game does contain fabulous music, incorrectly credited to David Whittaker in one of the magazine reviews which you can't even read anymore on WoS, these tunes are from Jas C. Brooke. I can see why people would like this game, it's just too bad I didn't.
This game was well received when it initially came out but it frankly never really appealed to me. I just found it to be boring fairly quickly and lost interest in it within the first few minutes.
This is based on the Sega arcade game Bank Panic, which is a pretty good arcade game, but sadly this doesn't play as well as the arcade version did. It can be good fun indeed but this version is very confusing in that I had a hard time determining which doors I was facing, something that wasn't a problem in the arcade version. It ain't bad really, but I didn't enjoy this as much as I hoped I would.
Xeno, 16 Nov 2017 (Rating: 4)
This is great fun and one of those I found myself to be addicted to, but it is hard to control at times and while I seem to be able to hit the post, he doesn't and his shots that look like hitting the post go in the goal. But flaws aside it's still a great little game to play if you're bored.
Yomp, 16 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
It's like Horace Goes Skiing except it's got mines instead of skis and it's shite. You have to get three men across the road but I don't think it's possible to get one man across. You can't move down with I suppose fits for Frogger but it doesn't fit here. This is just appalling and it's most likely worse than A'n'F's Frogger that I looked at recently and gave a 1, it's that bad.
Zolyx, 16 Nov 2017 (Rating: 4)
I loved Qix in the arcades and was pleasantly surprised to see this game cloning it, and it's quite nice actually. I would have loved this game back in the day if I bought it. So now I can finally play Qix on the Spectrum, and that makes me happy.
Not too bad, it certainly has the thrills as the arcade game did but the controls are a bugger. Megapede is a much better clone and it has better keys. If this allowed you to redefine your keys I'd enjoy this more, but instead I'll just stick to Megapede.
Have to say it, but this is better than Out Run, albeit slightly. It largely feels the same game and so both have the same issues and as such neither is great, but neither aren't so bad either. I feel that the turbo element of the game and that the game mostly didn't bother with routes made this feel like a proper racing game rather than driving through traffic. For that, I would give this one the nod over Out Run, just.
This is just an abomination of a game. Out Run and Turbo Out Run weren't great games but at least they weren't unbelievably shit unlike this game. For this to even bear the Out Run name is an insult to the franchise. And magazine reviews overhyped the hell out of this complete with fake screenshots with colour on them compared to the colourless crap we got instead, though you can't view magazine reviews on WoS anymore so you'll just have to take my word for it instead. The first two, whilst not great, at least are playable, this is not in any way. This is one of the worst games ever let alone on the Spectrum.
This is just a pretty bland racing game and I had difficulty progressing as the car kept breaking down on me. I'm sure the other versions are better, this one just isn't executed properly.
Afterburner is a great game, this port however is a little off. It's not the worst by any means, Activision done worse conversions than this, it's just not a lot of fun and it's more fun playing the arcade version, by a long way.
Ball Breaker is a game that looks a lot of fun and yet doesn't deliver. It is awkward, difficult and at times unplayable as you can easily lose all your lives very quickly and before you know it it's game over before it's begun. Not a patch on Arkanoid and Krakout.
Pretty much identical to Ball Breaker, even down to the faults and the music is exactly the same. Were they really that desperate to have to release virtually the same game twice?
According to Wikipedia, this was the very last game released on the Spectrum during its commercial heyday. It has some nice presentation to it and it has a great simulator feel to it with the customisable options you can make to your car. The graphics are mostly colourless but there's plenty of detail in the cars anyway to make up for it. All in all this is really good and it was a good way for the Spectrum to bow out of the commercial business. Gremlin could have been half-assed with their final release, but thankfully they weren't.
Football management games usually aren't great and this is a good example of that. Matches that don't feature your team are played anyway so you will spend more time watching needless matches rather than watching your own matches. And then for some reason you can only select the method and style of play for the home team, so if you play away you're picking them for your opponent's essentially but I imagine that's the fault of the code and you're picking them for you, at least I hope anyway. But the majority of football management games were boring, uneventful, unenjoyable and a bit crap, and this doesn't break that trend one bit.
So apparently in this game you have to save the galaxy by wandering around using velocity to move and walking on bouncy platforms to jump, picking up squares that add time, collecting bubbles to progress to the next level and then using your time to collect orbs in level 6. What a weird game, and given the author's other games were generally poor I'm surprised Atlantis even bothered with this.
Have to say I was disappointed with this. The car doesn't control very well and glitches and gets stuck from time to time. It looks great, but it doesn't exactly play that great.
A carbon copy of Super Sprint which was to be expected since the arcade game's the same. It has the very same control issues Super Sprint had and is thus equally, perhaps more unenjoyable than its predecessor. And while Super Sprint was re-released on Ocean's budget label The Hit Squad, Championship Sprint was re-released for budget by Alternative Software, that says it all.
I hate to be mean and disagree with the brothers Jordy and snekeel, but I felt this game had the same flaws as the Sprint games and more. When the cars are clustered together it's hard to identify your car as they are all the same colour, something that wasn't a problem in the Sprint games. Your car is determined by the icon above it, when they are close together it's hard to see it. Plus the cars tend to glitch up and lock into each other which can get into your way, and sometimes this can happen to you too. This should have been better than the Sprint games, but it ends up having the same existing flaws as well as new ones on top of it. It's a nifty game and quite enjoyable when your winning and well ahead of the rest, if not you'll struggle because of its flaws.
Amusing at first but then goes downhill pretty quickly when you realise dialogue makes no sense and communication is impossible and it just gives you random nonsensical responses or just the same ones repeated frequently, "don't I know it" being one he constantly gave me for instance. And then some of his responses aren't even in proper English anyway. Let's be honest and say it's not much of a game, it's a bit of a curious program at first before it becomes a redundant experience.
Beam and Melbourne House actually tried to do a wrestling game with the Way of the Exploding Fist engine. And you know what? It's shite. I found it pretty much impossible to do any of the moves in this game, I respect that such skill is required but no matter what I do he's able to do a move and I can't. At least the WWF from Ocean had a level of playability that made it enjoyable for amateur wrestling fans like me who hasn't seen a wrestling show since 1993, this did nothing for me. Even the wrestlers in the demo seem confused with what to do. Utter crap.
The opening "tune" is an ear wrencher for sure! This is meant to be a horse racing gambling game and they look more like dogs. It's simply a game of blind luck as you're betting on horses you know nothing about other than they are A, B, C, D, E and F, that's it. Just pick a letter, place and bet and they're off. And there's no photo finish either, instead when two horses finish together it's a "dead-heat" and the race is re-run, and one of them was my horse too, and in the re-run he finished last. But you can win, kind of. I had given up on the game and decided to blow whatever money I had left and even though player two's came second it won, player one was bankrupt and yet he won the overall game! Is the goal to lose all your money? So confusing! There were many games like this, a lot of them were better than this tripe too. This is such a badly written game, no wonder it was self-published.
Noah, 18 Nov 2017 (Rating: 1)
You'd be afraid to criticise such a game like this as you'd most likely be seen as an "antichrist" for doing so, and truth be told I'm atheist so that's the end of my discussion when it comes to religious beliefs. But let's not criticise a game for its concept, let's critique it for its gameplay, which is shit. Some of the food is pretty much impossible to get as it's directly next to a hazard that causes an apocalypse to happen. Guiding the animals to the ark is said to be a massive chore but I gave up on this game before I got to that part. If you're going to make a game based on something biblical at least make it playable unlike this.
This is quite good actually. It's playable, quite enjoyable and for 1983 you'd expect this to be worse than it is but it holds up quite nicely. It's difficult at first because there's no controls shows and WoS doesn't give you any so you are forced to learn them by yourself but once you do it can be a pretty pleasant game to play. The keys I learned to play best with are P for jump, L for fire, N for left and M for right. If you're here because you wish to complain about the controls I bet you're wishing you read this first. I also found it best not to jump on another platform unless it's necessary, for instance if the last enemy is only moving to the side and never to the centre you will have to move. Some of platforms are so narrow it makes moving to them pointless. That's why I don't give it a 4, otherwise this is pretty good and I enjoyed it.
I was so disappointed with this. It looks wonderful and it looked like something I could enjoy, sadly not the case. It's hard to shoot at the enemies and even harder to avoid them. Plus I encountered a bug where I dropped the blue key in mid-air and could not retrieve it again, making progression impossible. Argh what an absolute pity, I was really looking forward to playing this but as it turned out I may never play it again. Those gorgeous graphics deserve much better.
This isn't too bad actually. It plays quite nicely for its time and there's some enjoyment you can get out of it. But just like its energy the fun drains away after so long. But still, it ain't bad, especially for 1984.
Four game in one, air hockey, darts, ping pong and ten-pin bowling. Air hockey is quite good fun, it's fast and frantic but there's a tendency to score in your own goal rather than your opponent's goal. I won 12-5 and I think only 2 of them were actually goals, the rest were own goals. Darts is pretty bland with no sound during the game and I really don't like the throwing here with the angle and whatever is going on in the left, power? But it's really awkward and I struggled as a result. Plus you have a timer and if that runs out you can't throw any more in that game until it ends, I'm no darting expert but I'm certain there isn't a time limit. Ping Pong is similar maybe too similar to Imagine's Ping Pong game. You can set the paddle control to automatic so you can focus on hitting the ball which kind of defeats the purpose of a ping pong game but at the same time it makes it much easier for me as moving the paddle was a nightmare. Bowling has the ugliest graphics of them all and the most complicated to play. I kept fouling no matter what I did until I determine that you had to press fire at the last moment before he releases the ball, but even then I still got my arse kicked. This could have been a cracking program if the games weren't so complicated and the lack of instructions don't help. Only air hockey seemed to stand out for me, the other three didn't quite cut it, especially the darts game.
American Football games are always going to be difficult to convert, that's why a lot of them weren't very good, this one being among the worst offenders of them all. Not only does it play bad it looks nasty too and looking at the other ports this by far seems to be the worst one. The fact that every tackle reads as a "sack", which only occurs when you tackle the quarterback if he still has the ball, makes this game less of a simulator and more like a game written by non-educated numpties. I've never ever played the arcade version so I can't compare it, but I can already assume that plays better than this. The credits for the coding appear to read U.W. and Fred, perhaps they preferred to remain unknown, who can blame them after this dong.
I found myself greatly confused with this game, but it's from the same writers of Out Run so I suppose I should have expected this to be not great. It's fast I'll give it that but you're just driving endlessly in the hope of not hitting anything and that's tricky at the speed you're going at, and then I lose a life when I hit nothing. So confusing. It tries to be like Deathchase, the problem though is Deathchase is a much better game. It's not terrible, just too confusing for my taste.
This is a pretty nice shooter. It's smooth, responsive and looks pretty good too. I never played the arcade game let alone this so I wasn't sure what I was in for, but I was pretty pleased with this all round.
It's not a terrible game, it just isn't much fun and its sound will drive you mental.
This is largely just another of those tedious, snorefest football management game but you don't even know which position the players are so squad selection is random. That's just poor and amateurish and that ultimately swayed my decision to give this a 1 rather than a 2.
This is just a bog-standard game where you wander around a maze shooting enemies and using up most of your ammo to kill just one of them. After that it's a survival mission that you'll seemingly never win. What's the point then?
The animation is among the best I've seen on a Spectrum game and while the gameplay was slow it was very enjoyable and good fun. I couldn't decide whether to give it a 3 or a 4 but I eventually felt that for the fun I had with it and the pretty animation I had to give it a 4.
This isn't pretty playable really. Too much happens at one and it won't take long before you lose your energy and your game is over. After about 7 minutes of this you'll be left wondering what you did with your life.
Much preferring Pi-Balled. This is slower, more awkward and less fun, no hold on my mistake it's no fun. I may struggle to find a better Q*Bert game than Pi-Balled, and I may struggle to find a worse Q*Bert game than this.
This is one of the worst isometric games I've ever played. The main problem is that so many things get in the way of the screen and it's very hard to see where you're going and even harder to see any enemies. No wonder it was crap label Pirate Software who published this turd, because no one else would have.
The easy game is exactly that, easy for the children to play and get into while you do tasks as Thomas. The normal game is more challenging or perhaps a bit unplayable. Other trains appear from out of nowhere to hit you and then you crash for "going too fast" even though you are pushed for time. The easy game is probably too easy, but at least you'll get a game from it, unlike the normal game.
This wasn't that bad a game and I managed to get to 50% in it, but the screen layouts are very confusing. You enter the next screen by going right and then you have to go left, meaning if you're pressing down on right you'll instantly shoot back to the previous screen. This game also possesses some of the weirdest looking enemies. Sausages dressed as police officers? Mr. Potato Head with glasses? Dizzy carrying a pitchfork? Very bizarre.
This is one of those games that starts out great and then gets boring quickly. It's definitely an advanced program especially for a BASIC game, like when no two races are the same and nothing is random for instance. It's very clever, it's too bad there isn't a lot of enjoyment in it in the long run. Also it's worth playing this with Currah Microspeech to remind us of how awful it was.
Cluedo, 20 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Cluedo is a game that never really caught onto me and playing this game doesn't help in the slightest. They actually achieved in making this less fun than the real thing.
It's not really a game but a mere novelty, and a legendary one at that. For its purpose of being a joke I would feel harsh giving it a 1, so I will be lenient and say 2 is enough.
This is like Bomb Jack and we know that was one of the finest games on the Spectrum and one of the best arcade conversions ever, this though is a bit naff really. It was never going to top Bomb Jack but it isn't even a decent clone either. The movement is far less fluid and while it doesn't look the worse it's still quite shoddy in comparison to Bomb Jack. But it is at least better than Bomb Jack II so it at least achieves something.
This is proof that Out Run was a shoddy port. Here you can drive the red car you're supposed to be driving in Out Run, well okay that was a Ferrari and this is a Chevrolet but still it's red and there was no excuse for the Out Run programmers not to have us drive a red Ferrari other than they were too lazy to do so. This has the look, feel and enjoyment Out Run lacks. This does have the same problem most racing games have in that boredom will kick in with the same stuff happening but it's still a most enjoyable racing game and it's much better than the Out Run games by a considerable margin.
This game is called exactly what it is, it's a Brainache. The screen shakes constantly during the game and it annoys the heck out of me in the process. Some of the sound is pretty dreadful too. This isn't a very resounding Code Masters release to say the least.
The idea of the game seems to be that you collect hearts but I haven't progressed far enough in this determine that. The enemies are quite hard to navigate past and you stand more chance of dying than progressing.
Well this is something I was not expecting to be decent. It's a confusing game at first but once you realise what you can do you can go places in this a bit. You simply go around collect coins and later money bags, you have use the chutes or pipes to go up platforms, walk past the coloured beams when they disappear, then you have to let a blue drop fall on you so that you lose your head in order to fit in the gap and finish the level. It's written in BASIC so don't expect this to set the world alight, he moves very slowly for a start, but it plays alright and is quite decent, which is not what I expected.
This is likely one of Martech's final game before becoming Screen 7, and it is far for their best. The idea is nice but quickly gets repetitive and the frequent wobbly cursor serves as a major annoyance. It was likely done to add to the difficulty of the game but it makes it look more like Billy The Kid was drinking heavily at the saloon before he went out shooting people. Drunken Cowboy Simulator? I don't know.
This turned out to be quite a simple game that I ended up finishing in my first time playing the game, albeit on skill level 1, but still I usually don't finish the game on the lowest difficulty but here I managed it. It's quite a fun little game actually, quite repetitive yes but it was enjoyable nevertheless. I would have quite liked this back in the day if I bought it in fact.
My 500th review as it turns out. A lot of Donkey Kong games on the Spectrum were bad, this being one of them. The jump key is unresponsive and you seem to have infinite lives as you can die and die and die again, which defeats the purpose of being a game frankly. Not sure what the Kong is trying to be as well, looks more like a yeti.
This is such a tedious game and can get boring within the first few seconds. There is also a duplicate game called Slap-Slop that is exactly the same the same rather than a separate entry, possibly self-published by the author before it made it to Sinclair User perhaps? Not sure, all I know is that this game is like watching paint dry.
First off this isn't a 16K as loading this in 16K crashes it, load in 48K instead. Second, I am not sure what exactly needs to be done to prevent the earth from being "distroyed", it seems like the level ends randomly and I managed to complete this even on professional skill. And third, and most importantly, this is rubbish. The ship is very sensitive which makes hitting an enemy a matter of luck. And this was close to £7 too. £7 for a game you can effectively finish in around five minutes, I will be swift and to the point and say it wasn't worth it.
This was one of the first Pac-Man clones to get a commercial release on the Spectrum and it's definitely one of the better ones. It plays well and is very responsive, even if it doesn't look anything Pac-Man like. A lot of these clones were very primitive but this is very playable and enjoyable.
This is not great, at all. The controls are difficult, it's hard to work out what you're supposed to be doing in the beginner and it's just poorly programmed in the end. The second part was a nightmare and so I stopped playing at that point. The ending if you fail to survive the blast gave me a chuckle though. "That'll teach you for voting for Thatcher!"
I have never even heard of the arcade game this is based on let alone played it, but this is pretty decent actually. It's a game you definitely need patience for especially in later levels and I don't have much nowadays, plus the constant sound that plays during the game will hurt your head as you wait to make your move. The movement's a little wonky but it's quite a nice game, much better than I anticipated anyway.
It's not a terrible game, it's just difficult and the controls are a bit off. You have to be quick of your movement as you have to collect all the apples within the time limit, and sometimes the Spectrum can't respond quick enough so it misses an input. It looks alright, it just wasn't fun.
This is based on the arcade game Scramble and I like Scramble, it's a nice game, so I was looking forward to playing this and I'm left feeling a bit flat. It's difficult, the problem is your movement, it's too easy crash. Also, sector 4 looked horrendous though that could be down to emulation but it seems like it was too advanced for 16K to cope with, because it was a mess when scrolling. So it's ok but it wasn't as good as I'd hope it would be and that disappoints me.
I am really disappointed. I was hoping I was going to enjoy this game and I didn't. Moving left and right is a pain because of the tilt your ship does. It makes shooting the enemies much harder than it needs to be. I saw the screenshot, I saw the good scores, I felt this would be a great, fun little game to play, it's not. What a disappointment.
I struggled to get to grips with this. Maybe it might have been more fun if I played it back in the day.
It's from the same company that brought Noah which I reviewed earlier, and while it's more playable than Noah it's still not very good. The jumping is terrible, he will only jump the direction he is facing, so you can't face right and then jump left, that element is non-existent here, which for a platformer is pretty dumb. I made a comment to myself that is feels like Manic Miner with the music and all where it doesn't actually look like it, but when I died I got splatted like in Manic Miner, so I guess it's similar after all then.
I believe this may have been one of the first 128K games on the Spectrum, or certainly one of the first to be released with its own separate 128K version. I honestly wonder why this game was among the first, because it's a disaster! It was initially sent to Mikro-Gen who dismissed it as being to difficult to control, and they were right. Controlling this is an utter nightmare, it's so difficult to hit him and yet your opponent finds hitting you a breeze. This is like Barbarian which wasn't that great a game and only best known for chopping your opponent's head off, but that is a far, far, far, far, far better game than whatever this was supposed to be. No wonder Mikro-Gen rejected it, and when you come to think of it it's no wonder Domark accepted it, they'd accept anything regardless of quality, give them a wanking simulator and they'd still release it, especially after releasing this uncontrollable nonce.
I do like a good pool game and this has 6 modes to play, so things were looking up for it already. However, I was left feeling very underwhelmed by this. The balls move very slowly around the table which makes the whole thing a bore very quickly. And now I don't want to play any of the other modes now.
Impact, 22 Nov 2017 (Rating: 4)
I have to say I was impressed with this Breakout clone. It does look somewhat primitive for 1988 standards and certainly for something costing £10, but the gameplay is very solid and I certainly enjoyed this much more than Arkanoid 2. This is a very worthy and perfectly acceptable clone, and it comes with a level designer too. Very impressive.
Jawz, 22 Nov 2017 (Rating: 3)
A nice old shooter that's simple to play once you get used to how the game works. It's quite repetitive and it probably won't hold for your attention for more than one go but it's still quite a nice little game to play and I had much more joy in this than I did with Jaws.
I played this back in the day, it was shit, and 30 years later not much has changed. This is the only game Paul Gomm is credited with, three minutes of this and you'll see why.
One of the most notoriously bad games ever released on the Spectrum. This has some of the worst graphics on any game ever, what are you supposed to be? A cop? What the enemies supposed to be? They look like either indians or tribal warriors? Pretty sure they were meant to be terrorists. And the gameplay is just bad, it seems like you're meant to walk up the screen but yet there's hardly any progress to this at all. This is the same developer who brought us Uchi Mata and the same label that brought us Cage Match a year later, so in retrospect this was gonna be shit and it truly is.
Pretty nice graphics to this one but it's frankly unplayable. I can never determine the right speed with this thing and the lack of instructions don't help. Also, no sound adds to the dull experience.
The first part was half-decent at least, the rest of it is frankly garbage, especially with his awful jump. Third level is also very slow and jerky and that's all I've got to. If it was just the first part alone this could have been a fairly ok-ish arcade game but instead it's a very rubbish platform game.
Orion, 22 Nov 2017 (Rating: 4)
I wish I played this game sooner to be honest, because it's really good. It can be a challenge at first because you don't know or understand what you're meant to be doing but once you get used to it it can be a very enjoyable game. Every game I played I got better and better as well. This is perfectly acceptable.
Podder, 22 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Written by Greg Holmes in his pre-Gremlin days, I found this to be underwhelming. The graphics are up there with Greg's other games which is no surprise, but the gameplay was lacking for me somewhat. Maybe if I was younger and had more patience I'd enjoy this more.
I think I may have played the arcade version once but I don't remember it too well, but I don't think it looked this crappy, or played as easy too. I was able to complete all 15 levels even after dying so many times during the game, and that kind of defeats the purpose of being a game doesn't it?
I didn't find much enjoyment with this one. It just feels empty from the off and never improves. Even the music from Tiny Williams is weak compared to his other stuff. The graphics are not bad actually and the huge sprites are quite an achievement, it's just too bad there isn't really a game to go with them.
This attempts to be something like 720° and succeeds by being even more shit. The controls are a mess and for that I didn't get far in this at all. At least 720° had some gameplay to it, though it was bad, this has even less and is much less enjoyable as a result. The music is appalling too and when it's game over the in-game tune sticks on a note which then plays alongside the title music, my ears will never be the same again.
It looks good but indeed it's frantic and probably too frantic for my taste. Getting stuck didn't help matters much either.
This actually would have been a pretty nice game if not for the horrible scrolling and unresponsive controls. The gameplay is simple enough to pick up as you go along but the flaws spoil the enjoyment. The price for this is unknown but given the other two Streetwise games were over £7 I reckon this would have been around the same price range of £7 or £8 and it wouldn't have been worth it. But this wasn't too bad really and was certainly more enjoyable than some of the stuff I've played recently, but overall it was a disappointment.
This was Computer Magic's only game, and this game shows exactly why. The game is a nightmare and is not fun at all. You can get trapped to the point of no return when a rock blocks all your paths and touching them spells instant death. And they were charging £8 for this as well. No wonder it was their only game.
Bug-Byte's final game and it wasn't a good way to go out. The idea is good but the game itself doesn't play that way. I found controlling my canoe to be a bastard, which I will blame on my ineptitude but it still doesn't make this an enjoyable game. I have a feeling games like this have been done better.
Well at least it's sort of a game but it's far too tedious to take seriously.
Yeti, 22 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
It's like Exolon except it's shit. I wouldn't say it's a "pirate" job, it's simply a game that takes inspirations from Exolon, but while it sort of achieves that in looks it certainly doesn't in its execution.
Zoot, 22 Nov 2017 (Rating: 2)
Too complex for my liking. The first screen was fine, punch all the enemies and move down when all are eliminated, okay good so far. Then after doing the same to the Bodkins in level 2 I was told to try again. I learned after that you have to trap them all instead, and I can't work it out, and so this is no longer fun. It looked promising but ultimately falls flat.
Too slow, tedious, boring, montonous and dull to be taken seriously as a game, especially one costing you money anyway. The original price is unknown but I reckon CRL would have charged around £8-£10 for this dong. The best bit though is on the instructions when it reads "Distributed by Electronic Arts", now what happened to those guys I wonder?
I'm just going to say this is not one of Topo Soft's best games. It doesn't play well at all. I agree the audience representing as lives is nice and unique but it's too bad nothing else within the game stands out.
Lost interest in this very quickly. You just climb ladders, go through doors, get lost, that's it. Ain't my kind of game frankly.
Snake is a great time filler and this is pretty alright for what it is. But the keys are a bit unresponsive which kills some of its fun frankly, if not for that this would easily have got a 4.
No not THAT Matt Lucas! But seriously I don't normally do text adventures but I saw this on the Sinclair Randomseek on WoS and I thought it was worth a look because of its name alone which I found hilarious, being British and all of course, if you're Spanish, or Italian, or Senegalese then you wouldn't have a clue. So you are Matt Lucas, not the comedian of Little Britain fame but a Florida Detective. This isn't my kind of game and it isn't helped by the dodgy text which made it difficult to read, but it does have some good humour to it, like when you try to take the car for instance. But I have a feeling there are better looking text adventures than this, ones with clearer looking text for instance.
Not bad for one go but after that boredom kicks in hard. It ain't good for something costing £5.50 anyway.
It's another Barry Jones games, and I have to say it didn't take me very long to prefer Hit-Man. At least that had some gameplay which this has little and at least that had some thrills where this has none. Here you're just wondering around looking for pubs and money dropped on the floor to spend on pints. Walk into anything in the way, cars, cats or into the wrong house so many times and you're arrested for being drunk and disorderly even if you've not drunken anything. Not a resounding game at all. I want to play Hit-Man again after this.
I wasn't impressed with this. His big sprite and high jump make it difficult to avoid the enemies. It looks nice but frankly it plays a bit crap.
This starts off like an amusing program as I like these kind of games, but it doesn't take long till it dries up and you realise there are better games of this nature.
There's a certain level of charm with this game. Writing a song with hilariously non-sensical lyrics and live performance highlights are what made this stand out for me. It's just too bad that amusement doesn't last much longer when you are seemingly destined for failure and bankruptcy. Best to play this with saved states so that if you mess up you can just load back the save and continue from there, effectively cheating but at least you can see more of the game that way.
Again, starts out amusing and then fizzles out in the long run. This could have been a superb title for Code Masters but it's repetitive and drawn out rather than amusing and cheerful.
WhenIWasCruel looked at this game recently and I felt duly inclined to have a look at it, and wow it's appalling. I didn't expect this to be good but I'm honestly taken aback by how pitiful this turned out. It's supposed to be based on the arcade game Tekhan World Cup, I haven't played it in a long time but I have a feeling that was a far far far better game than what this was supposed to be. It's pretty slow, it's hard to move your players, the ball gets taken from you any chance it gets and three massive flaws took place during my games. The first was the opposing keeper saved my shot and caught the ball, he then kicked it away but the whistle blew and suddenly he has the ball again and kicks it away again, very strange. Then, the opposing player shoots the ball and it goes into the corner of the goal but it calls for a goal kick instead, it was a goal and I should be 2-0 down but I'm not. Then moments later my goalie disappears off the face of the earth giving them an open goal and I'm 2-0 down anyway. Absolute rubbish and this has quickly become one of the very worst football games on the Spectrum in my eyes.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, American Football games were tough to convert but after this I'm just going to go ahead and say it doesn't work on the Spectrum at all. I thought Cyberball was bad but this and Quarterback make Cyberball look like the greatest thing on earth, because Quarterback was bad and this is even worse!
As this game was clearly ripping off Postman Pat you wonder how they managed to get away with this? But anyway this is simply dire. The keys are very unresponsive and poor Pat is often left stuck as an enemy comes towards him. Let's just say the official Postman Pat games are better.
Simply put this joins the long list of unflattering and tediously boring football manager games. Your team stats are low to begin with and everyone else's is much higher, meaning you will certainly lose all your matches unless you sign better players, problem is you don't have enough money so you're forced to sign 16 year old apprentices instead who are worse than what you have already. The little highlight during the game is quite nice as most games had none, especially if your attacking because you get the chance to shoot and score a goal but these chances are largely few and far between and it won't take long before boredom sinks in.
I supposed this would be a good game if you're religious and know your biblical stuff, but as I said in Noah I am atheist and so I suck at this game as a result. But at least it's a game you can get into and enjoy as long as you have some kind of knowledge, unlike Noah which was mostly unplayable. I did find it very amusing that he walks up the stairs to get the key and when he gets one he leaps down the stairs like it's Christmas Day morning.
There's not much you can say about this really. It's really Breakout and it's alright for what it is. Of course there are better games of this type as many clones were written after 1982 and many had vastly better technical capabilities compared to this. However, there were also a lot poorer Breakout games written after 1982, and so we can appreciate this game's efforts and respect its nostalgia as a result.
You move quite fast, too fast maybe, which makes controlling a nightmare. The idea is good, it's just too bad the gameplay isn't executed well enough to make it work.
Another Barry Jones game, and while it's better and more playable than Happy Hour it still isn't a great game. It's good for one go and then after that it will probably be left untouched.
I will put this into the category of it would have been much better if I played it sooner. It looks and feels very impressive for 1983 so much credit there for that, you just need patience for it and I don't have that so it doesn't meet my tastes.
Simply put there are better Atlantis games than this and better Breakout games than this, Thro' the Wall from 1982 being one of them. This is pretty much Krakout but with no fun in it.
Given the average score on WoS is so low and combined with the two 1 reviews here I anticipated this to be bad but good lord I didn't expect this to be such the turd it turned out to be. Your man is so very, very slow, like if you told him to jog to the shop across the street to get some milk and a newspaper it would take him a week he's that slow. And the enemies are just as bad as they jerk and stutter across the screen. The fire key is unresponsive as well and when you get to shoot the balls later on you do not have enough time to react to them all because you are both slow and unresponsive. This is one badly programmed game and it's no wonder the scores are so low for it. And Chris Jenkins of Sinclair User gave this game 6 out of 10?! Words fail me.
These gambling type games will largely depend on your taste for them. I don't play them in real life but I do like a good gambling game, it's just too bad I've played many better ones compared to this. It's very slow paced and so it'll become a chore quite quickly. There are video poker games that look and play at lot better than this, especially when this game has a problem determining what colour it's cards should be. Right now I have a 2 of Hearts which is just black with a smudging of red on the middle and a Queen of Hearts which is entirely black where it should be red, which makes reading a flush all that more needlessly difficult. I will fold on this game thank you very much.
This is one of those dungeon crawler games where you enter the number of the chamber or room you wish to go. I played another game of this not long ago called Black Dwarf's Lair which was in 16K and released two years earlier, and I have to say that was a better game than this. This just feels random and didn't have the same level of amusement that Black Dwarf's Lair had. I gave that game a 2 but playing this makes me reconsider that choice, because this is bland and unenjoyable compared to it. But I suppose the deaths are amusing which is saying something about this game.
This is quite challenging and makes your brain work, so I suppose it achieves what it was set out to do. After three games you'll find yourself bored and wanting to either play something else or rest your head but it's nice for what it is, it's an amusing game nevertheless.
This isn't a great Golf game at all but at least it's more of the simulator than Code Masters' shambolic "Pro Golf Simulator".
Odd racing game really with a very confusing track. Somehow I won the first race without knowing where I was going, then in the second race some of the hazards that cause damage to your car are difficult, perhaps even impossible to avoid. I get trying to be different but at least be playable whilst doing it, because this pretty much isn't.
This on gameplay terms is one of the better football games on the Spectrum, but its flaws and horrible graphics are enough to discredit the game for what it is. Scoring a goal is random and down to luck. Your ball could aim for the post yet still go in, the ball could go past the goalie yet he'd save it, the ball could smack the goalie yet still go in, it's down to luck which kills the game's fun for me. I also never got on with the fact that you could only score when close to the goal and the screen changes, never fancied that at all. And while this isn't the worst in terms of its gameplay it sure is one of the ugliest.
Compared to Arcadia this is pretty poor with its plain look and terrible hit detection.
I'm not too familiar with the arcade version but I have to say this was pretty nice to play. It's smooth and pretty enjoyable to play plus it has some nice music in this as well which I am sure is taken from the arcade version. So in all I say it's thumbs up from me because this is pretty good stuff.
This isn't very good because it's quite hard to shoot anybody in this game. Plus you can lose all your lives for the shooter yet still continue for the driver until he loses his lives, which it effectively becomes a survival game, good luck with that. I'm struggling to determine whether this or Chicago's 30 was the poorer Topo Soft game, because both are pretty bad.
How funny is it that we have gone from the hand-selected Wells and Fargo to the randomly selected Welltris, thanks Randomseek. I thought Tetris on the Spectrum was bad, this is far far worse. It looks horrible, there's hardly any sound, I had a hard time getting used to the keys and everything is just so confusing in the process. To sum this game up, the two most interesting parts of it aren't in-game related. The first is the copy-protection scheme which showed you a flag represented in the old Soviet Union and you had to answer a question based on that flag, example what is its capital. The second is the dancers on the title screen, in which I have no idea as it what it's purpose is being there. Haven't a clue, don't know what it's all about and it doesn't fit into the game, and yet I find it amusing, too bad the game itself isn't amusing at all, it's dire. Welltris as far as I remember wasn't a bad game, this is just a horrible port.
I found this very hard to play and get into personally but it is at least a better attempt at a volleyball game than Bump, Set, Strike, certainly more realistic. I just find it hard to justify £9 for this.
I'm not familiar with the arcade game so I can't compare the two. This doesn't play too badly but I found myself in a problem where have the weapons don't work for you and you're better off punching them instead. But it's certainly a far better Sega arcade conversion than US Gold and Tiertex's god awful Bonanza Bros conversion three years later.
This isn't a bad football management game really. Unlike some of the others I've played I was able to get into this quickly and found myself enjoying this much more as a result.
Have to be honest, I didn't hope for much when I saw this, but I was getting into this somewhat before I found myself being doomed to my demise. The bat told me there was no escape and it had to be right because there wasn't. I really didn't like how you were constantly interrupted during the game with the text on the screen. It tries to be the Dizzy games but with those you did an action most of the time for the text to appear, here it appears randomly and it annoyed me. But it wasn't all bad really, certainly a lot better than I figured it would be.
It plays alright but it's simply Pac-Man with no sound, which isn't very exciting.
Nothing to see here except it's another horrible Capcom conversion from Tiertex. Horrible graphics that flicker when you go slow and yet when you go fast it's unplayable. Absolute rubbish.
It's certainly presented nicely but I couldn't hit the ball at all. I suppose if I had this back it the day I would have been able to do it and probably enjoy it, because I wasn't able to here.
Kljuc, 01 Dec 2017 (Rating: 1)
This was looked at recently by WhenIWasCruel and coincidently this game came up on Sinclair Randomseek, and so therefore I decided to take a look, and I have to say I think you were right Mr. Cruel. The chap's jumping is very annoying, he jumps very high yet has a hard time jumping over enemies. Plus, he doesn't seem to want to jump through gaps, if so what's the point of telling us to go up in to progress to the next screen if he can't jump through a gap onto a platform in order to progress? And this was a commercial release, and so I feel sorry for any Yugoslavian who purchased this game because it would have been a complete waste of money. If you look at Suzy Soft's softography you can see that they were a pretty well respected publisher with a number of games received highly by WoS users, but this game is not and we can see why. And if you look at the author you can see that this is the only game he's credited for, and we can see why.
Sub-par Tron-style game with the world's dumbest Artificial Intelligence. One go of this was enough.
This was written by the same fella that done the horrible Hercules: Slayers of the Damned game so I wasn't feeling very high on this one at all and those fears were realised pretty much instantly. This was supposed to simulator Western films?
This is probably one of the most underwhelming games I have ever played and probably one of the worst D&H release. They should have just stuck with football managers, none of them were very exciting but at least they were better than this by a mile.
Written by the same author of the dreadful Rollaround so I wasn't expecting much at all with this, and I was right. Mind you it is a better game than Rollaround but it's still not great as moving my ship was a hassle and everything seems to be random for me. Five minutes was all I could take of this and then it's time to play something better.
Ed-On, 02 Dec 2017 (Rating: 2)
The controls are very confusing. You would think that up is accelerate and left and right moves your car to the different lanes of the track, wrong. The controls are determined with which way you are facing, so if you are facing right you have to press up to change lanes, not left. I can't get on with that at all. Maybe it was like that in the original game but I haven't played it, if so I never wish to play another Head-On clone again.
Virus, 03 Dec 2017 (Rating: 2)
This was a bitch to control and I got nowhere in it. Shame because I was hoping this would be something I could enjoy.
I didn't enjoy this one. I found the constant noise irritating and the movement around the screen to be a pain. Sorry Astronut but I was not impressed.
Some of Brian Cross' games are pretty decent but this isn't near one of them. It doesn't look good and it plays horribly. Even at £1.99 this would have felt like a waste of money if I bought it.
This is a bit like Star Wars in a way, except it's 20 times less fun.
The Shaw Brothers had some pretty good games on the Spectrum, this one is probably one of their worst. I struggle to get past the first event where you have to do 5 pump-ups, he moves so slowly anyway so what chance have you got? A number of their games were picked up by Atlantis Software but there was no chance they were publishing this one.
Another racing game from Chevy Chase's Nigel Speight and it's another good one and way more fun than Out Run was supposed to be, in fact I'm willing to put this even ahead of Chevy Chase because of the view and the smaller car which makes it easier to manoeuvre your car. But both are really good racing games worth checking out. And you paid far less money for this and Chevy Chase compared to Out Run as well.
Doesn't look too bad but poor hit detection ruins the fun in this one.
Nice music and nice graphics but it's too slow and confusing to take seriously and enjoy. After about three minutes I felt I was done with it because nothing was happening, then you suddenly find a way to turn the other way and flying rocks much quicker than me flew towards me and killed me instantly. That's the end of that game then.
At least it's a proper pop quiz unlike Mike Read's Pop Quiz which was just Question of Sport with a music theme. The anagrams you might get alright but identifying the tunes played quickly on beep I found to be impossible. Might be worth a go for curiosity's sake.
Basket, 03 Dec 2017 (Rating: 1)
This game ought to thank its lucky stars votes no longer count on World of Spectrum, because with only 3 votes it doesn't count for its worst games list, precisely where it belongs. How did this get a commercial release in Spain?
For the third time I have gone from A-Z and hand-picked one game from each to review and this may be the last time I do this as picking a game from Q, X, Y and Z just gets harder and harder every time. And as usual I start off with a game that begins with a number lol. The main character looks similar to the one on Nifty Lifty but I've gotta say that's a far better game. Here the action is slow and pretty clumsy. I always seem to run into the bird that sends you back to the start and also found my man to jump automatically and continuously at one point, making me think it was a stuck key on my keyboard, but it wasn't, it was actually the game. I was not impressed with 1994 at all.
Artura, 04 Dec 2017 (Rating: 2)
This is not the best Gremlin game at all. It plays badly, doesn't look as nice as some of Gremlin's other games and no sound adds to the boredom. I'll stick to Gremlin's earlier titles over this.
This actually isn't bad, it's colourful and plays fine, by far the best game I've played so far today by a long way. But my problem is it plays suspiciously similar to Code Masters' Tarzan Goes Ape, which I have played but haven't reviewed yet, and that was released a year earlier. So it's not the most original game and seems to nick ideas from an existing game, but it's still pretty playable nevertheless.
Speaking of Code Masters, here's a game from them that I had hardly played up to now. This is like Bomb Jack except less fun and slower. The jumping is a pain and so is jumping straight into an off-screen enemy you couldn't see. It also has the same corrupted speech as 750cc Grand Prix which I reviewed a few weeks ago but loading the game on +2A or +3 mode let's you hear the actual speech. The music is very good but it's not enough to save this from being a disappointing WASP title for Code Masters.
This is probably one of the most monotonous games of my life. Nothing makes sense, everything moves so slowly and the game becomes a bore very very VERY quickly. If the attempt was to create a suspenseful adventure type game then it failed spectacularly.
Eights, 05 Dec 2017 (Rating: 4)
I remember playing this a long time ago and loved it. It's a great game of strategy and brainpower and I always found this to be most enjoyable.
It's fast and frantic but it's also difficult and also not very good. No matter what the enemies seem to make their way to the bottom anyway even after firing at them and there seems to be no end to you "starting wave". It's not the worst 16K shooter but it's far from the best.
I don't actually think I had ever played the Spectrum version before until now. It's just as difficult as its predecessor Ghost 'n' Goblins but that looked the better game to me, its graphics being nicer for instance. The music is wonderful, everything else is just off to me. Much preferring the previous game.
Unlike Street Cred this is definitely more like a Shaw Brothers game. It looks nice and plays nicely too, I instantly got into this and was enjoying it until the Warlock got me twice. But I will definitely play this again.
This isn't popular on World of Spectrum and was poorly received by Crash magazine saying it was plain and boring, and I have to agree. There's a lot of better shooters than this, this gets dull from the minute you start playing.
I wasn't expecting this to be as good as Jonah Barrington Squash, but it might have just pipped it in fact. I unsurprisingly struggled at first but I soon got used to the controls and was doing much better, I actually had a 6-2 lead in my second game before I blew it and lost. It's much more advanced than Jonah Barrington which you'd expect from a 128K game released six years after and is an accurate squash simulator in my eyes. Both this and Jonah Barrington are very good representations of Squash, but which is the better game? It is hard to tell but I will give this the slight edge.
This is like Galaga but 10 times less fun and about 50 times uglier. But it is a million times better than Reaktor's other shooter Out of this World as it has some level of playability to it where Out of this World had pretty much none, plus this was only costing you £4 where OotW was charging you double that. But neither are great games and not worth your time.
Four games in one - Blackjack, Craps, Baccarat (misspelt Bacarrat) and Roulette. Only Blackjack appealed to me, everything else seems too random to get into. Also there's zero sound in this one at all, what is it with Zeppelin games and no sound? I think it's safe to say there's better casino games than this one.
What could be said about Man Hunt? I get its simplicity but it doesn't play well at all, especially when the enemies fall down what appears to be hidden holes at random, unless that's in the instructions but they are another victim of World of Spectrum's issues as they don't load. It looks like a game written in BASIC but I can't break into it so most likely it wasn't. It's frankly up there with Butterfly in how ridiculous it is that this was commercially released and for the price of £6.95. And this was Omen Software's only game, I think I know why.
This wasn't bad but doesn't play as straightforward as other management games do. British Lowland for instance I found was much more enjoyable compared to this. I was pretty disappointed with how this one turned out as I like these type of games, but this one did nothing for me.
This is dreadful. I will honestly struggle to find a worse Olympics-type game than this one. It looks crap and plays crap, it's basically crap. I gave up after the shot putt.
This was a game I could never understand and had never played the Spectrum version as a result. But now I have finally worked out what to do in Pipe Mania after all these years! I imagine other versions are better but this is still nice enough, especially compared to some of Bedrock's other games.
This is okay for what it is but it won't keep you interested for very long, it certainly didn't for me.
If you thought controlling your car in Super Sprint and Championship Sprint was bad wait till you see how this game handles. It's literally uncontrollable. The steering is so sensitive and as a result you will most likely crash constantly. The Sprint games are a masterpiece compared to this rubbish.
I'm terrible at this game but it is well programmed and I don't recall playing a better snooker game than this one. Much more fun with two players rather than yourself as you can't play against the computer.
I was confused as hell with this at the start but once I realised what I was meant to be doing I got into it. It's a fun little game that I can play time after time again if I wanted to. But if you read bkelly's review, that's the author of this game who states he wasn't paid a penny for this. The rotten bastards.
Gotta be honest, I wasn't impressed. These type of games won't please everyone and this one didn't please me. It looks lovely, but the gameplay simply did nothing for me. I'm certain if I played this back then I'd like this more.
This comes from the same company that published Cosmik Pirate that made no sense whatever. You have to move the letter of Vanquisher around the puzzle and up to the top so that it reads Vanquisher. Sounds alright but it's slow paced and so by the time you've worked out some degree of tactics your patience will run out, or mine certainly did. And you paid £5.95 for this as well.
This was shaping up to be a nice little game but once I got to the part with the conveyor belts the fun was sapped away from me. It became far too confusing for my liking. It looks nice and started out well but it wasn't long before my interest went elsewhere.
Xadom, 09 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
This doesn't look too bad but it was just too much of the same to me to really enjoy it. But certainly not bad for its age really.
This one I was frankly scared about because I am very unfamiliar with the TV show its based on, I never really watched it. I am sure if I was more familiar with it I'd understand it more but I certainly like the tongue-in-cheek style of the game, asking potentially promoting the constable to sergeant to cover the Trade Secretary's drink driving arrest. But there are times were not a lot is happening and it just becomes tedious. But with more time I'm sure I can get my way through this, this does go on for five days after all.
Zaraks, 09 Dec 2017 (Rating: 2)
At least it's a game and it has some degree of playability in it, but the controls are a nightmare. I struggled to get to grips with them and that is what cost me. There's worse, but this is still not great at all.
It's at least more sensical and playable that D&H's Grand Prix but it something that won't keep you amused for long, especially when I was the top two positions at the start and become the last two in three laps. Clearly something I'm doing wrong and clearly I lack the patience to succeed in this.
From the same fella that gave us Race Ace from Don't Buy This, this isn't like really bad but it's not an exciting product to say the least. I was only able to get two police cars to crash into each other once, every other time it just went straight through them. Not very fun at all.
It was fun walking around shooting the baddies, until I figured that the best way to do it was by shooting them close which takes up energy, and also that, well that was it, that's the game. Of course your picking up items along the way but it didn't add anything for me, it got to the point where I couldn't wait for the game to end, and thankfully it did not long after.
I wasn't expecting what I got from this. I was expecting this to be a Berserk style game judging by the screenshot of WoS, not a ordinary scrolling shooter where it's hard to shoot anyone. And in the end I never managed to reach the part shown in the screenshot, I feel a bit cheated somehow.
Utterly confused with this one. The graphics and animation is interesting but the gameplay is pretty pitiful. I found the average score on WoS to be a weird one because it's from The Power House, but it turns out to be as pretty much pointless as the rest of their games. Not one I'll play again for sure.
I struggled with this at first but then once I realised what needed to be done I slowly got into it. It's not bad, it's colourful and quite cheerful.
1984, 12 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
Quite amusing in the short run, not entertaining in the long run. But still it ain't all bad really.
I feared the worst when I chose to play this one, or rather it was presented to me by Sinclair Randomseek. I was expecting it to be slow, sluggish and unenjoyable, so its immediate fast speed took me by surprise. I do feel that maybe the game at times is too fast and is thus uncontrollable and makes missing gates a habit but it's just a matter of getting the right speed for it I feel. There's no sound which creates boredom and the final event Ski Jump, Eddie's event, has to be loaded into the Spectrum after doing the third event, and it crashed on me, safe to say I was bummed. I find it weird that the previous events were all downhill where Eddie was a ski jumper and then Ski Jump refused to load, not fitting of bearing the Eddie The Eagle name I feel. It's not bad really, it's just repetitive and not very interesting, although I did expect this to be much worse so that's something.
Translated into English I think as The Goblin's Ballard, which is a pity as I thought it was French for the The Ballard of Luton, Luton Town have their own ballard, but no it is a goblin. And am I supposed to be a goblin? It looks like an elf with a santa hat on. This hat is very special to him as the bat steals it from you and then kills you when it touches your unprotected head. I also reached the end of the forest in about three minutes and my game ended as if it was a completion, but I did select the lowest difficulty so maybe it presents a longer, greater challenge in higher difficulties. But this is a flickery mess of a game with rubbish graphics, rubbish jumping and little gameplay which is anything but fun. It's up there with the likes of Butterfly frankly, awful, awful, awful.
This is the sequel to The Way of the Tiger which many thought was great and I found it was a bit crap. There are those that say "oh I loved that game", "ah that was bloody brilliant mate", "that game was rad man" and I never got into it at all, which is probably why I never played this sequel until now, but Sinclair Randomseek demands it and so I shall. And I will admit I ended up enjoying this much more than I should have and certainly more than Way of the Tiger, even if the game is nothing more than just wandering around looking for keys. But I managed to get into this, until I ran out of keys and couldn't find anymore, then it all got boring so I reset it. But it certainly has more enjoyment than it's predecessor, not much, but enough for me to give it a 3 rather than a 2.
Wow, we are in SQIJ territory with this one! I am having a nightmare with controlling my character and finding the objective to this game. I have found though that Enter is right and K is left while Symbol Shift seems to be jump. But it's a complete mess, the graphics are appalling and the game makes zero sense, and no instructions don't help but even then they'd be in Spanish anyway. All of Juliet Software's games are poorly received within the Spectrum community as there are all scored under 5, and with this we can see why.
Just like Podder this was done by Greg Holmes in his pre-Gremlin days, and where as Podder wasn't a great game this can only be described as an abysmal Manic Miner game. Can the first screen even be completed? I haven't managed it.
Never mind Operation Wolf this is more like Silent Wolf with no sound effects during the game, surely they could have just had sound for the shots being fired at least. And then there's too many enemies at once and so it's almost impossible not to run out of ammunition, which doesn't replenish even after losing a life. This is so unplayable it's amazing this even made the shops.
I didn't really get into this one really. I'm sure it's a great game for kids to play rather than impatient moody gits like me.
It's a dungeon crawler with a more text adventure feel to it. I'm just going to say I'm preferring Black Dwarf's Lair so much more and now I'm thinking that warrants a 3 rather than a 2. This did nothing for me other than nearly put me to sleep. This was disappointing because I have found dungeon crawler games to be a bit amusing, but this was not.
This is just a badly programmed unplayable mess. The spiders can block your path but with careful shuffle movement you can actually wipe them away and progress on, but it's worth nothing as progression is nearly impossible anyway. How come this didn't make the top 100 worst games list on WoS, it's dreadful and well worthy of it.
I was very impressed with this. It has great presentation and it plays really well, it's quite popular with the Spectrum community, given the two 5s, the 4 and the 8.21 average score on WoS, and I can easily see why. The one negative thing I can say about this game is your movement becomes very narrow and it makes it hard to control your ship and survive. But nevertheless this is really good and I shall definitely be playing this one again. Very good stuff indeed.
You only have one life, there's only two enemies on the screen, there's pink things to avoid, your bullets sometimes go through them and that thus makes this a completely inept and rubbish shooter. And A.C.E. were charging £6.90 for this. Let's just say there's loads of better shooters even on 16K compared to this crap.
This is probably best played with multiple players rather than on your own against the computer. I like that when you type in your pricing decision it hides what you type so that it keeps the other players guessing, so as long as they hide the keyboard too that is I suppose, but it serves it's purpose of strategy. But in all it's not really much of a game and largely based on just entering numbers for prices and that's it. A lot of these decision based games I can get into, this was a bore from the off and never picked up steam. And imagine doing a full 25 year game of this?
I came across this game after looking up the games in the 1983 Cambridge Awards which Oligopoly was a participant and placed third. This was not placed and has a lowly average score of 3.10, and I can clearly see why. So in this game you control Harry who has to retrieve the key to his house and go home, but he has to do so whilst avoiding mines, why he has a house in the middle of the minefield is anyone's guess? The gameplay itself is pretty basic and the concept itself is so bad it's actually quite funny. Plus it was published by Pulsonic, who brought us Butterfly, but while this is 1 material, truth be told this isn't anywhere near as awful as Butterfly was, it's just as bad and ridiculous but at least it's a game, unlike Butterfly. But it's still a really bad game, especially when you look at its competition at the 83 Cambridge Awards, let's just say it didn't stand a chance.
All the fun of politics (smear, scandal and crisis) without the boring speeches, too bad they left the fun out of it and made it boring instead. I see what they were trying to do here, all the election games were text-based decision management games and they wanted something more arcady and thrilling, but they did not succeed, because this is boring and confusing.
This is just really poor Scramble with flicky, jerky gameplay and rubbish keys. I didn't expect much from this seeing it's low score and my presumptions were correct. Awful!
This is supposed to be Astro Invader but it's as unplayable as you can get. It looks the part but it certainly doesn't play the part.
Within a instant of loading this game I regretted it because the key layout looked mad although I realised you could change them so it wasn't half bad so I tried to choose my keys around the fire button but it did not work so I just settled for moving up, down, left and right and didn't bother with up/left, up/right etc, which didn't work either. This is basically Star Wars except it's no fun and it has awful controls. I want to like this game but I have no reasons to do so.
Wow this waiting period, thank goodness for sped up emulators. It's another football manager game and one with funny scrambled up names, so you have people like Cifis, Cugsey, Sidlin, Dabry, Vuhry and Hojway. You can change them but I didn't bother here. This is an interesting one in that your progression is based on choice, like what you would do if the ball was passed to you in their six yard box, head it in or dummy or head back etc. Make the right choice and you earn stars, the wrong choice and you lose stars, it keeps you interested in the game at the very least. But it probably won't take long for your interest to shift away as you end up constantly making wrong choices and end up being dropped. This game was fun at first and then became just as tedious as the rest of the football manager games, but it tries to be different at least so it gets some credit for that.
Traz, 17 Dec 2017 (Rating: 1)
This is an appalling Breakout game. It's unique that it starts at a different level when you play it but the ball is so random, changing direction and speed whenever it feels like it, plus it interacts with the background and half the time you don't even know where it is. Plus your baton is slow anyway, so all this makes level completion close to impossible to me. And they planned to release this on full price?! Perhaps games like this are why Cascade disappeared.
A pretty poor game with a rubbish first game and a half-decent but poorly implemented Burger Time. Good for a quick look to get past the first part and then the job is done, then you'll never need to touch this game again, at least I won't.
This one I am at least familiar with but I haven't played it in ages! But third time lucky I managed to get past Brands Hatch successfully in 5 laps and it reminded of how wonderful it was. It has the thrills of F-1 racing nailed beautifully and it puts at lot of first person driving games to shame, Hard Drivin' for instance. This is classic racing game, it's bloody hard but it's also bloody brilliant.
It's from the same fella who wrote the unimpressive Astronut and I was equally unimpressed with this as well. It's a better game than Astronut but the controls are pretty terrible and the enemies you can shoot are an utter nuisance and it made the game a very frustrating affair. This and Astronut are for the bin as far as I'm concerned.
Having reviewed Astronut and Thrusta already I am now duty bound to look at the author's only other game listed, Robot Riot, which is listed to be Pac-Man. But here pills appear as you move and you collect a Power Mite that refills your energy, hate to tell you this but that isn't Pac-Man so it's not a clone at all. This is supposedly his best game if you go by the WoS ratings but this too is not good, the movement is slow the controls I found were off and the whole thing becomes a bore quickly. It is better than Astronut but I think Thrusta was a better game, just. But in all, three games from Patrick Richmond and none of them are good.
I think someone saw Light Force and tried to clone it but failed on all accounts. But saying that it's a million times better than The Power House's other shooter Freedom Fighter and the vast majority of their catalogue for that matter.
This is one game I have actually always tried to avoid playing as it never looked like my sort of thing, both here and on arcade, but Sinclair Randomseek demands it and I shall obey, and so I finally play this game for the very first time. The intro music is pretty nice, I'll give it that, the opening sequence is very impressive, I'll give it that, and the game looks pretty decent too, I'll give it that, but the controls are a nightmare. Moving left and right is a bastard! It's so hyper-sensitive and made shooting enemies and navigating the levels a lot more difficult than it ought to be. I agree wholeheartedly with Rebel Without A Cause's review, if it wasn't for it's fiddly, sensitive controls this could have been a great game, but as it is it's a nicely programmed game letdown by the lacklustre execution of its controls.
You apparently control a drunk and he must go to pubs and drink beer, but as he's already drunk it makes this game a complete uncontrollable and unplayable mess. Why on earth was a game so random and pointless allowed to be sold in the shops?
This was such an odd game and somewhat unfitting for The Flintstones licence. The game is in two parts, the second part sees you as Fred Flintstone take on Barney Rubble in a game of bowling, sounds reasonable enough. But in order to play some bowling you have to complete part one first, which has you, in classic Flintstone fashion, paint a wall, yep, PAINT A WALL! SERIOUSLY?! Show me one episode of The Flintstones where painting a wall was the main concept of the story. And it isn't as simple as that as you have Pebbles causing trouble by writing and drawing on your wall as you paint it, and it's a right pain in the arse, in fact I don't recall ever finishing it, maybe my heart wasn't into it knowing of how stupid the concept was. And then the bowling's a bit naff anyway. A number of these cartoon licensed games are quite enjoyable, it's safe to say The Flintstones isn't anywhere near being one of them. Paint a bloody wall, pff.
It's not great game, it looks terrible for instance and the gameplay confused me a bit, but at least it's a game worthy of The Flintstones name, you're building houses, not painting a frickin' wall.
Let's do some Christmas reviews. This is based on Chu Chu Rocket and to be honest it doesn't seem to work as well as you hoped it would but it's still a nice enough game and a decent enough version of a fun game.
It's a bit slow but it plays alright. Not sure if the "oh yeah" speech upon completion is necessary really but you do get 1000 bonus socks for completing the level, and it doesn't get more Christmasy than socks.
Simply recognise the carol played in BEEP and answer. Most of the carols featured I don't even know so as you can imagine I had a hard time with this.
It's simply a Christmas spinoff of Egghead. Nothing too fancy and nothing memorable but quite enjoyable nevertheless.
Crimbo, 23 Dec 2017 (Rating: 3)
Annoyingly you can't choose keyboard in the game and must play with a joystick, but luckily we can map the joystick to the keyboard on Spectaculator so we're good to go. It's a tricky game, there is little room for error and not a lot of room to jump at times. It looks colourful and sounds great too, but I didn't get far in this to fully enjoy it.
It's Jet Set Willy but set in Christmas. There's only eight screens in the game and after the 8th screen it just loops over again. Nothing much to say really, other than it's short and apart from level two it's pretty easy. If you fail to make the jump,in level two you effectively lose a life as you have nowhere else to go as the timer slowly goes down, even with the emulator sped up it drags.
I found Santa's jumping to be more of a nuisance than the snowballs but yes they add to the frustration too. I've only reached the second screen once and tben that didn't last too long. If you got this for Christmas you might as well have said goodbye to your hair, your patience and your sanity, because this game will drive you up the bleeding wall!
Love the tune but that's about it really. The Monty Mole games never really caught to me to be honest so this one wasn't going to either. Getting to the third screen was all I could manage.
Well it isn't as bad as the majority of Christmas game but it's a bit of a drag in all honesty, especially the delivering part of it.
Christmas games are meant to be fun and enjoyable, but many of them aren't and this one in particular is far from it. This is among the worst of them.
Santa, 24 Dec 2017 (Rating: 1)
In this "game" you participate in a series of Christmas-themed mini-games and every single one of them is abysmal. This game deservedly sits on the worst games list on WoS.
It's a short game where you just have to guide 6 reindeers to the gate and that's it but it's painfully slow. Also Santa looks most like Red Riding Hood here.
This seems to have been in a compilation of sorts as it gives you the option to load the next file and it mentions about the next two items being both games of a simple nature. I shudder to think what that could be compared to this. This is Santa is a dungeon crawler type maze game and it's only one maze and that's it. And when you finish the maze the screen flashes non-stop even when you continue making this really hard on the eyes and virtually unplayable. No wonder no-one's credited for it.
A Christmas shooter looks like a great idea and it does look quite nice, but the gameplay suffers from poor execution. This is certainly a lot better than most of the other Christmas games I have played this week but it still doesn't have the fun present to make it a good game. Too much happens at once and it is very difficult, what fun is it for a kid to die quickly in this?
I am greatly confused with this game but then I haven't played any of the other Smiler games and I think that is necessary to understand it.
Finally a very decent Christmas game. The problem is though it's too much the same throughout and repetition creeps in very very quickly. But it's still pretty decent nevertheless.
And I thought Santa was a rubbish Christmas game. This makes no sense whatsoever and it's absolute garbage!
Xmas, 24 Dec 2017 (Rating: 2)
Drop 10 presents down the chimney. Not much too this one to take seriously but I found myself having more goes than I ought to to try and see if I can get all 10, haven't managed it and wouldn't be surprised if you can't.
Simple and quite enjoyable but again it's too much of the same game throughout. But there's been a lot worse and so I'll give this credit but being at least playable.
This is totally confusing. I haven't played Ludo in years but I don't remember it being this mind-boggling.
X-Maze, 25 Dec 2017 (Rating: 1)
And finally I look at the B-Side game from Santa and it's as bad as all the Santa games. It's awfully slow and it won't take long before boredom overtakes you. Just what were they thinking with this and Santa exactly? Well that's my Christmas ruined.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Oh my God I had forgotten all about this! So basically there is a man called Michael Barratt, a Welshman in fact, who is a singer who goes by the name of Shakin' Stevens and he was very big in the 1980's, I think he had four number one hits in fact, one of the them, ironically enough, being Merry Christmas Everyone which is a fine Christmas song indeed and personally one of my favourites. Well, somebody decided he needed his own game and so The Shaky Game was born. Now this game was never sold commercially, instead it's reported to have either appeared on the b-side of his "This Ole House" single, which is referenced in the game but that was a 1981 single so that statement is therefore bollocks, and it's also said to have appeared at the end of side B on his "The Bop Won't Stop" album, which was out in 1983, like this game, so therefore that is more likely to have been the case. So in the game you have to guide a car to the Ole House of Vampires and avoid the bats and making sure you don't run out of fuel. It's like Head-On only with no pills to collect, you just have to drive the car to the home, and it's pretty rubbish. The keys don't work well unless you hold it in advance. Plus the bat pattern is pretty much the same every single time although I did play this on the lowest difficulty and I couldn't be bothered to play it on a hardest one so that could be why. But in fairness it's not an overly terrible game, it's just rubbish and one I'll never play again. I'll stick to my collection of Shakin' Stevens hits after this.
Last review of 2017. One of the most famous games in the home computer era but that was because of the Commodore 64 version rather than this. In short one of the tunes in the C64 version of this was nicked by Zombie Nation for their song Kernkraft 400 and became a massive hit, but David Whittaker complained, rightly so, and they paid him to use the tune. But the Spectrum version has no music so we're missing out. This is a strange one in the the concept is nice in that you have mini-games to play throughout the game, the problem is out of the 9 mini-games I played only 2 were actually good, Res Q in particular was just nasty, Stack mentions that the mini-games are Cassette 50 quality and Res Q has Cassette 50 written all over it, absolutely dreadful, as well as that it has clones of Frogger, Breakout and Chuckie Egg and all of which are terrible. Also his jumping is awful and the elevators are slow and a pain, most of my lives ended because he couldn't jump over the enemy properly, he didn't get in the elevator in time or the elevator opened right next to an enemy. This could have been a quality game with its mini-game fun what not but in truth it's poorly executed in that getting to the mini-games is a pain in the arse and then most of the mini-games are crap anyway.
Happy New Year everyone.
First review of 2018. I didn't have fun with this one and I can't imagine kids having fun with it either. Controlling your fire engine is very awkward and you can easily get lost because you can't find your way back to the station for instance, or at least that was my problem. The weirdest thing is you have to find a key, a skateboard and kite, this surely isn't a fireman's job is it? Plus, when you find the kite the game has to load data from the cassette in order for you to retrieve the kite, and then it loads back to the previous screen again when you get the kite. Kids won't enjoy this one at all. Alternative had a lot of these TV show licensed games and this may be one of their worst.
This is a simple game to get into but there doesn't seem to be much within the game to fully enjoy it. Also, I plain suck at it. But it's nice enough for what it is and I found myself having a "oh, one more go" feel to it. Quite nice.
From the same fella who wrote Brad Blasts the Galactic Barbarians is this ugly atrocious pile of tut. At least Brad had some fairly decent basic looking graphics, this has horrible graphics and has the same monotonous boring tedious gameplay that Pneumatic Hammers had. Simply horrific.
Okay for what it is but I couldn't help but feel robbed by the game's concept because it's hardly snooker.
A lot of 2s for this one, can't help but join in. The hot detection is very random and most of the time it won't register first time, then half of the alien would disappear and half would remain on screen, then at times he'd disappear as if it registered a hit but it doesn't, very bizarre and thus not very fun. I will make mention of the title music, the middle of it sounds like it tries to sound something like Black Sabbath and gave up half way through. Not terrible by any means, there loads of stuff that's worse, it's just not an amusing game at all and one go was enough for me.
It's quite amusing and probably most fun with multiple players rather than against the Spectrum. It all seems a bit too random but that's probably to keep you guessing rather it becoming too predictable. This was pretty enjoyable, it probably won't hold your interest for very long but it certainly held mine enough to warrant its score.
It looks as pretty as some The Shaw Brothers' games but the gameplay is lacking somewhat. One game ended when I entered Suzy's and couldn't get out again. Heartbroken is a much better Shaw Brothers game.
This is an interesting one and I managed to get into it to a degree but the actually rock climbing bit got to me and my patience ran out. I can see why people would get into this but it was too much for me and my patience.
It's listed as a shoot-em-up on WoS, shoot-em-up this ain't. Instead it's a game that has you flying around collecting items that add time looking for square items that take you to a new level of a different colour, and moving left and right in this thing is a bastard, plus the whole thing is boring and not very good anyway. So it's not a shooter and as it turns out it's not much of a game either. Move along people.
The low score on WoS serves a clue to this game's quality and there's a reason for that. It looks like a game lost in 1985 and criminally when you move left and right so does your bullet hovering in the air, I'm pretty certain that's not how Galaxian works nor is it how shooters work. What a mess!
A year before Classic Axiens there was Classic Muncher, a Pac-Man clone also by Bubble Bus, and this is much more like it. The one problem though is Pac-Man is too big and moving him was a challenge sometimes, but there are a lot of dodgy Pac-Man clones out there so I'll gladly take a good one when it comes to me. This is perfectly acceptable and very worthy.
I usually refrain from looking at type-in games because truth be told a lot leave to be desired, but this looked pretty. However the gameplay is its downfall. The jumping doesn't work half the time and getting the timing right to go down the ladder and onto the platform I found to be impossible and I just fall to my death every time. It looks nice though but the game is unfortunately as you'd expect in a type-in game, and I normally don't like to review them for a reason.
This looks pretty and so I was looking forward to playing this, and within a minute my excitement literally turns to pain. The movement is very annoying, there is no sound at all, every level has to be loaded individually from a separate file and when it's game over you have to reload the file from scratch, it doesn't take you to the main menu at all. I was massively disappointed with this.
While it's much better than the A'n'F version it's still unresponsive and Frogger is a game that needs response, so that killed it for me. If not for that this was looking at a 3.
It's an interesting one to say the least and I like the idea of it. I didn't do so well but I know I could have made better choices like buy more food and a horse as well as pay attention to the wanted poster in the the sheriff's office. This one will certainly have me coming back for more for sure.
This is not good at all. It doesn't play well, shooting I found was troublesome and it's hard to avoid the enemies coming towards you before you move so slow. Devil Diver and Glug Glug are much better.
If you're playing this game it's best to download another version rather than the original TZX file because it is broken as hell. It takes forever to start up and actually locks up as if it's crashed, but then it eventually starts the game, at the wrong level. Then after quitting and restarting it played without the One-Eye text or the scoreboard background, just the numbers in front of a plain black background. Then after resetting the emulator and reloading from scratch and starting the game up again it locked up even more and when it finally loaded it told me I had won the crown without doing anything. So then I downloaded the Hit Squad version and it's fine, no issues whatsoever. This plays alright and the music is excellent but there's no way of telling if you are actually doing any damage to the enemies, you know they're hurting you but you don't know for sure if you're hurting them, and that spoiled it for me. This isn't a bad game really as long as you download a working version because as I said the original TZX file is very broken but I reckon the arcade game would be better than this.
Now that I'm back at work following my broken foot, these reviews of mine will be few and far between going forward apart from weekends, and that may end up being a good thing as long as I'm playing crap like this. This game has no colour, no sound, no anything. It's clearly a rush job and it looks like something done in a whole day's work with little thought at all. This is absolute tripe and Titus charging £11 for this is an insult. It has to be considered as one of the very worst licensed games on the Spectrum, and possibly one of the very worst full stop.
It's similiar to Shark, another shooter from Players' which was appalling. This is a far better game, it looks nicer and has a better choice of weapons. A lot of Players' games don't deliver on the gameplay but I think this one does to a degree.
Another Juliet Software game and it's another stinker. This can be seen as the Spanish equivalent to Oriental Hero in that you just lose your lives quickly. Even after respawning there's an enemy in front of you firing at you and killing you, before you know it one minute later it's game over.
What is it with Ocean's arcade-inspired games having pointless mini-games at the beginning? Mr. Wimpy had it and now I load up Eskimo Eddie and it has one too! First we have a Frogger type game where you have to avoid clouds and polar bears to retrieve a penguin at the top of the screen and bring him back down again, and repeat twice more. I hate this part, it took me ages to get past it and so then I was finally able to play some Pengo which I was expecting at the beginning, and then that's pretty crap also and thus it wasn't worth the effort of the previous screen, enough!
A shooter from Germany, there isn't much to say about this other than it's a primitive one with only two aliens to shoot at a time, missing costs you bullets, run out of bullets and you're hit by an alien and you go in the ambulance and off you go for treatment. There's not much to this game but I have played worse, Alien Curse, another German shooter, and Space Warp, another shooter where you only shoot two enemies at a time, being two games that this is better than in that you can at least play the games and have some amusement with, unlike those, especially Alien Curse which was largely unplayable. It's BASIC to the core but it's not the worse I've played so I will be generous with my score this time.
This is a bit like Action Reflex and Impossaball but more confusing and more boring. Quite liked the title music though, thought it was Ben Daglish but he ain't credited and Andy Brown is who done Wildwater, so it must be him. Very Ben inspired.
Not bad for what it is but I doubt it'll hold interest for very long, it certainly didn't with me.
It looks really nice but the gameplay is naff. Too many times I escaped an area just to find myself back in it again. Annoying, frustrating and I'm done.
This actually isn't too bad. The match highlights are really good and it certainly plays better than the majority of football manager games. But there is one small problem with this game, it isn't much of a manager game. As The Dean rightly says, if you take away the match highlights then all this is is a mere betting game. There's no squad selection, no tactics, no training, no anything that's manager related. You just make a prediction of a home win, away win or a draw for the four matches in each week and that's it, everything else is just random. Plus you enter your name at the start and you are in the squad, but you don't seem to do anything yourself throughout the game, so what's the point. I did enjoy this game for what it was but couldn't help but feel mislead while playing it. In short, if you're looking to play a game to be a football manager look elsewhere.
Howzat, 15 Jan 2018 (Rating: 2)
This is pretty much a two-player cricket game unless I did something wrong while setting up the game. It's primitive but then it's 1984 so you'd expect it to be. It's not too bad in all fairness, but all your doing is pressing a ball to bowl, the batting is automatic and then you have to decide whether to run or not. If it was a one-player game it would work but as it is a two-player game it kinda doesn't seem like a game, at least to me it doesn't anyway but then I played on my own, if you actually played with a mate it might be more enjoyable. But saying that this is miles better than the Ian Botham cricket game which was complete donkey shit.
It's not terrible but it's fast and hard to control and thus it's not very good.
Jogger, 16 Jan 2018 (Rating: 3)
I anticipated this to be really bad because of its low average score of WoS, but it's not, in fact I quite liked it. It's nowhere near as bad as the atrocity that was the A'n'F version. There's a bit of problem with the response of the keys but I actually did enjoy this game which surprised me.
It's just a really poor Continental Circus clone and a vastly overpriced one at that. It's fast at full speed but it's very difficult to avoid the other cars who seem to just want to hit you any chance they get. Also it's very confusing to have a position AND a rank, and then pass cars that don't effect the rank whatsoever, what exactly is the purpose for this game? When you had Miami Cobra GT and Chevy Chase released the same year for £2.99 each while this was sold for £10.99 originally, this didn't stand a chance.
It's quite good for what it tries to be but it's too much of the same to me and you wind up repeating the same options over and over again which can get pretty boring. It's ain't bad, it just won't take long for the fun to drain away.
I was left wondering why for a football manager game the average score on WoS was so low, now I know why. You know how football manager games tend to play alright but tend to play pretty boring? Well this one happens to be boring AND play terribly as well. It has a very boring feel, a confusing interface, and a badly implemented and rubbish looking "arcade" section where you can only move one player at a time by selecting him from a menu, and by the time you do they've already scored. And you know what else is great! Three matches in my game crashed, it just froze and that's it, game over. I can honestly say that this is probably one of the worst football manager games I've ever played. £10 for a broken game with no redeeming features? You're having a laugh Impressions. It's no wonder they only produced three games and it's no wonder no-one is credited for writing this pile of trash.
I've got to say I was disappointed and underwhelmed with this. There seems to be plenty to do in it but I had a hard time going to places in that no matter what he wouldn't seem to do anything and none of the commands seem to work. Maybe it's one to go back to in order to try and understand it better but every other dungeon crawler game I can at least play and go places with, this one isn't as straightforward and intuitive.
1942, 18 Jan 2018 (Rating: 4)
I always remembered quite enjoying this. I suck at it now, certainly when playing it back today I suck at it anyway, but I remember it being a fun game to play. 1942 for me was always a bit of a bland game and so the conversion was going to have a bland feel, but it's still enjoyable, especially compared to other Spectrum shooters.
1943, 18 Jan 2018 (Rating: 3)
It's not bad really, but 1942 is a better game, plays better and looks better. I don't like the white background and everything just seems to be a breeze in comparison to the challenge a shooter presents. But still, 1943 is a lot better than most of US Gold's Capcom conversions.
This is tricky and not helped by the fact that this game give you the choice of playing the hardest difficulty by default! But even on the lowest difficulty it's still a tough game, but it's quite a good game for what it is and it is certainly playable.
No matter what I always crash out and there's little way to actually improve your car. The race screen is different but looks ugly. This might be one of the worst games Cult ever released, it's dire.
I struggled to get into this at all. With most management games I'd get into them at first and then the interest fades away, but with this that interest never appeared.
It's just basically a higher or lower card game and that's it. Good for looking to reach the end but once you do you might as well take it as a completion and move on. Also worth noting that the screenshot in WoS is messed up as it's a 48K game and that's being play in a 128K which is therefore glitching the graphics, amateurs. It is also worth noting that you paid money for something this short.
Play this once, answer some questions and after that you'll most likely never play it again, or at least I won't.
This isn't a bad game but it does looks like somebody's done a test game and then decided to release it for money. £6 for a game that is essentially a screen with moving sprites and a ship to fire at them doesn't sound like a fair deal, but then it's a 1982 game so I get it. I do like the way the colours change but some of the colours don't work at all, the pink and black in particular looks nasty. Also have to agree with Stack on the sensitive controls, you move fast, they move slow at the beginning, especially the bullets in the second wave, very easy to hit a bullet by accident. It ain't bad but it's only really good for one go and then you'll move on from it.
It's quite a nice game to play but it's one you can easily say repetition kicks in really quickly. But it is a fun game nevertheless.
A simple game, simple concept, easy to get into and it's enjoyable. Good fun.
Escape, 20 Jan 2018 (Rating: 2)
I found this to be a bore as all it is is running endlessly around a maze looking for an axe and when you do it just increases your chances of being killed. Not for me.
I think I'm too impatient for this game but it's a nice game for what it is and it'll keep you coming back for more. It's well programmed and pretty nicely drawn too.
I can see why it is popular with players but I always had a hard time with this one and alternating from the map to the game screen and steering the car was always a nuisance for me. It's very well programmed but you're required to pretty much do more than one thing at a time and I never got on with that at all.
Ninja, 21 Jan 2018 (Rating: 3)
I was enjoying this game until it crashed. This game is riddled with bugs preventing you from finishing the game which is a shame because I was rather liking this one.
It's not my kind of game, but it isn't bad and certainly a lot better than some of the dungeon crawler games I've played lately.
Got to be honest, I don't like it. It's not bad and I get the idea of a larger Breakout game but it's very confusing once the ball leaves the screen and the scrolling just adds to the confusion. I personally found Impact to be a more enjoyable clone.
It does require patience as well as brainpower but at least I can get into this and play it. It's good fun actually.
Graphically this is as good as a Perry/Bruty game can be, gameplay wise I felt something was lacking though.
After Jonny Quest and The Jetsons, Hi-Tec's games were becoming a right downer. This however is a much better game, far far superior than the two aforementioned games combined. It's more simpler to play and get into and good fun.
I guess you could say that Code Masters were going for a "Professional Wrestling Simulator" with this, in which you wouldn't be at all surprised to know it's not a simulator because it's not even wrestling. Compared to WWF Wrestlemania which was an accurate representation of wrestling, this is just more or less a pinning race to see who pins the other man's health down first, there isn't even a three count here at all, in fact you don't even have to pin the guy to win, just deplete his energy bar to nothing and you're covered. At least this is better than Rock 'n Wrestle in that you can actually play the game, but it is very limited and it isn't even wrestling. I think I will blame a lack of knowledge and interest on the product for this poor offering, Ocean and Twilight at least made an effort with WWF Wrestlemania, Code Masters' effort was well lacking on evidence.
It's simple enough, just guide the drums to the blue area and when they hold nine of each you win. Apparently it gets harder from level 4 but I can't really be bothered finding out for myself. I think I have seen what this game has to offer after one level thank you very much.
I think the best way I can describe this game is it's Scramble written by somebody who didn't understand how the game works.
This is appalling. Everything is slow and monotonous, their attacks seem to do more damage to yours and there is no sound. You paid £6.95 for this by the way.
It's not bad but if you've played Atic Atac then it's not very original.
Zaxxon, 27 Jan 2018 (Rating: 1)
It looks like Zaxxon but it sure doesn't play anything like it. It's jerky, slow and doing anything on it is almost impossible as a result. I fully expected this from a clone but not from the official game. Awful!
This plays badly and looks even worse. It's way too easy to lose your energy here. Not impressed with this at all.
Just a couple of months earlier, Mastertronic's Bulldog label brought out the abysmal Jackle and Wide, for that reason alone I would never have taken Destructo seriously back in the day if I had seen it, but this is so much better. It's simple and enjoyable to play although the deaths seem a bit too random for me. But still I was very impressed with this.
Sadly I found myself less impressed with this compared to the others. I couldn't get on with the jumping and that he can be damaged more than once in one jump. I didn't get far as a result.
Hunter, 27 Jan 2018 (Rating: 2)
I found this to be very irritating as the hit detection is awful. There were many times that I hit the target and it didn't count, presumably because it can only be shot on one tiny area. The sensor is arse anyway and to be frank so is the whole game really.
Therbo, 27 Jan 2018 (Rating: 2)
This highly confused me. It seems to be a two player game where one has to race to the goal to gain Therbo control and the other has to shoot him. Most of the time I haven't a clue who is who in the game. Also, the keyboard layout is insane but it appears only three of them work.
This game is quite popular on WoS but pretty mixed here, and I have to say it did little for me also. Pinball games are very difficult to convert and unfortunately this shows, because the ball is very random as it chugs towards bumper and deflects to places it shouldn't, also the flippers don't seem to work from time to time. I found this to be largely unenjoyable and I have played better pinball games on the Spectrum compared to this.
This is very detailed and may actually hold your interest in the long run but whether it does or not I suppose depends on your taste for these games. If you absolutely love games like this you will love it and devote your time for it, if not then you will turn up your nose and look elsewhere. I'm personally in the middle in which I like these games and will be interested in the beginning but then the interest fades away quickly and I run out of patience for it. But it's definitely worth a look for sure.
I liked this game at first, it's simple to get into and I was certainly enjoying it more than other JSW-type games I have played lately, but then I got to later levels and confusion began and the fun went away. It's not terrible, it's just not a lot of fun.
Ascot, 28 Jan 2018 (Rating: 2)
Two horse racing games in three games? Cheers Randomseek. This makes Racing Manager look like a great game and makes me reconsider the 3 I gave it. I mean it's 1982 so I shouldn't expect much from it really, but I suffered a very unfair loss in that the horse I backed to win had a massive lead and then suddenly it stalled near the finish and allowed the other horse to catch up, pass him and I ended up losing. Safe to say this will not keep you interested for very long.
This game is essentially like Metro Cross, only nowhere near as fun and enjoyable.
This isn't great but it certainly plays like it's a boxing game and thus is more than a simulator than Code Masters' "Pro Boxing Simulator" bollocks. I just had a hard time getting my punches in.
Whilst better than some of the other games I've played it still has its flaws. It's slower, predictable and the flippers don't work when they want to. Certainly ain't a bad game, just not as good as I remembered it to be.
It's another football manager game, and it's a really boring one at that. Comparing this to the others I've played, there is no training mode so there's no way to improve the players you have so you have to buy some. There are no highlights, no sound, no lasting appeal, after two matches I was frankly done with it. What a load of rubbish.
Weird name, even weirder name. I never liked this game as it was very confusing and boring to me.
One thing that is certain is the Closs brothers were firmly into skateboarding. Because while Tim Closs wrote Skateboard Kidz, brother James Closs went on to write Skateboard Joust a year later, and neither of them are impressive. Now this is a far better game than Skateboard Kidz but I found controlling my skater to be frustrating.
Defcom, 28 Jan 2018 (Rating: 1)
David Whittaker's title tune is fantastic, the game itself though is absolutely pitiful. It's a bit like Blasteroids but nowhere near as fun. It's a bore right from the off and never picks up momentum, even with the music playing in the background. Worth a look for the music alone or just find it on YouTube, because if it's a game you're looking for you won't find it here. This is possibly the worst game Binary Design wrote.
It's pretty much British Lowland on sea but it's ineffective. It encourages you to buy stuff for your ship but the one time I did I got arrested and fine for carrying contraband and was broke as a result and my game ended as a result. I'll stick to British Lowland thanks.
Lover, 28 Jan 2018 (Rating: 1)
This game is filled with misinformation on WoS. Firstly, it is not in English, the three languages you can choose to play in are German, French or Spanish, not English, so I felt cheated. Second, this is not a puzzle game, there's nothing to arrange, nothing to answer, nothing to sort, nothing to unscramble, nothing, it's not a puzzle, so I felt cheated. And third, and most importantly, it's not a game, there's nothing to do here other than enter two names and that's it, you don't do anything else, whether you fall in love or not is completely random, and if you don't you shoot yourself, it's not a game, so I felt cheated. So basically Lover cheated me three times, not impressed at all.
I quite liked this and it's certainly a better game than Yeti which Christian Urquhart and Mike Smith brought out a year later. It's quite a hard game and I'm shit at it and it's not helped when you turn around slowly and so when enemies come at you quickly from behind you literally cannot react to it in time. But it's still quite a fun game, I just wish I was better at it.
Copter, 29 Jan 2018 (Rating: 2)
It's a shooter yet shooting anything is a waste of time. The fire key doesn't seem to want to work on the keyboard but then after mapping my keyboard to the Kempston joystick I found shooting to be useless as the bullets just go through everything and you're better off just rescuing people. The game gives you a bonus for preserving your ammo anyway and not shooting gives you the maximum for it all the time. It's not overly terrible but a shooter where shooting is utterly pointless doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.
Whilst not the best looking Space Invaders game it certainly plays like a good one. I was very impressed with the speed and the weapon you fire. I wasn't really expecting much from the average score on WoS but this is certainly one of the better 1982 games I've played in fact.
It's not the Solitaire we know and wasted so much time on, this one is filled with pegs and you have to move a peg over and another peg to clear them and then clear them all and finish in the centre. It confused the hell out of me and then when I realised what I was meant to be doing it was too late and I lost. Suppose it's good for a quick look and nothing more. I'll stick to the cards myself.
I remember playing this back in the day and it didn't make any sense, and now playing this 30 years later it still doesn't make much sense.
Buggy, 29 Jan 2018 (Rating: 1)
Similar to Boat Run only 50 times more uncontrollable and thus it's a worse game. Who'd have thought that Boat Run would end up being a more playable game?
Not overly terrible but I don't get how I have to kill ghosts by guessing a number though, then when you get it right it proceeds to play Old McDonald had a Farm, what this has to do with terror beats me. Then when you die, or in my case fall in the pit, it resets the Spectrum then confirms you die? Weird. It wasn't terrible but I shall not be playing this again any time soon.
Was this written to take the piss? Your man moves so slow avoiding enemies is impossible. Imagine paying £6.95 for this in 1983.
We need instructions for this because I'm confused with the objective and the keys. This is like Star Wars but it sure as heck isn't anywhere near as thrilling as it.
If you look at the game list from Scorpio Software and later Scorpio Gamesworld and look at the scores for their games, this was their best game, and I can certainly see why. It's very playable, it's responsive and it's good fun, and all for £2.99 as well. I really liked this one and I wish I played it sooner.
It's not a bad snake game but I find it weird that you can finish the level without eating everything. Also what is with the noise of the spider?
This isn't really a game, it's just something taken from a web show from Ashens and you'd need to fully appreciate the humour to understand this "game" and why it exists. As far as replicated the game goes it's as accurate as you can get, which is pointless since it's not really much of a game anyway.
I'm just going to say Space Panic and me don't get on, because the only other clone I've played is Sam Spade and I didn't like that and I think I dislike this even more.
The magazines gave this poor reviews yet the WoS users had a different impression as evident by its average score of nearly 8, but I have to say the magazines win with this one. It's slow paced and I really couldn't get on with the way you collected and used items here. You only collect three items at a time which I'm fine with, but you can only do so when the square is highlighted and that I'm not fine with, it was very confusing. I did like how you can throw the baseball cap at the Dalek to obscure its view and get past him, probably the best part of the game which says a lot. I certainly wasn't impressed with this.
I felt duty bound to review the other Doctor What game which is from 1988, four years after CRL's Doctor What! game. This is a more simple looking Manic Miner type game but it's a difficult one at that. The first time I played, screen 1 was completed with no problems whatsoever, then screen 2 was a nightmare, lost all my lives and it was game over. Attempt 2 saw me fail on screen 1 three times and game over, and every other attempt after that saw me fail on screen 1. As a Manic Miner clone, there's a lot lot worse out there, but it's just very tough and it probably won't keep you interested for too long as a result. But as a Doctor Who inspired game and comparing it to the previous Doctor What game, I think this is the better game, just. But let's face it, two Doctor What games, one with a ! and one with a ? and neither of them are great.
I did enjoy this game, it's a fun shooter, but it has some drawbacks. It feels too much the same, there's no variety in the game, it is very repetitive and the sound is appalling. But it is a fun game and one I really enjoyed playing and look forward to playing again. I struggled to decide whether to give it a 3 or 4 but ultimately decided that for fun alone it was worth 4 but being too much the same throughout and having dreadful sound was worth -1, plus if I scored this out of 10 I'd probably give it 6, so 3 seems to be the most realistic score. But, I like it.
This is one confusing game. It's a fast game, maybe too fast as it's hard to control. Then the items appear randomly on screen, you can fly past the screen see an item and go "oh I'll just go back and collect that" and it's not there, then go back ti the previous screen and there's an item that wasn't there beforehand. You also solve anagrams to "wake" someone even though I didn't exactly see who it was I saw in the first place. The first anagram I guess was parsley, which was wrong because it was Players, who published the game, and then the second one I cheated and got that it was Interceptor because of course Players is a subsidiary of Interceptor Group, of course. But even after solving it and saving the mystery person or thing it just felt pointless. And then you randomly die anyway. Does bouncing off walls kill you? Does moving too fast kill you? Do I need to be at a specific location quickly before I die? I'm so confused with this game and my head is hurting as a result and so I shall not be playing this game anymore, ever.
Arena!, 01 Feb 2018 (Rating: 1)
This was release alongside Alien Swarm, a game I previously reviewed, in a two game bundle pack. I thought that wasn't a great game, at least it's a better game and A game compared to what this is. It's a bit like Pong and Breakout except you're just rebounding the flashy things off your bat and that's it. It gets boring within the first few seconds and it only gets worse throughout. Also, you'd think that when you enter your difficulty and speed that 1 and 0 would be the easiest options, no they are the hardest and quickest in the game, fooled me. The more flashy things they are the more confusing and unfair the game becomes, to the point that you can actually lose a life instantly after losing one previously. And then try playing the game in demonstration mode, even that sucks arse at this game manages to die instantly within the game's startup. And who wrote this again? Oh yes the same person who wrote the horrific Jackle and Wide game for Mastertronic four years later, nuff said.
The problem with these type-in games is they are mostly primitive, but some of them are at least playable to a degree, this one though is not playable at one. The keys are dreadful and confusing and shooting the enemies is down to sheer luck. This looked alright, it sure doesn't play alright at all.
This has to be the inspiration for the Ninja Rabbits games, it's pretty obvious. Graphically it is impressive, very very good detail in the graphics, but I had a hard time fighting in this. He wouldn't swing his sword when I wanted him to and when he did I was miles away from my opponent. Having only one life just adds to the problem. I feel there's something I'm missing in the fighting element and I would need the instructions to fully understand my wrongdoing but of course they are in Spanish which is wonderful. By sheer luck I got past the first screen only to immediately die with one hit on screen two due to my low health. But it certainly looks to be a great game, the gameplay just doesn't feel quite right for me to enjoy it properly.
Zone-M, 03 Feb 2018 (Rating: 4)
It's a version of Centipede and I was very impressed with it. It's a much better version than dk'tronics' Centipede and up there with Megapede the clone I had and played many years ago. Very enjoyable. I want to play this guy's other games now.
It's very much Super/Championship Sprint only you have much more control on your car in this game unlike the Sprints which I had difficulty doing so in. So I would gladly take this over those any day.
They tried to make this look more like Super and Championship Sprint and achieve it by making this as uncontrollable as those games were. It doesn't help when all the cars are identical. The first game didn't need fixing yet they did and broke it. I guess this therefore qualifies as yet another shitty sequel then.
As a Pengo clone this certainly isn't bad but I had much more enjoyment in his Centipede clone Zone-M compared to this. But still, it's not a bad Pengo clone really.
It's a clone of Amidar and it's a perfectly acceptable one. It's fast, responsive, enjoyable and keeps it simple by just having squares to fill. So three games by Zuheir Urwani and three nice and playable games, his Pengo clone Willibald in 1984, bettered by this in 1985 and bettered more by his Centipede clone Zone-M in 1986. I wish they got released commercially to be honest because they were all good games.
It's pretty accurate and pretty good fun. However there is a longevity issue with this as once you beat the level 3 opponent, the hardest difficulty, the game is done and there's nothing to do on it, and you can't play two players on it. It's good and I like it but there's little to achieve in this and if you're good you'll end up finishing it in five minutes and you're done, and that's the end.
It looks terrible but it actually plays decent enough. Might have been a pleasant purchase as a budget game but certainly not for full price.
Just about as unplayable as you can get. You just either constantly crash or end up shooting yourself. Most of these Players games haven't been great but they haven't been this bad and this unplayable.
I like the novelty in this and it looks nice, but it seems a bit to easy to hit a person or birds that decreases time. It certainly has the looks to be a quality game, however I feel it misses the mark.
Nice enough graphics to this one but the gameplay is mental! It took me ages to get out of the first screen and when I did I instantly died anyway so it was hardly worth the effort.
It's a better game than Las Vegas Casino but it's more likely something you'll play for about five minutes, think it's alright, put it aside and likely not touch it again for a while.
As an Olympic-style game, there are games that play worse than this, but as an arcade conversion a discussion is a waste of time. It's horrific in every level and when you consider Ocean released a perfectly good version of Hyper Sports a couple of years ago how on earth they managed to cock up its predecessor is a complete mystery. It's almost as if this was made as a joke, it's that bad.
It appears this game is called "Egg Catcher!" rather than Egg Saver, I can only guess Sinclair Programs named it Egg Saver. This is a very short game, 50 golden eggs fall down and each are worth money, collect the eggs to earn the money, the game ends after the 50th egg drops, that's it. It's impossible to get all 50 eggs because some fall so far away it's impossible to reach it in time unless you use a bit of trickery to make sure you anticipate it quicker I assume, like save states. Also you have to catch the eggs dead centre I believe, if you are just out it won't count. Also, don't bother counting how many eggs you collect, the game only tells you how many you collect by its money count and it's a frankly a distraction. It's not a terrible game, it's just short, 50 eggs and we're done, but it's a nice time filler at least and I've played a lot more terrible and unplayable type-ins lately, so it's nice to be able to play one properly for once.
Frog 5, 04 Feb 2018 (Rating: 2)
This currently sits on the Top 100 Worst Games list on WoS and indeed it is a pretty poor game. But truth be told, as a Frogger clone, it isn't really Frogger. It is in that the gameplay is similar but this time you have to get the frog across the road and into a cage at the top of the screen and then go back down and into another cage. Truthfully speaking, I have played worse, the A'n'F version was an abysmal clone that is frankly unplayable, this whilst being a poorly written game is at least to a degree playable, unlike the A'n'F version. So it is a bad game but it is not utter tripe like the A'n'F version was, perhaps I'm being kind, maybe too kind, but this isn't the worst Frogger game I have played on the Spectrum, so therefore I will be gentle with it and say 2 is enough.
I felt it was necessary to review this game since it was released alongside Frog 5. Unbelievable this is much worse than Frog 5 which is currently on World of Spectrum's top 100 Worst Games list. Frog 5 was at least playable, this is totally unplayable. You don't stand a chance in this at all, when it says your opponant (sic) is deadly accurate it wasn't shitting, it never misses a shot. Before you know it you've lost all your lives as soon as the game starts. How this hasn't made the worst games list along with Frog 5 is a mystery.
Might as well review the combined bundle of Frog 5 and Showdown while I'm at it since I reviewed them individually just now. Frog 5 is a bad game but not as terrible as its low score on WoS suggests, Showdown on the other hand is horrible and is actually the worse game out of the two. Neither game are worth a look though it has to be said. This would get an aggregate score of 1.5 but as we don't have that I'll just go the 2 to round it off instead, even though it feels like I'm being generous given Showdown is tripe.
Theo Develegas pulls off a Harry Price and makes a game largely of code from Titus' Crazy Cars. The cars present in that game appear in this game as traffic cars. The backgrounds may be different and at least it has a proper A in it but it's largely the same game and thus I would give this game a 0 if I was allowed to.
Tennis, 04 Feb 2018 (Rating: 1)
I had a feeling these Load 'n' Run games weren't going to be great, and so far one game in and that theory is proven to be correct. It's more pong than Tennis, and it's too fast and uncontrollable. Highest difficulties, especially the highest one, prove to be cheats be moving towards the net and THEN serve, something that isn't even legal in Tennis plus you don't even move closer to the other player in Pong anyway. So it's trying to be Pong and Tennis and fails in being both, I have a feeling this is start of a long and painful relationship with Load 'n' Run.
Another Tennis game from Load 'n' Run you say? I'm in. Surely this can't be any worse that the previous Tennis game. Well in fact, it is. It's slower and more playable as a result, but like Load 'n' Run Tennis it's pretty much Pong with a Tennis theme. There's no serves, if a point is won play just continues from where the ball left off, there's also no outs, at all, if you hit your ball well wide and well out, you win the point anyway, which can be a very good exploit to use if you plan on winning. Overall both this and Load 'n' Run Tennis are very bad, but this gets the nod on the worst as it states to be Tennis yet doesn't even follow the rules. 2-0 for Load 'n' Run stinkers, I have a feeling this is going to be a recurrence as time goes on.
This is very similiar to Break Away, a game I previously reviewed, too similar, similar enough for it to deemed as plagiarism in fact. If Break Away clones an existing game I'd forgive this, otherwise this gets little love from me other than a generous 2.
The idea to convert the Amiga favourite onto the Spectrum was ambitious but the end result is largely ineffective. This was supposed to achieve the goal of having an epic adventure on your Spectrum yet all it achieved was showing how limited the Spectrum's capabilities were, with its largely monochrome graphics and its two cassette bullshit multiload. The game itself is alright, mostly repetitive though with constantly beating up ants and walking right endlessly until you reach a door, which then tells you to load side 4, then you realise you can't do anything because it's too dark so you have to go back, which loads side 3 again. I'm thankful I never bought this back in the day because it would have been a pain in the arse to load and run. It's not a bad game, but stick to the 16-bit versions I think.
Have to agree with The Dean on this one. I didn't enjoy having enemies appear out of nowhere and shooting you even after shooting them four times.
Quite decent at what it tries to be but it will most likely keep you interested for a brief period before moving onto something else, no sound adding to the boredom. I've played worse poker games though.
It's not bad, much better than most of Tiertex's other conversions certainly, but it just feels a bit flat to me.
It's quite a nice conversion but it's letdown by its annoying scrolling and the fact that after dying you respawn exactly where you died, even if it's in mid-air falling towards spikes.
I was totally unimpressed with this. I found it hard to hit my enemies unless a fired a bullet at them and you have a limited supply of them, so when I ran out it usually meant death. I imagine the other versions like the C64 version play better than this.
There are a lot of things wrong with this. It is slow, the ball rebounds off the objects rather than hit them, your ball can go through the straight gaps without hitting anything, it goes through your bat and ends your life and when I had one more object to hit it randomly said ouch and ended my life and made me start again. So this is for the trash never to be played again.
One of the early BASIC football manager games. There are no highlights at all, it takes you straight to the result which is fair enough. But team selection is odd, all the players are blank and you have to fill them in at the very beginning, so I just put in England's 86 World Cup squad. Injuries are very common and you'll most likely run out of players by the time you reach the tail end of qualifying. It always plays a beepy God Save the Queen every time it loads your squad. There isn't much waiting in this game which is great but there isn't a lot of everything else along with it. With all the injuries causing your squad's rating to go down you don't stand much chance of winning the World Cup anyway, I lost to El Salvador which says it all.
Ladeks, 10 Feb 2018 (Rating: 1)
I can't seem to do anything here, you only have one life and that one life usually ends after about 3 seconds. This is as appalling as you can get.
It's not bad but the narrow screen and large ship create problems throughout the game, sometimes you have tight gaps to fit through between a barrier and a bullet and you can't fit. Level 2's green is much harder to see than Level 1's yellow as well and I think I prefer playing it in 48K mode as the 128K sound is annoying. Suppose it fits the budget price really.
A Your Sinclair covertape game written from the fella responsible for Laser War, a game I reviewed some time ago which had the world's dumbest AI. And now we've gone from that to one of the world's dumbest concept. You have to choose the icon of which direction you want your sphere to go but you barely have time to react and do anything here. This is rubbish beyond words and thank goodness this never made it to shops.
Xark, 10 Feb 2018 (Rating: 2)
I was expecting this to be pitiful owing to the low score on WoS but this isn't too bad. The sound is awful and the game doesn't offer very much but it isn't as terrible as I expected it to be.
I'm just going to say this is unfinished. The screens are identical and you seem to have infinite lives. It's also random in that there's some people you can walk through and there are others that build up some meter which presume is damage. Is this really a game? No. Did this really need a review? No. But what's done is done.
It's Defender and it's terrible. I can't imagine how it would have felt paying £5.99 for this garbage.
While the graphics are pretty appalling the gameplay is pretty alright really, although I felt none of his attacks worked apart from the flying kick and the horse riding part was a bit annoying but then that was a fault in the arcade version too. But it is pretty playable at least.
This is certainly a better covertape game than whatever Rikosphere was trying to be but you don't have a lot of time to make you moves and it is too easy to shoot the key you need to progress, which means your stuck. You are also supposed to top up on laser but again you don't have a lot of time. It isn't a bad game really in all fairness to it though.
Can anyone help me with this game? I don't understand how it works!
Got to say this game drove me up the wall. I can't find a way to get past the MCP, no matter what it always catches up to me in the end. This is too frustrating and unplayable that to call this rubbish is an understatement. Games like this are exactly why a crap games competition exists.
Well this game left me feeling confused. The first part is fine, the second part, well, greatly confused me.
Rescue, 14 Feb 2018 (Rating: 4)
This was fun to play back in the day. I feel I lack the patience for this now but for nostalgia's sake I'll give it a 4. The most amusing thing about this game however you can end your game immediately if you go right which supposedly takes off your craft but as you don't have enough fuel you will crash. I timed it and it approximates that the game will end in 0.21 seconds! And then just try to break into the program and see what happens!
A lost full-priced Durell game from 1987 that was resurrected by Elite two years later and release on their budget Encore label. I had great difficulty controlling my plane and while you're not supposed to shoot your allies I did anyway. It is not a bad game once you get used to its controls but if you don't you will struggle.
Great music in this one and it's got pretty graphics, but the gameplay is a little brutal and hard to control.
I had a tough time with this at first but then I bought a better car and my performances improved, I even became World Champion! I have a save state of this now and look forward to playing more of this again.
I had a really hard times getting this one to load and I did I felt a little underwhelmed with it. I struggled with the keyboard layout and ducking in second part was quite a chore. It isn't a bad game really but I can't help but think there are better versions than this.
The numbered version of Master Word. These type of games are good for a time filler, after ten minutes it's time for something else. This one though has rubbish key response, you have to jam the button down and then it takes a bit to actually register it properly. Not bad for a quick go all the same.
It felt necessary to look at Paul Dobie's other game after looking at Code Breaker. There is a slight problem with this Battleships clone in that all the pieces have to be horizontal where if I remember clearly they can also be set vertical as well, or maybe I have gotten the rules wrong after all these years.
Level 4? I can't even get past level 1! And when I did I instantly died in Level 2! Seeing that this bloke wrote Brad Blasts the Galactic Barbarians and Muggins the Spaceman and both of them were crap I wasn't hoping for much with this, but this might actually be worse that them both combined! This is just unplayable.
Bricky, 17 Feb 2018 (Rating: 2)
Another Tron-style game. It's not great but at least it's a better version than Laser War.
Operation Wolf with Your Sinclair staff on a single screen. The cursor isn't quick enough to move from one side to the other so there's times where it's impossible not to be hit, but it's not bad.
These type of games aren't all that great but they usually aren't as bad as this one. I thought its average score was a bit harsh at first, turns out it's fully justifiable.
This might be one of the most unenjoyable of Alternative's kids licensed games. The jumping is horrible and makes progression through the different screens tougher than it should be, especially for a kids game.
Gun.Smoke is an arcade game I've never been a fan of, but this port, whilst being bland and too much the same, is much more playable.
A sequel to Desperado completely unrelated to Gun.Smoke and instead of a vertical scrolling shooter we now have Ocean's RoboCop set in the Wild West. I don't mind that it's not related to the arcade game and the gameplay has changed, what I do mind though is its horrible graphics and pitiful gameplay. It's yet another shit sequel.
This is a very confusing game and it's safe to say this isn't one of Code Masters' best Spectrum titles. It looks like a game you would enjoy but it certainly doesn't play like one. The movement is slow, there's no way to avoid the things enemies thrown at you and you tend to get stuck from time to time, even right next to a ghost which ultimately kills you. In the same year Tag Computer Games also done Rockstar Ate My Hamster for Code Masters which was decent the lost steam the more you played it, and Arcade Trivia Quiz for Zeppelin which was an enjoyable game, this however is anything but enjoyable and if anything I personally see this as overrated.
I do like this game, it is simple to get into and understand but there are inconsistencies with the cat's jumping that prevents this game from getting a higher score. Plus the graphics aren't great but it's 1984 so what did you expect? But the gameplay works bar the jumping and has some variety to it, like level two has you jumping on a raising platform to reach the higher parts and level 4 is like Manic Miner. It's good for a quick go really, not all bad.
I have chosen to review this game next because it's the only other game Paul Barsby wrote on the Spectrum and it's a Frogger clone and I've covered a number of Frogger clones on the Spectrum on this site and I guess this is another one chalked off from that particular list. Now I wish I hadn't, because in terms of Frogger games on the Spectrum this is up there among the very worst, which is saying something given A'n'F's Frogger is currently the worst I've played. Here the traffic is way too fast on screen one which makes progression past it very difficult, because as well as speed being an issue the gaps are few and far between and also they are small, so the margin for error is tiny. Screen two, which took me forever to reach, is at least slower but you have four rows of traffic to work on, and predictably I failed. Another point of fail is you have to move even when on a log which isn't how Frogger works as the log moves you as you time your jump to the next log, you don't have that here, you have to keep moving to stay on the log which for a Frogger game is wrong and should be classified as illegal. But what makes this game stand out best, for infamy rather than pride, is its speech which is hilariously bad, especially when you kill your tortoise. What is he trying to say when he dies? I reckon he's saying something like "silly driver" which sounds stupid if you drown him and I can't even make out what his second speech is trying to say. This game is just appalling and an absolute unbearable nightmare to play. I think A'n'F's Frogger is still the worst as it was unresponsive and unplayable as a result, but this is among the worst Frogger clones I've played on the Spectrum. And Algray didn't last long by the looks of it with one other game, The Exterminator, which is MIA so no review for that game then. I blame this game for their premature demise.
Have to agree with Stack on this one, the fact that you have to hit the enemies at a certain point for it to count as a death is no fun at all. And people griped about Catwalk having poor graphics for 1984, what do you call this then? Compare the graphics of these two games, no contest. This actually isn't a terrible game and I feel it deserves at least a 2, but the fact that the enemies are practically untouchable unless you hit a certain part of them is inexcusable and doesn't make your game fun to play, and that is why the score of 1 is justified.
Got to say it, but dandyboy is right, Bryan Ferry as Dracula on the loading screen is something that once you see it you can't unsee it. It looked promising with the lovely detailed, though colourless, loading screen and the charming music to go with it, but it's too bad the game itself doesn't match my hopes. It's reminiscent of Ghost Hunters but you seem to just wonder around looking for keys, or at least from what I played anyway, which doesn't appeal to me. I do like that you can change to a bat and wolf, but it doesn't save the game from being a bore. Also when you die you start all over again, which is always annoying. It is a shame that this didn't live up to my hopes. I guess I'll just be better off staring at the loading screen for 10 minutes rather than play this game for 10 minutes.
Advanced Lawnmower Simulator gets an expansion, and not in a good way. The keys have a massive delay in response and the gameplay is slow, meaning mowing the entire lawn is quite a painful chore, and this is only lawn 1, I can't imagine what the other lawns are like. And the author shared his address on the game, I wonder how many people actually wrote back to him?
I am back. I have been sick the past week but I'm getting better day by day and I managed to go back to work today.
Back to business now and this is another football manager game and one with one of the longest loading waits I have ever dealt with, and people complain about loading times in modern games. Annoyingly the squad is the England team which I think I mentioned before in another review of a separate game and so this looks good if you choose to play as Czechoslovakia, although you can alter the names anyway but can you really be arsed finding 22 Czech names to play with? Also, went I went to the program screen I pressed N for no for arranging a friendly and yet it done it anyway! So now I have a friendly against Northern Ireland against my wishes. Then when I select my team it asks me if it's my final team and when I said yes it tells me to drop a player anyway as if I pressed no, and it did this for subs as well. So it seems you have to tell it twice in order to do something right. And the game itself is, well lacking, but then it's a football manager so what did you expect? But there is almost no sound and it's slow paced even when you set its game speed to 10 which is supposed to be the fastest, and the match itself is a drag and boring experience, against Austria we had one shot in 31 minutes. The match screen gives you some sort of commentary at the bottom, like Austria possession, tackle, far too high for a shot that's missed, but the way the game is you will easily lose track of it out of boredom anyway. And after losing 2-0 to Austria enough was enough, this is dire and possibly one of the most boring and pitiful football management games I've ever played, with its long loading times and broken commands. This is a 1988 game that looks and feels identical to one played in 1985 and it makes me want to never play another football manager game again, that is how bad this is. I prefer being sick than playing tripe like this.
Mlynek, 06 Mar 2018 (Rating: 4)
It's in Polish, but it's Head-On, so I felt this would be easy to play and understand and that a review was possible. I wasn't hoping for much owing to the lowly 3.20 score on WoS, but this is a very favourable and fun version of Head-On. It plays at a good speed until later screens when two enemy cars tend to slow it down a bit, and it's responsive which has been a problem in other Head-On games I played. This is one of the better clones I have played and I felt it merits a 4 rating for being a joy to play and for not having the same responsive problems other clones had. Nice game, really enjoyed it.
Simply enter some numbers to invest on certain markets and watch your money either go up or down randomly. It's a curious one at first but it doesn't make a good game in the long run, by week 4 I had already done everything that needed to be done and as such was bored of it and didn't feel like playing anymore. And there's 26 weeks of this to do and if you reach £100,000 you move onto part 2 of the game, no thanks.
It's not a bad game, the problem is it's too fast and movement is a pain as a result, especially when you're being shot at and you're trying to manoeuvre to shoot him, but you can't because it's too quick. This would have easily earned a 4 if not for that.
Simply shoot the falling spiders and score as many points as you can within the time limit without letting too many fall on the ground. Good for a couple of games and after that you're done. Nothing special really.
Not the worst golf game by any means, but it's confusing to play the right shots in this as the layout isn't straightforward and the X marker tends to get in the way especially in short putts. There's far worse golf games than this but this doesn't do it for me.
It took me forever to figure how this game works, but it 5-8 to move left and right and 0 to climb up and down ladders. You have to retrieve all the barrels and bring them to your starting point while avoiding the baddies. It's alright once you work but what you're doing, but then it's a bit unresponsive and then too responsive in that it reads it twice which has you going up then down the ladder is quick succession. Not terrible but it's one I'll never play again at least.
This confused me. First it autofires and spins when you shoot, then you have to fire and it stays still. I also found myself confused as to what is collectable at the start and what isn't. The shooting is offputting too, how many times must you shoot something before it explodes? Then when you die it proceeds to the next level anyway. But the icing on the cake is the high score screen is missing a V, so if you're called Vincent, Victor or Vladimir you're in trouble. To sum up this game it's certainly not mega and it isn't good either for that matter.
This one intrigued me greatly, Tetris mixed with dominoes? This looks like fun, well the one problem going for it is it's not Tetris. From the way the gameplay is described it's more like a Columns game, but it isn't that too. From the way the game looks it appears to be similar to Puyo Puyo or Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine if you had a Mega Drive, Master System or Game Gear growing up, but it isn't that either. The game ends up being a confusing mess of a puzzle game with no clear objective and tiles disappear at random. You put two of the same together, three, four, nothing happens, suddenly the next time you do it nearly the whole board is cleared and you've levelled up without knowing what you're supposed to be doing! I mean it looks fun but then I don't know what I'm doing most of the time and so it's not. Any assistance on this would be greatly appreciated and then I'll have another look at it properly, but for now I'll just leave this be and be forever confused by it.
Zythum, 12 Mar 2018 (Rating: 3)
It plays alright really and can be quite enjoyable but his floaty jumping is a pain in the ass. You can't float to high as the enemies will come closer to you as you land and they may hit you as you have no time to turn around and hit them, yet you can't float to low as you have gaps to jump across and you'll fall short and die. It annoyed the hell out of me. This doesn't deserve a 4 but then 2 feels a bit harsh since it wasn't that bad a game, so 3 feels justified for me.
Bug, 12 Mar 2018 (Rating: 2)
It's not the worst but I can't help but feel that surely there's a better snake game on the Spectrum than this. If this was a commercial release I feel the magazines wouldn't have been kind to it.
The late great Sir Bruce Forsyth had his own game on the Spectrum and let's just say it isn't going to be on any of his memoirs any time soon. I mean it plays quite like the show but it comes across as bland to me, plus the computer is a cheating git, he answers too quickly before you've understood the question and there's no sound at all. Comparing this to other quiz computer games this is inferior and doesn't have the same charm. It'll be a good night if you play your cards right, or if you avoid playing this game, yes I know it doesn't rhyme but it's the truth.
It isn't bad for what it is and it certainly isn't bad for its age, but it isn't something I would sit and play for a lot of time. But it's an interesting one to say the least.
The plot is an amusing one, the game though is unimpressive. The controls are a nightmare and moving your man to avoid the hazards in the game is much harder than it ought to be. The humour is there, it's just a pity there isn't much of a game to go with it.
This appears to be multiple games in one. The first is a shooting game where you circle around to aim and hit the baddies and hitting 45 of 50 progresses to the next stage, a snake clone where you have to score over 1000 to progress, but I failed six times and gave up. The first game is too responsive and the second game is partly unresponsive, but neither were any good and the rest of it shall remain a mystery to me, which might be a good thing.
There's a lot of things wrong with this game. Firstly, the default speed is way too fast and you'll end up losing all of your lives within a few seconds, so it is best to slow it down using A as soon as you start playing. Also, you are too slow as a whole so avoiding enemies is a chore. I would suggest this game was some kind of prototype for a future release which ended up not happening, but whatever it was it wasn't very good at all. With just 4 votes it is not considered for the worst game's list on World of Spectrum as you need at least 5 to qualify, and votes are no longer taken there, so this game can thank its lucky stars that WoS is forever broken beyond repair because this will avoid its rightful place in that list.
This is so poor. The playing grid is so small and so bad, you don't know where you're going next and can even die while moving to the next screen, presumably because you've hit the ocean. I guess you can say it's like Treasure Hunt but a very poor representation of it.
It's another Frogger clone and as it's a 1K game you can't expect too much from it. This isn't too bad, it just doesn't offer a lot other than increased speed per level, which is to be expected from a 1K game. But it's responsive, playable and enjoyable. I've played a lot of poor Frogger games on the Speccy so playing a decent one is a welcome change.
Wow this is tripe. It's a racing game where going fast is a no-no as you go too close to the top of screen and increases your chances of crashing, and when you do there is a chance that it will respawn you on a turn and thus it crashes you every time you try to move or accelerate. Complete dong.
This actually looks like a game that could have been good fun, but the problem is it's terribly unplayable. Getting past the flames in the beginning is a matter of luck and then when you do you have to collect all the items while avoid more flames and then leave, then repeat, that's it. So we have seen all that the game offers in about a minute and you paid £7.95 for this. Wow.
It's like Gun.Smoke which is a game I never got on with, and like it's counterpart it's hard, too bloody hard in fact. I never got far into this at all.
I remember playing this years ago and it was a fun game, difficult but good fun. It's all about learning patterns of the enemies and it can get very challenging, but it's a good challenge and its look and feel stands out. I really enjoy the music but found myself playing better with it turned off, probably because you hear the bullets being fired and so you can anticipate better. This was as good as I remembered it to be.
Good god the image on the title screen! This appears to be a game where you just jump on and squash what looks like a dog and a whale and they touch you and if they do enough damage on you you're dead. And the jump doesn't work half the time which is annoying, plus there's a tendency to land on the enemies and not kill them meaning you will be damaged or even killed. And there doesn't seem to be any levels either, you just keep going at the one screen with the same two enemies to squash until death. It's pretty basic and it most likely won't hold your interest for long, it certainly didn't hold mine for more than two minutes.
It's a Centipede clone called, Centipede, going by the title screen. I thought this game was called Centi-Bug? I thought dk'tronics already had a game called Centipede? Anyway I am not going to say much about this one other than the hit detection is iffy and I played a much better clone years ago called Megapede, so if you want Centipede on your Spectrum play that and not this.
This one I played a few years ago and found it to be one of the most laborious games I've ever played in my life, and playing it now just reminds me of exactly why. It just doesn't have any redeeming features at all and becomes an instant bore. It really is the sort of game that needs instructions and none are present which only adds to the confusion of everything. What was the thinking behind this game? And it cost £7.95. Crash destroyed it in their review and rightfully so, this is as abysmal as you can get. It's funny and ironic that this is called The Trading Game, because there's one thing this isn't more than others, and that's a game.
Credited to The Oliver Twins for some reason, pretty certain they had involvement in this and nor would they want to. It's very hard to control the sphere and it's difficult to do pretty much anything as a result. I'll just say the other versions are probably worth playing more than this.
I was initially disappointed to not hear one of the worst tunes to grace the Spectrum going by Raphie's review as I didn't get any, but then the game crashed when you started playing it on 128K and +2. After loading it on +2A I finally got the music, which is a bit crap but there are worse tunes than this for sure, and finally the game started successfully and boy I wish it hadn't. The key layout is atrocious, QAZX and 1, you need to be double-jointed to work your way around that layout. The goalies are manual controlled so you need to be the one to do the saving here, you can only imagine how well that went with me. And indeed as stated earlier both teams look identical which is as lazy as you can get. As far as football games go, it's dire and among the worst out there, as well as that it's easily one of the worst games Players ever released. And the best thing about the game is its cassette cover, which while looking as bad as the majority of Speccy football games the first two teams I think of when I see it are Uruguay and Mexico and neither are in Europe.
Abyss, 29 Mar 2018 (Rating: 4)
Sorry for the lack of reviews lately but my mother passed away on the 20th of March so I took time away to mourn with my family. 81 was a cracking innings all the same but it was still sad to say goodbye to her in the end.
As she will say herself, the show must always go on, and so it shall. This is a pretty nice game and I quite enjoyed the mini game feature but some of them don't work work well and some of them are just crap which spoils the fun. But in all it's a nice little program that kept me interested. There was no way this was getting a 5 but I felt 3 was too harsh, so 4 will do for this one.
Froggy, 29 Mar 2018 (Rating: 3)
Oh look another Frogger clone, I'm so in. From the bloke that wrote the official Speccy Pac-Man conversion, which was initially a clone before Atari got involved and made it a conversion, this is very faithful to Frogger itself and certainly a step up from the previous clones I've looked at, though the unresponsive keys spoil the fun. If not for that this would easily have gotten a 4 from me. It comes complete with the Frogger tune as you start the game which was nice. There was never an official Frogger game on the Spectrum, but if one had to be it would certainly have been this one.
Sinclair Randomseek selected me to play Odd Job Eddie, a Harry Price game that stole code from this game, so as a consequence I will avoid Odd Job Eddie and look at this game instead, and I wish I hadn't frankly. It's a Manic Miner game and a brutally difficult one with horrible jumping and enemies hard to avoid. It makes me wonder why Harry Price pirated this? To lower the difficulty or to make it even more impossible than it already is?
Good lord the music! This is one of Ocean's forgotten games, that being because their credit is missing on WoS and so when you search for Ocean games in the database this one is missing and so you forget that it's one of theirs. Actually there's a bigger reason why it's forgotten about, and that's because it's shit. This came at a time where when Ocean's games were good they were really good, and when they were bad they were really bad, they had the best of games, they had the worst of games, and my god this is among the worst. It has zero gameplay enjoyment, it's too slow and hitting anyone is a matter of luck. From what I recall the arcade game was a fun game but this port is anything but fun.
Hear that music? That is supposed to be one of the greatest theme songs of all-time and it is utterly butchered. And as far as TV show based games go, this is among the very worst in that it has absolutely nothing to do with the show whatsoever. If you hadn't seen the show before you'd think this as another dungeon crawler adventure type game, but if you did, and more importantly if you loved the show, you will know that this doesn't follow any of its look and feel in any way shape or form. You are to go around and do certain things in order to progress, no THEY are to tell YOU what to do because you can't see a thing anyway! Given that Knightmare was inspired by two Spectrum games, Atic Atac and Dragontorc, you would think that they would have added elements of those games to make this game stand out, but nooo instead we get a shitty dungeon crawler type game with a rubbish control system and had no faithful following to the show at all. And there's a candle as a timer for some reason, no comment. This is nothing more than an insult to Knightmare fans. This was one TV show conversion they shouldn't have bothered with.
Panic, 02 Apr 2018 (Rating: 2)
It's Space Panic and it's a game I do not get on with. Every clone I have played thus far has left a foul taste in my mouth and this was no exception, but this was by far the best one I have played as I was able to progress in this one unlike the others. But the controls are fiddely which makes this harder than it should be, but then it's a 16K game so you'd expect that. It is a step up for Space Panic, it's just too bad that step isn't a big one.
Glass, 02 Apr 2018 (Rating: 4)
I liked this. It's straightforward and plays quite nicely, except controlling your crosshair is a bit iffy and sensitive at times and the playing area in the shooting levels is so basic it makes it look difficult to determine if you are actually moving or not. I agree that the game has a lack of depth to it, it can get drawn out and repetitive rather quickly, but given the crap I've played recently I probably enjoyed this more than I should have, not that I'm complaining.
How did this not make the worst games list? The first part is so difficult to get past because it's so fast and there are a million obstacles to avoid. But when you do you then have to dock into a shuttle, but you are so tiny that it seems impossible to line it up to shuttle to the naked eye, but luckily I managed it first time so maybe it's easier than it appears. You then must shoot the aliens as they fly away from you, except you can't move, at all, ever, it is broken beyond repair, and thus you can't progress any further. How did this get a commercial release? And when you choose not to play again it tells you to preorder Star Quest II - The Aliens Strike Back, but this doesn't appear to have been released, thank the lord.
I was quite addicted to Skips back in the day, but playing this makes me go off them forever, that's if they're still being sold. The whole plot is ridiculous, finding a house to enter is a matter of luck and finding items in these houses is even more luck based. I can't find anywhere to replenish fuel and I'm beginning to wonder if that is even possible. And you're riding a bike whilst you're asleep? What message is this sending our children? This is one the most tedious and hideous games you will ever play in your life, for the love of Skips avoid at all costs. And the author managed to misspell cursor as "curser" on the title screen as well, excellent.
I bought this many years ago and wasn't impressed with it in the slightest, and many years later I'm still not impressed with it. Sure the graphics are really nice but the whole gameplay just feels like a let down and doesn't quite work. Perhaps the other versions play better compared to this, maybe I'm being mean to it, but I was never fond of this.
Now this is a game I always remembered being a fun little game. It's marred by colour clash and scrolling issues and maybe it's me getting older but the in-game music was doing my head in a bit, but playing it now was just as fun as I remembered it to be.
The sequel to CJ's Elephant Antics I didn't play until a few years ago and I struggled to find the same charm in this as I did with its predecessor. They have changed very little, so much so that parts of New York are recycled straight from France, the first level in Elephant Antics, yeah you aren't fooling anyway with that trick Code Masters, and I think that benefits AND hurts the game. It just lacked the same enjoyment as Elephant Antics did for me. Perhaps with this game failing to meet the same heights as the first game the writing was on the wall for poor CJ as his third game CJ in Space was eventually cancelled and never released. Poor CJ.
It's Battleship and it's tedious. There's not much say about this other than I got bored of it very quickly because of its slow pace and I've played better versions than this. Best to stick to the board game though truth be told.
To call this game a hassle is an understatement. The tribbles just constantly get themselves into all sorts of "trubble", hence its name. This is like a Pro Babysitter Simulator and it annoyed the hell out of me. Given this fella also wrote Flip Flap which was an abysmal Pinball game I looked at back in December my hopes weren't too high on this one and my premonitions were proven true. It's original, I'll give it that, but it was a total pain in the backside.
Got to be honest, this wasn't much of a game. Once you trap the sharks, which can be done so easily, the level is done and all you have to do is wonder around avoiding the octopus and accumulate 2000 points per level and that's all. Worth your time for one game only, after that there isn't much point anymore.
This appears to be broken to hell. The game moves so slow and the car moves itself as none of the keys work. How does a game this broken not make the worst games list?
Boks, 06 Apr 2018 (Rating: 2)
Boxing from Polska! Basically hit him on the head a few times he goes down you've won and that's it, one opponent, no ten count, nothing. In terms of boxing games there are worse out there but they at least followed the rules to a degree, this is nothing more than a primitive fighting game played with the easiest settings. The controls are pretty advanced though, buttons for left hand and right hand punches, but if only more was done to the actual gameplay. I feel this would have been a decent boxing game if not for that.
Mouse, 07 Apr 2018 (Rating: 1)
It's Frogger yet again, except we're a mouse now for some reason and you have to avoid tractors, trains, hawks and the electric fence. This is among the worst Frogger clones I've played, not as pitiful as the A'n'F Frogger but it's certainly among it. The controls are dreadful, first they was unresponsive, then hyper responsive and then non-responsive again. I also lost count on the amount of times I went past a vehicle and still died. With Froggy we were heading in the right direction with these Frogger clones, but now we're heading backwards again.
Six games in one! So this review will be long winded, get comfortable because I'm going to tell you a story. First is darts and it's much simpler and straightforward compared to Indoor Sports' darts, though maybe a bit too simple once you get the hang of the crosshair's pattern. Still this is much more like it and fairly enjoyable, though you can't play the computer in this game and it only goes on for three legs. After that it's Bar Billiards, a game I've never played in my life. And this was a drag, it's you needing to pot as many balls as you can and 10 minutes, at least I think it is anyway and plus there's pegs to avoid as well. But when time expires you still play on, and why I don't know but it left me feeling irritated and wanting to quit. Luckily you can reset and load a game individually, and I did this to load Dominoes. This is slow paced and quickly becomes a chore. I also was not sure if this even follows the rules correctly as you can just place Dominoes wherever you feel like, but illegal moves exist so I guess there's some rules to follow. It's a quiet straightforward game I guess but I couldn't wait for it to end. Next is the infamous Table Football, and there's a reason it's infamous but that's for another review, spoiler! But this is dreadful, the ball never stops once you hit it and the goalies never work, meaning you're guaranteed to score every time, absolute bollocks. Then it crashed on me, fantastic, but thanks to reset I was then able to play some Poker. This is just like any other casino game except more primitive as you can't change your bets. I reckon it's the first to lose their money loses but I honestly couldn't sit through a whole game of this. And finally it's Skittles, which is a mini form of bowling where they do the aiming for you and you just have to press a button to throw, and I never managed to get them all down once, making me think it's impossible to do so, also there's no sound. But still it's more playable than the others so at least it has something going for it, And there you have it, six games in one tape and only Darts and Skittles stand out, the rest aren't worth your time, especially Bar Billiards and Table Football. So Darts I will give a three as it was very decent, Skittles will get two, so too will Poker and Dominoes and one point for Football and Billiards, with its divided total being 1.8 which I will round off to 2.
This is exactly the same Table Football that was in Pub Games but re-sold so Alligata can earn more money from it. Pathetic.
I forgot about this game. It always was a charm to play and very enjoyable, albeit very short. But Puff could have had a decent series for him like Dizzy and Seymour if Code Masters thought about him more, but instead he got himself one little sequel and you know where this is going already don't you? But that's for another review.
The sequel to Little Puff and it's one of the most dire sequels yet. Gone is everything that made Little Puff a fun title and in its place it a bog-standard CJ clone. Everything is a mess, a rubbish colour scheme, horrible scrolling, enemies that don't die, comparing this to Little Puff is like comparing a Picasso to a child's drawing. The only thing going for it is the music and even that gets old after five minutes of listening to it. This was released at a time when the Speccy scene was dying and Code Masters didn't give a shit about it anymore and so they just released anything to make some dough, this debacle being proof. There's no way in hell this should have been passed for release.
This has to be one of the quickest completions ever. Simply collect 20 crystals from the ceiling to destroy the Amethyst Egg of Xanu, and that's the only level. I did it in about six minutes. You can see why it was a magazine rather than a commercial release. Also worth noting that it was this chap's only game written.
The "intro" sounds like someone's scored a goal rather than fitting for a game bearing the name of Sir Francis Drake. This game apparently has you in an expedition as Sir Francis Drake himself, but the lack of instructions really hurts this one as I got easily confused with what to do. You move around the ocean and then random dialogue appears, such as the one shown on the WoS screenshot, but the game doesn't exactly tell you how to answer it, I just typed overboard though and it worked, at least I think it did anyway. The problem is, this message keeps appearing throughout the game, so I typed anchor and I broke free without damage, whatever that means. There are also Spanish galleons to attack or ignore, of course I attacked because I'm a mean bastard and chose to fire cannons, and I ended up getting holed and had to return to dry land, then I ran into another rock and typed anchor, but was holed again and sunk before reaching dry land. It looks to be an interesting one but there doesn't seem to be a lot going for it, again the lack of instructions do not help at all as the objective isn't clear cut. Where do I go from Lima exactly? What is my destination? Am I to collect food along the way and where? If somebody can manage to get into this for a detailed explanation of the game's concept, objective and strategy then it requires patience and so that is me out.
You shoudn't really have to knock this game because of it even written in 1K, but truth be told it's not a good game, it's not enjoyable. There's no score, no goal, no sound, no challenge, no levels, no, anything. You just avoid the cars by going left and right, the game accelerates for you, eventually you're hit and it resets and you start again, and that's it. Yes, 1K, I get it, but 1K games can be enjoyable to play, this isn't, it placed 53rd in the 2002 Minigame competition and has a lowly average of 3.17 in 6 votes for a reason, not because it's a 1K game, but because it's simply not a good game, in fact it's a bit rubbish.
I tend to review series games in order but Montana Jones I doesn't exist apparently, at least on the Spectrum it doesn't anyway, so here we are with II. And it has title music taken from Task Force by Players, naughty, but they did credit it so not all bad then. However when you complete a level there is a brief hearing of Out Run's Magical Sound Shower which is not credited. Naughty, naughty, naughty. You would think from its average score that this would be a decent game to play and early doors it sure looked to be, but the jumping is off and jumping on the necessary platforms can be a nightmare. I had thought initially that level 1 was impossible ti finish but then the previous review made me think otherwise and indeed a quick search unearthed a walkthrough which should how level 1 can be completed, and still it was a bastard to do it. The whole level design seems off as well, such as in level 6 where you fall randomly through the floor, sometimes right in front of the enemy and making it easy for him to kill you. This looked like it can be a fun arcade-style game to play and so I was extremely disappointed with how this game turned out to be.
This is a weird one. It's a Boulder Dash clone featuring puppies and you have to rescue them from captivity from Doc Dogmush who is on holiday, which already makes no sense, how can you have a game featuring a baddie who isn't even present? The game itself is almost unplayable as the enemies quickly become attached to you and follow you till you die. And like Boulder Dash rocks are your ally, except you can't move them so how much help they will be is a matter of luck I guess. It's not a horrible game by any means, it's just not very good.
It has the familiar Shaw Brothers look, on first impression this looks a bit like Cavemania, a Shaw Brothers game I reviewed some years ago. However the gameplay doesn't match up to a typical Shaw Brothers game. The movement of your character is slow and jerky, unlike a Shaw Brothers game which were usually smooth, and the jumping doesn't quite work too well as well as controls that don't respond very well. This looks like this could have been quite a nice game and I'm really disappointed that it's not. I'm going to put this down as a prototype that was prone to faults and inconsistencies, a prototype that was eventually never released that is, and I begin to see why.
Dandy, 15 Apr 2018 (Rating: 2)
This has nothing to do with Desperate Dan unfortunately, it is instead a Gauntlet-style game featuring Thor and Sheba. And it's not a particularly good Gauntlet clone, it's not terrible, there are worse out there, but it's slow, confusing, unfair as enemies respawn when you return to a screen you've cleared and the sound is very annoying. I think I would have liked this game if I bought it 30 years ago and it may appeal to Gauntlet fans, but it won't take you long to find a better clone than this I feel.
Cisco Heat wasn't a good arcade game yet unbelievably it was ported to the home computers to, well appear even more crap. But strangely enough the Spectrum version is the better version, the Amstrad version is very slow and the Commodore 64 version is infamously one of the worst games ever released. This version doesn't have a lot going for it but it isn't as bad as I imagined it would be.
Based on an arcade game that I have actually never played, not even on MAME. The controls are very awkward and shooting anyone is a matter of luck. It looks nice for sure but I found the gameplay too odd to enjoy. Perhaps if I played the arcade version I would appreciate this more.
What a bloody strange game this is. It's a shooter but with no shooting from you. They can fire at you but you cannot fire at them. Instead you hover around a, ship I presume, and making it explode piece by piece, and that's all for gameplay. I mean it isn't dreadful but it's hardly an exciting game, especially for its price. This is a game that would have easily been passed by Zeppelin for £2.99 and Alternative for £1.99, but no CRL were charging £8.95 for this, a game where you just go around making things disappear and can't shoot anything.
This is a version of ***man according to the game's intro screen, the things you do to avoid copyright while ripping off a game. It also says that "it is slow" and it wasn't kidding, normally you move a dot at a time and when you eat a power pellet you move two dots at a time, and annoyingly the ghosts are quickly than you and will catch up with you eventually if you are not careful, which doesn't seem bloody fair at all. In this game the dots are irrelevant apart from the power ones because is not to clear the whole level but eat the ghosts, which will be why it's called Ghost Gobbler then. Weirdly when you eat a power pellet the ghosts make your dots disappear as well as you do, as if they suddenly become on your side. So this "***man" game is slow, broken and not very good at all, in fact this may be one of the worst clones on the Spectrum.
Sadly, or rather thankfully, this has nothing to do with that Popstation Street Fighter clone where two men pull their arms and legs off and throw them at each other which Ashens has reviewed 50 million times. Instead you control a, thing, shooting, robot-looking things, around a city while rescuing humans. The controls are really tricky and pretty bad, it plays like a game fitting for a dual-stick arcade, like Robotron for instance, it doesn't work on a standard keyboard. It looks like something that could be fun to play but the complicated controls prevent that.
The game looks very pretty but the gameplay lacks execution. You're just wondering around entering doors for dead ends while collecting stuff to throw at baddies. My interest wore thin about about two minutes. I may be getting senile but I swear Ultimate game were better than this.
It's a decent game and I certainly enjoyed this more than my previous review Nightshade, but it's just lacking in lasting enjoyment. I felt part 1 was better than part 2, part 1 I at least was able to enjoy, part 2 on the other hand was a drag. I feel I would have enjoyed this 30 years ago but it doesn't hold up to much now. Still it wasn't a bad game, I just don't fancy spending too long at it personally.
Skull, 19 Apr 2018 (Rating: 3)
This was an interesting one to say the least. First game I had on it, I enjoyed it. Second go I had I did not enjoy it. It looks good and the skull itself is impressive, but again it's just endless wondering looking for items and stepladders. I think if this is your sort of game you will enjoy it.
This is as unplayable as you can get easy on the "easiest" difficulty. The things you are yo shoot at move so fast and yet you move very slowly and your weapon doesn't work as well as you'd like it too. I first played this on average difficulty and didn't do so great, this prompted me to do "childish" difficulty next and managed to do even worse! Yes, 1982 what did you expect and all that, what I hoped for was a playable game, this isn't one bit playable. Compare this to Arcadia, need I say more?
This adventure is "incredible" alright, incredibly dull and bad. Why do you need to stop moving constantly? And why did my game end suddenly? I entered a new area and it then read "You cannot leave. The globe is still lost. Do you wish "too" play again", so that's it. Game over just like that. My game ended for entering an area I shouldn't have been. No further comment, other than up yours you pile of poo.
I was intrigued with this from the WoS screenshot and indeed the game itself looked promising, slow paced and with annoying sound when you choose your letter but the gameplay was amusing, until I move all the ball to the bottom as required, because when I did nothing happen. It still commands you to pick a letter even when they're all gone. So this looks to be unfinished, what a pity because I was at least enjoying it.
Pool, 02 May 2018 (Rating: 4)
I have been violently ill over the past two weeks but thankfully I am better now and I should be able to go back to work next week, and so these reviews can continue. This is the predecessor to Steve Davis Snooker and I'm as bad as this as I am with that. It's similar to Snooker but with less balls but it's just as fun, albeit more limited which makes Snooker the better game. But both games are good fun, worth your time and dare I say, interesting, and nobody in the world is going to get that reference.
Oh Ultimate, your games were surely great 30 years ago but they are of little appeal to me now. This is Nightshade but with a western look. The controls are just as awkward and so to is the bore and lack of thrills. I'm just going to say me and isometric games don't blend together.
This is a pretty good game but it is very repetitive which spoils it a bit. Plus the fun for me ends the moment Ron the Robot appears as he slows the game down and is frankly a bastard. But it was good for what it was and I certainly enjoyed this more than the some of the other games I looked at before I became ill.
Oh isometric why do you do this to me? The controls are abysmal and found myself being attacked too randomly and so I didn't last long every time I played this. I might as well go back to the Ultimate library after this tripe.
As Sinclair Randomseek brought Boxing Manager 2 to my attention I felt I ought to look at the first Boxing Manager game first, though in all honesty whether they are actually tied to a series your guess is as good as mine. Guide your boxer to the top "before he suffers brain damage", already we can see what we're faced with here can't we? It's pretty basic and just evolves you managing a boxer and not exactly playing it, but it's a million times better than most football manager games and I was able to have a bit of fun with this. The one problem I have with this is they don't give you enough money at the start and you don't earn a lot of money throughout the game so buying a gym will be hard work, this makes fighting more difficult opponents a more tough task than it already is. Interestingly the Cult Games version, while technically the same game, is re-coded to suit their look and style, as if it had been stolen and re-programmed without the original author's knowledge which clearly even though he is credited for it, so it's more a "almost equal to" rather than the exact same game. Anyway, this is pretty good, streets ahead of the vast majority of football manager games.
And so to the second Boxing Manager game. This game actually allows you to control your boxer as well as manage him and I will be doing that second, for now let's focus on the management side of this. While this give you move options and gives you more control of your boxer's style it feels like a duller game. What made Boxing Manager a fun game to play was it was played at a steady pace, the rounds were short and it kept things moving at a fair rate, this only took two rounds for it to feel as drawn out as a football manager game. In the first game there were loads of knockdowns but here I'm on my fourth fight, haven't had a single knockdown yet and winning the fight seems to be determined on how much health is left, which is a bit rubbish, it's boxing not bloody Street Fighter. But it did offer me £1175 to take a dive, in other words throw the fight, so there is some sort of variety to this one. As for controlling your boxer, it's very confusing because you switch sides at random which means you have to constantly have to change the directions of your shot, plus I had trouble hitting my opponent at times. Safe to say, stick to manager, or better yet stick to Boxing Manager 1.
This is an unfinished game by Cybadyne which somehow made its way onto a Crash covertape in 1992. It's just level 1 and a bonus level and that's it. You would think from the name that it is related to football, nope, it is a game where you control a little creature that jumps and shoots. This is practically a cartoony version of another Cybadyne game Yeti. The level is awkward because you have very few bullets and they do not replenish when you lose a life, and jumping over enemies is tricky because of his bouncy jump. The bonus level looks fun, a shooter in the form of Galaxian only horizontal, but I've only seen that on a demo as I can't get past the level. Looks pretty but plays a bit arse, I can probably see why this was never finished.
This is another unreleased Cybadyne game released via a Crash covertape much like Head the Ball, only this game was finished and was set for release, it was reviewed and everything, but the closure of Destiny Software prevented that from happening, and that probably explains Head the Ball's fate as well now that I think of it. This is actually a really fun game to play, and I really enjoyed it. While repetition kicks in after so long it's still very likeable and its humourous presentation, even down to the in-game ads kept me hooked. This is easily the best game Cybadyne wrote and they earned nothing from it. Game development was a cruel business at times.
F-1, 06 May 2018 (Rating: 2)
Spanish Formula One game which is mediocre at best. The frame rate is dire and manoeuvring your car is almost impossible. I also seemed to suffer from excessive temperature all the time which made my car blew up all the time, and so I couldn't even complete one lap of this without crashing. Not impressed in the slightest.
I remember Smith's crisps from way back! They had lovely salt and vinegar chipsticks crisps which I loved, but I don't love this game, in fact it's pretty crap. It's slow, it's hard to control, it's abysmal in every level. And this was Torchraven's only game, hmm I wonder why?
Three games in one, great. Poker Royal which is your standard video poker game, Twenty One which is basically Blackjack but with alternate payouts such as 7 7 7 and High Low which is higher or lower. This isn't really too bad, it just gets boring pretty quickly and it annoyed me when it kept giving me bonus credits when I didn't want to because I wanted to move onto the next game. I have played worse casino games though.
This I suppose is a predecessor to Devastating Blow which I reviewed earlier this year as this is written by the same bloke. It's slower, uglier, and it's even more difficult to punch your opponent. While I gave Devastating Blow a 2 playing this now and comparing it to this it deserves a score of 20 because it's streets ahead of this dung. Be sure to check out Dynamite Designs' "forth coming" games - Hands of Stone, World Football, Seasons Sporting Specials and Super Fruity Simulator, actually none of these exist because this was their only ever game, figures.
This has to be one of the most unplayable Breakout games ever. Don't even bother trying to play on slow because your bat is very slow and it's impossible to play. But even on fast you have to cope with the ball going through the bat instead of rebounding of it like it should. Bricks disappear willing as the ball goes near them, though the goal is not actually to clear them all but rather to hit one specific brick that will complete the level and move on to the next one which is fine with me otherwise level 1 would be impossible to finish. But it's an appalling Breakout clone, one of the very worst in fact.
Ooh this site now has links from other websites for each game and now we can review the newer games not covered on World of Spectrum. Very nice and refreshing update, well done.
Onto the review for this tut now, ironically one of the very first in Speccy history. I'm very aware that this is 1982, the humble beginnings of Spectrum programming, but this is impossible to play. Everything is too fast including your ship and the enemies are tough to aim at and shoot, the UFO in particular is impossible. I seem to remember playing a German version of this clone that was pretty bad and this is even worse.
I somehow thought I already reviewed this but it turns out I haven't. I think this was the last game I got for my Spectrum and it was always a fun game. The monochrome graphics within the puzzle pieces are a problem though and it does become an unnecessary challenge trying to tell which piece is which, but it is a fun game, even if I couldn't work out how to do level 2-1-4 and then cocked it up when I eventually worked it out on my last life.
This is pretty nice, it plays well, looks good as well and the crosshair is very responsive and moves at a good speed for one. The problems this game has however are it's hard to see where the crosshair initially is during the showdown and there's one three parts in the game and they repeat themselves each level. But I rather enjoyed this one and I think I would have loved it if I had it back in the day.
And so here we go, a new game and I literally mean a new game, a 2014 game not covered on World of Spectrum and previously not covered on this website as a result but now here it is in all its glory. And if you're wondering why this is my first of the newly added games to review it's because I asked the excellent Spectrum Computing website to randomly select a 2014 game for me and I will eventually do a randomly selected game for 2015 up to 2017 and maybe 2018 as well as some of the 2013 games WoS don't have. This is a pretty decent puzzle game but I found its controls too confusing for my liking, even when I tried to collect the blocks with down and fire with up. But it's decent nevertheless and it's a nice idea, it's just confusing when it doesn't need to be.
This seems like it could have been a good game, but it's too slow and completing one level will probably take a month. And during one game I drowned on the first mine and my game was over just as it begun, now that is unfair.
Now this is a 1K game that is playable in the very least. Can be good fun the first time you play it yet may not be fun there after. But it's a nice idea that works.
Mex, 10 May 2018 (Rating: 3)
It's Tetris and it's alright really. It's slightly reminiscent of Mirrorsoft's Tetris when more than one block falls at one time but it looks and plays nicer plus I will give this the benefit of the doubt for being BASIC. All in all there's worse clones than this, and you thank Mirrorsoft and their "official" game for that.
Tatris, 10 May 2018 (Rating: 3)
Two Tetris clones in a row, thank you Randomseek. This has The Entertainer at the beginning which was a surprise as this is listed as a 48K game but the Z80 snapshot is 128K, thank you World of Spectrum. But this looks and plays nice, it's on the slow side and the blocks drop down instantly which I dislike but I feel this will be the case for pretty much all the Tetris clones on the Spectrum so fair enough. It's not the greatest but it's not bad and it certainly isn't tat, and it's better than the officially licensed game, thank you Mirrorsoft.
The fella that wrote Tatris also wrote a Breakout clone and a Pac-Man clone. Fine, I've got nothing better to do, let's look at them both then. This will be the Breakout clone then and pretty slow and tedious, much more than Tatris. But it is a better Breakout clone than Pirate's Smashout so at least there's something going of it.
Well it's as slow as Tatris and Broke Out but it's quite difficult to control your Pac-Man and the ghost is much faster than you. Also the power pills are represented by what appear to look like giant red poo. But still Pac-Man has been played worse on BASIC compared to this, but this and Broke Out are no better than Tatris.
It looks decent but it sure doesn't play it. You will most likely find yourself running out of ammo before actually being able to progress and the jumps are a nightmare, especially when he cannot jump from moving platforms, you practically have to time your walk from it to the ground. The overall design is flawed and overly complex.
This was hard to control, especially the bikers. Shooting the towers with the skimmer wasn't a problem, but once you had to use the skybikers that was the problem. To get the enemy bikers you have to slow down for them to reach you and then when you speed up again to catch them you lose all control and will either run into them or a tree.
It's a simple game to get into and can be enjoyable particularly if you have some nostalgia with this game, but it does get repetitive and boring fairly quickly and Jetpac is a far far better arcade game than this.
It's another football manager game. It's a well programmed game but it's also fussy too. The menu is a bit too slow for my taste and selecting my squad took longer than I desired, then when I bought a player it reset my squad and I had to do it all over again which annoyed me greatly. The action highlights are quite nice, even if they take forever to shoot and they never ever get tackled plus most of the goals are scored with the ball going through the goalie. But it's fairly decent for what it is, the presentation is miles ahead of many of the BASIC ones and I did get into this more than I ought to.
My horse racing knowledge is very vague so you can imagine how this went. You either have to be completely knowledgable or lucky to get anywhere in this game. Certain situations occur that can take away a question or money from you, almost as if it's doing everything it can to prevent you from winning. Not for you, if you're an avid fan you may wish to take a look though.
This is an interesting one. You have three characters to control throughout the game. By default you control X-R-2 which appears to be a giant robotic zombie, then you have John who is a tiny man with a gun almost straight out of those toy soldier packs we got when we were kids, and then there's Nave, a flying device. The problem I had was determining which player was suited for the situation I was in and where exactly to go. I quickly determined going down the pit with the robot wasn't good and felt John would go instead but I ended up going down another pit and couldn't get out, then Nave was able to go up and back to where I came from but he couldn't fit the gaps to get through and so I was stuck. Then on another playthrough I avoided the pit altogether and flew over it with Nave and continued till a dead-end, then switched to John and continued on and went so far that the other players were rendered useless. There's far too many things shooting at you at once and it's hard to keep up with them and it won't take long to determine that the robot is so huge he's practically an easy target, so eventually it won't take long for you to "succumb to The Dark Power", The Dark Power being what El Poder Oscuro translates to in English by the way. It has an amusing concept to say the least but I don't it's executed well enough to make this an enjoyable game in the long run.
And from 2015 we have Baldy, a bald man you have to navigate from platform to platform to collect cassettes. It's good fun, it's simple to play yet it's challenging. It kept me interested and coming back for more anyway.
Cosmazoigs! Try saying that after a few shots of gin in you. And it starts with a bastardised version of Chariots of Fire played by a schizophrenic maniac, and you have to sit through its entirety before starting the game. It's an Asteroids clone with a difference, because there is only one thing to initially shoot at, and it's difficult to do so, but when you do, all hell breaks loose as multiple green balls appear and when you shoot them a swarm of red asterisks emerge from them. I suppose it is a fine technically achievement to have so many things float around the screen at once in a 16K game but it doesn't make this is good game because it's pretty much unplayable as avoiding death is almost impossible. Nice try though.
Capman, 12 May 2018 (Rating: 3)
And from the same bloke who brought us Cosmazoigs we have Capman, which is Pac-Man, and it plays the Star Wars when it loads, the things you got away with back in the day. As a Pac-Man game, it's primitive yes but I've played worse, plus it's far far far more playable than Cosmazoigs. If this was released commercially and we had to pay £5 for this then I would have a problem with it, but it's a type-in game for a magazine and you paid no extra for the game itself, perfectly acceptable. It's still not a great game as the playing area is too small for my deteriorating eyesight to deal with and the keys are a bit unresponsive but it's acceptable for what it is, plus there's worse Pac-Man clones out there.
Piggy, 12 May 2018 (Rating: 1)
For this to be released commercially in 1988 is astonishing. Everything is 1984 and not even good. It's poorly programmed and dreadfully difficulty. How Bug-Byte thought this would be a good game to market in 1988 alongside Robocop, Target Renegade and Treasure Island Dizzy I'll never know.
Let's look at the author of Piggy's other work shall we? Released three years before Piggy is Ned's Garden where we control Ned's head around a maze collect items for his shed. It's faster than Piggy but just as difficult. The speed can be more of a detriment as moving is tough and the enemies can be hard to avoid, even entering a room can cause instant death because of the sheer difficulty of the enemies. It's a slightly better game than Piggy but it's still pretty unenjoyable.
And from 1986 we have Goblin Dungeon which is a type-in game so we shouldn't expect much from this and indeed there isn't much to say about it. It takes your little man a week to get to the treasure and the green door again and using the dynamite appeared to glitch on me, used it once and then was never able to use it again which makes progression even harder than it already is. I didn't think it was possible but it has happened, this is even worse than Piggy, type-in game yes but there are playable and enjoyable type-in games out there, this isn't, this is pitiful and makes Piggy look like a 10 out of 10 work let alone 5.
Based on Turtles, no not those Turtles. Turtles was an old arcade game from Konami that I can't remember. The graphics are not great but the gameplay is perfectly acceptable, it's quite neat and it works. It probably doesn't hold up well compared to the arcade version and I reckon there are more clones of this that are probably better but I very much enjoyed this game. I would have happily paid a fiver for this back in the day.
Another game I thought I reviewed, turns out no-one's reviewed this or its sequel The Arc of Yesod which I am much more familiar with compared to this. It's a pretty looking game that should be more enjoyable than it is, but his horrible jumping makes this a needless chore. One of the game's programmers Stuart Fotheringham states the original game was lost after a hardware crash and they had to rush a new version from scratch, I can't help but wonder how the original played compared to this, especially his jump because this could have been much better.
This one I am more familiar with having played it many years ago on my original Spectrum and to be honest it's not as good as I remember it to be. His jump appears to be sorted as he doesn't roll as much when he lands, but it's too much of a carbon copy to Nodes of Yesod, the in-game music was better in Nodes and I feel the design here is weaker compared to Nodes. Such a pity because I remember quite liking this way back.
Klimax, 16 May 2018 (Rating: 3)
This game was never released on its own and it's a shame because this is actually decent though it becomes a drag over time and its controls are a bit crap, if not for that this would easily get a 4.
Kraal, 16 May 2018 (Rating: 2)
This like Klimax is a Portuguese developed game that wasn't released in its own, in fact it appeared on the same compilation entitled 4th Dimension. And it begins with K as well. The speech in the main menu is quite insane and there's a striptease mode for some reason which will be talked about more if you rescue the princess, which I'm guessing is a fib. This looks nicer and there's a nice in-game tune to go with it but ultimately Klimax is the better game. The graphics needlessly get in the way and it's much harder to shoot the enemies here, and so this felt like a letdown which is a shame.
This too came out on Hewson's 4th Dimension compilation and never on its own, and I can see why. As Raphie's review stated the game had the tendency to crash but I figured that it was a problem with the Z80 snapshot, so I made a new one directly from the 4th Dimension compilation and it never crashed so that is that sorted. However, it's still worth noting that even after this the gameplay is highly broken. The players constantly clash and flicker and bounce off each other like pinballs, the colours are glitched in that you can choose to play as yellow vs red yet you play in blue instead of red, the goalkeepers are just outfield players and they never actually dive to save the ball, you can't tackle, directly aiming for goal from a throw-in is the only way throw-ins are effective, there is a lot wrong with this game, even the goalnets look like something out of an Etch A Sketch. This is easily one of the very worst football games I've ever played.
Suppose I might as well post a review for the entire compilation now since I've covered all its games. This contains three games never before released on its own, and Mastertronic's Rollaround for some reason. Klimax is the standout game, it's good fun though becomes a drag over time, but ultimately it is spoiled by Kraal being a letdown, Rollaround being rubbish and Super Cup Football being a highly broken and abysmal piece of shite. One good game out of four? That's a waste of money if you ask me mateys.
Well I was fearing much confusion with this once as it's a Spanish but it turns out it's in English rather than Spanish, thank you World of Spectrum. However, my fears were realised and much confusion sat in. You apparently have to push the red blocks to help you reach the purple area to complete the level, but level 1, the one after the "tutorial", is a mess because the jumping is absolute crap. Eventually after many attempts I managed to complete it and level 2 is even worse. Plus when a red block touches the purple area it is instant game over regardless of how many lives you have. Useless and unplayable.
Code Masters' version of Head Over Heals and this is no way as enjoyable as that game. It's jerky, scrolls horribly and has nothing that made Head Over Heals a great game. I've criticised Ultimate's isometric games but games like this are why people loved them so much because they are a work of art compared to this.
This currently sits on WoS' worst games list and it isn't hard to see why. Press the letter, number or symbol shown on the screen to hit it, though it only works with caps lock turned on. 25 in total and that's your lot. Let's be honest about this, it's not really a game.
This was released at a time when Ultimate's games went to shit and this is a good example of that. It's the type of game Mastertronic would release for £2.99 yet Ultimate were charging you £8.99 for it. It's bland, awkward to control, not fun to play and a complete waste of money.
This isn't overall bad and can be quite playable, but it's too fussy and you're constantly shot at by enemies off-screen too many times for my liking. I'm pretty certain there's better games of this type on the Spectrum, and for less money too.
Blocks, 19 May 2018 (Rating: 2)
Matching blocks game that gives you a screen fitting for a harder level and expects you to do it in the quickest possible time. The good thing is once you've done it you'll never need to play it again. But it does randomise every game so I'll give it that.
Wow this is amazing! Highly playable and addicting. It will frustrate you but it had enough charm and brilliance keep even me going. Crash Smash material!
Two games in one, the standard 501 and Killer which I know nothing about. Throwing the dart is easy, stop the line at the intended target and then stop the black cursor at the ring of that target, and the speed of the changes with each level you choose at the start of the game, so level 5 is much faster than level one. The problem is you always have press enter in between shots and I don't like that, would prefer if it kept with the flow rather than be constantly interrupted all the time. When you win, in which they proceed to play the theme tune to Match of the Day for some reason, you can choose to play again and when you do it's Mugs Away, meaning the loser of the last game throws first. However, the game's scoreboard doesn't read that too well, in my case player two threw first yet it took away the score from player one and vice versa, so what's the point of giving us such a feature if you can implement it properly? As for Killer, you simply have to select a target for each player, left-handed for some reason, and your opponent has to hit the double of that target three times to win, straight-forward enough. It's not really a bad game but it's brief, you can only play two players and continuing the game is bugged. Also the higher your level the more broken stoping the line and cursors are because it increases the chances of them not working. Put it this way, it sure isn't World Class.
This is a "mini version" but no other versions exist so fair enough. It looks like it could have been a quality game but you obviously need to gain strength and defence points to succeed because the enemies are much stronger than you, and that is tricky is do as enemies will constantly block your path and you obviously then need to fight them to collect the points needed to improve. It therefore won't take long for you to lose most it not all your health and die. This will benefit the patient I'm sure but I was not impressed with this.
It's Tempest and truth be told it's a bit crap. It's got rubbish controls and the hit detection is iffy, the meteor was nowhere near me and still it registered a hit. I reckon Tempest has been done a lot better than this and I am sure to find a better clone than this, but that's for another day.
Ah this one I played many years ago and hated it and years on I still hate it. The plot itself cannot be more stupid, Bigfoot, an ape, has to rescue his girlfriend, a human. Isn't such a thing illegal by law? Way to go with that one team. I google searched Bigfoot girlfriend to see if this plot had been used elsewhere, maybe I missed something perhaps, but I got more results for Bigfoot from Howard Stern than Bigfoot the myth, which sums the whole thing up really. It appears they confused Bigfoot with King Kong with the plot because King Kong of course falls in love with a girl and climbs a building with her in his hand. That works because it's the ape displaying the romantic weaknesses which therefore makes him vulnerable, here it's the chick falling in love with the ape and the two are in a mutual relationship, zoophilia in popular culture, who would've thought it? There's a song that fits with this and I can't think of which one, oh yes Breaking the Law by Judas Priest. Also, Bigfoot has to eat spinach, no that's Popeye and not Bigfoot! And of course the gameplay itself is rubbish, it's oh so easy to lose your energy here and the items you need to collect are a pain in the butt to actually collect and the pathetic graphics don't help in the slightest. And Code Masters asked us "Why Pay More?" Simple, because they are better games with better plots. This is easily one of the very worst Code Masters games ever, if not THE worst. Don't be expecting a "remastered" version of this on PS4 anytime soon, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if Code Masters are trying to forget this game, who can blame them?
This game was developed by The Firm, who were responsible for the rubbish and idiotic Bigfoot which had an ape in a relationship with a woman for some reason. The Firm done two other games on the Spectrum so let's see if they are as ridiculous and hideous as Bigfoot shall we? Ball Crazy was released one prior to Bigfoot and predictably you control a ball. You have bounce the ball on the platform until they turn into the indicated colour and repeat for all of them in one row, then change the next row into another colour and repeat, all while avoiding and shooting at enemies. There is a problem though, the enemies are difficult to shoot at and even more difficult to avoid. You start with 10 lives and with good reason because you are going to need them. This is pretty crap but it's a million times better than Bigfoot so at least it has something going for it.
And the third and final game from The Firm is Combat Zone, or M.E.N.T.O.R. which is on the title screen, so a bit of an identity crisis with this one it appears. This is shoot 'em up, that actually isn't a shoot 'em up. It's similar to Death or Glory which I reviewed a while back is that bombing seem to be the main concept of the game rather than shooting, because here you have to bomb at least 10 targets in order to complete the level, if you start you start all over from the very beginning again. The difference is CRL were charging £8.95 for Death or Glory while this was on the market for £1.99, however Death or Glory looked and played far nicer than this. This is frankly a mess, the graphics flicker when it scrolls, although that could easily be an emulation problem but still it hurt my eyes, its keys are horrible and it's difficult to determine what you're actually supposed to be bombing. So Combat Zone/M.E.N.T.O.R is actually similar to Bigfoot, a rubbish game with terrible gameplay, horrible graphics and above all else a ridiculous plot.
Time to look at a 2017 game for the first time and this quite a nice game that I happily would have paid money for back in the day although it does look to be a relatively short game. Nevertheless it's an enjoyable game.
This is a shame because it looks like it could've been one of the nicer 16K shooters and I did like this at first, but then the more I played it the more I loathed it.
A Type-In game for Sinclair Programs you must fill your sandwich with jam and avoid the Jam Snatchers whilst doing so. Well I never use jam on my sandwiches, only on toast, so this already is going down well with me. After you select your skill level the game starts almost immediately, so much so that I wasn't even ready and my game ended before it begun. Jam falls from the top, you catch it with your spoon, avoid the falling Jam Snatcher and move the jam into the sandwich and that's it. The controls are somewhat unresponsive but you'd almost expect that from being a Type-In game, but the concept is simple enough it kind of works and when you do fill up your sandwich the skill level goes up unless you picked 5 at the start. Truthfully there isn't much to it really but I have certainly played worse Type-In games than this, also better ones.
Two Type-In games in a row Randomseek? This is Amidar only it's an uncontrollable mess and plays a bit crap. There are plenty of better Amidar games than this and better Type-In games too, this makes me want to go back to my previous review Jam Sandwich and give it a higher score because that was miles better than this.
Make that three Type-In games in a row and we're back to Sinclair Programs with a Blitz clone. At least in this one when you hit a building you die unlike Nuclear City Bomber and this does work in spite of it being a Type-In. That was until you bombed all the buildings because you still move even though there's nothing to bomb at anymore, and then you land to ground and it's game over, but I figured that each skill level represents the levels within the game so I tried it on level 2 and after getting all the buildings I got a good landing and a second screen, very nice. I used to think that Blitz was a tedious game and it probably is, but I enjoyed this and I'm definitely down to playing more Blitz games in the future with this being the benchmark. It's a 3 but a strong 3 nevertheless. It's a short game but a nice game. Told you there were better Type-In games.
And now from Spectrum Computing, the magazine not the website, is this like four magazine games in a row now or something, The Archaeologist. This actually was set for commercial release but the publisher went bust so it never was as a result, shame. Which publisher that was I don't know, I'm sure Paul Sneesby told us in his permit but you can't read those anymore on World of Spectrum so thank you for that it brings me one step closer to permanently relying on Spectrum Computing, the website not the magazine, for my random Spectrum needs. On to this game now and it's another Manic Miner game. Annoyingly the tune isn't played automatically, you have to press T to play it, and it happens to be Morning Mood by Edvard Grieg which is different in the very least. And apparently you can save it mid-game, this was save states before emulation. As for the gameplay itself, well I have felt disenchanted with Manic Miner over the years due to the many Jet Set Willy clones that have existed over the years and playing this doesn't help in the slightest. It looks pretty but the jumping is off, the enemies are quicker than you than avoid them is a pain and I managed to get stuck inside a level's layout and so it's bugged as well. I think you would have to be a dedicated JSW fan and have played many of its copy games to fully enjoy this one, I haven't and will never review one of them, so I didn't.
Many years ago I reviewed a game called Paranoid Pete which was a game originally developed for Weetabix who turned it down because it was shit and then it was released under an alternative title, Paranoid Pete, without changing the Weetabix main character Dunk in the game and it all went tits up from there legal-wise. Well, Weetabix didn't give up there and asked Romik Software to write a game for them instead and this time there was success in the form of Weetabix versus The Titchies. I honestly thought I had already reviewed this but I haven't so here we are. Here you control Dunk the Weetabix who must grab a missile and throw it at the green Titchies who are laid out rows of 5, 4, 3 and 2. Yes, it's an alternate form of Space Invaders. But it's quite nice, it works well though it does get repetitive and tedious rather quickly. But I can see why Weetabix approved and released it because it works, it's a nice concept and it's fun for the kids to play, it's just letdown by being too much of the same throughout.
This one I had in my collection far too many days ago. In my opinion Rasputin has the best use of sampled speech in a Spectrum game, it's absolutely glorious. It sounded fantastic then and it holds up just as well now. Sadly though that's the only thing I enjoyed of this, the controls are a pain in the ass and hitting anyone with your sword is useless. I never got far into this game and thus I never really liked it, which is a shame because for the speech alone this game deserves better credit.
It's Pac-Man, but in reverse. Yes, this time you must plant the pills rather than eat them. Sadly though that doesn't make this a good game, at all. It's slow and jerky and the enemies are maybe too smart to avoid. Nice idea but it's poorly executed.
The fourth worst game on World of Spectrum and richly deserved. This is hardly a game, you just shoot a wall in order to shoot a blue alien whilst avoiding a blue barrier, continue till time runs out and that's it. There's no way you can win this game, and you can't even shoot the bricks at the end so even if the goal was to clear the entire wall you can't anyway. How this was even published is beyond me.
The C.M.E. bloke that wrote Alien Kill also wrote this, the world's slowest and most boring Fruit Machine. The reels are painfully slow and take forever to stop. It's enough for your enjoyment to wear thing instantly. No wonder he only used his initials.
It's Donkey Kong except with Godzilla replacing DK. It has one life, rubbish keys, horrible gameplay and is completely unplayable. I would be surprised if I see a worse DK clone than this.
You know this game's going to be great when you die the very instance it loads. All this is is driving straight, well try to anyway. It's as basic as you can get, except the car seems to move at random anyway meaning you'll almost certainly crash within the first minute of gameplay and why would you want to go in for even longer anyway?
It's our old friend Stuart Campbell of Nuclear City Bomber and Videodrome infamy and this time it's a snake game. You know how this works, you control a snake and your snake must eat things throughout the level, though doing so increases the size of your snake making it easier to either block your path or directly hit your snake. So what could go wrong here then? Well the answer is pretty simple, it's not snake. Remember when I said that your snake increases in size as you eat more things? Well this snake increases in size when you move regardless of what you eat or if you eat anything. And guess what? Your tail remains static and doesn't even move with your snake, making it very easy to block you path or hit your snake and making this clone entirely useless. And its keys are unresponsive too which again makes it easy to hit your snake. And at the beginning the game asks if you want sound, this "sound" is actually the game's "music" which I have no idea it it's supposed to be and actually slows the game down! If you choose no you still get sound when you complete a level or lose a life but you don't get any "music" and noticeably the game is faster, but while it's faster it's still or in this case even more unresponsive. So Stuart Campbell's Wipeout is true to Stuart Campbell form, and when I say true to form I mean it's rubbish. In the very least though at least it's a game unlike Nuclear City Bomber and Videodrome which weren't games, but still, it's pretty rubbish.
The things we got away with in the 80's eh? Actually something tells me this company did not get away with it, it was their only game and to my knowledge it was never released, presumably because it was Pac-Man and unlicensed. It's Pac-Man but in an adventure-style game and it looks like it could have been an interesting game, but the gameplay is poorly executed as Pac-Man has a rubbish jump which makes jumping over things in his way more difficult than it ought to be. Nice idea and it's one that will have you feeling curious upon first look, but then within five minutes you'll be left wondering why you even bothered playing this.
And from 2018 I present Steel Jeeg, a game based on a 70's Japanese anime that was and still is hugely popular in Italy, which will be why an Italian wrote a game based on this series. It looks pretty and reminds me of Berserk, but the gameplay is ultimately flawed. At first I couldn't understand how the default weapon doesn't even fire and none of the other weapons hurt the enemies at all, but reading the instructions told me that the red enemies are only defeated by the Magnet Power, your default weapon, and you have to go near it to use it on him and defeat him. The other enemies are defeated using the various weapons you have and you have to determine which weapon works best for the different enemies. Nice idea but the problem is that by the time you've figured out the best weapon to use on a particular enemy you've lost half your energy. I reckon if you just avoid the enemies altogether and know your way round to the bazooka, to the levers and to the Queen, it might be a quick completion, but it certainly isn't an easy one because of it's flawed gameplay. I was immensely disappointed with this game.
Menace, 10 Jun 2018 (Rating: 1)
This game's keyboard controls appear to be broken as he moves by himself and kills himself in the process, so I was forced to play with the kempston joystick mapped to the keyboard, thanks for that Menace. But even after all that the game is still horrendously bad to play. Moving your character is almost impossible and it's so easy to be hit by another pupil. The whole gameplay is confusing which makes the object of the game pretty much impossible to accomplish. How is this not on the worst games list on World of Spectrum?
Raphie stated in his review that Invaders was similar to Space Intruders, which I reviewed back in January, and described it as a "clone of a clone". Having played the two games back to back just now I can honestly say that while this is not a carbon copy of Space Intruders he does have a point. The enemies are slightly bigger and the UFO is different but the main similarity here is the weapon is pretty much the same as Space Intruders, just a different colour. Also, it's slower than Space Intruders, as well as that it's less fun. It's not a theft job as the weapon appears to be the only main difference, but it was obviously inspired to look and play the same as Space Intruders and it frankly fails on almost all accounts. It looks a bit nicer but it sounds worse and crucially it plays worse. So without question of the two Space Intruders is by far the better game.
This is a pretty authentic and reasonable Robotron game in its own right, but the game gets painfully slow over time, some of the screens are too easy as you can just stand in one area and shooting the enemies effortlessly as they walk towards you and the keyboard layout is abysmal. I have played worse for sure, but they had better keys. They could have been a real standout game but its imperfections and flaws prevent that.
This is supposedly "almost equal to" Wild West Hero, my previous review. However as it turns out the only similarity in the two games is they are both Robotron games. For a game to be deemed "almost equal to", it would have to be essentially the same game with the same code but with slight changes to avoid it being a carbon copy. A good example of this is Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Jnr where the only difference is the character sprites are a bride in one and Frankenstein in the other and in the latter the puzzles were different, other than that it's the same game. Also Zeppelin Games were notorious for copying codes from one game to another, Santa's Christmas Capers for instance is directly copied from another shooter they released, Q10 Tankbuster I believe it was called. Despite looking all Christmasy it was essentially the same code and thus the same game. Here we have another Robotron game, but the graphics are different, the player is different, the game has music and the goal is different. In Wild West Hero you had to shoot everyone to finish the level, here you have to shoot what you can and avoid the enemies that cannot be shot whilst waiting for a colouring version of you to appear and you must walk up to him and finish the level, which I believe was the goal of the original Robotron, you had to rescue members of your family. So in essence, although it is a second Robotron clone from Silicon Kid, which this and Wild West Hero were the only two games they did, it is a different game, written in a different code with different graphics and a different objective. Now World of Spectrum aren't the only ones "claiming" that this game is a copy of Wild West Hero. As it turns out Personal Computer Games magazine described the game as "almost identical" to Wild West Hero in their review of the game, after which Mike Stockwell, the writer of both games, complained in a letter to the magazine which prompted an apology from them. So case closed, they are not "almost identical" or "almost equal to" at all, they are similar yes as it's Robotron and the awful keyboard layout remains the same, but they are not carbon copies of each other. And after all that it's worth pointing out that Wild West Hero is by far and away the better game of the two. This does appear to fix the slowdown issues of the game, but the chunkier graphics hurt the game and so does the fact that you can't shoot everything as they just get in the way of the objective of rescuing your brother or cousin or whatever he's supposed to be. It just lacked the same enjoyment as Wild West Hero and it didn't take long, precisely after hearing the game's music as a matter of fact, for me to prefer playing that instead of this.
This could have been a very enjoyable adventure game but the execution is way off the mark. The fighting is basic and short, the text is hard to follow and thus makes the game more confusing that it should and there is no sound at all. It's safe to say this wasn't worth the £7.95 price tag at all and if I had paid £7.95 for this I would have been incredibly pissed off.
This is without question a well polished pinball game and on look alone it is one of the finest pinball games to grace the Spectrum. However, the ball physics seem very off as the ball will effortless fall off the side of the table or sometimes even through your flippers. In one go I launched the ball only for it to reach the bottom half of the table and then between the flippers without having touched the ball at all, now that is unfair. If only for that this would have been a quality game, but the ball physics are the essence of a pinball game and this one is lacking.
Danger, 13 Jun 2018 (Rating: 1)
This is a freeware game from a Spanish fella and was either written for fun and his own amusement or he couldn't find a publisher to release it, if it's the latter I can see why. It seems to be a game that you can't win, you enter a room you lose a life, you go down to explore to other screen and it costs you energy which after losing all of it you lose a life and there doesn't seem to be a way to gain energy again. Let's just say this isn't much of a game, in fact I'm willing to bet it's not even finished.
This game is quite well received within the Spectrum community and I hoped that this miserable git would join them, and thankfully I can. This is very playable and enjoyable, it's simple to get into and good fun. It's a game I would find myself playing for a while without any regrets. I would have happily paid money for this if was released during the Speccy's heyday.
Outlaw, 14 Jun 2018 (Rating: 2)
It's Gun.Smoke and I do not get on with Gun.Smoke in the slightest. This is budget Gun.Smoke however and you can tell. The gameplay is much more primitive than Gun.Smoke ever was and the collision detective is off as hell. Your main goal is to shoot the baddies, however the real objective is the shoot the barrels that reveals pickups which increases your skills like gun power and speed, because without this you will not get far at all. This is Gun.Smoke but cheaper, uglier and dare I say, worse.
The jerkiest version of Scramble you will ever come across. It's safe to say this definitely shows its age and that Scramble has been done much better on the Spectrum as time has gone on.
Compared to Avenger this is by far a better written game, however the controls are far too complex for two hands and thus it is pretty much unplayable. It's not abysmal by any means, but it's not fun either.
Oh we have definitely gone backwards with this series now. Fireflash is a complete work of art compared to this tripe. Hitting anyone is a matter of luck and it isn't helped that your bullets are shit compared to their laser. This might even be worst that Avenger as while that was jerky as hell you could at least shoot things, because here you almost can't. I was hoping after Fireflash that we would be going upwards and onwards with this game but it turns out I am wrong and wrong badly.
Well thank heavens this is the last of this series because I can't take this anymore. Apparently there were two versions, an easy Sentinel and a hard Sentinel and they have to be loaded separately. However, both versions appear to be impossible to play anyway because the awful keyboard layout makes this pretty much impossible to play. I think I need several shots of gin to get over this series of debacle.
Suppose I might as well review the entire compilation since I painfully went through all four games. None of these four games are worth playing though Fireflash is by far and away the best written game of them all. The games written after Fireflash. Proteus and Sentinel leave a lot to be desired while Avenger is a jerky mess of a game that's supposed to be Scramble. This compilation is truly horrific and the only thing that I can be thankful about it is there was only four games in it. And the box was said to be nice so there's that.
Stomp, 22 Jun 2018 (Rating: 2)
This is a version of an arcade game called Checkman which I don't recall ever playing and nor do I want to after this. The gameplay is arse, the goal appears to be to collect the flags and defuse the bombs but you can only move of the blocks once and after that you can't move there anymore, this makes getting stuck more simple than it ought to be. Something tells me me and Checkman are not going to get along and so clones like this one will most likely not be well received.
Tilt, 25 Jun 2018 (Rating: 4)
This is a great game but it feels short and once you get round the tables a least twice it feels repetitive. Still it's definitely one of the better Code Masters games and well worth your time.
Batty, 27 Jun 2018 (Rating: 5)
I can't believe I never reviewed this yet. It's a very worthy Breakout/Arkanoid clone that's up there among the best. It has everything you want in a Breakout clone, fast and smooth gameplay with power ups to collect and baddies to smash as well as bricks. Fans of Breakout should definitely give this a go because it's great fun.
Nice idea but it doesn't play well at all. The time goes by too quickly so by the time you've read the question and the possible answers a bulk of the game has already gone, this makes scoring more awkward than it ought to be. This only appeared on a Crash demotape, and it's just as well.
I actually rather liked this one, it’s got a simple concept it easy to get into and it’s actually quite good fun to play, but your man moves so fast it makes this more awkward than it ought to be, especially in later levels. If not for that this certainly would have got a higher score for me.
It's a nice shooter and good fun to play, looks very pretty as well, but I can’t get on with needing two players to play at the same time all the time. It makes the whole game more confusing than it needs to be. Make me play as either the jeep or the helicopter rather than both and this would probably have even got a 4.
There isn’t a whole lot you can say about this game except it isn’t a game. It's a confusing horrible mess with a complete lack of basic instructions especially on how to even start the game. It currently sits on WOS' worst games list and it is completely justified. What an absolute pile of tripe.
Amoeba Software's only other game and released one year before Voyage into the Unknown, play this makes me wonder what the hell went into the development of the latter game. This is more a proper game compared to Voyage into the Unknown. Is a basic concert of simply blowing up your opponent with one shot but you need to set up your shot to coincide with the wind by adjusting your tank barrel and your shot velocity. In all the gameplay works and it’s actually good fun the play, the repetition does kick in pretty quickly and there is a general feeling that once you do it there’s no need to play it again. But least it is a game to play, unlike Voyage into the Unknown.
In this Czech puzzle game you have to line up dice to score points, either by lining them up in ascending or descending order, 2-3-4 or 4-3-2 etc, or match them horizontally, like 1-1-1. However, this doesn’t work vertically which becomes a problem as you play the game. The idea is good but the execution of it isn’t, it becomes very confusing as it’s actually quite difficult to comprehend the dice on the screen the further you play and the more dice you drop, which I appreciate may be down to my aging eyes but I had a hard time getting to grips with the game as a result of this. This could’ve been a really good and underrated puzzle game if its concept worked, because in the end it doesn’t. I think this one will come down to taste and this ultimately did not meet mine.
This is another game that could have been really good but is let down by its poor execution. Dropping poisonous fish is useless as I usually found myself just running into it straight away, plus the keys are pretty awkward to get to grip with it and there all occasions where headshots aren’t even registered. There are far far worst 1983 games than this but this misses the mark of being a good game.
Kraken, 02 Jul 2018 (Rating: 3)
In terms of what it is, a version of an old Game and Watch game, it does its job. The problem is you play it once and you see all that this game has to offer, there is little replay value in this one. I don’t think the author could’ve done a better job with replicating this onto the Spectrum though and so I feel it deserves some merit.
Centi, 03 Jul 2018 (Rating: 4)
It’s a Centipede game and in actual fact it’s one of the better ones. You can play in different speeds though fast is frankly impossible, but for the most part the speed is good even on slow. I actually forgot that this was a type-in game while I was playing it in which you can tell it is as the centipede is mostly made of letters reading Acorn Atari and you control a ZX, but it plays really well for a game of this nature. I have played far worse Centipede games and far worse type-in games compared to this and this feels like a breath a fresh air in those categories. If this was my first Centipede game and my first type-in game I would’ve given this a 3, but because I have played many others and the majority of them have been bad I just have to reward this game for being good fun by giving it a 4.
Well at least it is Blitz and it isn’t the worst one out there but it’s far from a good one as well. I'm semi convinced that the first level can’t even be finished, just with the way the bombs drop, the speed they drop and that you have to hit a building at least three times before completely disappears, which as you can imagine becomes a chore rather quickly. Not one I'll be playing again for sure.
I'm guessing this is loosely based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It looks like a nice game for sure with its colourful graphics, however the gameplay completely fails on all fronts. No matter what you do you will always be caught and your death is inevitable. The fireball is a bit crap but then hitting them from close range rarely works as well. If this gameplay was more polished this might have been a quality game, but as it is it’s pretty much unplayable.
It’s an Operation Wolf game and while it’s not great it’s a much better clone than Operation Hanoi by Players which was just abysmal. Here they have done away with grenades and most enemies take few shots to kill so there’s more chance of preserving your ammunition here. However the cursor is slow and by the time you reach some of the enemies they will hit you, in which I should point out that unlike Operation Wolf where you had an energy bar here if you’re hit once you lose a life. It’s worth pointing out that this game was never released on its own and truth be told we can clearly see why.
This is an arcade game that I have never ever played. The idea is pretty original but the gameplay is all over the place. You have to climb a building to rescue women and dogs as well as avoiding falling objects and fire, but so much happens at once it’s hard to keep track of what you’re supposed to be doing and where are you supposed to go. You have to reach the top of the building within the time limit to complete the level, which given the gameplay here is as confusing as it is that will require a lot of work and patience. The graphics aren’t great as well and it’s hard to see things fall on you as a result of that. I can’t work out for sure whether it’s a crap arcade game, a crap conversion, or a little bit of both, nevertheless I found FireTrap to be a largely underwhelming experience and one I will actually never experience again.
This is actually a pretty nice Frogger clone. I have come across a lot of bad ones on the Spectrum so playing a clone this good is very refreshing. It plays at a nice speed and it is quite responsive as well not completely but at least it is there unlike in other clothes such as the A'n'F version for instance. On its own its decent enough but when compared to other Frogger clones this stands out as one of the more playable ones.
The graphics are nice but the gameplay simply doesn’t do it for me I'm afraid. I never got far into this without being hit as they always seem to get to you no matter what you do and even if they are not near you it still reads a hit anyway. As far as I’m concerned Funky Punky can just funk off.
Gorgon, 09 Jul 2018 (Rating: 1)
This is pretty terrible to say the least. No matter what you do it all appears to be very random in doddle difficulty and then in the other difficulties nothing seems to work. I completed it first time on doddle difficulty and then tried it in heroic difficulty and I never once felt like I was in actual control of my character because it all played like it was random. If ever there was a game that deserves less than 1 this is certainly one of them.
This is actually a well written game in its own right, certainly for a type-in game, the problem is it feels endless. You constantly find yourself running into to dead ends and running around in circles, plus when you kill an enemy and then fine yourself in a dead end the very next room, it respawns again when you return to the previous room. In order to make some steady progress I found myself having to rest constantly, pretty much in every single room I entered. Therefore I must be the world's laziest warrior because I can’t go to more than two rooms without needing to take a 2-5 hour nap in between. And I spent a full hour on this game on three attempts and didn’t once see a wizard, I feel completely cheated. It's much more advanced compared to most other type-in and yet in the end I think that ends up being the main problem for this game as it over-complicates itself and just become a chore rather quickly as a result.
You know what I don't think I've ever played this arcade game before. I was expecting it to be some sort of Space Invaders type game with shooting tiny bullets, I certainly wasn't expecting a large missile to be fired for sure. But I've since seen the arcade version and well this version is better. It's faster, good fun, there's no slowing down the missiles or anything like that it's simply fire, steer, hit and presto. It's samey and it's repetitive but it's fun and I really enjoyed this one.
This as it turns out is a rework of an Atari XL game. It looks really nice but the problem is there is little range when you attack an enemy and so it is easy to die. The jumping is also awkward as he jumps forward as well, in some screens it's an advantage but on others it's a massive disadvantage. This was a disappointment to say the least.
And so here it is, at long last, my 1000th review and I don't seek any privileges or congratulatory responses as this only proves I spend too much of my time playing very old games (and some new ones along the way) than I probably should but hey 1000th review. It's taken a while, I started reviewing games on this site in 2013 about after a year I disappeared because of work, my hard drive crashed with meant I lost all my games and that was that. Then in late 2017 I came back after I broke my foot in a work accident and I decided to come back, and the ball has been rolling since, except I went away for a bit again recently but I'm back now, miss me? And when I came back Initially I felt I had to change things about, especially reading more detailed reviews from dm_boozefreak, Davey Davey and I'm sure there was a third but I can't remember, sorry! Because yes the majority of my reviews in the past were simple and basic and a half-ass effort, but I felt I had to up the ante, one line reviews weren't enough anymore.
So enough about me, onto my 1000th review and rather than be randomly selected a game by World of Spectrum or Spectrum Computing I decided to specially handpick my 1000th game. I don’t even know why this is getting a review but somebody has to at some point and it might as well be me and it might as well be for my 1000th review. For my 1000th review is of a game that isn’t a game.
Hareraiser: Prelude was one of two games in the Hareraiser series, the other being Finale. They are infamous for being ludicrously unplayable due to its lack of graphics, lack of gameplay, lack of instructions, lack of anything. Apparently there's a puzzle you have to solve but what and where that puzzle is is anyone's guess.
All you get in this game is some trees, a sun, clouds, grass, and a message reading something in the lines of “a prize fit for a queen” and “the grass is like a carpet”, and that is your game, endless wonder, endless pictures, endless confusion.
This game has no end, and it doesn’t have a start either, because it’s not a game. It’s a scam.
Basically, you paid almost £10 on a game you cannot win, ever. And to make matters worse they went for a double and released it a second time for exactly the same price and exactly the same code.
A lot of people proclaim this to be the worst game ever, but that isn’t true because, well it’s not a game.
Some of the previous 999 games I’ve looked at here have been appalling, but at least they are games. Even SQIJ is a game, sure you cannot control it without breaking into it but it’s at least a game, because this is no game in comparison.
It didn’t need a review, but then it didn’t need a release either. And at the end of the day someone had to take the mickey of this in this site it may as well be me.
Here's to the next 1000.
Good to see dm_boozefreek with a flurry of reviews. Nice to see some life on this site.
So, onto review number 1001 and I've kept things nice and simple with a BASIC game involving a spider, well it doesn't look much like a spider really, more like an ant. There isn't much you can say about Spider 'n Fly really, you simply have to move your spider, or whatever it's supposed to be, to eat as many flies as you can in 99 seconds. You can only move up or down and you can't do anything else like shoot. It's a game you'll most likely play once and then never play again because you've seen all it has to offer in about 10 seconds. A typical game to put in a book of BASIC games really, nothing more than that.
Before the movie and its 50 million sequels there was this. I have only loaded up the game for 32 seconds and already I am regretting it! Why are there birds cheeping at the title screen? I thought this was a car racing game not a bird watching simulator. But as it turns out it's not a racing game either, it's a shooter. You have to drive your cars and avoid various obstacles whilst shooting enemies when they appear on screen. I have to say they weren't kidding calling this fast because this is really fast! Probably too fast! And as result it's a tad unplayable in parts, but they said it was “fast” and “furious”, and it is so what did you expect? It also looks nice as well, some nice use of colour here which makes it truly stand out. It is shame this was not released on its own because this could have been well received I feel if released in a budget price. It looks nice, plays as fast it's advertised and it will most likely leave you feeling furious as well. Plus, it was more fun than watching any of the Fast and Furious movies, so as far as I'm concerned, result.
This too was not released on its own like Fast 'n' Furious and the two were bundled alongside each other. This too has nice graphics and is pretty fast, but unlike Fast 'n' Furious which had effective gameplay, this doesn't. I don’t know everything just seemed more fun in the previous game compared to this. Still it's a lot better than some of the other shooters the Spectrum threw up and it isn't half bad in all honesty, it's just Fast 'n' Furious was the better game that's all.
Might as well review the compilation containing both games while I'm at it. Both are quite fun, Fast 'n' Furious is the better game though Thunderceptor is well worth a look too and it's a shame neither were released on their own.
It’s Q*Bert and it doesn’t work. During the game the witch will summon lightning out of her hands, when she does the game freezes for a moment which confuses the whole gameplay especially when she does it right before you do a command. It makes you think you've already done it where you haven't because of her lightning thing. It just messed up the rhythm of the game for me and made this a far less enjoyable experience than I desired.
When I saw the 7 rating I thought “this could be really good”, but I was deceived. It's as you'd expect a type-in game to play, slow and unresponsive. I have played a better Frogger game on the Spectrum, a few as a matter of fact, but I have also played worse so at least there's that.
At least it's Centipede and at least it plays alright, it's just too bad that I played a much better Centipede game 28 years ago. But it still beats a lot of BASIC clones floating around so it's worth a look nevertheless.
It’s a nice idea to have four parts in one level but It doesn’t work so well, or at least the first game did and the other three didn’t is what I'm trying to get across. This could have been a bloody game if not for the confusing modes, it's really well programmed but its gameplay is ultimately its downfall.
Tiler, 23 Nov 2018 (Rating: 1)
From Stephen Curtis, “famed” for Arena and Jackle and Wide comes this game about a bloke contracted to tile somebody's roof and that somebody won't stop bouncing, and should he bounce on you so many times you are finished. The concept is bizarre but at the same time quite fun in its unique way, what isn't fun however is playing this game. It's confusing, it's awkward, it's so easy to be hit, it's just not a playable game. I think in 15 minutes I only managed one tile. So here's a hint, if it says Stephen Curtis anywhere within the game, AVOID!
This is supposed to be a multi-event game but really the Sprinting game was all I could take of this. It features horrible Etch-A-Sketch type graphics, no sound and no appeal, AND it actually insists that you taps buttons for FIVE whole laps! I shudder to think what the other events are like. The fact that this was released at all let alone 1988 is inexhaustible. It's like this has been developed for a joke to see if someone like Alternative would be mad enough to release it, and well they did. Unless of course Alternative themselves developed it which may explain why no-one is credited for it. Probably they were too embarrassed to put their name on the game and if so I don’t blame them in the slightest. This is ranked among the worst games in Speccy history and rightfully so.
Another one of these “get lost till you die” simulators that to do the rounds a lot. Basically you have to wonder around and look for an exit, no better yet you have to guess where the exit is and after three failed attempt you will fail the task of Omicron and will be executed at 12 tomorrow. You can only imagine how this went for me especially with no instructions, and the small 3D view doesn't help much either. After one minute I was bored stiff already because every route seems to be identical with no progression being made at all. Its WOS score is under 3 and it's under 3 for a reason, because it's rubbish. Of all of the maze games I've played this is easily one of the worst. Forget escaping from Omicron, you can simply escape from this game instead, by not playing it.
The sequel to Wonder Boy and this always was the better game for me on all formats, the Spectrum version though lacks the fine features that makes the other versions stand out. First off, minor complaint of no music, Super Wonder Boy has some great music and it’s a pity it can’t be heard here. The second and a major complaint, monochrome graphics, not so much the first level but the yellow and red in level 2 Cruel refers to in his review, hate to say it mate but you were right, it really hurt my eyes. It plays grand and all and like I said it is the better of the games compared to Wonder Boy, but misses the mark of greatness. It’s alright but it’s also a classic case of what might have been.
There's not much I can say about this game other than it's bloody hard to steer and being in Spanish doesn't help, but I'll give it credit where it's due, the writers went all out in developing this. It looks really well programmed with some nice detail among the largely monochrome graphics. If only the gameplay wasn't so difficult for me, then I feel I would have gotten into this a lot more than I did. But there seems to be a fair degree of popularity with this one among gamers and I can see why.
It's everything you'd expect in a type-in, no surprise there, but but whether regardless of whether you choose to play an easy or a hard game the mine-layer is a bastard to avoid. The level layout is different every time you play the game which is a pretty nice feature but the joy doesn't last as the mine-layer consumes your soul in a heartbeat. He moves quick and you move slowly, there's only one winner I'm afraid and it sure as heck ain't you.
This is weird and doesn't appear to be much of a game. You just control a set of footprints around a “mysterious house” and when seek becomes stop and flashes you have to search around the room for something, but what it is I don't know. You can also be teleported to another area, again the reason I am missing. The lack of instructions really hurt this game as there is no clear objective as to what you’re supposed to be doing within the game, what you're looking for and why. Also, there doesn't seem to be any enemies at all. It's a game that you will likely get bored with very quickly.
Gotta say I quite liked this one although it is at times brutally difficult. But for 1983 standards I have seen worse and certainly played worse. This looks nice for its time it responds pretty well too, given at this time we were used to controls not responding well this one seemed to read my commands quickly and efficiently, although I just got myself a new USB keyboard for these games so maybe that has something to do with it. But it's a nice little game though boredom I'm sure will kick it fairly quickly. But I enjoyed it and so I feel 3 is a harsh score and that 4 is reasonable.
In this game you have to load your ships with troops, tanks, helicopters, shells, bombs and more to aid you into battle, the problem is once you get into battle none of these appear to make any difference. You still fight as you and only you and you only have a ship, a gun and a missile and you fight the same enemy, or at least I did but as you imagine I gave up on the first screen because nothing seemed to work and I kept getting blown up. Safe to say I'll never play this one again any time soon.
As a Fruit Machine game it's as bland as you can get. There are special features in the game but getting to them is a complete chore and most of the time you'll lose all your money without seeing anything of any importance. For more luck you're probably better playing with four players at the same time but by the time you get round to something interesting your patience will be totally exhausted. It certainly looks more advanced compared to the more basic Fruit Machine games, but at least they play like one, because this sure as heck doesn't, other than it's fixed and designed for you to lose.
Without question it's a vast improvement on the previous game. Loads more special features, easier access to reach them, better sound, much more enjoyable overall. Still fixed as ever but it seems more forgiving than the previous game. All in all it's so much better and definitely worth at least one go in your life.
I accidentally came across this on my emulator when trying to load up Fruit Machine Simulator 2, I somehow went to search for Fruit Simulator by mistake and by the time I notice I reached Fruit S and this is what came up, and so I am now duty bound to review, especially upon realising it was a Fruit Machine game by total coincidence. This is a weird one as it seems to involve moving a black square around a maze with the numbers that appear on the fruits on the reels determining how far it goes, almost as if it's a board game with dice. It also features Pac-Man and his ghost fiends for some bizarre reason. Well it's more basic, it's much smaller and it sounds more annoying too, it also goes on a bit forever leaving me feeling more worn out with my patience than the two Fruit Machine Simulators combined. I am sure I have played worse than this, I might have to scroll through my archived reviews for my history of Fruit Machines games and see if I have come across worse, but I've certainly played better.
Usually these magazine type-in games aren't much to shout about, they usually aren't any real good but then at the same time they mostly aren't hideously dreadful, Jump Bug however is one of those exceptions. This is like Jumping Jack's evil brother that's been locked in a cupboard for several years and has burst out to reign terror onto anyone who dares to play it, well not terror actually, more like boredom and frustration. You have to jump your little man through the gaps above you to reach the top of the level, but the jerkiness of the game's code and the fact that you cannot sit still and he's constantly wondering around the platform makes this more arse than it needs to be. There is a small hit point to make the jump, and I mean small, even when it looks like you've nailed the jump you haven't and you've banged your head instead. Which actually reminds me of a song, the one that goes “bang your head, metal health will drive you mad”, except it won't and this will, go figure.
You, for some reason, are a soccer ball. You, for some reason, must collect what appears to be tennis balls, for some reason, whilst collecting keys in order to open locks to help your progress further. I struggle to find the point of this game and the lack of instructions only add to the mystery. Controlling the ball itself is a pain and predictably when you hit anything you shouldn't you fly and bounce all over the show, which obviously doesn't help. I found myself feeling quite bored with this game very quickly, which is a shame because I had high hopes for this game initially. I hoped Balowwwn! would be good, but it's not enjoyable and pretty naff. Balony.
Galaxian with vegetables! And from Hudson Soft too! So what do we have? Carrots at the top, is that turnip in the middle, and tomato at the bottom, even though they look more like pumpkins. It is a bit jerky in movement but then it's 1984 so what did you expect, but it plays pretty well and it's responsive. However, the one significant gripe I have with this game is when you die the enemies keep moving and can actually kill you again instantaneously if you're not careful, like I wasn't and I lost a second life in very quick succession as a result, that's not how Galaxian works. It is a pretty nice game with a novelty theme and it looks really nice too, but that one issue spoils the fun for me. Of not for that this would easily get a 4, but instead I have to join the crowd and score it a 3.
And now we have Galaxian, or possibly Galaga, with fruit! So here we have to destroy some pears, apples, bananas and plums, well I hate plums anyway so that one is no problem to me. It has a simple, basic look which is reminiscent of some of the 16K shooters floating around, and some of them played like tripe whereas this doesn't, to a degree. Shooting the fruits is fine enough, but I couldn't get on with the keys, Q for left and P for right is not a good layout for me, regardless of the game if the control keys are this far away from each other then that spells trouble as far as I'm concerned. It has a basic look and style, which fair enough I can deal with, but it has a rubbish key layouts and apart from the enemy patterns the levels are identical. Good for a quick blast but after that you're likely to never play the game again, or at least I won't anyway.
I have been putting this off but its time has come. I had this one back in the day, never liked it and still don't. While batting is alright and I can at least score runs, fielding however is different. I could never field properly or throw the ball correctly, plus you have to throw it back to the main thrower, the pitcher I think you call him, every time, even after throwing a strike. Too many times I was prepared to throw the next ball at the batsman when suddenly the catcher has thrown it to second base allowing the opposition to score an easy run. Never got on with that at all. The billboard next is a nice touch but I couldn't help but feel aggrieved at the game being interrupted by cheerleaders, because it's not an American sports game without cheerleaders is it, except it's not seen in a traditional baseball game anyway. This game could have been a classic and I suppose it is to some gamers, but as far as sports games go this was always a bust for me.
The second of Imagine's World Series games, this time with Basketball, this time I did not have back in the day and that I am certainly glad about. It does feel like a more favourable game compared to World Series Baseball but the passing and shooting is a matter of luck, one money when you want to shoot he'll pass and throw the ball out of play, then when you want to pass he'll shoot the damn thing and throw it out of play again. I always felt confused with which team I was and was never able to be the right player I wanted or needed to be while defending. I want to say that this is better than Baseball but instead I'll just turn up my nose at the World Series games and be thankful I won't have to play them ever again.
Well I have to say it's a well programmed game with a lot of detail put into the look and presentation of the game, but the gameplay itself though provides more questions than answers. Comparing this the World Series Baseball it's streets ahead in terms of quality but I couldn't help but notice that when I hit a foul in WSB it counted as a strike, and in here in doesn't. Also, the fielders are a bit arse and won't actually get the ball when you want them too most of the time, then when the catch the ball in the air it doesn't count as an out. There is also a way to exploit the throwing to get an easy out, which is to move to the very right and then aim to the very right some more, he will swing his bat but not be able to hit it. However it only works if the batter is facing the right of the screen, if he's facing the left he'll still hit it, and the sound of the ball when it is hit is quite something too. I do like the presentation in the game and it was fun to play, but there's too many inconsistencies in the gameplay to give it a higher score. I feel that the non or novice fan will enjoy will the avid fan with loathe it, I'll choose to be inbetween on this occasion.
It's indeed a Tetris clone and it's safe to say this game has a mixed opinion. Rebelstar Without a Cause scored it a 5 and said it played better than official version and that if players wanted to played the classic version this game is as good as any. The problem with that though is once you've gone past level 2 you've seen all that the game has to offer already and repetition and boredom kicks in quickly afterwards, or at least it does 27 years on and when you're now in your 50s like I am. Meanwhile Alessandro Grussu gave it a 2 and said there was no reason for preferring this to the official version. The problem with that though is the official version by Mirrorsoft was shite because the background interjects with the blocks in play and the drop button was hypersensitive. So, how does this rank for me? Well basically as a Tetris game it does the job, it plays favourable to the arcade version, it's responsive and the drop feature works well, unlike the Mirrorsoft version. Like I said though repetition and boredom does kick in and after completing five levels my work was done. But it is a very decent Tetris game and in turn a decent magazine covergame as well. Certainly one of the better Tetris clones to try on the Speccy.
It's another BASIC Frogger game, oh goodie. I was truly fearing the worse with this one, but having played it now it surprised the hell out of me! It looks pretty, the keys are responsive to a degree and it plays fine too. The one difference in this clone is that it's done away with logs and now you can travel in the water, thank you for pointing out that frogs can actually swim in the water for once. As a BASIC game and a Frogger game, it's perfectly acceptable and indeed one of the best ones I've played as a matter of fact. Well done Stuart Nicholls, it was the only game you wrote in your life but it was a good one nevertheless.
This game is pretty much more like Plump Pop but played like a Breakout clone. The goal is to the move the trampoline to bounce the man off to and guide him to pop the balloons at the top, very much like Plump Pop. The main problem though is it is so tediously slow, so slow in fact that it will literally take forever to pop all the balloons because there's far too many in the level to pop. And like Raphie says in the previous review, when you do nothing happens and the only thing left to do is to lose all your lives, face game over and confess that you have just wasted your time with this game, I know I did.
WoS' randomseek presented me Big Bad John, a game from Harry Price and so I ignored it and instead chose to look at the very game its code from stolen from, because well, he's a bastard. But as it turns out, looking at this game was a mistake too. Basically, you are Molecule Man and you must find your way to safety by collecting 16 circuits in order to use the teleporter to escape, however time and radiation are against you. The time is a common problem but the radiation is a big problem, this is because as you play the game your RAD counter will go down and you need pills to increase, but they can only be bought using money, and money can also, or preferably, be used to buy bombs which can help guide you to new new places. Basically, you to need to find a coins, spend them on pills, otherwise you are dead and you don't have a lot of time to do it, in fact you have around 36 seconds to do so. Yes, your very game can end in just 36 seconds if you fail to buy any pills in order to stay alive. This concept is ridiculous and words fail me that is exists. I'm beginning to see why Harry Price pirated these games, because most of these were rubbish before he got his grubby hands on them he reckoned he could make them play better, or worse most likely.
Wow this shooter is fricking weird. You travel through different parts on England, Stockport, The Moor, Russholme for instance, and you have to shoot various strange enemies, which includes giant maltesers, cup cakes, and flying headsd which seem to have a bit of a likeness to Ronald Reagan. It's not too bad and it's a million times better than Molecule Man but it just comes across as bland to me and after you play it once would you want a second go, likely chance is no. It's not bad, it's just quite dull and not very interesting.
Welcome to the first entry in Mastertronic's MAD-X range which gives you two games for the price of one! And the last, and I can see why it was the only game from this range. Well first of all to summarise we have an isometric adventure game in Molecule Man while Energy Warrior is a shooter, so at least you got two completely different games bundled together. Molecule Man is ridiculous because you have to quickly find some coins and spend it on pills otherwise you die and you only have 36 seconds to do so, while Energy Warrior is much better but it's a bland shooter with no real replay value. So two uninteresting games then, that will be why Mastertronic never used MAD-X again.
This is a running game like no other. It is not a button masher, but rather a game of strategy. You have to determine your runner's speed whilst also keeping a eye on your stamina, and so you cannot afford to go as fast as you can like you would in a button masher. For 400m races however that concept doesn't work as I feel that is more a sprint race while for 800m and 1500m races this concept is much more accurate, especially for the latter. I know this being a former champion at the latter discipline in school - MANY years ago! The one main problem I have is it all seems the same which means once you do one race that is the game, and so things get utterly repetitive pretty quickly as a result, but saying that the unique gameplay certainly kept me going in spite of this. This is a pretty nice game as a whole with a unique style and feel and one that will likely keep you intrigued despite its repetitive nature.
Pogo, 05 Dec 2018 (Rating: 3)
I have to say, for a Q*Bert clone this is among the best I've ever seen. As The Dean put it, it's hard to believe that this was released in 1983 because it is leaps and bounds ahead of most other games released that year and feels way ahead of its time. It looks superb, it's brilliantly programmed and it's incredibly responsive. The keyboard layout however is dreadful. You have to use 1 and 0 for top left and top right, which is fair enough, but then you have to use caps shift for bottom left and break for bottom right which happens to be mapped to the space key and it really doesn't food on your fingers when you use these keys. I often found myself being confused with the controls as a result of this and pressing the wrong key to send him the wrong way or the wrong key which doesn't move him at all. I can't help but think I'd enjoy this more if I had played this in 1983, which i didn't because I never bought this game. It's a shame because it looks like a fantastic clone and certainly favourable to the arcade game itself, but if only it had a better keyboard layout. Yes I know I could play it with the joystick, but I don't have a joypad anymore strangle none of those options worked when I tried mapping them to the keyboard, so I was stuck with the shoddy keyboard layout. Come to think of it though, as i was using the keyboard for my joystick controls it probably would have been even worse anyway.
This like Pogo was written by Ronald Rhodes. It was released one year after Pogo in 1984 and was the second and final game he wrote for Ocean. This is a another arcade clone, this time of Bagman which already presents a problem, because Q*Bert I'm familiar with, Bagman not so. For one the keyboard layout is just as bad, P for up and ENTER for down, which in today's keyboards is BESIDE P rather than below, but strangely I never had a problem with the layout this time unlike Pogo so fair enough. What I did have a problem with though is everything else. To call this inferior to Pogo is the understatement of the year. The pretty graphics, gone. The quality gameplay, gone. The responsive keys, gone. In its place is an ugly, poorly designed, unresponsive mess. Your character only seems to pick up the money when he wants to leaving you to frantically press the button in hope that he does this and by the time you do the enemy has hit you. How can it be that you can write two games that are polar opposites of each other within a year?
I liked the simple concept of the game, then realised it wasn't so simple, the game gives you 99 lives for a reason. It has a nice look but the gameplay seems off with the constant quick deaths, hence they give you 99 lives. The in-game music is nice, but it doesn't help the game itself from being a bit of a frantic mess.
Football managers are usually dull, we all know that, but they sometimes have a degree of gameplay that keep players interested in spite of the fact it has almost no graphics during the actual matches. This one as a matter of fact DOES have in-graphics during the matches and they actually don't look that bad they are just slow and the strikers are rubbish because they keep missing open goals. The menu interface is a little bit of a mess but it's nice looking nevertheless. I rather enjoyed this game, it's probably one of the best football manager games I have played.
Kenny Dalglish also had an arcade football game under his game, one that is less memorable than his football manager game, and with good reason. Well for starters we have a pretty decent illustration of Kenny himself, even if it kind of looks like he's having a mid-match chocolate snack. I find it funny that you choose to enter names for the “Reds” and the “Blues” yet the teams aren't actually red nor blue. The gameplay itself is utterly atrocious, controlling the ball is a pain, you can't seem to kick the ball unless you stop moving and passing is non-existent. The biggest laugh however is the kick-off which is treated like a face-off, even if one team scores. The computer players are dumb even on “amazing” skill and while playing it on a faster setting improves the gameplay a tiny bit it only shows off the game's flaws even more. The game ended when the opposition glitched the throw-in and the ball got stuck out of play. No further comment, other than this is one of the worst football games I've played in my life.
Oh dear, where do I begin with this travesty. This game borrows a lot from Kenny Dalglish’s Soccer Manager game, the look of the interface, the squad setup, the match highlights, almost as if it's a direct sequel. However it's safe to say that is a far inferior sequel. The match highlights are quicker but much more primitive, with the goalie only diving to his right and all the players remain static. It's also more challenging as no matter what I do I don't seem to win, I'm either losing or drawing, plus two games in my goalie got hurt, out for ten weeks, and I cannot afford to replace him. Just, flipping, great. And that becomes a problem in my game, injuries and not being able to replace injured players properly as the players are much more expensive here, and the one time when I do buy a replacement player HE gets hurt on his second game as well. This is quite unique as it's a football management game that achieves the dull look and feel even with match highlights. Simply put, Kenny Dalglish's game is much better.
Pooyan, 07 Dec 2018 (Rating: 4)
Pooyan is an arcade game by Konami that I am not familiar with nor is it that popular as there aren't that many games based on it. Here is one of them and for a BASIC game it actually plays pretty well, yes it's repetitive but you blame that on the original arcade game. It looks pretty, it's nicely designed, but once you miss at least two enemies your game is about screwed as they block your path and you can't go down so far anymore otherwise you're done. But it's a really playable game and I quite enjoyed it.
Poojan, 07 Dec 2018 (Rating: 2)
Just thought I'd look at another Pooyan game, one spelt with a J in between this time around. Simply put, the other Pooyan game was better. This is more flickery, jerkier, not as responsive, dare I say not as pretty looking, and the arrow sometimes goes through the balloons without bursting them. Not good, give me Mr. Marx's Pooyan game over this any day.
I'll give it credit, I wasn't expecting to fight snakes during the game. It looks alright I guess, neatly designed, but it all seems the same to me, plus killing the snakes appears to be random. Not terrible but not something I would want to play again.
Written by the same fella that wrote Megapede which I was very fond of many years ago. Have to say, I am not big on Missile Command, but this was just good. It's really fun and playable, it gets frantic as you go on, and it's outright full of thrills. It doesn't quite get a 5 but it gets a very good 4 from me at least. I would have loved this back in the day and given it's from the same author of Megapede I want to play this dude's other games.
Robon, 08 Dec 2018 (Rating: 2)
And now it's a Robotron clone written by Andrew Beale of Megapede and Repulsar fame. On first look it doesn't look that great and that opinion doesn't change while playing the game. I was not impressed with this, to keep it simple Megapede and Repulsar are far better games and I've played better Robotron games too. This one just didn't do it for me.
Just when you though Code Masters had ran out of things to “simulate” and make racing games out of, here they are with a jet bike racing game. And well it's crap. Controlling the jet bike is a complete nightmare and it's almost impossible to win or race without hitting anything to slow you down. And the biggest crime of all? It was written by The Oliver Twins. What. Happend?!
Exactly the same as Jet Bike Simulator, except the courses are split into easy and hard on separate sides and it has a female voice, other than that it's identical and it's equally shit. Oh Code Masters you vile bastards.
Wolfan, 08 Dec 2018 (Rating: 1)
Me and isometric games, they usually do not go well and this game doesn't help the cause. It's just endless wonder doing nothing rather than be followed by enemies and facing imminent and eventual death. Clearly I'm missing something with these games but this one was pretty much doomed from the start.
It's a BASIC football management game but in Portuguese, and this one DOES have match highlights! But they don't work well, the goalie doesn't move at all resulting in pretty much every shot being a goal, now you can see why BASIC football manager games had no highlights in the first place. To give it credit though, it's a BASIC game so what did we expect from it, it is largely no different to the other BASIC football manager games.
Yes, the world's most famous mid-table team had their own game back in 1990. All of your favourite Man Utd players from that era are here, including that famous legend Ralph Milne. Well all the options from others football management games are here, injury report, sign a player, training etc etc etc, and speaking of injuries I found myself in a unique situation where I had all at the same time, Lee Sharpe out with a broken nose and Clayton Blackmore out with concussion as if they had a fight with each other, and Mal Donagh out with a strained ankle, presumably picked up whilst trying to break up the aforementioned fight. But this is different from most football management games as it doesn't have highlights nor a match screen, it has an actually match, arcade style, played by YOU! It's on a separate side and requires more loading so there was a catch, but still we get to play a game so this already is much better than 98% of football management games. Our first league game is against Tottenham Hotspur, yet WE are the ones wearing white. We're Man Utd yet we're not wearing red, limitations yes but surely this could have been avoided. This doesn't actually play too bad compared to the majority of football games on the Spectrum, it's just bloody difficult to score a goal. The match finished 0-0 and we'll be last of Match of the Day tonight as a result. Then my second match against Aston Villa was exactly the same, all shots but no goals. A football game where you can't score? What a waste of money.
And then Manchester United had themselves a sequel for when they won the old Cup Winner's Cup. This is much less of a football management game as all you do is select your squad and you can't sign any more, so it's more favourable to the arcade style of gameplay. Before each game you can choose your cup, either the aforementioned Cup Winner's Cup, UEFA Cup or European Cup, I chose the latter. Our first game is against Derry City from Ireland and we are in red this time, they actually got the colour right unlike the first game. It now says the name of the player with the ball which is a very nice feature, I find it particularly funny that Derry's number 7 is called Bus, so never mind Derry parking the bus against us they PICKED a bus against us. The giant scoreboard is gone and we have an larger screen for the pitch, plus you can now see on the pitch where your free kicks are going rather than use the radar from the first game, but other than that it's the same game. But I managed to score a goal, in fact I won both legs 1-0 (2-0 on aggregate) and now play German side Nuremberg in the next round, so I'm pleased with that at least. I think this is the better game, it's a larger screen, it's in the right colour and I was able to score a goal. Not great, but a step up from the first game in the very least.
I have been putting this off for so many years but it's time. I remember playing this years ago and hating it. It's a Manic Miner type game where you control Egghead who must collect keys around the level. Sure, the game looks nice, except Egghead looks like an alien which probably explains why the aliens took over his house in the first place, but the gameplay is complete naff. I never got on with his jump, he jumps so high meaning it's easier to hit spikes plus he can't jump forward whilst being static, you have to move him forward first then jump which messes up timing. I never liked this game, and now I'm going to go through the sequels as well, so I might go insane after it all.
So here we go, Egghead 2. Because of my hatred for Egghead I have purposely avoided all the sequels up to now, so my one hope is the series gets better over time. (loads game and hears opening music) Oh wait a second I have played this. This seems like a more professional job and the jumping issue I had in Egghead where he can't jump forward whilst static is sorted, but the game seems even more of a pain than the first. Of course falling from a great height is harmful, that's fine, but even from straightforward heights he'll lose a life, because it's an egg innit? It seems like a better game but than it's more fussy with deaths, also that music is giving me a headache and so is that sound that plays when you switch levels. Two games down and my patience is wearing thin already.
13 years after Egghead 2 here we have Egghead 3 and he's in space because of course he is, who didn't have a space game. No music to this one, probably a good thing given the previous two tunes annoyed the hell out of me, especially Egghead 2. It's just too bad the garbage gameplay remains and it's even worse because there's now an issue with collision detection. I suffer two deaths where I was nowhere near the enemy yet still died. So 13 years on and we are heading backwards with this series.
Now onto Egghead 4 and for some reason he's a cook now and he has to prepare tea for Shelley, his girlfriend? Well for starters, 10 times improvement on the music, which doesn't fit the game but then neither did the ones in the first two Eggheads and they were public domain tunes so I'm calling this a huge step up. The gameplay though? Not so. The design is nice but it's just confusing trying to find what a proper ingredient is and where to drop it correctly. I will say that it's an improvement on Egghead 3 in the very least, but it's missing something to provide some charm, or maybe I'm just missing the point.
Well here we are and I honestly don't know why I'm still going, Egghead 5. We have another tune from Yerzmyey and it's even better than Egghead 4 so props for that. And what do you know, the game's not half bad, it's not great by any means but it's not as bad as the others and is a big step up to them. Its design combines Manic Miner and Dizzy and comes across pretty well. Also that somersault jump is so Dizzy-like. This still pissed me off and I still hate it as much as the others, but it seems much expanded and the overall look is better so I'll give it credit with an extra mark. But now I am done with the Egghead, totally done with it, let us never speak of it, wait, what, what do you mean there's a 6th one...
Just when I thought this series was done and dusted, cracked and turned to yolk, Egghead 6 lives. Who asked for this exactly? It sure as heck wasn't me. Okay deep breath, I've come this far, let's get cracking, you know I had gone through five of these previously without any egg references and there's two I've done in this one already. Again we have a Yerzmyey tune at the start, and a noisy one if that's your thing, but no music during gameplay which is a bit tragic but it means I can now concentrate better and it does have a little jingle when change levels and pick up something which I do like, so it'll do. And we are going back to basics with Manic Miner elements as in where's collecting things in each level and honestly, it plays quite nicely, it works, I rather like it. It took 18 years but finally Egghead has warmed to me with a nice, playable game to enjoy. But now let's us NEVER speak of this series again. I'm going to end up hating egg for the rest of my life now, imagine eating an all-day breakfast without egg? Impossible.
Seemingly the most inspirational game of all-time because it's spawned 150 million unofficial games, and frankly I never saw the fuss in it, not back then and certainly not now. It's just a larger expanded version of Manic Miner, which for me was always the better game compared to this. Like it's still a nice enough game but not the greatest game ever that deserves to be cloned by every aspiring programmer, their sisters and their grannies. And for the record I will never review any of the unofficial JSW games, just this and the official sequel and then I am done with JSW, forever. Forever. For. Ever. And ever. And. Ever.
Once you've played Jet Set Willy you're bound to know what this is like, especially if you played the Amstrad version which is where this was ported from. The new rooms will add curiosity to it and it has Manic Miner's music so that's a win, but Manic Miner's still the better game for me no matter how many clones they write for this. I may actually lean towards this as the better game of the two JSW games, which is rare for me given my history on sequels, but then again this is more a expansion of the original rather than a direct sequel come to think of it.
This is a interesting one, not quite your typical questions and answers game. Some of the questions are challenging and really pushes the senses and boundaries, with topics such as if a photographer gave you royal nudes would you post them on your paper and if you saw your daughter dating a boy of another colour, would you encourage them to date boys of her own race. Basically, if you run out of question cards you win, I can't help but feel confused because it means you're going to get wrong answers deliberately so that they don't win, not entirely sure if that's Hasbro's fault for designing it that way or Leisure Games' fault for porting it that way. It's not a bad game really, it just doesn't have any replay value for me, once you finish one game would you want to play another game? Also, you set stats at the beginning of the game which doesn't seem to have any effect on the game itself, except for when you realise how incorrectly your stats were at the end.
Wacky Races is one Hanna-Barbara game from Hi-Tec that could and SHOULD have worked, but for one reason or another it doesn't. Originally it was written by Robin “Orb” Holman and Mick Hanrahan and it was in colour, then when they left it was given to a new team and they changed it to monochrome, and you know you're in for a monochrome game with one look at the soulless plain yellow loading screen. The graphics aren't great as a result, nicely drawn but dark blue is not a good choice of colour, even white would have been best I feel. Also the gameplay, I find it weird seeing different enemies to hit and avoid other than those you are racing, who seem to do very little to you anyway. Also, of all the characters to be, you are Dick Dastardly, the antagonist as well as the one character who never wins. Talk about a waste of a license, and of all the Hanna-Barbara licenses to obtain this you'd think would have been the jackpot for Hi-Tec, but instead this turned out to be one of the last games they released before folding months later. Shame, because they had some good games Hi-Tec but towards the end the quality of their games were diminishing, this and the god awful Jetsons game being the catalysts of that.
I was searching through Spectrum Computing looking for a recent game to review, and by recent I mean when World of Spectrum took a shit and stopped adding new games recent, and I came across this and thought it was very appropriate to review this one now since it has a Christmas theme and Christmas is near and I covered almost all of WOS' Christmas games last year. So why not, let's do some Christmas games again this year. This one is a shooter from the same author of Bauble Blast which I covered last year, and it's pretty average at best. It looks and sounds nice with AY music from Yerzmyey but the gameplay is a little dull for a shooter, by the time I reached level 3 I was completely bored with the game. It's not bad really, just not a lot of fun, especially for Christmas. Bauble Blast is a better offering from Dave Hughes.
Here's one Christmas game World of Spectrum forgot about it its dying days, thank you Spectrum Computing for recognising it as one. I kind of see what WOS missed it apart from it was dying a slow death, because it's not really a typical Christmas game, but it is the 3 Wise Men so it is Christmas themed and that's good enough for me. Apparently it's in two parts, the first is a shooter and the second is an adventure, but I never got past part 1 so I can't comment on that. The game looks nice but I had difficulty with the shooting part, the enemies are faster than you so hitting them is awkward and you being slow mean avoid the enemy fire is even more awkward. But while it's not great it's far from the worst, I just wish I saw more of it than I did, but I've likely got so many of these to do in a short space of time so it will have to do.
Santa needs your help. You are Santa. First he needs your help yet you are him looking for help, already I am confused. Anyway, as Santa you must retrieve the presents from the guardians. If you fail the children will no longer believe in you, what? And will kill their parents, what the fuck?! Oooookay I thought this was going to be a jolly Christmas game but instead it's more like The Christmas Day Massacre. As the opening text says you have to wonder around collecting presents and avoiding the enemies and other obstacles. The problem is he moves too fast and thus controlling him is a big issue, it's just so easy to hit something and lose a life. I guess with a name with crap in its title what else should I have expected?
This is the same as the previous game I looked at Christmas Crapmas, it's Santa wondering around collecting gifts and avoiding enemies, but it's larger, prettier and much better. It's still not great as boredom will likely kick in within the first few minutes, but it's pretty much how a Christmas should be expected to be and it's definitely passible.
Earth is being attacked by alien robots disguised as Christmas items. These Christmas game plots just get better and better! It's another shooter and it's mental. First, you move really fast, second, you have to wait for your laser to fully recharge before you can fire, and third, you can only shoot the centre of the screen. So it's a Christmas game not for the weak, because it's quite difficult due to these regulations. Once you miss the centre it can be a tall order to be able to hit the enemy as it comes alarmingly closer towards you and you have to wait for the laser to fully charge up, and the fact that you move so fast doesn't help. It's not a terrible game it's not good and it's not suitable for impatient gits like me.
It's another Christmas game with crap in the title, and after this I'm a bit disappointed that a Crap Christmas Jumper Simulator game doesn't exist, come on aspiring programmers, you know what to do for next year, just saying. But this game does actually live up to its name by being a crappy game with crates, in fact it's more than crap, it's downright abysmal. This game is played like Sokoban but nowhere near as fun. You can't push the blocks, you can only move them by going through the blocks so that they move on spot at a time. So say you want them to move to the right you have to go to the right side and go through the block, them go round and do it again, and again, and again. You can punch the blocks but this only works for going upwards like an uppercut punch, it never works for the sides. This makes the game so painfully tedious as completing the levels take much longer than they need to. I think in all honesty this is probably the worst version of Sokoban I have ever played, I mean the graphics are pretty but the gameplay is just tediously horrific. The one thing you can truly say about this is at least it lived up to its name.
It's another game of Santa collecting presents and avoiding enemies, and this one works. It's got a nice look, good design, the gameplay is efficient and responsive, I really liked this one, especially given the last one I reviewed Crappy Crates left me feeling quite grumpy indeed. This is a perfectly acceptable Christmas game.
This is based on the Nintendo DS game Polarium, problem is while I have a DS I've never played this game, so that's gonna be a problem. The game itself isn't so bad, you have to light up all the black squares so they they will turn white and match all the remaining squares or vice versa. The problem is, this version has no sound and so it can become quite a boring experience quite quickly. Also, I'm currently reviewing Christmas themed games for Christmas and this, isn't really a Christmas game, it's only Christmas by name alone, as well as all the levels being days in December and it says ho ho ho when you complete a level, other than that it doesn't really have much to do with Christmas. But that aside it isn't really a bad game, I've just played better.
It's our old pal Horace! And he plays the role of Santa as he has to collect all the presents within the time limit and jumping on enemies as he goes on. This is actually a really nice game, it's a simple game that plays really well. I think Grumpy Santa is my favourite of the recent Christmas games thus far but this is well up there for sure.
And now it's our old pal Monty with another Christmas game! It's Month with Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy style gameplay, go across lots of screen collecting different items. Sounds fun? Indeed. Is it? Not really. The game looks nice and plays rather nicely too but there is hardly any sound in the game at all, in the end that makes this game look and feel pretty lifeless. I mean as a Monty game it's playable, but it lacks the charm for lasting enjoyment. Good enough to play for Christmas but you'll quickly find yourself playing the classic instead.
Professional Toast Simulator. What, the, hell? Oh it's toast as in touching glasses together rather than toast you eat, that's a bit of a pity. Well it's from the same author of 3 Reyes Magas while this looks like a better game I can't help but feel I prefer the previous game. Basically you are holding a glass and during each level a series of people will come along and give you items which you can collect, but if it's a glass you can do a toast with them. It's a simple idea but the fact is you some a lot of time during the level waiting and doing nothing, which isn't a lot of fun really. It's simple in nature but it's not really a game that you'll be playing often, maybe once or twice but that's about the height of it. I'm off for some proper toast now.
There isn't a whole to say about this except it's a game where you control a turkey through a track, jump over hurdles and to other platforms, and that's it. It's a concept seen on a number of BASIC game and a lot of them aren't good and this, while it's not terrible it's one you'll feel done with very quickly and never play it again.
It's another Christmas game from Dave Hughes of Bauble Blast and Chrimblast fame, and this one plays with with an AY rendition of, wait for it, Nothing Else Matters by Metallica, I mean, perfect for Christmas eh? In this game Santos has to collect food for Christmas dinner as well as the Golden Bauble, and should he return to his wife without them she will literally kill you, and they aren't joking because the very first thing you can choose to do in the game is return immediately to your wife which costs you a life, and yes I must kept going back to her until all my lives were gone because I just couldn't help it. It's just another one of those games where you walk around collecting things, nothing out of the ordinary yet nothing particularly special. I can't help but feel that Mr. Hughes' other two Christmas games played better.
And yet another Christmas platformer and another one where you wonder around collecting presents, and as well as that you collect keys to help you reach different areas but they will only open doors that match the same colour as the key. All this is done while avoiding various enemies, and if you're lucky to collect a gun you can shoot some of them too. It's another nice looking game with pretty colourful graphics, but I felt having played other Christmas games of this kind alongside this one that I have played better, Grumpy Santa, Merry Christmas from Horace and Christmas Gift Hunt are at least three of them. But it's not bad all the same and it'll provide some kind of Christmas cheer, just not as much as some of the others I've played during the festive season.
And I think that's quite enough Christmas games for one year. Maybe next year if I'm lucky to still be around I'll look at compilation games, I think there's a couple of electronic magazines of a Christmas feel and maybe I'll look into those next year. But for now, Merry Christmas folks, have a good one.
Boxing Day would be nothing without a boxing game, and so here's one bearing the name of the beloved Frank Bruno. This is based on Nintendo's boxing game Punch Out under the Bruno name, and it's alright really but I had a hard time getting to grips with the controls. It is also annoying that if you lose you have to reload your opponent again, which isn't so bad on an emulator but if you were running this on a real Spectrum, it can be quite a bastard. Thankfully you are given a code every time you win a fight, meaning if you lost your third fight you can just enter the code given and reload the third fight again rather than go back to the start again, but this only adds to the pain of multi-load. It's not really a bad game, the look is there for sure but the gameplay misses the mark and the multi-load only adds to the troubles. Barry McGuigan's Boxing game is much better than this.
Rocky, 26 Dec 2018 (Rating: 2)
Initially released by Dinamic as Rocky, it was re-released by Gremlin as Rocco, which is funny for me because my son is called Rocco who a few years ago was the near spitting image of the main character in Wonder Boy. This is another Punch-Out style game much like Frank Bruno's Boxing, but while it is relatively simpier it lacks the graphical charm. Much like Punch-Out there are different characters to face against, each with different looks and characteristics, and while Frank Bruno's Boxing managed to achieved the look of each character, this does not as everyone looks the same regardless. It is also less varied and more so, less fun and quickly gets old and repetitive. I did enjoy the simplicity of the gameplay but for everything else Bruno gets the nod. I'll just go ahead and stick to playing Barry McGuigan instead.
Hunter, 27 Dec 2018 (Rating: 2)
I find it funny that at the start during the opening sequence it says game over when you haven't even started yet. All of David Rushall's games are freeware and were never released commercially. I don't exactly know why and you can't read his distribution allowance message on WOS because it is broken beyond repair, thank you Lee Fogarty, but it's either he couldn't find a publisher or he wrote them for his own personal enjoyment. The latter is most likely as there are three of these Hunter games and eight in total, one is MIA on WOS but is available on the excellent Spectrum Computing website. If it is the former however I can see why because this is not very good. The game is seemingly in three parts, first you must fly your helicopter named HUNTER and shoot the other helicopter through the gap in the wall. It's a bit basic but too many times I was shot when I clearly shot them first and I'm certain they went through my bullets a few times too. Part two sees us flying over the North Sea and shooting the enemy, but here the flying seems nonexistent, because I can go down but then cannot seem to move up, it's as if I have to keep my HUNTER high in the air constantly whilst shooting the enemies, so if I can only shoot enemies on one part of the screen what is the point? And part three is, well I never got that far so I don't care to type about it. I've seen and played worse but it's not a great game at all. The intro was the best part, says it all really, and there's two more Hunter games to do as well, why do I do this to myself?
As I loaded this up I said to myself, let me guess it's the exact same game as Hunter, it isn't though. The intro is really different and I have to say, given what he was playing with, David Rushall put a lot of effort into the intros of these games, Hunter's was quite impressive given its time, memory and written in BASIC and this is impressive also with the volcano eruption, I'm impressed. What I'm not impressed with though is the entire game which seems to be broken. It is basically Scramble but you move up and fire automatically and have no control of your helicopter at all, plus you are hit for no reason at all, the enemies are nowhere near you yet it registers a hit. This is broken, whether it's the code, the snapshot, the actual game itself or all of the above I'm not sure, but it's a shame because I liked the intro and I like Scramble, but this is broken as hell.
It's the final straw and the writing is well and truly on the wall for this series. Simply put, this isn't written as well and is much jerkier than the others, with this one you can tell it was written in BASIC, with the other two, especially the first one, if I told you it was in BASIC you would be surprised, or at least I was anyway. It's very difficult to control your helicopter here, unlike the previous two game you have full controls of your helicopter but I think the game suffers as a result, if it was kept simple like the first one then it might have been a better game, but it isn't. But I will give David Rushall credit, he put a lot of detail into these games given the BASIC language he was working with. The first one had a nice intro, Hunter II had a pretty impressive volcano eruption during its intro and while Hunter III doesn't contain much of an intro the explosion visual in the game is really good. Graphically the games are impressive especially for BASIC, but gameplay is a letdown, this being the worst of the bunch, well Hunter II was but that was broken anyway. And maybe that's why they were never released commercially in the end.
These Epyx sports games are a mixed bag to say the least some of the events are a nightmare like pole vault and gymnastics, but then again if you choose to practice one event at a time rather than go straight in to compete in them you can get somewhere with improvement in the events, pole vault for instance I was able to improve on immensely. Diving and Gymnastics though I could never work out at all. It's a relief that this game is kind on your fingers by not being a button masher, but then I felt the gameplay itself suffers for being overly complex.
The sequel to Summer Games and it has the exact same intro, exactly the same one, and with a much more primitive menu too. And from the off I notice the keyboard responses are much delayed compared to the original. I thought it was a problem with my USB keyboard but no issue 2 and issue 3 settings on the emulator, my old USB keyboard with the faulty space key, the keyboard on my laptop and the keyboard on my son's computer were all the same. For this one we have all different events, not one event is repeated, so it's the same intro but very much a different game. Also interesting to note that this was actually never released on its own, it was for the Commodore 64 but on the Spectrum it appeared originally on the Gold, Silver, Bronze compilation along with Summer Games and Winter Games which was released two years earlier on its own, and while Summer Games got a Kixx re-release, Summer Games II to my knowledge never did. The only events I was able to get on with were the Rowing and Javelin, every other event was a struggle, especially Equestrian. Much preferring the first one and now I can see why it was never released separately.
This is bloody difficult, this is unfair and this is appalling. From the horrible excuse for “music”, the constant flickering graphics and the inability to make it past screen 1 all adds up to make this a right stinker.
Exactly the same as Valley of the Dead except you are a robot rather that a hot air balloon and it is somewhat easier as I was able to get past the 1st screen numerous times, but it's the same game and it's equally crap. What on earth made Barry Jones think he could release this twice?
For what it is it isn't too bad a game, it's just unforgiving. There are even times the cuboid will get you when he's not even on the screen, and when you have just one life that doesn't seem very fair.
Well you get what you pay for with this I guess. It's nothing more than an average shooter with dodgy hit detection. It's too easy to run out of ammo and to gain more ammo you have to walk to a dead bandit before he disappears, but by the time you do that you're most likely dead. And when your thirst meter runs low you need to walk to the hotel to fill it up, but then chances are you'll be dead the second you walk out again. And at the start you can choose between a fast, medium or slow speed game, and when you choose slow it automatically makes you play with a Sinclair joystick. I didn't expect this to be any good because it's cheap, it's Alternative Software and Richard Stevenson wrote the game and he also wrote the awful BMX Ninja, and indeed that it exactly the case, not as bad as BMX Ninja obviously but still not very good.
A-Maze, 29 Dec 2018 (Rating: 1)
Alternative's Dead or Alive also had a B-Side game with it, this one, a game released one year earlier by K'Soft who are known to me for that dreadful Skuldugery game where you had to move the character AND the screen during the game. It's a simple looking painter style game, move your brush to the paint and then paint the entire grid afterwards, what can go wrong? Turns out, everything. So you're the brush in a grid filled with squares, but you can not move to another square until you can go through an open gate which a series of them move around the grid. While this is going on you are up against a glowing circle type thing that kills you with one touch, and you wait for the one gate you need to progress he can move closely to you and cause you to panic. Then when you reach the paint, indeed you have to paint the grid whilst following the same routine. Who thought of this design? This turns what's supposed to be a simple, fun and effective game into a huge laborious mess. Playing this and Skuldugery makes me wonder if all of K'Soft's games are this bad, but that's for another day.
Z-Fred, 29 Dec 2018 (Rating: 1)
From A to Z and from a Maze to a...Fred, yeah I'm aware that made no sense but there you are. This is another Q*Bert clone which explains its name and if you look at its score on WOS then you know what you're up against, and it truly does live up to it. I had a hard time getting to grips with the keys in this game and as such I can't get past two levels. But I will say this, it's no worse than Cuddly Cubert, because that game was slow, jerky and frankly unplayable. Z-Fred is only 5 times bad while Cuddly Cubert is 50 million times bad. I was tempted to give this a 2 to show that at least it's a better Q*Bert clone, or more to the point Cuddly Cubert is a far worse clone, but Z-Fred is really not a good game in its own right.
On a gameplay scale it plays alright but it suffers from slowdown occasionally. But the monochrome graphics are a nightmare as the enemies clash with the background and make themselves hard to identify. That is what killed the game for me.
I was hoping that this would be a better example of Breakout than Baloon-Man, but it's not. It doesn't play very well at all and it's just what you'd expect in a type-in Breakout game. Simply put, there's better.
As a wrestling game it's alright I suppose but you definitely get what you pay for here which is not a lot. Despite having different characters both teams are the same regarding, it has the same problem as Code Masters' Wrestling Superstars where you're mainly doing punches and kicks and there's one move in the entire game, and once you play one game you've seen it enough to put it away for good. Also, if this was AMERICAN Tag Team Wrestling, why would they be using the BRITISH round setup for the matches?
It's just a football manager game, again. That's all you can really say about it, except it's from the Shaw Brothers, well programmed by a chap called Vinny Vity but still it has the Shaw Brothers name on it, so now I'm interested. It has the England squad for your players, again, but you can change them if you like, so I had Bates, Connor, Lynch and Jones in my defence and Wally and Pillock up front instead. You can purchase new players, again. You can though visit your directors who will call you pathetic and say that you face the sack for relegation, and we haven't even started yet. Anyway onto the match itself and we have a screen to tell you the match time allotted, again. But you do get highlights with it though, it's just too bad they were mostly for the opposition and we hardly had a sniff in any of the games I played, in fact three matches in and we haven't scored yet. It is programmed well I will give Mr. Vity and the Shaw Brothers credit for that, it's nicely presently, it's bold, the highlights are a bit of a nice touch and so it crushes most of the BASIC ones and that Graeme Souness one I played not long ago, but it still misses the mark in being a great football manager game.
This is a nice simple game to play and get into. One of those great time filler games to pick up and play quickly and to have some good amusement in the process. The sound will probably drive you insane but if you put aside the pitiful noise throughout the game it's playable and good fun.
Why is this called Tie-Break and not Tennis? Because it may have been originally called Tie-Break but then they acquired the Adidas license and then its name changed to accommodate that. This game quite uniquely gives you a choice of racket to use in the game, however from my experience whatever you choose doesn't make any difference to the game so this choice is pretty pointless. It's also weird seeing you as “Team” 1 rather than Player 1 at the start but then refers to you as Player 1 during the game and your opponent as Player 2 even though he had a name at the beginning. Anyway this game reminds me a bit of Passing Shot because of its top down view bit it really is a poor man's equivalent of it. The graphics are not great and the gameplay is extremely lacking in quality for a tennis game. Serving is a bollocks and returning balls is pretty much down to luck. It's ugly, unpredictable and pretty much unplayable, as far as Tennis games go this may be one of the worst I've ever played. Match Point, which by this point was already six years old when this game came out, absolutely crushes this.
Having mentioned this in my previous review for Adidas Championship Tie-Break I felt I had to review it next. It is a far better game than Tie-Break and a pretty playable tennis game in its own right. It looks decent and it plays much more straightforward. It's not the best tennis game in the world and the arcade game wasn't particularly much to rave about, but this is a worthy conversion and certainly one of the more playable and nicer tennis games on the Spectrum.
Another tennis game and one from Sensible Software, yes, THAT Sensible Software famous for the Sensible Soccer games, and this was their very last game on the Spectrum, they only did four and this was the final one. This has a nice rendition of the BBC Tennis theme done by the late Richard Joseph. It's then followed by another lovely tune to match. The presentation is nice as well with a large number of tournaments to compete in, including Adelaide, Wellington, Guaruja, Australian Open, Indian Wells, Japan Open, Monte Carlo, and of course Wimbledon. So I chose Adelaide, a cement tournament and my first round opponent is Pieter Aldrich of South Africa. The player design is, well different to say the least, they are entirely of Vector lines. So onto the gameplay and the colour of the game varies from each court you play, cement is black, is blue and grass of course is green but this really hurts its look and I much preferred the other colours. The one main problem I had was the gameplay is done with the dreaded numbered keys but I mapped my keyboard the Sinclair joystick which used the arrow keys and tab to fire so all good there then. The game overall plays really nicely actually, it's straightforward to hit the ball, you have a flashing box at the bottom to tell you to hit the ball, I had no problem doing rallies and winning points, and all in all it just felt nice. The scoreboard is also a nice touch as well. This is a very acceptable tennis game, it looks a bit weird but it does play nicely, and even though I lost to Mr. Aldrich I was able to give him a good game and managed to keep with him the first six games before he took advantage of my mistakes and claimed the next three games to beat me 6-3. I enjoyed this quite a lot and it's well worth a look for tennis fans. I really want to find time to do an in depth career in this game, and believe me I don't say that about a lot of these games.
For the last of this current series of Tennis game I look at one from jolly old Spain. This is like Adidas Championship Tennis in that you can choose your equipment, and this one isn't just down to racket, you choose your trainers too. This looks and sounds really well, but the gameplay is very tricky, it's fast and doesn't give you much time to time and plan your shots well, which I think in essence achieves its premise as a simulator. It's not a bad game really, it's nicely presented, but I just preferred Passing Shot and International 3D Tennis so much more and of course it's nowhere near the quality of Match Point.
Bejewelled with emojis, now that's a really bad combination. Bejewelled is of course the Match 3 puzzle game everybody loves, except if you're one of the 125 million people that's played Candy Crush Saga that is. This is played like Bejewelled in terms of gameplay by matching 3 or more of the same coloured face, and here you have to match the required number of colours for each face in each level to progress. It does work, I will give it that, it's a nice game that challenges the brain, but in later levels it seems to deliberately not give you enough of the one remaining colour you need to progress, or else that's just me being a moaning git again. But it's a game that works well, the problem though is you play it once you've seen the game, does it really have that replay value for it to be worth a 4 or 5? Possibly not but I'm being generous to it and give it a 4 because it looks and plays well to earn it.
It's a fun game to play indeed but I personally found the keys a bit of a pain. But still it's very favourable to Bomberman's usual gameplay and well worth a look for fans to see how it all began.
It's Bomberman distributed by Sinclair Research who then removed the programmers names and renamed it Eric and the Floaters. It's essentially the same game but it can now be controlled with a joystick which I map to the cursor keys and the tab button, and I found this much easier to control than the usual keys. So by a nose this is the better game, but both are really good and worth playing.
Karnov, 31 Dec 2018 (Rating: 2)
Karnov and I have never got on. I will give it credit, it looks gorgeous, but gameplay is what counts here and Karnov's gameplay is pretty arse. His floaty jumping is offputting as is the scrolling, it just makes the game more awkward than it needs to be for me to enjoy it, it did 26 years ago and it still does today. Many would see away these drawbacks and like it simply for the impressive non colour clash graphics, but not me, because you can be in HD for all I care, if your game plays like shit you will be shit, as Karnov has found out. And I still struggle to find the purpose of Karnov being Data East's mascot after all these years. That's like making Egghead the ZX Spectrum mascot rather than Dizzy.
Happy New Year everyone!
I was sure this would have been better than Crazy Cars, turns out though that it's even worse! Yes there are routes to take but getting to them is a bleeding nightmare, because you crash pretty much all the time and when you do whilst taking the correct route it respawns you on the OTHER route, meaning what you did was a waste of time, like playing this game was a waste of time. Also, you can shift up but you can never shift down, so if you manage to prematurely go to high gear you are toast. So I much prefer bland Crazy Cars 1 over this tripe. I should have known, Titus. Did they ever game a good game?
Well, it's not as bad as I thought it would be and it is a better game than Crazy Cars II at least, but it's basically a re-coded Crazy Cars with a car that can now shoot as enemies you most likely can't see and being shot at these hard to see enemies in the process. Not atrocious but far from great.
This is clearly written by the same guy that programmed Dick Tracy, the colourless graphics, no sound, dull gameplay featuring enemies that take forever to be defeated, it has everything. It also has a panther to accompany you and thus it draws similarities to Shadow Dancer, but it doesn't appear to do anything, comparing this to Shadow Dancer may as well be considered a sin. I can't make up mind as to which is worse between this and Dick Tracy, both are equally horrendous.
This too appears to be written by the same guy of Dick Tracy and Wild Streets infamy, but if so this looks to be his best yet. It has colour and it has sound, but you guess it it's equally unplayable. It doesn't take long for the robot to kill you and it seems impossible to hit him. And I thought this was going to be a scrolling beat em up, chances are this is the only screen in the whole game, or at least it was in my game and I can't be bothered to see if they are any more. I think this may actually be worse than Dick Tracy and Wild Streets because at least there you were able to shoot and beat up people, here you can't seem to do anything.
Titan, 01 Jan 2019 (Rating: 2)
The last Titus game yet to be covered by me and what do you know it's called Titan, I see what you're doing there Titus. This I left till last because it's the most different looking game of them all, a breakout game! Well it's not breakout as we know it. Basically you have to guide a ball around a level hitting all the blocks, sounds simple enough, well it would but the ball itself is disobedient and won't go where you want it to most of the time. It's not the worst game of this nature nor is it Titus' worst either, but it's just not exciting at all, it's quite painfully dull and if you manage to play the game for more than 15 minutes without a single yawn you deserve a knighthood. But it is just as I predicted, Titus haven't a single good game in their Spectrum softography.
Well I'm back at work now so my posts will be more limited, but playing games like this make me wonder why I'm doing these at all. It's Donkey Kong and a bad one, not really terrible but it's really not great. Your man, obviously not Mario, moves slowly as if he is in no hurry to rescue the princess, more like he can't be assed doing it. Kong at the top just stand there, he has no animation, probably that was a stretch too far, but it's quite amusing seeing a large lump of red with four black dots staring at you as you play. It is not the worst I've played but its slow pace makes this a bore to play and promptly forgotten about.
It looks like a fun game and all and I see why it is popular with other users, but I can't help but feeling I'm missing something with this and I'm lacking the same charm compared to others. In all honesty it doesn't look too great and the gameplay is a bit complicated as overtaking is a matter of luck as its much easier to hit the other cars and waste your shield. I hoped that using weapons would add to the game, but it doesn't. It's not a bad game but it can be enjoyable to a degree but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped.
Out of curiosity I searched through the site for later football manager games not covered by World of Spectrum, and I came across a couple by a chap called Mark James Hardisty. This one, called Champions Soccer, was coded in 1990 but never released. Up to eight players can play and we have eight teams to choose from - Manchester United, Liverpool, Sheffield Wednesday, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Sheffield United, Nottingham Forest...and Westfield. Like...what? Of course I'm Westfield because I'm curious as to why they exist in this game.
So we are split into two groups for some reason, Group 1 has Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool and Notts Forest and Westfield are in Group 2 with Villa and the Sheffield teams. So we're competing in the Pro! Systems League, I'm guessing Pro! Systems was Hardisty's company brand. As it turns out the game is 5-a-Side soccer as Arsenal's team consists of Lukic, Dixon, Adams, Rocastle and Merson, Man Utd's team features Leighton, Bruce, Robson, Hughes and McClair while Westfield's team features Byrne, Filan, Feehily, Egan and McFadden, oh sorry that's WestLIFE, my notes were upside down, Westfield have White, Newell, Wesley, Evans and Hardisty because of course he put himself in the game.
As it turns out also, we have to watch EVERY match, not just the ones that feature your club of choice, ALL of them. So I have no choice, I have to watch Arsenal vs Man Utd, great. The match screen is the bare minimum, a plain black screen with a little text of commentary that's too fast to read, no sound and a green and red image that I think is supposed to be the pitch but looks more like a cross between a jigsaw puzzle piece and a Christmas present. Oh and it finished 0-0. Then for some some reason it gives me info on my expenditures and finances, THIS ISN'T MY CLUB! I PICKED WESTFIELD! Then it gave me “this week's offerings” which happen to be players you can buy, and nothing happened other than the option to press any key. Charmful. And then the process is repeated all over again for Aston Villa for Sheffield Wednesday, and remember when I said there was no sound? Well I guess I was wrong because there's beeps to acknowledge a shot, which means Arsenal vs Man Utd had no shots at all. So I eventually skipped ahead to Westfield's game against Sheffield Utd, and finally there's a main menu, where we can list players, take out a loan or change your team, but who cares let's just get a match going, and we lose 4-0 because of course we do, and I've truly had with this game.
So my latest discovery in the realm of football management and I wish I never did because this is dreadful. There are football manager games that I get interested in at first but then lose interest and there are ones where I lose interest quickly, but rarely have I found one where I lose interest in an instance, this was one game were I did. This is just a mess, why am I viewing matches for the other teams? Why am I getting finances for the other teams? Why am I given the option to sign players after watching a game from other teams? I thought I was managing one teams rather than all eight. This is a complete mess from start to finish. Thankfully this chap never wrote another football manager game again after this...except he did two years later...OH GOD!
And yes, two years after Championship Soccer, there was Championship 6-a-Side Soccer which Mark Hardisty wrote in 1992 and actually sent it to D&H Games for publication but was turned down, I can only imagine why. Well you can play with up to eight players again but we have more teams to choose and Westfield are nowhere to be in sight, but neither are the team I support so I just went and picked Leeds Utd just because. Like last time there's group draw done to separate the teams, and there's three in a group this time rather than four, Leeds are in Group E with Man Utd and Liverpool, thank you very much for that. And then it proceeds to show me info for Sheff Wed vs. West Ham Utd, not this shit again, actually you have a choice this time of whether you wish to watch it or not so of course I said no and it skipped to the result. The main problem is, the game plays through each group's games at a time, in this case Group A and then Group B and then the top teams from both groups play a qualifier match which the winner goes through. As I am in Group E, it took a while for me to play my matches, which means a lot of repetition of skip matches, not wanting to trade players and not wanting to view the groups, over and over and over and over and over again. But at last it's my match and again we can change the squad but we can also change tactics as well. As you might have guessed, this is now a 6-a-Side soccer match instead of the 5-a-Side matches seen in Championship Soccer. You can choose to skip your own match but I'm watching because I feel like I've waited my whole life for this moment. Our match screen this time doesn't look as bare and the text is slower and easier to read but our “pitch” display remains and is larger, looking more like a Christmas cracker rather than a present from the previous game. This time however there is no sound at all, even when there is a shot on goal or when a goal is scored, no sound whatsoever, plus as the text is slower so too is the whole match itself by the looks of it, except we play 12 minute halves here so it's not a full on drag. Anyway we beat Man Utd but lost to Liverpool who topped the group and we're out. There's a final round featuring two groups, the two winners face off in the final, the winners are champs and then we start all over again. I wish to make not that at the start of each season there's a FA Cup holder and a League holder, yet none of these are featured in the game, it's just the Sixes tournament and that's it. It is a a slightly better programmed game, it makes some sense where as Championship Soccer made none, but it's just a tedious, boring drag of a game, and in the end this is why D&H rejected it, because it pretty much has no lasting appeal even for a football manager game. I mean at the end of the day I done all that skipping just for two matches. Simply put, this nor Championship Soccer are worth your time.
It's another football manager game called Championship Soccer and this one is done by STD, which sounds a bit rude until you realise it stands for Steve, Tony and David, the three chaps who wrote this game. It's a 128K only game but you wouldn't know it as it has the look and feel of an ordinary BASIC football manager game, just with more memory. And even with all this added memory there's still no sound at all, surely there was room in 128K of memory for some sound guys. And the waiting times are just as long as usual, but I suppose bigger memory means more processing right? The match screen is a pitch of a team's goal mouth which works, there's some text of commentary at the bottom and the list of scorers will appear on screen should that happen, so it's what you'd expect from a usual football manager game. It's not terrible, it's just the same that I've played elsewhere. Here's the thing, this was released in 1989 and going for £7.99 while I would have played something similar to this four years earlier and for £4 less. This would have felt life a ripoff had I bought this.
Even Code Masters got into the ever-increasing football manager market! Already it feels different with some nice music on the title screen, which you can also choose to play during the game as well. In this game you have to enter your team name, so you can enter Man Utd, or Wolves or Westfield and you're set to go. You can also enter a security access code for some reason but you can turn this off to save the hassle of remembering it all the time, like is your data really going to get hacked? So rather than a menu you have an office! There's the phone to call your mum, I mean the bank manager, physio, scout, coach and the transfer market, which is a real piece of work, because if you want to sign anyone, you have to type their name in, you have to find the players yourself and then type them in to the market. There's a computer where you can select your squad and turn off the security like I mentioned earlier, the files view the tables, fixtures and the players which comes in useful for the aforementioned transfer market, and the newspaper which shows the results, and of course the radio to turn on or off the music. As other people have commented previously, the best way to build your squad is to sign unemployed players for nothing and then sell the, immediately to make some dough to sign the best players, which kind of spoils the fun of it a bit but you win at all costs I guess. The match screen is also nice upgrade, here we have an actual match playing with playing running around the pitch with the ball passing it around and shooting towards the goal as the match commentary details what's happening. You can speed up the game with the cursor keys if you wish as well. As the same users before also state, the game seemingly breaks if played for more than two seasons as everyone eventually becomes crap in the end and signing players is ultimately pointless. It's a shame because this is a massive step up from most football manager games and sold for less money. It's got a nice look and feel, it keeps you intrigued, the music is a welcome addition even if 1 it gets old and 2 it doesn't really fit the game, but it's still a nice addition nevertheless. I did like this one a lot which reflects on my score, I am aware of the faults it appears to suffer from as you play on but I can only review up to how far I played, and from I played of this it was a really positive experience, either that or I've played enough bad ones to appreciate this one more than most people would.
This, like 1st Division Manager, was written by a lad called Nick Thompson. Whereas 1st Division Manager was picked up by Code Masters, this was picked up by Cult, and you can see how much of a difference these games are in standard with Code Masters' assistance in the previous game and Thompson doing his own thing in this one. It does have the same menu look for when you enter your name, but you now get to select you team this time, in my case Blackpool for no reason except these games never seem to have my team in the game. The squad selection screen is similar to 1st Division Manager as well, just not as pretty looking, and there's no player ratings here so who the best players are for your team is guesswork. The match screen is also very similar, if not directly copied from 1st Division Manager. Simply put, while it's not a terrible game, basically everything good in 1st Division Manager is gone and this now resembles pretty much the same football manager games I've been playing and reviewing for the past 93 years.
Nick Thompson’s third and final football management game and it once again uses the same match engine, though the menus have been given a complete overhaul. It's his second one for Cult following The Match and this time it involves international teams trying to qualify for the World Cup, even though it was released in 1992 when there was no World Cup. There's not a whole lot you can say about this other than it's an international football manager game that likes to stack the odds against you and give you a headache. Players will constantly get injured playing for their club, even during the month, and then players will retire right in the middle of the qualifying campaign. In terms of the match screen, once you see it in 1st Division Manager and The Match you've pretty much seen all it has to offer. It's a nice feature if you've never seen the other two but three times over without notable changes or improvements? Not so much. This one bored onto me really quickly because there actually isn't a lot to do here, which as a counter argument means you will progress quicker without faffing around too much, but Cult have better management games in their library than this. Oh and I did help England qualify for the World Cup but then we went out in the group stage after drawing to Poland and Uruguay and then losing to flipping Albania, typical.
It's definitely not among the worst arcade conversions on the Spectrum but it just lacks the enjoyment you can find in other versions of Shinobi. The big jump only works when it wants to and I twice died from projectiles that were masked by the graphics. It's not a bad effort all the same and it could have been a lot worse, but it also could have been better designed.
Another Sega arcade conversion and one I never liked, not on arcade and not here either, and yet everyone one else enjoys the game except me. This is playable, I will give it that, but I never got on with the character moving slower than the enemies and especially since you have to rescue 10 hostages before a time limit, and with him moving so slowly that seems like a tall order. I think this is better than the arcade version which is saying something, but it still doesn't warm to me.
Merlin, 10 Jan 2019 (Rating: 1)
Merlin is a colourful game on first look but once you start playing it all the problems pile up at pretty much the same time. The huge Merlin sprite clash with everything on the screen as the sprite moves BEHIND the background sprite rather than in front of. There is also no barriers, you can either jump up the stairs or you can walk through them if you so wish. He's very tall Merlin and that represents another problem, as getting past enemies is very difficult and timing is near impossible. His jump is also crap. This game serves as one of the biggest acts of deception I've ever come across, because with one look you're intrigued into thinking this is a colourful platformer and it turns out to be a huge graphical mess. Thankfully, I'll never play a game like this again, except the author cloned it for a magazine covertape, TWICE!
Merlin the Wizard is now Captain Crook the Pirate. This is the same Merlin except now the enemies clash with the background too, thus they become impossible to see and even more impossible to avoid than before, and because of that it's even worse.
First, he was a wizard, then he was a pirate, now he is a soldier, with a gun, that doesn't, even, fire. What, is, the point? This felt a little more playable than Merlin and Pieces of Eight but everything else is the same, faults and all.
Never thought I'd be beginning this review by saying it starts with a rendition of Fanfare for the Common Man, but here we are. This contains eight events in total. There's Sack Race where you spend more time falling over than anything else, then there's Pile of Plates which is slow but I managed to complete this event so fair enough. Boot Throwing is a complicated mess and I couldn't throw anything to save my life, River Jump is like pole vault only more harder and more shit, Pole Climbing features the most complex control system ever for climbing a pole and thus progression is next to impossible and Run Up the Wall has you most likely running INTO the wall rather than up it, and I gave up at that point. Of all the multi-event games I've played this is among the very worst I've ever come across, it's ugly, it's dull, it's complex and it's absolute donkey shit. At least The Dean saw some kind of humour in this, I didn't, hence my low score and this review. This can frankly piss right off.
This is as unplayable as unplayable can be. From the off you are swarmed by enemies and you have no time to escape from them and their fire. Then when you die you can instantly be killed on respawn. How the fuck did this get a commercial release?
A housewife simulator, who would have thought it? It's not overly terrible but it gets repetitive, boring and you're constantly getting stuck with nowhere to go. It was interesting at first, but then that interest wore away very quickly.
Apparently this is inspired by the EA game of the same name, however it doesn't share the same gameplay. Rather than be a shooter, the game plays like a maze game where you wonder around different screen and you have to rescue people while avoiding monsters and electric wires. It does look nice, I'll give graphics credit, they aren't amazing but the use of colour is nice, it's just a bit too dull for my taste, there isn't a lot that happens apart from moving, there nothing to pick up (or at least I never came across any) and I didn't like the movement here. Pretty disappointed as I had high hopes for this one.
I don't know which is more shocking? That this was released in 1988, that it's branded as speedway or that Code Masters actually re-released this game four years later. It looks dated for 1988 let alone 1992 and its boring and repetitive gameplay will leave the avid fans unimpressed and the novice fans looking somewhere else for amusement in a hurry. Whittaker's music is the highlight, but even that gets old as quick as the whole game.
Got to say this plays pretty nicely. The ball physics are a little iffy and the table doesn't really offer much, so most likely you will play it once and never play it again, but it's fast and the flippers are accurate. It's very playable and it's enjoyable. I have come across far worse pinball games than this and given this was £1.99 you'd expect this to be just as crap, but I found this was fine, as I say a little iffy and doesn't really offer much, but it plays well enough to be appreciated by me.
I don't know what I can say about this? Except it's a BASIC type-in game and it has all the faults that you'd expect in a type-in game and it probably isn't worth a second go when you die. But you know, it's playable to a degree, it's not very good nor interesting but it's playable nevertheless. It's quick to get to grips with but then it's quick to lose interest in it.
It looks like an interesting game to play but as it turns out the gameplay is pretty lacking in quality and enjoyment but I guess that's the fault of the arcade game which incidentally I've never played. The first screen in particular has monochrome graphics which hurts the game as some enemies are hard to see and avoid. I'm just going to go ahead and say the arcade game is better even though I've never played it.
This is a classic, it hasn't aged particularly well through the years, but it's still a classic. The first good football game on the Spectrum and still one of the most charming, although as I said earlier, the years haven't been kind to it. It still holds up pretty well gameplay wise, you can move with the ball well but passing is down to a bit of hit and hope luck and I always found it best to score from long distance, also manual goalie could albe a problem for some. But it always was one of the better football games on the Spectrum against the 90% of bad ones, so if have to play a good football game on the Spectrum, play this along with Emlyn Hughes.
It's pretty much the 128K version of Match Day with international teams from Europe, other than that it's the same game. Can't really say the 128K improves the game any, can't help but prefer it as it was before. But it is still a very playable football game because it is Match Day at the end of the day.
Thankfully not the same game for a third time. The game is a bit cleaner but now with smaller players, probably because they look so small depending on where you're sitting at the ground I suppose. And this time we have a Kickometer which determines the power of your passes and shots and with a variety of setups, including all kicks which means you can backheel it the other way, which is funny when you are shooting. And you can have computer goalies which kind of defeats the enjoyment of the game for some but for me it's good because I dislike the manual goalie. Also different in this game is the addition of a Matchday Cup and League. So onto the gameplay and instead of the Match of the Day theme from the original we have When the Saints Go Marching In, which is a bit hilarious for me being a Southampton fan. For the gameplay, the kickometer will often work against you and the crowd noises can get annoying really quickly. But saying that it is the same Match Day gameplay, only with varied kicks and the ability to jump when the ball is in the air. Is it a playable football game, yes, absolutely, hence the 4 rating. Is it better than the original Match Day? Hell no. For me the original still holds up.
This was given decent reviews and was highly-rated on WOS, and it does look like a nice game and a proper racing simulator, but that's its problem for me as I cannot get on with this at all. I cannot race without constantly spinning and it is the same no matter what I do. Too many times I have wanted to try it and see if I can succeed with it and too many times I have failed and lost interest. It does have the look of a racing simulator die-hard racing fans need, but it's just too complex to be taken seriously, at least for me it is.
The music and the presentation is impressive, the gameplay though is severely lacking. The firing is pretty weak and the timer goes down way quicker than it ought to, which makes collecting all the crystals a needlessly more difficult chore than it needs to be. I also wasn't a fan of the slowdown in the music during the game, surely no music was a better option. I am sure this was better on other systems, but the Speccy version is a pretty big misfire.
An unplayable mess that had no right ever being released. How on earth can you even avoid the flying arrows? Progression is completely impossible and so don't even bother to waste your time on this because it's not worth it, at all. And the person who wrote it? It was his only known release. No wonder.
Written in only 4096 bytes of memory, hence its name, this is actually pretty decent. Yes it gets old and repetitive very quickly, but it's smooth, plays at a nice speed and it's responsive. You'd think this would be yet another BASIC driving game but you'd be well wrong, this, while not the most exciting game nor a game you'd be hooked to, is playable.
It would normally be difficult to say this is a better game than the previous game because it's largely the same, but there are significant improvements that makes this stand out. First off, the view, previously your car was small and their cars were bigger, now you are driving the same size car as them to give you a true racing feel. Previously I have said that 4K Race had an Enduro vibe to it because of the small car you drive, this is more like Pole Position and that is a good thing on all accounts. Also, it is a bit faster than the previous game which gives it even more of a racing feel than before. So it's the same as 4K Race but with minor changes, but it's these changes that make the game look, feel and play better and makes it stand out as the better game.
The only thing I can really say about Sidewinder II is it's a lousy shooter with zero replay value. It has a more timing to avoid enemies element rather than actually firing at them, which didn't bode too well with me and makes the game more of a drag than it already is when you're shooting at them. I also found it a nuisance that you can casually go as you like and then die because you overlapped the edge of the level and there's no way of knowing you've actually done it. Not a game I'd recommend nor play again.
Another one I can't believe I haven't reviewed yet. This is a really fun game that's simple to get into and pretty addicting to keep going back to. The incident cards add to the gameplay but I couldn't help but feel a bit upset when I was forced into a transfer when we were sitting pretty at the top of Division 4 and in the 4th round of the FA Cup. I also found myself short on money too easily, which I guess is realistic.
I am not entirely sure if Footballer of the Year really needed a sequel but nevertheless here it is, and well it wasn't long before I preferred the first one. Instead of working your way up through the divisions like you did in FOTY 1, here you have one league mixed with English and Scottish teams as well as Swansea Town of Wales, and Irish Rovers for some reason. The incident cards from the first games are gone but incidents still take place randomly during the games, it just happens when they say and not you. Instead we have a Double or Nothing quiz game where you play from a minimum of £10 to a maximum of £500 and you have to answer three questions correctly in which your money is doubled each time, get it wrong and you lose the money. Well it's different but nowadays it's easy money because you can pause the game, look up the answer and you win, and some of the questions are poorly written anyway so chances are you lost your money more times than won back in the day. The gameplay itself has changed too, instead of just moving the ball to a part of the goal and shooting, you control your player while players pass the ball and you have to walk to the point of where the ball will last travel to as shown on the blackboard tactics. You also choose your goal cards before each match between A and U. I guess it's an attempt to make it look more realistic and more like a simulator, but it honestly makes the game a complicated mess. Even when the blackboard shows you where the ball will travel too during the play you're still left confused as to where to go and where to stand by the time the ball comes near you. Like one of them is a penalty kick that you never take and they always miss and you have to score afterwards, but it never tells you where to go, plus one of the players isn't behind the ball when the penalty is taken and is clearly offside when given the ball that is then fed to you. And come to think of it you can be miles offside yourself in some plays and you won't be fouled for it. Was this meant to be like a simulator? Because it sure as heck doesn't play like one it is was. There are always defenders in the game but unlike the first game where they can tackle you, here they are just stiffs who don't move, and so is the goalie for that matter too. The first game had simple and effective gameplay that worked and was fun, this one however has stripped away everything that was great about the first game and turned it into a boring, complex, walk to a spot to score game. Hate to say it, but it's another shitty sequel. I'l just go back and continue my saved game for FOTY 1, if you don't mind.
While I've been away sick there's been quite the activity on this site which is always nice to see, but I'm better now so let's get cracking with some of these. This is one of Hewson's lesser known games, hugely overshadowed by Zynaps and the Cybernoid games. It's fine for what it is and it looks nice, but I can't quite help myself but to compare this to Pippo like The Dean did in his review. Now Pippo is a fantastic game and one of my favourites on the Speccy, and that was being sold for £1.99, this was sold for £9.99, and is this worth the money? Absolutely not. Sure it's larger but it just didn't feel as much fun as it should have been. And I think that will be why no-one at Hewson brings this game up so much nowadays, because they'd rather stick to their Zynaps and Cybernoids, where as for me, I'll stick to Pippo myself.
In this game, you are a man that's been turned into a bird with heart problems, oh the world can be cruel at times. I have to say I was not impressed with this, the enemies are quickly attached to you with little chance of escaping them and you only have one life, so as you can imagine that did not last too long for me. It looks pretty and all much like most of Gremlin's games did anyway, but the gameplay is pretty boring and ineffective for me.
We begin this review with a story. Are you ready? Then I shall begin. Ahem, Michael Jackson died. Remember that? And in fact poor Michael's dead TEN years this year, absolutely fascinating that it's been all those years since his death. Well almost ten years on from his demise fans have the chance to fondly remember some of his best loved tunes and career highlights. As well as that though there is also the chance to look back at some of the low points of Michael's career and indeed his whole life as a matter of fact, without mentioning some of the more personal stuff because this is not the time, nor the place. But in my opinion we cannot speak of the low points of The King of Pop without mentioning two of his biggest career blemishes, this film, and more precisely, this game that it's based on.
Now there are two versions of this game, there's the arcade game by Sega which was ported to the Mega Drive, and there's this that was written by Irish software house Emerald Software for US Gold. The arcade game is actually pretty playable and passible, weird as hell, as there's a reason for that which I will get to later. But this game and this port however, let's just say there's a reason this game is never brought up on any MJ discussions. The game loads and begins with a cutscene of Michael Jackson's Moonwalk, except it doesn't really look like a Moonwalk, it looks more like Michael Jackson on his shopping round. Then after more loading we have a title screen with Bad playing in the background, and it's Bad, well I'm being harsh, it's not overly terrible but the composer clearly had the most basic skills of the AY chip and it's painfully short, meaning its repeated loop will give anyone a headache.
And after yet more loading it's finally time for the game itself. First of all, there's Bad playing again, this is one of those games where no music is better, but thankfully you can press M to turn it off. Then there's Michael looking pretty much nothing like him at all actually. And that walking animation is, well strange to say the least. At least he's walking properly when he's walking up but when he's walking down it kind of looks like he's doing some silly dance and waving his hands like an idiot, if you're walking like that in the streets you're just asking to be arrested. Then there's Michael on the right doing some pose. I think it's suppose to be the tiptoe pose he does usually at the end of a Moonwalk, or at least in the film he appeared to do that anyway, I don't know it's been years since I've seen it, for good reason, but to me, from the position of his hand and the look on his face, it looks more like that classic pose of MJ with a severe case of diarrhoea and not being able to find a toilet. Well done Emerald, well done.
Then there's the gameplay. In level one you must wonder around a maze and collect the four items on screen and also pieces of your disguise costume, then you must find your motorcycle and ride away to complete the level. But there's a reason hardly anyone remembers the game beyond this point and it's not just because the second level was bugged and it never loaded for most people, but because this level represents the whole game, bad. It's slow, sluggish, gets redundant pretty much within the first minute of playing it and enemies come thick and fast and there's pretty much little chance of getting away from them unless you cheat. And you have six minutes to do it. SIX minutes?! It would take you that long to find ONE item or work out what the bleeding fuck you're supposed to be doing in this game let alone collect EVERYTHING! But thankfully when Michael dies, which is chillingly prophetic now that I think of it, the timer is reset back to six minutes and you keep what you have collected. So in order to make progress in this game, you have to die to gain more time, and the game gives you twenty lives. Less thankfully however is when you do lose a life you start from the beginning of the level again. Who designed this game and who thought this concept was a good idea? Michael Jackson certainly had no input on this game, unlike the arcade game.
Yes for you see, the arcade version of Moonwalker was actually designed by Michael Jackson himself. So if you've played or looked at the arcade version and thought that it was strange, that will be why, because without speaking ill of the dead, he was a pretty strange man Michael Jackson and the arcade game's concept just about justifies that theory. But this version he had nowt all to do with. In fact did he even know that this game exists or was being ported to a Spectrum. Oh just picture the thought of Michael Jackson playing this on a Spectrum. If only.
And the biggest crime of all is the game actually seems to get better as it goes on, well better I use loosely but it looks at least better than what I've just spent six minutes of my life playing anyway. You ride a motorcycle and collect orbs and then it turns into a car before it transforms back in a motorcycle and you collect orbs again. Then you have Michael looking more like Michael and actually shooting people. Then Michael transforms again into a giant machine to shoot even more baddies, and this part has a bastardised version of The Way You Make Me Feel in the background, come back Bad all is forgiven! But it's just too bad that hardly anyone saw these levels due to the aforementioned bug that prevented the next level to load, or maybe that was a blessing.
So to summarise, Moonwalker is not just bad, it's absolutely shite. Clearly one of the worst tie-in games to ever exist and it shows the ignorance of US Gold for allowing it to be released. Tell you what, Michael Jackson may be dead but it's at least better than having to play this game instead. Holy shit I just wrote new lyrics for him! Think of the royalties!
Ah Chewits, I can taste them already. And because we're in an era when everything including confectionery got licensed game, Chewits had their own computer game as well, in fact they got two! The second is The Muncher and will be reviewed at a later time but someone reviewed this while I was sick and I thought I'd take a look as well. Basically it's Pac-Man that's very much not a game. You control the Chewits monster, or Muncher most specifically, and you must eat the dots whilst avoiding the tanks. Collects the Chewits sweets allows you to eat the tanks as well. If you die, the dots you collected spawn back and you start all over, plus you have infinite lives. This is less like a game and more like a BETA test program used to test the control functions. And what happens when you do complete the level? The screen freezes and the sound sticks to a constant noise, it displays Guy Faukes on the screen for whatever reason, and then it proceeds to promote shitty Techno Cop. And that's it. Literally that's it. This “game” serves as nothing more than a promotional filter to plug Gremlin's next shitty release. There are no words.
As I've stated before, I cannot get on with Space Panic, and this clone may well be the worst of the bunch. The keyboard layout is complete bullshit and clearly unusable for two hands alone. If I come across a worse clone than this I'll be very surprised.
This clone of Space Invaders is completely broken. The game is a bastard to load and when you eventually do load it it automatically selects the level for you despite it asking for the level you wish to start at. The game itself is miniature Space Invaders played at a fairly fast pace, but once you're hit the game is over, and I literally mean the game is over, because you cannot ever again move once this happens. You are instead frozen and left to watch your ship get hit twice more for game over, you are completely and totally powerless to do anything about it. I thought that surely it was the version I downloaded, but no, every single version of this game is exactly the same. No words of mine can fully empathise how bullshit this game truly is, just play it for yourself to see it for yourself.
You'd think of this as yet another Pac-Man clone, but while it share the same kind of gameplay it actually has differences from a standard clone. Yes you're controlling a man around a maze eating things, in this case eating fruit in place of pills, yes there's enemies to avoid, in this case grumpy chasers in place of ghosts, and yes there's four of them. But here, rather than a power pill or fruit to eat to get rid of the baddies, you have a laser to fire at them, but it only works when you're close to them and when you do hit them they return to their corner, even when you are directly at that corner, meaning you can hit him and still lose a life because he still managed to hit you. The controls don't really work so well leaving you in a spot of bother especially with a grumpy coming after you. It's not a terrible game, it's just badly aged.
He had been the best. The trains on his patrol had been free from crime. He had seen to that. But the death of his Green Beret brother from a drug overdose sent him over the edge. Seeking vengeance he hounded drug dealers and showed no mercy when he caught them. He became known as a Renegade - the FALLEN ANGEL. So never mind this game trying to be like Renegade its cassette inlay is practically telling you that this IS going to be pretty much like Renegade. Well it kind of is yet kind of isn't, it reminds me more of Subway Vigilante by Players which was pretty shit, and this is no better. The controls are monstrously unresponsive and it's pretty much impossible to consistently do any moves here. The hit detection is way off too and each level appears to look almost the exact same. It's not as terrible as I'd figured it would be but it's pretty bad, it's repetitive, unresponsive and pretty dire, definitely not worth the 10 quid you would have paid for this back in the day. Well what do you expect it, Emerald Software wrote it, yes the same chaps that done bloody Moonwalker the very same year. Need I say more?
This isn't a bad Space Invaders clone and it's certainly playable, unlike that Specvaders game I reviewed the other day. There are imperfections within the game like the delayed reaction to a hit for both them and you and just when you think you have escaped the fire you're still recognised for a hit. But it's 1982 and 16K and in the very least it is playable and quite good fun as a clone.
As promised, this is the second game based of the old Chewits sweets alongside The Muncher Compo, this one being simply The Muncher. Written by two Aussie dudes for Gremlin, it's basically Rampage, you destroy buildings and eat people, what's not to like. Well it's pretty slow and the controls seem glitchy in that you tell him to do one thing and he'll do another things and also he'll do something even when you haven’t commanded him to do anything. There were a couple of times when I wondered if I was actually playing or if it had gone to a demo. Nice idea of a clone but it's executed pretty badly to be taken serious. Now you know why not many sweets got games based on them.
I do enjoy a good darts game, only this is not a good darts game by a long way. Moving the dart is very awkward and it's very tricky to hit a good shot, I get that 180 was too easy but this overcomplicates it so needlessly. The fact that it changes speed with each throw doesn't help one bit. As a result of this my opponent crushed me 3-0 and my game was over before it begun. The graphics aren't great either, the overhead shot of the opponent throwing is quite nice but the colourless board not so, especially with the white parts of the board resembling an electronic dartboard rather than a real one. The Around the Clock mode, which has you hit each number on the board in numerical order, was quite nice but it doesn't save the game being overly rubbish. Give me 180 over this any day.
The second game to bear Jocky Wilson's name, and it has multiple modes, which would be why it's called a compendium. We have Football, Dart Bowls, Scram, Ten Dart Century, Shanghai and the traditional 501. Unlike the first game where you competed in a tournament, here you only face Jocky. The board looks a lot nicer and moving is a bit better though the speed of moving the dart goes change but doesn't change as frequently like Darts Challenge did. What's annoying here though is you have bounce outs, which means the dart has hit the wiring around the board and dropped onto the floor. Realistic? Yes. But what's annoying about it is it happens far too frequently and it can happen even when you've hit a fragment on the board, so either it's a child's board or it's made of hard wood. The opponent view is now on the side with a player looking nothing like Jocky, which is what you'd expect really, but he's too tall and fat to resemble anything like Jocky, he had a belly yes but not this extreme, he actually looks more like Leighton Rees come to think of it. Plus he's likely to have teeth whereas Jocky didn't have any bless him. It also doesn't tell you what you scored in each throw which is a tad annoying.
So what are the games like? Well, football has you hit a bullseye to start and then hitting doubles to score points, first to 10 wins, not really understanding how that can been called football really. And I lost. Dart Bowls is essentially like bowls, the player throwing first throws a jack and the player have to throw darts close to the jack and the player closest scores points. First to 21 is the winner. This kind of works but the problem is, it drags. First to 11 was probably a better idea but 21 for this game is such a bore. I won though so I'll take it. In Scram the player throwing first hits number to take them out of the game and thus cannot be scored from, the second player must score with the numbers that aren't greyed out. Once all the numbers are taken out the roles are reversed and the player with the highest score wins the leg. First to 3 legs wins. This again quite works but again because a bit of a drag, either that or Football was too short. I lost. Ten Dart Century is basically throwing ten darts on the board to score 100 and if the players score more the closest to 100 wins the leg, first to 3 wins. This works quite well and you can play it at home so easily too, but you can cheat by scoring 100 with 3-5 darts then miss the rest of the time without penalties, bounce outs also aren't penalised, unless there's a tie-break rule where I used 6 darts but Jocky scored with all 10 thus he wins. I won. For Shanghai, a number in the board is highlights and you must hit that number to score points depending on which segment you hit, 1 for single, 2 for double and 3 for treble. The player with the highest score after all the numbers have been hit wins. Again it kinda works well and it's a game you can easily play at home. I lost. And of course the traditional 501, players start on 501 and work their way down to 0 whilst finishing on a double, Jocky ripped me 3-0.
Compendium of Darts is quite a mixed bag. The 501 game is as bad and difficult as the first game but this has some other modes that work pretty well and would work on a standard dartboard, unlike the modes seen on Bully's Sporting Darts. Football didn't make sense and Dart Bowls might be best played if the bull was the jack, but other than that the other modes played pretty well and they work to a degree. My favourite might be Ten Dart Century, it was a really fun game that made you really think about your scoring because hit a big number and you have to score low to avoid going way over 100. Because of the other modes working well I feel I can be generous with it and give it a mark of 3 because they saved this game from being as boring as Darts Challenge.
The first of the officially licensed Postman Pat games, and holy crap it's absolutely dire. The tedious scrolling and snail's pace will be enough to drive you batty from the first moment you play the game. And what does the game involve? Letters? Parcels? Nope, following someone's trail to reach them and then going back to where you started, hence that is why it's called Trail Game. And it's apparently aimed at 4-6 years old, yeah like they are going to enjoy a game so choppy and slow. With its WOS score at 4.17 I didn't expect this to be good, but I totally did not expect this to be this bad.
The first of Alternative Software's Postman Pat trilogy, and this couldn't have started on a worse note. Apparently, Pat has drive his van to deliver things to different people, which sounds just how a Postman Pat game should be played, but you do so on the world's slowest and rockiest van. It's like the van is driving on four flat tyres with the way it's rocking so much as it moves. You have one hour to complete your tasks, it might actually take you one hour to do one task let alone all of them. Oh and good luck trying to find who you are meant to be looking for, because you will most likely get lost, get stuck or end up back to where you began. And that was the EASY game, I'd hate to play this in difficult mode now, but thankfully I'm not going to. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's even worse than the Trail Game.
Surely this can't be worse than the first game, and having the same music isn't a good start. Here Pat has to wonder around and post letters to houses, like what a postman does, already it's a million times better. In an easy game you have 20 letters to post and on hard you have 50 and Pat must post them all before his tea-o-meter runs out. For this to go up you have to do different side quests as well, such as getting a ladder to help Jess who's stuck up a tree or getting a torch of the vicar. Occasionally there can be broken when you find them so you need to find Ted so he can fix it.They are mostly optional in easy as you can post 20 letters without doing any if you're quick, but they are necessary on hard. There is also the chance to take a ride on Sam's van and you also need to avoid the chickens who will take your letter away and you must retrieve it before you can post another one. There is much more to do here and is very favourable to Postman Pat. Quite a nice offering and a huge improvement on the original.
Well for starters we have a different tune, well the same theme song but an AY rendition of it. This is basically like Paperboy, you drive your van along the street and deliver parcels to different houses while avoiding obstacles and other vehicles. It's pretty bland, looks ugly, the sound is random and just plays whatever it wants to randomly. Postman Pat 2 is much better but at least it plays better than the first one.
Remember playing this years ago and it was a bit boring for my taste, and playing it now only confirmed that theory. There's seven events in all, Hot Dog, Biathlon, Speed Skating, Figure Skating. Ski Jump, Free Skating and Bobsled. Hot Dog is great fun and easily the best event in the whole game, which was probably why it was the first event, Biathlon on the other hand is painfully long and loses its appeal very quickly. Speed Skating is confusing at first because it's rhythmic timing rather than a button masher, which is realistic, but at the start you're usually scrambling to figure out the right timing which can cost you precious seconds but once you're used to it it's relatively straightforward. Figure Skating is clumsy and frustrating as you're looking to do certain tricks but end up doing either the same one all the time or just fall over, then Ski Jump is a little awkward as you have to press fire before the jump and during the jump as he's about to take off, controlling the ski jumper in the air was a bit fiddly for my taste. Free Skating is identical to Figure except it's a different tune and it gives you an extra minute of pain to deal with and Bobsled was difficult at first but once I realised when I did wrong I was able to coast through it without any problems. So of the seven games here only three of them I got on with and only one of them I enjoyed outright. I do feel this is more playable than the Summer Games offerings but not by much.
It's yet another Hanna-Barbara licensed game but this time NOT from Hi-Tec. No, this one is a different kind of beast, it's a shooter and from Reaktor. The first side is a long-winded story and that's it, no game, nothing. Side two is where the game is and controlling your ship is a nightmare, especially when there are enemies you can only avoid rather than hit. It's simply not fun to play at all and it's at this point where I figured Side A is more worthwhile than Side B, which indeed is saying something. But given the same author, and indeed the same company, were responsible for the almost as poor Out of the World and the same chap also wrote the hideously complex Super Bowl game for Ocean, what else did we expect?
This, unlike Challenge of the Gobots, IS a Hanna-Barbara game from Hi-Tec, and really I couldn't help but feel empty with this one. It plays more like an adventure game rather than a platformer of say Ruff and Ready. This one seems to remind me more of Jonny Quest and The Jetsons, which happen to be two of the worst games Hi-Tec release, though this thankfully is nowhere near as bad. It looks nice with some nice looking graphics but the gameplay seems like a chore, especially when they give you so much time to finish the level. I applaud it for trying to be different, Challenge of the Gobots was a different kettle in the fish but then you'd expect that because of different publishers, but this just didn't do it for me. Maybe if I played it 20 years ago, I would have enjoyed it more.
This was inspired by the Capcom arcade game Trojan, which unbelievably never got a port on the home computers. A Spectrum version was planned but was ultimately never released. So if you liked Trojan and wanted it on your Spectrum this was the closest you got to it. The level design is different and there is no jump hotspot to kill higher enemies but he has a sword and a shield so that's as Trojan as you can get. It looks really nice but for me the gameplay is a bit arse. I had a really hard time with the hit detection here and it's so easy for the enemy to walk right past you and drain your health in the process. Not impressed with this.
It's an interesting concept to say the least but it's just poorly executed. As The Dean states there are four disciplines to train in. There's Dribbing which has you dribble the ball around the cones, or as The Dean states just past the arrow, which defeats the purpose of dribbing the ball. There's tackling, except you can't actually tackle, you just have to go near the player and you'll either take the ball off him or fall on your bum. It all seems luck based to me. There's passing which has you pass the ball to a flashing teammate who are alligned in a circle, and is the only one of the four that makes any sense. And then we have penalties which is self explanatory, run towards the ball and shoot it past the goale, except you run towards the ball from roughly 30-35 yards out, who even starts their run-up that far out anyway? Plus, you button bash to run. And then scoring a goal is luck based anyway, plus you're more likely to run past the ball without even hitting it. And then once you have all the disciplines completed there's the assault course to try out which has you doing everything all over again, like you can be bothered anyway. Again, nice idea, it's just too bad it doesn't work very well.
Ok so who thought this was a good idea for a game and why was it allowed to happen? As the previous reviews state, the game is too fricking fast. It's impossible to know what is happening and the ball has a mind of its own, at times you don't even know the ball has been taken from you. Then you can be clear on goal and the ball just drops from you with nobody around you. What? How? Why? WHY!! Complete bollocks.
This isn't really a bad game, it's just the fights take far too long to finish and the moves don't work most of the time. Plus the stage is the exact same every time, or at least it was by the time I quit the game. If the fighting was more straightforward and everything worked as their supposed to maybe I'd have a better opinion of this.
Having painfully played Moonwalker the other day I felt it was time to look at another movie licensed game from Emerald Software, yes because Moonwalker was a movie, a loose one but still it's a movie. Here we have The Running Man, a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger who plays the role of the “Butcher of Bakersfield” Ben Richards as he participates in America's most dangerous game, The Running Man. While it isn't really one of Arnie's most standout films it's still memorable and enjoyable, but this game however? Well, it's a shambles and really what did you expect? In this game nothing works, not the kicking, not the punching, not the jumping and not the running, nothing. You spend more time being knocked over by a dog and falling down holes more than anything, so by the time you reach the first stalker, which I assume is Professor Sub-Zero because he carries a hockey stick, your energy is nearly completely sapped. What chance do you have with such pathetic jumping and fighting? And so Emerald have provided yet another stinker of a movie licensed game, but really were we expecting anything else?
And now I'd like to close this review with one of the more famous lines from the film. “Hey Killian, here is Sub-Zero, now, PLAIN Zero.” Which is precisely the score this debacle of a game deserves.
And having sat through two utterly pathetic movie licensed game, Moonwalker and The Running Man, how can I now not review one of the more infamously crap movie licensed games on the Spectrum. Who on earth thought this would make a good idea for any game let alone a movie licensed one? It's supposed to be a dogfight shooter type game but without the fun of shooting anything, well I mean I can at least shoot someone and kill him, but when I do seemingly die with him, almost as if it's punishment for killing him. The Commodore 64 version has legendary Comic Bakery music but this has nothing, no music, no graphics, no thrills, no enjoyment and no game. It's right up there with Highlander as among the very worst in movie licensed games and in Ocean's game library. And that was it for Tom Cruise on the ZX Spectrum, except for when Mindscape released the equally abysmal Days of Thunder three years later.
It's a decent BASIC game, there are far worse BASIC games on the Spectrum and there are far worse games have shamefully disgraced on magazine covertapes compared to this one, but I rather lost interest in it quickly than I hoped. It responds well and plays rather nicely, but you only have one life and unless I'm missing something, and no instructions don't help, some of the rings can become trapped between the weights and thus be unobtainable and thus you can't progress further, which becomes a pain. Shame, because it's one of the nicer BASIC games you can find.
The overall presentation of the game is excellent and it all has a nice feel to it, but the gameplay is brutal. You have one life and you likely won't last long with the swarm of enemies you face. I have never seen beyond the first screen, which is a shame because I've always had a soft spot for this because of its wonderful cinematic like presentation.
A Manic Miner style game that doesn't really deliver on enjoyment and felt me feeling flat. It's a shame. I wanted to adore it like it was my own son, but I don't find any reason to, I've simply played better clones than this one.
Dear dear another Capcom arcade conversion from Tiertex. But truth be told, while it's not a great game, the graphics are a bit bland and the gameplay is a bit off, this could have been a whole lot worse. Tiertex have definitely done a lot worse than this.
Again, Tiertex have done worse, but this is definitely poorer than the first Strider. It's slower and lacks the charm Strider 1 had.
It looks nice but the gameplay is just bonkers. Bullets and enemies come from everywhere and it's pretty much impossible to avoid them. You have an energy bar which depletes after a hit and with too many hits you lose a life. And when you lose a life do you start from the beginning again? Do you start from where you died? No, you don't even explode, you just keep going like nothing happens, meaning if you are not careful you can actually lose more than one life amongst a swarm of enemies and bullets. Nice colourful graphics yes but the gameplay is tripe.
Spitting Image was a satirical puppet show that transformed various well known people, including politicians, pop stars and tv presenters into puppets in order to take the piss out of them, and it was brilliant. And of course, at the height of its fame and popularity Domark, yes that fucking Domark, brought out a game based on it for all hilarity. Apparently there's a World War that will take place and it will be so great even the Swiss will get involved and so terrible the Italians have already surrendered. One leader will emerge from this war to rule the world, and we have six to choose from - Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Ayatollah Khomeini and P. W. Botha. What's sad about this is that at the time of this review, Gorby is the only one still alive. Evidently this is a fighting game. Each of the six characters have a sidekick which you activate by pressing the chosen button you define and they throw something at your opponent, for instance Maggie's sidekick is her husband Dennis. As well as that, each has their own stage, Maggie's is 10 Downing Street, Botha's is a rugby field and Ronnie's is a restaurant called...Ronnie's! They also have unique traits when fighting, Ronnie has a stretchy neck, Botha pisses on you and The Pope uses a guitar like it's a gun, although it looks more like a banjo but who am I to judge? The fights are officiated by The Queen and the main title screen features a great rendition of the Spitting Image theme which is done by David Whittaker. The idea is noble, the humour is there, but the gameplay is confusing to say the least. There are times where it's hard to determine if you are doing any damage and before you do you realise your opponent has taken much your health away. I also felt confused with the match format, I won my first fight 3-0 which made me think that it was the best of 5 rounds and the first to 3, in my second fight I was 2-0 down and won the next 3, yet thinking I won Queenie told us to keep going, I lost the next round and the fight, despite it being 3-3 in rounds. I also found the sidekicks to be useless most of the time as well. Spitting Image had the potential to be a fun fighting game with plenty of laughs and thrills, but in the end, while still being a nice enough game, it falls short of excellence.
The low score on WOS suggested this game is a pile of trash, but I actually enjoyed it. Yes it gets old quickly and it's repetitive and it's slow paced, but it's challenging in a good way and it was good fun for what it was. I suppose you play it once and you won't play it again, but I want to play it again actually. Pretty nice game overall.
This was on the b-side to Micromega's Brainstrom and was written by the same bloke, and it's nowhere near as fun and enjoyable. It's confusing, it's dull and I lost appeal in it almost instantly. The WOS score for Brainstorm is very harsh for me as I enjoyed that game, while the score for this is fully justified and it can thank its lucky stars voting on WOS is dead because it would have been put in its top 100 worst games list where it rightfully belongs.
Like Brainstorm and Puzzler, this was written by a S. Brooks and those are the only three games he wrote on the Spectrum. Brainstorm, despite its low WOS score, is actually really good, Puzzler on the other hand is a confusing debacle. This in comparison is playable and good fun and like Brainstorm it's really enjoyable. Dominoes in essence is a pretty simple game to play and get into and so a conversation of this would have easier to make, and thankfully it translates well into a game to play and enjoy. Oh and I beat him, twice! Happy days!
In agreement with Mr. Ramirez here, irritating is how best to describe this game. It's really not a bad game but the problem is Freddie won't fit into gaps when you want him to which doesn't help. It's alright but it's frustrating as well.
This is a really good game. It's good fun and then it's challenging at the same time depending on the maze. The fact that no maze is the same every time you play the game adds to the appeal and challenge. I really enjoyed this one.
This is a game I had back in the day and felt it was alright, but playing it now, not so much. It's basically a clone of Ghost 'n' Goblins and not a good one, it's just as hard and it's just as unenjoyable. Clumsy by name and clumsy by nature, this will not keep your interest for very long.
Snooker games usually wind up not being great games, and then there's this. There is a lot wrong with 3D Snooker. First off, there are only 8 reds on the table rather 15, which I suppose quickens the game length a bit but you want your sports games to be as authentic as possible and this isn't, far from it in fact, and the number of red balls is just the beginning. The balls themselves move frantically around the board even with the merest kiss, and as Raphie points out you can just press fire to stop the cue ball even when you're opponent takes his shot to rack up foul points in your favour. And when I finished my first match, nothing happened even after hitting every button until it eventually went back to the main menu by itself, then I tried a 5 frame match and after the 1st frame, nothing happened, ever, even after 15 minutes of waiting and after smashing every button continuously, nothing happened, my game literally just ended. Absolute crap, how the hell the hell did this get past for public release? Snooker games in general usually aren't great, but I'll be very surprised if I across one that's worse than this on the Spectrum, or ever for that matter.
It's a shooter and it's published by Century City Software, and that already is a red flag because Century City released bad games, such as Laser Lord and Man Trap. And it's written by Stephen Curtis, and that is a second red flag because he too wrote bad games, like Arena and Jackle and Wide, so we're not off to a good start with this at all and we haven't even played the damn thing yet. The game's in-game instructions are a gem, first it boasts the game to be a “real-time arcade game”, if it is why is the frame rate so slow when you start the game then? It also states that the failure to destroy all 20 waves “means your death, which could be fatal”, I'm pretty certain all deaths are fatal, or at least the last time I check they were. What could I say about this? Well, at least it's a game and at least you can do something in it, unlike Jackle and Wide, the problem though is it's not very good. It's slow and jerky, so much for “real-time” then, some of the enemies are quicker than you which creates a problem in avoiding them, and while firing in both directions is unique, it can also work against you. You're looking to fire ahead but move back away from the enemy, but you can't because it will fire in the opposite direction instead. Also, if you clear wave and there's enemy fire coming towards you does it clear away? Hell no, the new wave starts and the enemy fire remains and hits you anyway. It's not REALLY bad but it's still bad and it's a game I'll thankfully never play again. Look out for those red flags people.
It's Missile Command and I played a very good clone before Christmas called Repulsar by Softek which was released in 1983. This is from 1988 and from Alternative Software, and because it's Alternative Software you'd expect this to be a very cheap and very bad Missile Command clone, but actually, yes that's exactly what this is. It's slow, bland, it kills the mood pretty much instantly and it really didn't take long for me to determined that Replusar is a much better clone is every aspect. And the best part of the game? If you wish to play it on a Kempston joystick, or prefer to play it on a Kempston joystick, tough, because it crashes the moment you select it, and this was passed for release, clearly untested. Enough said.
In this game you, as Annie, have to stop President “Raygun” from hitting the nuclear button. If you see him you must shoot him dead, except he will immediately clone himself. Other nasties in the game feature Tommy, Harry Hardnose, Plod and Iron Lady, who is of course Maggie Thatcher and she is immune to your shots. It's playable yes and it's quite fun, but I feel it's a game you can never win and Ronnie, sorry President Raygun, will endlessly clone himself until you die, and that can only be fun for so long. But it's a nice game for what it is nevertheless.
It's not a bad game really, it just comes off as dull for a puzzle game. This is inspired by a game called Jewel Quest which I have never played. It plays like BeTiled, which was a Bejeweled clone, only you now have to fill the whole grid with connections as well and must do so within the time limit. It plays alright but like I said, it just feels bland, there's little remotely exciting about this game, plus the background music is painfully repetitive which only adds to the issue. I can only assume it's a fault with the original Jewel Quest game it's based on but I will stick to BeTiled.
As a 16K game and as an Asteroids game, I have played much worse and this is more than passible. I also like the way the ship doesn't glide along the screen as you thrust like you do in Asteroids, that usually sets me up to a disaster, but there's no such thing here as you just stay still when you thrust. It's not much to shout about really, but it's quite good for its time and I rather liked it.
This was release alongside Planetoids and it doesn't take long to see why it was released alongside another game rather than one its own, because it's not a game. It's just a static blue screen and that's it. There's no way of telling if you're actually moving, hardly anything appears on the screen, I had one thing on my screen but I crashed to my death before I could reach it. This is lazy programming at its lowest.
Planetoids is a game, an early Asteroids clone with a certain amount of appeal, while Missile is not a game, it's meant to be a shooter but nothing ever happens. Missile is only present because there was no way it was being released on its own because it's shite.
Hi-Tec were famed for their cartoon licensed games, mostly from Hanna-Babara, but this was one of the very few non-licensed games they released. It's a Commando-type clone except you drive a tank. It's a playable game, no question about it, it plays at a nice speed and it responds well, but it just becomes lifeless really quickly. But it's decent enough, just not really exciting nor gripping.
It's not a bad racing game or arcade conversion, it's just not a good one either. The element of speed just isn't there and before you say anything about it being “only a Spectrum”, look at WEC Le Mans, then you'll see proper speed in a Spectrum racing game. Also the whining sound heard when you make a corner is irritating. This could have been so much more but then maybe that was too ambitious.
Pssst, 19 Feb 2019 (Rating: 3)
It's as colourful as you'd expect in an early Ultimate game, but the gameplay felt largely off to me, as least response wise anyway. I'll stick to Jetpac thanks very much.
This is Columns-style game that looks and plays really nicely. The one issue I have with this is you can only drop your blocks horizontally, if you need them horizontal you're out of luck. But it's still really nicely written, it's colourful, has a proper feel on an arcade puzzle game and may well stand out as one of the best games Zeppelin ever released.
This is a music strategy-management game written by the late Chris Sievey who was a member of the band The Freshies but is best known as Frank Sidebottom, a comedic character who was instantly recognisable by his giant paper-mache head. The goal here is to write a single that gets you to the top the charts, which is quite a pain as the game likes to shit on you any chance it gets, which I guess is an element of the real-life struggles of an aspiring up-and-coming band. It is a nice game and it has something to keep you intrigued into playing it longer, but that was almost two hours I played and while I got better results every time I wouldn't necessarily say I got significant results to be satisfied. It's a game that does require plenty of patience but you have to remember, I'm 50 now and so I have no patience anymore. But it's an interesting concept and it's a lot better than some of the other music management games I've played in the past like Rock Star Ate My Hamster and It's Only Rock 'n' Roll.
One year before The Biz, the late Chris Sievey wrote Flying Train, which despite its title does not feature any flying trains at all, oh who am I kidding, of course it's about flying trains. Here you have to drop the flying trains onto their carriages whilst avoiding the birds, nine successive trains means you win the game. It isn't rated as highly compared to The Biz and there is a reason for that, basically it's a bit naff. The response is off and the timing is even more off, you have to drop the train one point before its level with the carriage, and that presented plenty of problems for me. Also, a carriage is usually appear directly on an existing train, which too created problems for me as you are going to end up playing guesswork with where you have to drop the train. Challenging? Yes. Clever? Hell no. After two minutes you've seen all that this game has to offer and you'll likely end up thinking it was two minutes wasted. Do me favour, stick to playing The Biz and avoid this one.
It's definitely one of the nicer looking tennis games on the Spectrum and it plays at a pretty fast pace, plus you can play different shot types depending on the combination of buttons you press. The detail is there and I did like how it looked and played, I just wish I was better at it. I will say that I have played better tennis games on the Spectrum, Match Point for me is the very best while International 3D Tennis and Passing Shot are also very good games, and this too is really nice as well, especially for its price.
This is a surprise! This is actually really good, I spent quite a while on it and enjoyed it quite a lot. It's got nothing much to offer in terms of graphics but then it's not supposed to, it relies solely on the gameplay and it's got an original style that works really well. I've said it before that gameplay counts for everything, you can have the most gorgeous, colourful, spell-bounding graphics all you want, if your game plays like crap you will be considered crap, or you can have the most bog-standard graphics but play well enough I'l like you, and this doesn't do much in the graphics department but its unique gameplay certainly kept me interested and intrigued throughout. Very nice game and well deserving of its score.
Another Sega arcade conversion and this is an arcade game that I really liked back in the day so I had high hopes for this one, please can this conversion be good? Please can this be good? And well, it's average at best. The graphics aren't a major problem, yes they are small but that was a problem with the arcade version too, but the colour use in some levels are offputting. Also, one of the things that stood out in Crack Down was you place time bombs on different areas of each level identified by an X on the map, here it's difficult to see where the X's are because they are the same colour as the map. And the difficulty is really cranked up here, the arcade version is pretty tough but this was intense! There is predictably no music during the game, but there is an excellent title tune from the legendary Mark Cooksey, which seems to contain almost all of the arcade game's melodies into one complete tune and it quite possibly one of the longest title tunes in Spectrum history. So Crack Down on the Spectrum is a bit of a disappointment and this I saw this coming to be honest. Not the worst conversion mind you, but if you are familiar with the arcade game like I am it won't take you long to figure out that this port doesn't really do it justice.
It looks fine graphically and I get changing the gameplay a bit so that it's not a direct carbon copy of Donkey Kong, I really could not get on with it. The controls seem funny, the jumping is ineffective for the most part, he won't climb the ladder when you want him too, enemies can appear randomly and hit you before you know it, there is just too much wrong with this game. It only gets fun when you grab the hammer on the third screen and you can fire them at enemies, but that fun only lasts a short time before the negatives consume it once more. I'm really disappointed because I had high hopes for this.
While the faults of the previous game are present, it's a big improvement of the predecessor. It's more like the classic Donkey Kong gameplay and thus I was able to get on with this much more. It is a really short game however and it is generous with lives though, you start with 50, and I completed the game 21 to spare. Not all bad though and in the very least it's a step up.
To my knowledge, this is the final game World of Spectrum recognises before it went to shit. Cattivik was written by Italian duo Gabriele Amore and Alessandro Grussu and is inspired by an Italian comic of the same name. It was written with Jonathan Cauldwell's Arcade Game Designer and is one of a number of games to use this engine. Among those written with AGD include Antiquity Jones, Chopper Drop, Lost in My Spectrum, the latter of which was also written by Grussu and the unofficial Donkey Kong Reloaded and Donkey Kong Reloaded Again, which were written by Amore. First off we have the game's loading screen, and it's really nice. I like the character at the front which will be Cattivik himself. So to the title screen and with some nice title music which for some reason sounds a bit familiar unless it's my memory playing tricks with me. It could even be an original tune or for all I know it's from Cattivik itself. Nonetheless it's a nice jolly sounding tune. First thing I notice about this game is the colourful graphics of this game. One of the benefits of AGD was it gave you really nice graphic and colour options, and this game takes advantage of it, some games did so more but this game still took advantage of that. But the gameplay feels very similar to Donkey Kong Reloaded which doesn't sit well with me at all because I couldn't get on with that particular game. Even the death sound effect is identical and the way the sound only appears when the character moves is also identical to DKR. There is also a bug on the second screen where you go to jump over the sewer type thing on the top right and instead you are teleported to the ladder on the bottom again. And the third screen is under water, much like DKR. So this seems to borrow elements of DKR, perhaps it was the other way round but to my knowledge that was released before this one. Mind you, this type of gameplay and design is a better fit for Cattivik compared to Donkey Kong, but it just doesn't sit well with me I'm afraid. Nice graphics but the gameplay is a miss.
Cattivik never dies, except he died twenty times in the previous game, but who am I to judge? Yes, Cattivik returns with a sequel written three years after the first game. This has a more adventure style game as well as a platformer and there's a lot more exploring to do here. The graphics are a step up but the overall gameplay I found to be lacking. The music is pretty nice at first but it doesn't take long for it to overstay its welcome. I do think this is an improved game to Cattivik but it's still not a game I'd relish playing again.
Run and gun game with lasers, ladders, switches, keys and confusion. The only thing this is missing is fun, because this is pretty dull. I can see why Martech sent it to Your Sinclair, because they knew it was crap and no-one would buy it.
This has always been a fun game to play, maybe less so these days given I'm 50 now and I've run out of patience but it's still a fun game. The overall design is excellent and leaps and bounds ahead of the majority of games released around this time.
Hate to say it, but this is just Saboteur only more expanded and complex and too much for my taste. Within two minutes I came to the conclusion that Saboteur 1 is a much better game game. I got plenty of joy with that but little joy with this. It just felt like the same game only inferior. It shows that sometimes working with the same formula doesn't always work.
Absolutely crap and unplayable. One of these days I have to look at the whole 60 Spectrum Games compilation this is from because the majority of games on it look pitiful, just like this one is.
As a shooter it's pretty nice, the graphics are colourful and stand out and the gameplay is adequate for what it's meant to be, but then the firing is the main gripe for me. Shooting at the enemies consists of a weapon which fires from side to side, so it fires from the right side, then left, right, left, right, left and so on and I don't like that, it was very off-putting to try and shoot an enemy but it fires from the right side and misses him leaving me a sitting duck for it to hit me instead. It's actually not a bad game for a covertape and I was somewhat gutted to learn that this was the programmer's only game, but I have played better and more thrilling shooters on the Spectrum compared to this, and ones that fire better too, simple as that really.
A pretty bland arcade game gets a shoddy port that turns out to be even less appealing than it initially was. It hardly even looks like its arcade counterpart. There isn't even a game over screen when you run out of lives. When an Ocean/Imagine game doesn't even get a budget release you know it's going downhill, and this certainly did very quickly. Given the same fella wrote the equally poor Motor Massacre for Gremlin as well I shouldn't have been all that surprised.
This is one of the most highly rated modern games on the Spectrum, so I was intrigued to see it for myself. It's based on Cosmo Gang the Puzzle, which in turn was based on the Cosmo Gang redemption game and later became the basis of Pac-Attack. Graphically it is very impressive, no question about it and for some the graphics alone are enough to give it a 5 rating, but the gameplay is the main course of any game and here, while being pretty good, the game is a drag because of its painfully slow pace, which causes the levels to take forever to complete. Is this getting a 5 from me? Hell no it isn't, hell no, but a 4 is justified because it looks good and plays well enough too, but probably best to play it at double speed for maximum enjoyment.
This is one game I could have sworn I reviewed ages ago but it appears I've not covered this one at all, hmm is this site removing my reviews or is my memory playing tricks with me? I'm sure the answer lies somewhere in between these points. Anyway let's get round to this one because I bought this many years ago and never worked it out, and years later I still kind of don't. It's really nicely presented and the replay is a wonderful touch, but I keep getting the ball stolen from me at random and yet when I try to do the same it's a foul. And speaking of fouls, I can never finish a game without there being too many fouls, even when my opponent commited too many fouls. That means I win even though I'm down 5-23 right? Too frustrating for me to properly enjoy, both back then and now, but the technical brilliance stand out nevertheless.
The game plays at a fairly decent speed but indeed the control system is frickin weird. You know the way you're on a car or a bike and you move left and right to move? Here you move in all directions, so if your bike's going right it expects you to press right, for down left you're to press down and left together and so forth. It reminded me of how Wheelspin Frenzy on the Xbox One plays, I know this because I played it with my son recently and we both agreed that it was a bit shit. So luckily with this “experience” I was able to get to grips with the controls quicker than I normally would, but even then I was still nowhere near the qualifying time. Because when you change direction it slows you down quite considerably despite giving you a clutch and brake to slow you down, which makes this function quite useless. It looks like a nice game and I can see why it's popular but I feel its letdown by a confusing control setup and an unfair qualification setup. It's not terrible, just unfair and a big letdown.
This seems like a straight-up decent Amidar clone but there are two problems I have with it. The first is the freeze button, it only seems to work when you are pressing no command buttons, which doesn't work well if you only have a split second between using it and surviving or not using it and dying. The second problem is the teddy minigame when you complete a level, the first time I played it it selected my route automatically, not giving me anytime to studynthe routes given to me and work out what's the best one to pick. Then when after completing level two I decided to just guess one out of random, and it crashed my game, poor teddy is left at the top of the screen waving his arms and crying for help but there's nothing that can be done, he is stuck there, forever, poor teddy. I was enjoying this, it plays nicely and it's responsive but these issues and this glitch spoil the fun intensely.
Zaxxan, 28 Feb 2019 (Rating: 1)
This is everything you'd expect in a shitty BASIC arcade clone. It's slow, jerky and frankly unplayable. You're supposed to be down at the bottom shooting things but by the time you do that and you reach a gap in the wall you don't have time to make it up and through it because it's so slow. At least I got a hi-score and got to insert my four-letter name, I put in crap, seems appropriate given the state of the game.
When Cruel said this was a shoot'em up mixed with gardening he wasn't kidding! As well as shooting enemies you have to kill weeds and plant planets. Too complex for me to contain, I just enjoyed shooting things, everything else can do one, and so can this game for that matter.
This one comes by accident because I was set to review Pogo, but it turns out I had already reviewed it, I had obviously put it on my list twice. So I thought let's review this instead because it at least has Pogo in its title. I simply couldn't get on with the gameplay, it moves so fast at times and shooting anything is a matter of luck sometimes.
One of the most legendary and infamous games on the Spectrum, mainly because of the Engrish text displayed when you beat the game. It still looks pretty well today in fact but I found the keys to be useless to use, but using the Interface joystick mapped to the keyboard worked so much better. Saying that, this game is fricking hard. It doesn't help that you have to get through two enemies each time on stage one instead of one. It is a nice enough game but it frustrated me to no end.
Xcel, 01 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
While some shooters can be and have been considered dull, this one kind of fits that bill for the most part. I mean it's alright but it doesn't really have anything of note that would keep you hooked for long.
This one is weird. You play a full football match with two teams by yourself! You have to work out passes and create shooting opportunities for your team, it's ok to do that for one team but BOTH?! Is it intriguing? Yes a little bit. Is it appealing though? For the most part no. There's no fouls, no throw-ins, rarely is there a corner or even a goal, in the three matches I played I only had one corner and one goal, and he was even miles offside for the goal by the way. It's good I suppose for one game bit Jesus I wouldn't fancy doing an entire season of this. The second side is a World Cup as well, no thank you.
It's ten-pin bowling from Czechoslovakia as it was then, except Bowling this ain't. Basically you have three rounds in a frame rather than two, you can never ever knock down all the pins on one go and in fact you can never knock down more than one pin side by side, it hits one and goes past the other one, oh and the pins don't get knocked down, they explode instead. Thank heavens this style of “bowling” never came to pass ever let alone in 2000.
BISCUITS! Yes my ultimate guilty pleasure has its own game. As soon as the title music plays it sounded familiar, and I was right, it's the same tune heard in Crimblast which I reviewed during the Christmas period last year. The levels are titled after biscuits and level 1 happens to be Rich Tea “the blandest of them all”, hey that's one of my favourites! Plus you have 128 lives! Boy these modern games sure are generous with lives aren't they? Or maybe that's a sign of how hard this is? Yes, that's exactly what it is. You have to walk around the level and collect biscuits, all whilst avoiding the Bunsen Honeydew-like enemies and the glitchy wave-like things. You can use the platforms to move up or down and moving to the end of the row moves you up or down to the next one as well depending on which side you exited from. It is not easy at all. It's very easy to lose focus and run into something you shouldn't and it's easy to find yourself confused. The wave thing is very offputting and you'll likely make a mistake because of it. It took me forever to get the first level done but eventually I did which mean we can now move on to the second level, Bourbon Biscuit, take a choclatey plunge. This is when things get really ridiculous. You still have the Bunsen Honeydews and you still have the glitchy wave but you now have a blue bug-eyed thing and moves faster towards you when you're on its area, and a bomb. You just can't get anywhere in it at all with so much on the screen at once, and that's only level 2, I shudder to see how the rest of the game pans out. Biscuits in Hell can only be described as tough as hell. Nice idea for a novelty game but it will frustrate you.
I can't get on with this game. It looks really nice and has some really good tunes and sounds, but I am often left confused with the gameplay. It's definitely one that takes plenty of trial and error in order to succeed.
Darts, 02 Mar 2019 (Rating: 2)
How did this one come about? Well, Sinclair Randomseek presented me Tank Trax, which I had already reviewed, but I then noticed that it was released in a two-pack compilation with a game called Bullseye, which I had also reviewed already. However, as it turns out, that Bullseye was not the same one I reviewed previously, oh no, this was another game entirely, well not entirely because Bullseye was based on the darts based quiz show of the same name and this is darts as well but I mean it's a different Bullseye, or rather it's not even Bullseye. This was a darts game called Darts re-released under the name Bullseye, and I haven't reviewed it yet so here we are. This I believe was the very first darts game on the Spectrum and as I've said before here, I like a good darts game, I'm no expert or avid fan but I know the basics enough to enjoy a good darts game like 180, the best darts game bar none. This isn't anywhere near as good, as you'd expect. There are five games to play, Doubles, which is actually the standard game of darts with the option to start on a double as well as finish, Cricket, Killer, Round the Board, and Noughts and Crosses?! How is that going to work on a dartboard? There are also three ways to throw a dart, the first way to type out your intended target for your dart, which is a bit misleading since it says to type out commands such as S3 for single 3, D8 for double 8 but when you do type in something like T20 it crashes. Instead you press either T, D or S and then enter the number. It confused the hell out of me at first before I released what I was doing wrong. You can also throw the dart by using the cursor keys and pressing T to throw, which is slow, or by selecting the height and angle, which is complex. Whatever you choose though, everything is luck based, but I suppose that stops it being too easy so fair enough. And how does Noughts and Crosses play? Exactly like the game does but you have to hit the right doubles to get a mark, so it's essentially 0 and X mixed with Bingo. It's not a terrible game but it definitely will not hold your interest for long. Thankfully things got better for darts fans later on but this was not a good start for darts to be represented.
One of the most infamous of crap Spectrum games. From one look at the opening sequence you know this is going to be shit. And then comes the game itself and the opening background will either hypnotise you or give you a migraine, or both, it's really hurtful for the eyes. It's even worse when you hit a boost, enough to give out seizures! Absolutely dreadful. And you're expected to shoot enemies as well, how can you when you're blinded by the bloody background?! When you reach outdoors it looks a hell of a lot better but those tunnels are a nightmare. Even now I have stopped playing to type this up and my vision is all over the place as a direct result of this game. The gameplay is dull but those graphics are a disaster. The music isn't bad but you know what my favourite part of the game was? When it said game over, says it all.
Exactly what I needed right now, another Stephen Curtis game. Yes the author of crap games like Arena, Jackle and Wide and Tiler, gives us Nonterraqueous which is a bloody nightmare to type up so thanks for that. Already there are notable similarities between this and Accelerator, another Stephen Curtis game, but the game is irritatingly difficult as you only have one life and one touch with photon thruster ends your game immediately. You can only change forms in the SWOP but you change into something that can't shoot, then you also collect bombs and what happened when I use a bomb? Death. Enough. I should've known from the author that this was going to be crap, and so it strikes again.
Errrrr it's another one! Yes Nonterraqueous 2 essentially and this more is more of a platformer with some kind of shooty element to it. If Arena and Jackle and Wide weren't a warning to never play another Stephan Curtis game again, this game may well serve as that warning. You spend more time trying to jump your way through the level, and with that I mean constantly adjusting the strength of your leap and yet his jump is still shit. You can fly to reach places but that requires repeatedly pressing a button and it takes forever. And then by the time you do reach where you'd like to be you end up being bounced around and back to where you came from. This is so bad it makes Nonterraqueos the game of the year in comparison.
It's Blitz again and this time from Pulsonic, known for the infamously bad Butterfly game. While not as terrible as Butterfly it's still a pretty rubbish game. There is a massive delay with button presses, especially your missiles. You fire one and then you have to wait pretty much forever to fire another one. Not the most redeeming Blitz clone but I've played worse.
It's certainly one of the nicest looking football manager games I have ever played, but it's painfully slow and the keyboard controls don't respond well with it. If not for that this would have got a higher score. Worth a look anyways.
Fredie, 05 Mar 2019 (Rating: 1)
It's Fredie and it's also known as Fleapit, but I'll tell you what else this game shall be known as, crap. Basically Fredie the Flea has to decode the pits by collecting the dice of the screen, but he will only do so by falling on them. The concept is stupid and so is the gameplay. Fredie spend more time waving his arms about like a pillock rather than jump to where you need him to be. After you have collected all the dice you have to jump up through a gap at the top to I presume the next pit, like this this knows how to jump! Dreadful, as bad a game as you'd expect in a bad type-in game.
Turns out there are only two games credited to David Fryett, Fredie/Fleapit and this one which was written the previous year, I'm duty bound to do this one now aren't I? Oh alright then. Surely it can't be worse than Fredie can it? Actually, yes, it is. This is unplayable, to the point that as long as you move you will die. Like I think there's some kind of collecting to do but the game pretty much won't let you do anything. It is practically a disaster.
And I follow Dead Eyed Dick with, The Brick. Dead Eyed Dick, the Brick, thanks for that Sinclair Randomseek. It's a Breakout clone from Spain and this one has a lot wrong with it to be considered a good clone. First, the ball interacts with the background, that doesn't help. Then the bat interacts with its background, that doesn't help. Then the ball changes speed randomly, that doesn't help. Then there's the laser you use to shoot the enemy, that doesn't help either , because you then pretty much have to move the bat AND the laser as well as focus on the ball's movement as well. This clone doesn't come close to Batty or Arkanoid.
This was one of the last freebie games we ever got, and it's not that bad. The problem is that shooting the enemies doesn't really seem to matter to the game, what does matter is that you reach the end of the level within a time limit, a very short time limit I may add. So it's less of a shooter and more like a race against the clock with obstacles in the way that you can shoot, and that kind of spoiled it for me.
It's based on the appalling Breakout clone Traz and it's just as dreadful. New levels added? How about improving the gameplay to make it more playable instead.
It's that thing again isn't it? The game has really glorious graphics and all but the gameplay counts for me and the gameplay here is a bit naff. It's a platformer with strategic puzzle elements concerning making blocks appear and disappear to help your way through the level, and I never got on with that. I shall blame that on the original arcade machine which I never played, but it's not a game I am particularly thrilled about. Nice graphics yes indeed but it's not fun.
Loading the game is a bastard but look at Jordy's review and it will show you how its done, on Spectaculator anyway, other emulators are available. But is it worth the effort to load it up? Heck no. Emlyn Hughes' name is on one of the greatest football games in gaming history, but his name is also on this joke of an arcade quiz game. As the others state, the game has a habit of giving right answers incorrectly, I got one asking for Yogi Bear's companion, which is obviously Boo-Boo which the other alternatives being Jerry and Goofy, I answered Boo-Boo, wrong. Also, when you are wrong the next question takes forever to load, which doesn't help when you are about to lose. The facial expressions of Emlyn, who bless him isn't alive anymore, are quite alright but really add nothing of real quality to the game. And that's all I need to say about this game, it's shit, purely one of the worst quiz games you'll ever play.
Since I mentioned Yogi Bear in my previous review of Emlyn Hughes Arcade Quiz, I thought I'd review his games here and now, especially this one since I had this many years ago and have somehow never reviewed it yet. Maybe because I found it to be a bit crap, especially for a game you spent £10 on. And apparently it can be finished in under five minutes!
It's from Hi-Tec and it's from Twilight, this surely must go right, and thankfully it does. It has the same style of gameplay as Top Cat where you wonder around and find your friends, but this time you need the right colour keys to open new areas to reach your friends. And you throw sweets at the enemies to stun them. Overall it works and it's good fun. Kudos to Twilight.
With a colour scheme taken directly from Wacky Races, this took only two minutes for me to come to the conclusion that Greed Monster is the better game. It's astonishing that two Yogi games released by the same company and released in the same year can be so drastically different, in style, presentation, gameplay, and most of all quality. Greed Monster had plenty of quality for what it was, Great Escape had almost none.
This isn't too bad really, the gameplay is quite nice and all and you can at least have some degree of enjoyment with it, but the whole thing just feels bland. Also two lives means a bit mean. I was fully expecting a last life after my second death but no, game over, balls. But not too bad in fairness.
Advent, 07 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
This is actually pretty well written, but the problem is it's a kind of game that gets boring pretty quickly. Decent enough though.
Some of the early Ultimate games stood out among the crowd, Jetpac certainly did, Pssst not so, but this was one that did. It has really bright, colourful and well detailed graphics and some compelling gameplay to match it. The most major drawback I have with this game is the keyboard layout. I really hate it when all the keys are close together in the same row, in this case Q W E R T, it's confusing and it's not clever. But still, nice enough game to pass the time by.
This can be good fun especially if it's your kind of game, I'm just convinced I've played a better game of this type somewhere and the annoying thing is I can't remember what it's called.
This games involves you moving from side to side to enter a dock and shooting coloured squares. It is not exciting, it is not well responsive, it is not fun. Oh and it's the only game Accord ever published, says it all.
Accord Data International Ltd, who published the awful Space Shuttle, also wrote this game which was published by the equally long-winded Christopher James Software Ltd, so these are the only two games in existence from Accord and having done one already I am now duty bound to look at this one too. It plays like Yahtzee which is a bit like five card poker but with dice. After each roll it tells you to select dice and then roll again' this is to choose which dice you wish to hold but there is no way of knowing if you have even pressed it or not until you choose to roll again, surely flashing the text or something like that would have been helpful but nope it's guesswork. And in the end you have to enter your score based on what you have, pair, three of a kind, full house etc. It's tedious but at least I spent more than 10 minutes playing it so at least it had something going for it.
I am immensely disappointed. The game itself plays fine, it's smooth and it's responsive, but the graphical glitches spoil it badly. It just makes the game so confusing and it looks like a total mess. I have done multiple setups and downloaded the TAP file as well as the TZX file and everything is exactly the same. And then someone has done a video of it on YouTube and it's exactly the same for him as well. There is a remake by Tom Dalby that looks fantastic, but it's not listed here and so we can't review it. Shame.
When it comes to football manager games, this is widely considered to be the mack daddy of them all, and it really isn't hard to see why. It does look primitive and it definitely hasn't aged particularly well, the menus have a very basic look and you have to type 99 to continue and the match highlights feature little stickmen with rubbish goalkeepers. However, this is 1982 after all and back in 1982 this was an impressive piece of coding, especially the match highlights. Others have tried to emulate Football Manager over the years but very few have come close to matching it.
As time went on this sequel had to improve its look on the original. Football Manager gets away with its primitive look because of 1982 but there was no way the sequel would. So predictably there is a complete overhaul, in the interface, the squad selection screen and the match highlights. While the match highlights are among the very best in a football management game, the interface consists of entirely no menus, instead everything is thrown at you such as selling and buying players and extra training. The player selection squad though is the major gripe, it isn't straightforward and kind of confusing actually. But overall it is another great football manager game. Better than the original though? Part of me says yes and part of me says no.
The third game in the Football Manager series, well it's more a spinoff game to tie-in with World Cup, and for this there's another overhaul and not a good one. Of course you now have international teams for the World Cup, but the players are non-existent, they are just Player 00, Player 01, Player 02 etc. You can edit them but changing 21 players is quite the hassle. Then there's the Brian Rogers and Paul Yates Results service, which all feels weird, especially since Brian Rogers was the man behind Bedrock Software who developed this game. Interesting photo as well for them it has to be said. The player selection screen is also changed and not in a good way either. You can change position, action and passing style and I can't be bothered with that. And before the game I was greeted by Brian and Paul again who asked “Just one question” which I could answer with either “The lads done great” or “Ask me after the game”, how exactly can the lads have done great the game hasn't even started yet! You also get to discuss tactics with your players, or rather another photo of some players and looking suspiciously older than 1990 it has to be said. And now it's time for the match itself and holy fuck, holy fuck, hoooly fuck, the match screen is horrific. The players are larger but it's slow, it flickers constantly, it looks really ugly and actually looks like it's taken from one of those crappy handheld LCD games. There is also no sound at all and there's actually no way of knowing which team is which, and more importantly who you are supposed to be unless a goal is scored. This, and the whole game in fact, is 50 steps backwards from FM2. And nobody reviewed this game yet until mine, that is why, because it's an abomination.
It was inevitable and here it is. In 1991, a full nine years after the original game, came Football Manager 3. And this time, unlike the first two games and the World Cup spinoff game, Kevin Toms had absolutely no input on this game whatsoever. I'm not sure if he had much or any involvement on the Spectrum release of the World Cup Special but he did design it on other systems, this though, no, his face isn't even on the cassette inlay. Instead taking the reigns is one Brian Rogers of Bedrock Software who was responsible for the accursed World Cup Special game, and I think we already know where this review is heading don't we? This time we have a menu consisting of a desk and it's an absolute fiddly mess. It's very unresponsive and some of the options didn't work well for me, perhaps it's something I'm missing but it's not clever to have a football management game without a straightforward interface. At least the match screen is better than the World Cup Special, the players are smaller but it's easier to look at and it doesn't flicker all the time, plus there is match commentary. However, you don't actually see a lot of it as the action is far away, not a major gripe but compared to what we've had in this series it's a bit of a big deal. Also, the commentary at times has a seizure by reporting multiple things at the very same time, which gets annoying quickly. Also, no sound effects again. With this and the World Cup Special we can see why the first Football Manager games are so beloved, because of the genius of Kevin Toms, once he had less input the writing was on the wall. To make things even easier I have come up with my own red flag setup, ready? If it reads the words Bedrock Software, and more precisely, Brian Rogers, AVOID! That should cover it.
This will be the reason for the Football Manager reviews recently. It's kind of vague trying to compare this to Football Manager if I hadn't even reviewed it yet. I can totally dig the appeal of a rugby management game as long as it works well, which this does not. It has an outdated interface for 1986 standards with a very primitive looking menu setup. The match highlights are reminiscent of Football Manager but not as good. Players just fall over when they are tackled and when your tackled the play is over, which is completely the opposite of how Rugby works. There's no passing, there's no scrums, there's nothing that resembles Rugby except running with the ball and getting floored. And fair enough, Football Manager didn't have much to shout about in the match highlights either, but the difference is that was 1982, this is four years later and so it looks really dated. Oh and there's conversions and penalties which are usually missed by the ball going UNDER the posts, something that is actually a bit of a rarity in Rugby, usually they are missed by going wide of the posts but usually never does it go under. Also, the only sound in the game is when there's a penalty or the half is finished. I suppose the only saving grace for this game is it cost only £2.99 whereas Football Manager cost more, but you still would have felt like you wasted your money in spite of the cheapo price. This could have been a worthy game to play but as it is it sucks just as much as the average bog-standard football management game does.
Three years after Artic's poor attempt of a Rugby Manager, it was Mastertronic's turn to provide a Rugby Manager game which also cost £2.99. At least with Artic's game you get to choose the team you wanted to manage, here you are always the manager of Salford, don't like it? Tough. And at least the Artic game separated your lineup by position, this doesn't and thus you can place your reserve players anywhere in the lineup, simplistic yes, realistic no. This game has a match screen as well and it features just a bar to determined the area of the play and match commentary, which works, because at least there is passing and at least when you're tackled the attack continues, you can't see it but at least the game describes it. However, there is no sound at all. Also, Salford are crap and will get hammered pretty much every game. I could see myself getting into this much more than Artic's version because at least this works, but it gets boring quickly and likely won't keep you interested for very long anyway. Sod it then.
This is another of those Gremlins games that have the nicest graphics but the poorest gameplay. People constantly get into your way and the whole thing is just a boring drag. Now I feel grumpy having played this.
This is a really nice game that looks and plays pretty well. The Vorton though is a bit of a pain to control which really distracted me at times, but other than that it's an enjoyable game and is a good way to pass the time by.
It's pretty much the same as Highway Encounter, though more controllable and easier to navigate through the level. But replacing lives with an energy bar that saps quickly is a big step backwards for me. If not for that, this is perfection.
Oh boy it's American Football again, not that I have anything against it, it's just their games are crap. Cyberball is crap, Quarterback is crap, Super Bowl is crap, and this, you guessed it, is crap too. I mean it plays at a nice pace and it at least makes an attempt to replicate the sport so there's credit where credit is due, but it's complicated as hell to throw the ball, which is like the main fundamental of American Football. It's not the worst, but still, it's crap. Anything but Fantastic.
Zenji, 13 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
This is quite a nifty little puzzle game, but the controls are awkward and the face you control won't fit into gaps when you want them to. Not bad but it's far from great.
Your standard horse racing betting game from Italy, except we have frogs and it plays Camptown Races during each race, played by someone who forgets the keys midway through it. And sorry, those aren't frogs they're mushrooms, oh and I never win either, such is life.
Seen this on Spectrum Computing and I simply couldn't resist the temptation to take a look at it. There isn't a lot to the game at all, you just have to pick a party of either Tory, Labour, Lib Dem, Green and UKIP and then decide if you want to run a campaign, attack a party policy and defend your policy, and that's it. And it continues for 52 days but weirdly when you do choose to run a campaign the day doesn't end and it only does when you choose not to, and even if you do there's nothing else to do, you just tell it yes and that's it, what kind of campaign is irrelevant. And in the end of it all the vote results in a hung parliament because “sorry this game isn't finished yet”, meaning nothing you do in the game matters and this was a waste of time, much like Brexit in general.
Golf, 14 Mar 2019 (Rating: 2)
This is the kind of game I would want to enjoy because it comes across as simplistic, it's too luck based for my liking and thus it doesn't really work well. The best bit is when you hit a spectator who gets angry and throws the ball ball, something that they aren't allowed to do in real life. Not terrible but not something I'd relish playing again.
The intro is mental! It's Asteroids in a real world environment rather than in space and it looks and plays pretty nice, albeit on the bland side. It's also awkward that you can't really slow down once you've accelerated, I know this was the way Asteroids played but did they not think of implementing such a feature as time went on? Not all bad though, quite decent and it's the best game I've played today which is saying something, but it doesn't have enough to leave me fully satisfied with it.
Who could I possibly say about this game? Other than it's a mess. You have to reach people to interview them about the murder of the butler, but they usually appear in places you can't reach in time before they disappear. Then you're obviously going to have to bribe them to get the information you need to solve the murder, but sometimes they won't give you it, like the reverend punched my nose, which should have been a red flag and suggest he done the murder. There is just nothing in this game to make it even worth playing. Whodunnit? After playing this, who cares?
Reminds me of Lunar Lander but controlling the lunar is a pain and the whole thing gets boring really quickly. Nice explosion when you crash all the same.
It's simply a type-in game when you type in directional commands for a spider to eat flies, or more accurately an asterisk to a bunch of letters in alphabetical order. I suppose I have played worse and this is good for one game and nothing more.
This was one of Irem's notoriously hard arcade games and so this conversion was going to be tough. It's not only difficult but it's ugly and hurtful on the eyes. From one look of the preview screenshot I felt this was going to be bad, and indeed it certainly is.
It's a game rated under 3 on World of Spectrum so I feared the worse, but have to be honest, I have played worse games. I have come across some games on my list of games under 3, and I have a list because they don't appear on Randomseek, same for denied games too, and some of them have been dreadful and well deserving of being on the list. This however isn't atrocious, it's just a lousy game with little thrill. It's bad yes, but I have played worse.
It's definitely a better game than Double Dragon but it's still rubbish. Half the time the moves don't work properly which leaves you a sitting duck for punishment. The bottom line here is yes they messed up Double Dragon twice in the same year.
Have they possibly messed up Double Dragon for a third time? Well the game is slower and the graphics aren't too hot but then they weren't on the arcade version anyway, they are plain white here though. However, the gameplay is a massive improvement. It's much easier to do the moves, they are more effective and it plays a lot better than the previous two games. So at the third time of asking, they finally got Double Dragon right on the Spectrum.
Judging from its average score on WOS I was hoping this would be really good, but in the end I felt underwhelmed with it. There's isn't a lot of usual wait loading to deal with which makes this different to most football manager games, but it just lacks that spark of greatness for me. Five teams in a league is a bit poor and I've played eight matches and haven't won a game yet, scored only three goals and one of my top players was transferred without my consent, and the transfer market isn't helping one bit as it mostly contains goalkeepers. It isn't really bad, it's just not the good football manager game I hoped for.
Here I go again with my A-Z reviews, yet once again he starts with a number. Haven't done one of these in a while so I thought why not, let's do this thing. The rules for me to follow are -
1. I must handpick one game from each letter. I usually use Sinclair Randomseek on World of Spectrum and recently I've started using the random game option on Spectrum Computing, but this time I have to select the games myself.
2. It must be a commercial release between 1982 and 1993 and distribution is allowed, so no Code Masters, Ultimate etc, because I have my own list of denied games anyway. Foreign language games are acceptable as long as it was commercially released for money.
And 3 and most crucially on this occasion, not been done before and never will be done again, it must have no reviews on this site, zero, mine will be the first one.
So I begin with this one because it was nearly at the top of the pile. I've played games of this type before and better ones dare I say. This one has a crap keyboard layout, confusing movement, slow responses and grenades that work by sheer luck. This is not good at all. I'm off to a bad start with this.
This is like Super Scramble Simulator, complete by being in the same colour, only ten times more crap. The main menu options are very hard to read which isn't one bit helpful if you don't understand Spanish. The biker just loves to fall off his bike, obviously speed has a lot of do with it, on certain areas you have to slow down what not, but he just seems to fall off no matter what. I do like the detail of animation from the biker when he does crash however with the dots above his head, that is pretty nice, too bad the rest of the game isn't.
On paper Mastermind is a sort of quiz game that should really work on computer form, but this doesn't. And why doesn't this work? Because rather than answer questions from a wide range of categories for your specialist subject, do you know how many categories there are? Two. Films on side A, sport on Side B and that's your lot. So if you want history, music, geography, science, tough, it won't load the data because it doesn't exist and your game basically ends there and then. And this was £9.95 on initial release back in 1984, roughly £32 in today's standards, and all for two categories of questions. If you wanted more questions you had to buy a separate quizmaster pack for another £5.95, so while the majority of quiz game have the questions already loaded in the program, here you have to purchase them separately. There's only one word to describe this game - pass.
The low WOS score should've served as a warning but in fact that's the very reason why I picked this for my C game, as well as the main reason that nobody had reviewed it yet. So did the game live up to its billing, of course it did. This game looks bad and it plays even worse. It's bland from the first moment and never improves. I have never been able to find any key here, which leads me to wonder if a key actually exists or if this game is just trolling us.
It's bloody Space Panic again. Why did I pick this for my D game? But you know what, it actually isn't too bad. I have a particular hatred for Space Panic but this is pretty decent and playable, heck it's the best game I've played on my A-Z list so far, that's saying something.
And now it's Missile Command again, no problem though as I like Missile Command. The keys in this though are very confusing which forced me to rely on the cursor keys and tab set to the Kempston joystick. It isn't that bad really, I've played a better clone, Repulsar, and I've played a worse clone, Aftermath, this one I can place in the middle and say it's alright.
The low WOS score of 3.06 should've served as a warning but in fact that's the very reason why I picked this for my F game, as well as the main reason that nobody had reviewed it yet. I can see why the score is so low, because it's frankly unplayable. You have to navigate the level to rescue people, but Fireman Fred is slow, especially climbing up ladders. I am to rescue the first guy on the left of the first screen, but the right guy I have not, because Fred is so fricking slow. What a disaster! And with that I wondered what the magazines said about this? Oh, nobody reviewed it, says it all.
G-LOC, 22 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
This was highly reviewed in magazines, including a 90% review from Your Sinclair, but truth be told, it's not that great. It's all not bad, it's nicely presented, but often you're left confused over what is a hit and what isn't. Plus the whole game can become very clustered which hurts the gameplay. As a spiritual sequel to Afterburner you cannot help but compare the two games and there is no doubt that Afterburner is a far better game. And on a side note the title music is only good for about the first 30 seconds and then it goes downhill after that. Not bad really but not anything raving and it's especially not the 90% super game YS gave it.
This plays similar to an LCD handheld game and actually works quite well worth you get to grips with it. Not too bad at all.
Inkosi, 22 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
Pretty much the harvest version of Dictator. Not too bad but it's more limited and feels much shorter.
Two games in one, an arcade game and an adventure game. The arcade game involves you collect the four suits found in a deck of playing cards and bringing them to the centre, but this can only be done when you collect the black key. You also have to avoid the knaves that move around the level frantically. They can even sometimes get you immediately after respawn. You move very sensitively as well, which only increases your chances of making a mistake and getting hit by a knave. And the adventure? I can't play it because I don't have the right code. I presume you get this in the arcade game. And you paid £10 for this by the way, I cannot help but think it is a waste of money. Certainly one of the worst games I've played this week.
Kemshu, 23 Mar 2019 (Rating: 4)
This is a weird one. It's a puzzle game published by Cult of all people, who were more famed for their sports management games and mostly in the realm of football. This is the sort of game that needs instructions and there's none available. However, on research I discovered on MobyGames that you need to fill the entire grid with the target colour, and in order to achieve it you have to surround the coloured squares with the target colour. Once you realise this and once you get your head around what you're supposed to be doing it actually can be fun and pretty challenging. I went from getting nowhere and getting up to 25% not knowing how or what I was doing to reaching 73% and suddenly it has become a mission in life to complete the first level. I want to play more but I don't have time so this will have to do. Quite nice once you work out what you're supposed to be doing. Best game I've played on this A-Z list so far.
Lojix, 23 Mar 2019 (Rating: 1)
It's another puzzle game and this time from Virgin. And here apparently you have to fill the grid with different shapes. But it's very fussy and I had a hard time even putting the pieces onto the grid. It kept telling me off that the piece cannot go there, well it bloody fits don't it? This is challenging and not in the good way. Sod it, I'm gonna play some more Kemshu instead.
It's five card poker and I've got to say it's pretty well programmed, the guy who wrote this clearly knew poker and it's fundamentals. It has the terminology right, the players know to go for a flush if possible and it all plays pretty realistically, although it can be pretty boring as well. I did the easy difficulty of 5000 chips and I have to say it feels like a drag because the bets are usually so small, although I did a no limit game and there were occasions were the players would raise over each other constantly like it was an auction. You also don't know how many chips the computer players have left, as if it doesn't matter and the game continues until you run out of money, and when they run out they play on anyway? I haven't played enough to find out for sure but I hope I am wrong with that, otherwise it defeats the purpose of being a poker game because you can't win. I feel playing it on hard is the real game because you only start with 500 chips and you would have to be cautious about your hands more so that you don't lose too much. But for what it is I am very impressed with how it plays, I'm really enjoying it and I will be saving this current game to return to later.
Naanas, 23 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
It's all gone bananas frankly, because in this game you have to catch the falling bananas and avoid the coconuts. It's simple game, simple concept, works alright, plays alright and it's at least response, but it's also pretty sensitive as well. It also gets old very quickly, you play it once and you've effectively played the whole game. Is this worth playing for more than 10 minutes? Honestly, no. And you paid nearly six quid for this back in 1983, yet Maverick, my previous review, cost 3 quid and it provided, whilst the same kind of limited gameplay, more enjoyment for the money. But I will cut some slack on it because it's a simple game running on 16K, it responds well and there's far worse 16K games out there.
It looks colourful and it looks original, but it is just far far too complex for me and the instructions don't even make any kind of sense.
It's an assault course that's tiring, infuriating and not a lot of fun. The running doesn't work as well as it should and I feel I have now broken my keyboard so thanks very much for that. No sound during your run just adds to the boredom.
Quasar, 24 Mar 2019 (Rating: 2)
It's a quiz with a difference, the difference being that you have to physically move to your chosen answer whilst being chased by some kind of robot. It beeps a lot and the questions are the same each time you load the game. Interesting first time around, after that not so.
This has to be the worst Defender clone I have ever played. The controls are horrible, there isn't two directions buttons, one moves and the other turns around. Most of the time you can't shoot anyone and you only have two lives. Imagine paying £5.50 for this. Absolutely horrid clone and if I come across a worse one than this I'll be frickin surprised.
Remember Scalextric everybody? I still have one in the shed that hasn't been touched in donkeys. None of that matters here though, because you know the way Scalextric is a slot car racing game with remote controlled cars? Well this ain't any of that and instead it's a grand prix racing game with grand prix cars and driving around grand prix circuits. I can't help but feel those who bought it felt totally ripped off, especially with the incredibly misleading inlay showing. slot car and this isn't anything like it. It's not terrible but it's well you know, not Scalextric, not what you played and certainly not what you hoped of buying her, and then racing itself is pretty bland anyway. You can design your own circuit which will keep some people amused I'm sure but it won't change that it's a pretty boring racing game, and a misleading one at that.
It's bowling that doesn't quite work. This is because the spin meter spins so fast it can act as a detriment more often than not and you'll most likely miss the pins than hitting them, even on kids level.
Going by its original WOS score this is a popular game and I can see why. It's colourful and it plays pretty well. I didn't particularly get into the game much and I had a problem with where exactly to go but that is a problem with me and not the game, because it does look playable as long you get your head around it and figure out where to go, especially with a walkthrough. It look like some that is on par with games like Spellbound or even the Ultimate game. Wasn't for me personally but I can certainly identify its popularity and appeal and it's one to potentially go back too.
A robotic soccer game that tries to recapture the magic of Xeno and fails hopelessly. Controlling the robot is a pain in the ass, there's hardly any sound and all the thrills of Xeno simply isn't there. A real proper dud, one I'll thankfully never touch again.
Some nice music to this one but the gameplay is severely lacking in any real quality, not helped any by the tiny graphics and the lack of sound. For 1988 this looks very outdated too, possibly if it was released in 1986 it would have been more favourable. I certainly would have wanted and expected more from my £8.95, especially when you look at games like Feud which was out a year earlier, was £7 cheaper and looks and plays considerably better than this.
X-Out, 24 Mar 2019 (Rating: 3)
This is a bit of a funny one because it's under X yet it's actually pronounced Cross-Out which means it should technically be under C, but X it is. And didn't they do a sequel called Z-Out or something like that? Frickin' weird, maybe there was a spinoff game called F-Off as well but who's to say really? This is just a standard shooter with monochrome graphics, an overly sensitive ship and brick hard difficulty. There is however an array of customisable options within the game, from choosing to your ship to choosing weapons and other accessories. I done one setup and didn't get very far, then done another setup with a rotating drone flying in front of me and managed to get further, so experimenting with the different setups will provide some kind of amusement and intrigue among players I'm sure. It's not all bad, I just feel its 16-bit versions are probably much better.
Remember that Five Dice game I reviewed a while ago and said it was like Yahtzee and it was like poker with dice, well here is Yahtzee itself. It's very primitive being a 16K game as the dice are simply represented by red dots and they are very small and squashed under the scoring board, but as someone who cannot work out the scoring in this game it's nice that everything is in the same screen so that you can then work out the scoring as you go along. Still complicates me but it's better than Five Dice so it's a winner in that sense.
Hungry Hungry Hippos! Yes believe it or not this game is Hungry Hungry Hippos, that classic British game where you aim to eat as much as possible with your hippo, which inspired you to do the same, you know like eat as much as you can, like a hippo, and then you get sick, you get diabetes, you get heart disease and then you die ahem that's besides the point, the point is, classic game for all the family. And now we have it on our Spectrums! Well the Spanish did anyway but still, Hungry Hungry Hippos! And well, it's a bit fun but a bit naff also, there's four players and you're controlling all of them, plus there's only one ball at time, which kinda works because of the limitations but it's not the game we know is it. Good game to play once and after that you've seen everything and so there's no need to play it again.
And that is my latest round of A-Z of Spectrum reviews done, please remind me to never do this again because it is a pain in the ass. I need a vacation, and a lenghty one.
Back again and I'm back with this turd of a game. What could have been a decent game is ruined by a shoddy look and a bullshit keyboard setup. Your Sinclair ripped the Summit re-release for being outdated and written in BASIC, as if the reviewer didn't even know it was a re-released game. Turns out it looks dated even for 1984 standards. And Julian Gollop's name is credited for this game, yes THE Julian Gollop who a year later went on to write Chaos which is one of the greatest games in Spectrum history. It's safe to say this was a blemish and things would get better, much better.
Oh look another Pac-Man clone. And I have to be honest, not that bad. I understand why people wouldn't like this one, but I've played much worse. This one is pretty responsive at least and I was able to navigate around the maze without any trouble of Pac-Man not responding to my directional commands, and that makes a huge difference in judging what is a good clone and a bad clone. This isn't great but it isn't terrible by any means, fairly decent I'd say, I was expecting a lot worse.
Another Hanna-Barbara game from Hi-Tec and Twilight and it's another good one. The graphics are not great it has to be said but the gameplay works well enough to enjoy it. Are there Bomb Jack similarities? Yes. But it's not a direct clone. The gameplay is slow paced and repetitive but it works and is enjoyable. Not a standout game in the Hi-Tec Hanna-Barbara range, but a nice one nevertheless.
Paddy, 03 Apr 2019 (Rating: 2)
Well this is a unique one to review. Currently MIA on World Of Spectrum, this has now be preserved by the good folks at Spectrum Computing! So here we have Paddy, looking a bit suspiciously like Miner Willy, ahem, I think we can see where this is going. We also have Archie Arrow, Bertie Balloon and Sid Security Guard, but Sid won't be making an appearance because of reason. Indeed it's another Manic Miner type game and it's not a good one. The keys appear to be non-existent as I could move the man at all, so I had to use a joystick mapped to the keyboard and even then the game doesn't respond well to the controls anyway as in the most crucial of times he won't even jump, and even when he does it's rubbish anyway. Poor Paddy, he lives again after many years in MIA oblivion only to be unloved forever.
And this too is a MIA game on WOS that can now be found on Spectrum Computing, hence I'm reviewing it now. Initially this is more broken than Paddy was. When the keys didn't work for Paddy at least you had the joystick to use which worked, this doesn't, and so you cannot move your ship at all and this is the same with both the TZX and TAP files. Eventually I got it to run on the JSSpeccy online emulator, and well it's among the blandest games I've ever played, but even then it could have been worse.
It's colourful yes but it plays like tripe. There's a degree of dodgy collision detection going on which only adds to the pain. I found it funny that the game preview snapshot and the preview pic of the RZX Archive walkthrough on YouTube show a horizontal view whereas I only got to see the vertical side of the game, says it all really.
It's yet another Manic Miner style game. I can say two in my last four reviews all I want, I handpicked Paddy and so I was almost asking for one from Sinclair Randomseek, and by God I got it. And if terms of Manic Miner games, it's really bad, like possibly one of the worst I've ever played. There is nothing going for this at all. On one screen you climb a ladder and walk on the yellow path which disappears while you walk on it and should you fall from that height you lose a life. Well, I was about to fall but managed to make it to the next screen, did this game recognise my recovery? No, it still proceeds to plummet me into the ground to death, even on respawn when I should have been on safe ground he goes right through it and falls to his demise. As much as I detest the amount the Jet Set Willy clones that exist I'd rather binge-play those rather than play this again.
This is like Space Invaders but in mini form, like really mini. There's only four enemies on the screen and if you kill them all that's it, that's it, that's the game and you've won, oh wait here they come again, but it's the same four enemies, shoot them the game is over you win here they come again and the whole game is a complete loop. Plus, you have infinite lives. The whole game runs like a test program rather than an actual game. The funniest thing about this game though is the very first thing it does when you load it up is shoot you and kill you, thank you for loading now you die, what?! It's as basic as a BASIC game can get. Well at least they didn't charge you money for it, oh hold on of course they did! £5.95 to be precise, ok you got nine other games with it but still they charged money to play a game that can technically be finished in about 20 seconds. Good heavens.
There isn't a lot to say about this. It's a crap game written for a crap games contest and that alone tells you everything you need to know about this game. But at least it works, you'll just most likely end up playing it once and then ignoring it for the rest of your life, except I played it twice because I'm ill.
Yucan, 10 Apr 2019 (Rating: 3)
A shooter from Spain given away free on MicroHobby magazine similar to Crash, Sinclair User and Your Sinclair, presumably because the author couldn't find a publisher so he sent it to the magazine to distribute it instead. Whatever the case it's actually pretty decent. It scrolls slowly which may put players off but it's playable nevertheless. I have certainly paid for worse shooters compared to this.
Well here's an Atlantis game I had never heard of til now, and now it wish I hadn't even bothered. It's a Boulder Dash game featuring robots who need to save humans. Robot 1 digs, robot 2 collects humans and robot 3 pushes rocks. Too confusing for my liking and it's too easy to get stuck with no chance of recovery. And yes like Rebelstar states, a loss of life means all progress is lost and everything was a waste of time. May I go back in time so that I'll have never heard of this game please?
This was ambitious and as it turns out maybe it was too ambitious. The graphics are impressive and the overall presentation of the game, down to the alien at the beginning and even the Taito logo is a sight to behold, really impressive. But as with any game the gameplay is the main component and with all the colourful detail comes a sacrifice, and yes that sacrifice is indeed the gameplay. This is because the gameplay, as a direct result of the chunky, colourful, highly detailed graphics, is a clunky, spluttering mess of a game with a horrid frame rate and confusing style. Too much happens on the screen at once and before you know it your health bar is sapped and you are done. The flaws are not for the lack of effort but largely down to the ambition of such a conversion, because it doesn't quite work. Some conversions really ought to have been left to the 16-bit computers and I feel Space Gun belongs in that theory.
Wow Sinclair Randomseek's having a field day giving me games beginning with S. This is a fencing type game, or more precisely a cavalier simulator game. Its gameplay is similar to an old Taito arcade game called The Great Swordsman, you can attack his head, body or legs with your sword. This actually didn't play too badly but it just appears to be random. You can do more damage to him yet he'll beat you with one blow and vice versa. It's largely reliant on luck rather than skill but it's still a pretty nice game for its concept.
Bedlam, 11 Apr 2019 (Rating: 2)
This looked like something that was my kind of game but whilst it looks fun it sure doesn't play fun, and do you know why? Let me tell you why, because the controls are bollocks. You know when you move your ship with the directional and he flys around the screen? Well to do that here you have to press your button of choice TWICE! Once to point in that direction and again to move him, this made navigating around the level more of a bastard than is necessary. And by the time you do eventually get round to where you need to be you're hit and you either you start all over again or you're dead depending on the amount of lives you have left. I am frustrated and disappointed because I really hoped this would be a nice game to play, but it's really far from it.
First ever review from Grandad YOR. Absolutely thrilled to bits. One day I'll be showing my new grandson these games and maybe in around twenty years time if all is good and well he'll be posting his own reviews here!
Back on topic now. As a shooter it isn't bad at all and in fact it's really playable. In terms of look and style it reminded me of Gemini Wing only with less colour clash and so it was easier to progress as you can at least see what you're hitting and what you're meant to be avoiding, which you can't do in Gemini Wing because the graphics are a mess. Here they are a lot cleaner and better detailed which makes a world of difference. Nice game overall, pity I'm crap at it but then it's my first time on these Speccy games in a few weeks so I'm bound to be rusty.
This is a Spanish beat-em up with plain white graphics and brick hard difficulty, not helped any by his crap jumping and rubbish kicks. The +3 disk version, which I also used for this review because it was in English at least, has an added intro with title theme and 128K sound, but none of these improve the game any, in fact the tune isn't even worth discussing about, which says it all regarding this game. The only thing remotely interesting about this game is it appears to have a Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson lookalike on the loading screen. Now how come this doesn't get a movie tie-in starring him like Rampage does?
A German football game in English you say? WRONG! Only the first text is in English, everything else is German, it's clear the person at WOS who looked at this game only got to the first screen and decided it was in English. Anyway this is unbearable and unplayable, passing is impossible, the goalies do nothing, the keyboard layout is crap and movement isn't helped by the fact that every player on your team moves with whatever direction you press. I suppose we ought to have expected this.
This is so slow! You have to retrieve items from the conveyor belt and place them on the bottom, but at this speed it will take you about a week to fill up all the space. You must retrieve them before they fall off the conveyor belt or you lose your pay, lose too many and you're sacked, well with the speed this chap is going at what chance do you have with it?
It's no question this is well made and certainly looks great, but there are certain negatives that hurt this game. The first is his slow movements, the second is the enemies are hard to shoot and you'll easily waste your ammo, and the third is the character does a spinny shuffle when you want to change direction, which is an utter nuisance. Not all bad though, certainly looks great and especially for £1.99 too, but the gameplay is lacking, looks the part but doesn't quite play the part.
As a type-in game, what did you frickin expect? But I have to say, this could have been worse. If you can get past the slow scrolling, the slow responses, the tedious gameplay, this can be a tiny bit enjoyable and I certainly had more enjoyment with than I legally should have. It's bad, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse.
Well it's professional, I will give it that, but it just misses the mark of greatness for me. It certainly isn't bad and clearly a lot of work went into this one to try and make it the definitive bowling game, but it's a game I never really clicked with in all honesty.
NARC, 14 Aug 2019 (Rating: 3)
NARC as an arcade game was visually stunning but the gameplay was a bit too much for me, nothing to do with the drugs and all, but too much was happening at once and it was hard for me to keep up with it. The Speccy version is no different even with the reduced speed as bullets comes flying at you from all directions. It isn't typically a bad game nor is it a bad conversion, it just doesn't match my tastes nor does it particularly interest me.
It's another type-in and this time it's boxing. The author clearly put a lot of work into this one with the boxers' movements and the punching to give it a proper feel, but the controls are an absolute nightmare. It's the numbered keys to more whilst pressing Q and P to punch, just try and use that setup on a modern keyboard! You need long fingers to able to move and punch, I ended up just moving to a desired spot and just punch in thin air in hope that he'd walk to my punches. This would have been a fairly decent BASIC boxing game if not for the utterly bollocks keys.
Apparently inspired by the Pink Panther, right down to its theme song in the beginning of the game. It appears you must go around the level to enter buildings and collect items, which becomes painfully old within a minute of playing this game. The idea is pleasant enough but the execution is terrible, and the lack of instructions don't help in the slightest. If the gameplay doesn't drive you mad the text on the cassette inlay will.
Not a dreadful Manic Miner game but still pretty bad. The jumping is horrendous which makes the game more down to luck than skill. As sure in six attempts I only got to the second screen. I appreciate it's more my fault than anything but it's still worth highlighting that this is not a good game by any stretch of the imagination.
This is really good. It represents the sport very well and it is enjoyable for what it is. The scrum goes on forever at times which doesn't happen in real life and I could not for the life of me score a conversion, they seem to make you kick from miles away which seems unfair. Other than that it's really nice, I enjoyed it very much.
Jaws, 17 Feb 2020 (Rating: 2)
You swim to collect treasure whilst avoiding the shark and crabs. Doesn't really sound like an exciting game, and that's because it isn't. It's not terrible, just pretty tedious.
There isn't a lot to say about this, other than it's a boring rugby management game with zero sound and little appeal except it was sold at a cheap price. Oh and I never won a match and got bankrupt and sacked after four weeks, says it all really.
Oh yeah I remember this one. It starts with a movie credits like screen with the infamous “Starring You HAS The Hero”. And who is this hero you ask? Well it appears to be somebody cosplaying as John Rambo which doesn't make any sense for a vampire game but ok whatever. It's very much similar to most of the other Shaw Brothers games but it's lacking some charm compared to some of them such as Heartbroken for instance. Indeed as previously stated by manu it's very easy to be hit by the enemies in this game, mostly by walking into them in fact. It's not bad but the Shaw Brothers did better than this and I'm sure they did better games I haven't come across yet.
Alien!, 19 Feb 2020 (Rating: 2)
Well, there isn't much you can say about this really except it's vaguely a game and then it mostly isn't? You have to land the telephone on the alien's head and yes it's very much E.T. by this point. If you miss you lose and if it lands you win, and that's it. The entire game lasts seconds. I suppose the best thing about the game is the scenes you get if you press no when asked to restart, you get one for failing and one for succeeding, and both last longer than the actual game did. I don't really know what to say, except I've played worse? But then again was this really a game? Is this really worth reviewing? I don't know. At least you didn't pay money of it, except you paid for the magazine so you technically did. I'm just gonna give it a 2 because at least you can play it, it's just too short. Plus it gave me a good chuckle and I needed that.
Baron, 19 Feb 2020 (Rating: 2)
A game set in the 1089, well that's a bit different. As The Dean mentions up to four players can play and hence the objective is to “obtain the highest score by fair means or foul”, which is funny given By Fair Means or Foul was an entirely different game released years later and it was crap. I played a two player game with five turns (it can be played between 5 to 20 turns, like I can be bothered). You feed workers, plant bushels and hire mercenaries, except I had to press yes multiple frickin times for it to register I wanted to hire any. At the end of turn one, 85 workers from Baron 1 starved to death and 93 workers starved to death from Baron 2, well that's just jolly ain't it? Anyway you basically repeat the same process in every single turn, every, single, turn. I did get to attack the other baron but nothing really of interest happened exceptt nobody died and I gained 19 acres of land, whoop whoop I guess. I hoped this would have played like Dicatator but it's not even close. And in the end three turns was enough before I waved the white flag and called a truce, in other words I pressed reset. Not a totally disastrous game, just boring, repetitive and not very fun.
Do you know, I don't think I had ever played Robotron on the Spectrum before. And I have to say it was a massive disappointment. It is a well written game, certainly in terms of graphics and presentation anyway, but the execution in the gameplay is well off. For starters, from level two onwards there is a considerable degree of lag while playing the game which spoils the fun. In the arcade game pressing a button constitutes to the direction of which he fires, up he shoots up etc, here he autofires which just adds to the chaos for me. It's also too easy to be hit by an enemy in this game, and as such I have not got past screen three in any of my attempts. What a massive disappointment, I was really looking forward to playing this and now I wish I hadn't.
This too intrigued me when Robotron 2084 was randomly selected for me to review. 1. Because it's called Robotron and is an obvious clone of Robotron 2084, 2. Both reviews here have scored it 1. WhenIWasCruel called it a basic clone while dandyboy said it was absurd from start to finish, yet 3. Its original average score on World of Spectrum, which yes somehow still exists and I don't know how or why, was 5.00 in 6 votes. Plus the newly added 4. That I was very disappointed with Robotron 2084 and am curious to see if the clone can outdo the official title. So where does this game really lie then in terms of opinion? Well, to put it bluntly, it's crap. Basically it doesn't play anywhere near how Robotron SHOULD be played. The official game did, it just wasn't very good at executing it, this doesn't come close to it by any stretch of the imagination. Robotron is meant to be an exciting shooting game, this isn't exciting, it's bland and it's rubbish. So in short, Cruel, Dandy, you guys were right, 1 to this game and to hell with it.
Hopper, 21 Feb 2020 (Rating: 4)
It's a Frogger clone and I've reviewed a few of these in my time so how can I not look at this one? It's quite nice and it plays a lot better than some of the other Frogger clones I've played, but I found the up key to be quite unresponsive, whether it's the up cursor key or the O key, it's unresponsive at times and it's annoying and spoils the game. The frog does move slowly across the screen which makes planning your path to the left homes a chore but I will take this over beepy flicky movement any day. It's a challenging game even with ten lives and after finally finishing the first screen it said “That was obviously too easy” oh fuck off it took me six bloody attempts to complete it! Also why does it play Rule Brittania when the frog drowns? That's like the least expecting tune you can possibly think of for drowning, or death for that matter. I think Frog Run from Anirog is a better clone but this is still one of the better clones on the Spectrum and a treat for Frogger fans.
It's not an arcade game I'm too familiar with but from what I'm remember it was a bit crap and at times I had an intense dislike for this but I feel that's down to the game and not for conversion, because as a conversion it's pretty accurate. I dislike the shooting elements and I dislike how easy it is to be hit. But judging it as a coversion, it works just as well as the arcade game and deserves credit for that, even if I dislike this game and never want to see it ever again.
Oh, but then there was a second version. Oh goodie. Yes I felt duty bound to look at the entry that did not win the Deep Scan contest, because as with every contest there is a winner, there is a runner-up and this was the runner-up, well at least I assume it's the runner-up as only two games are listed or at least that's my excuse! So this may not have won but that doesn't necessarily say it's crap in comparison to the one that did win, and you know what, it isn't. It's written in BASIC like the winning game was but it's slower, not as smooth and you only fire three bombs compared to four in the other game, but it's plays fine for what it is and is much more forgiving. It's not a straight out arcade conversion and more of an inspiration I feel but it works well to the point that I was enjoying it more and I actually completed it in my first attempt, maybe that says it's too easy in which it probably is but I'll take it nonetheless. So there you have it, two Deep Scan games and none of them are crap. For the accurate arcade feel, the Beyker Soft version is the better game, but for personal enjoyment, this version wins, yeah I can't believe it either.
I'm with The Dean here, I like Beastie Feastie/The Glob as an arcade game and I'm disappointed it never got an official conversion or a clone during the Spectrum's heyday. But it's Beyker Soft and Sergio Vaquer Montes to the rescue with a game based on this arcade game. It won the Arcade 2005 Contest, well okay it was the only entrant but still, it won, and it plays quite favourably to the arcade version which is important for a conversion. I was however quite disappointed with the game as it does lack the same kind of thrills from the original game. It's not a bad effort all the same, it's just not as good as I hoped it would be, especially in comparison to the author's Deep Scan game.
This honestly did nothing for me. You never seem to have the right selection of supplies to go far and it's as if you are just destined to fail. I was mildly interested in this because of its concept but that interest quickly sapped away.
This is actually really good. It plays much better than most other Spectrum football games, it's nicely presented and plays at a decent speed and frame rate, probably is a bit jerky but I've seen a lot worse in football games so I consider it passable. The other Spanish football game Darko means is Emilio Butragueno Futbol which is absolutely dire, this is so much better in every level and is probably one of the very best football games I've played on the Spectrum for that matter. Really enjoyed this one. Well done Michel, you are indeed a football master.
The B-Side of Michel Futbol Master is a Super Skills game reminiscent of Gary Lineker's Super Skills, but this is very underwhelming. The controls seem off in this and I had a hard time with dribbling because you have to manoeuvre past the cones and kick the ball away from you and collect it as you do so, and you needed to get 15, and I kept hitting cones, not kicking the ball, and this made it more of a chore than anything. Having finally passed the next training was ball control which the controls don't work have the time. I can see why this was on the B-Side rather than relased on its own, because it's crap, the magazines would say it's crap and no-one would buy it as a result, so instead they put in on side two of a good football game.
I was randomly presented with Jack the Nipper II but I can't really look a that before looking at the first Jack the Nipper game, so here we are. It's ambitious and I suppose it can be good fun once you get the hang of the game but it just felt flat for me personally.
It certainly looks nicer and there are some improvements to the game like the simplified jumping and firing. It still lacks some charm for me but it is by far the better game from the original and thus giving it the same score would be harsh, so 4 will do nicely.
This is now pretty much gonna be a case of squeezing in some reviews before the site's servers go belly-up again. The servers seem even more unreliable than they were the last time I was active. I found this to be completely unplayable because the ball you control has a mind of its own. You have two settings with ball respond, low or high and none of these make a difference as it darts around all over the place on both settings. It makes shooting anyone far more harder than it needs to be. Atlantis released some good games over the years, albiet they were mostly with the Shaw Brothers, if it wasn't be the Shaws it's most likely going to be crap, and this is a prime example of that.
This is a Spanish isometric game which was one of a number of games written with 3D Game Maker. Now I am not a fan of isometric games, I cannot get into them, and while I struggled to get into this game as a result but it actually wasn't terrible and can be decent as long as you get the hang of it. I mean it took me forever to realise the guy can jump, I know it's in Spanish but come on Grandad use your imagination here. I do imagine I will run into far worse games written with 3D Game Maker compared to this, this at least looked alright, it's just difficult to control, avoid enemies, kind of boring and of course isometric. But not a terrible game so it has that going for it.
I don't know what to make of this. One look of the game implies it's a shooter, yet it's not. It's more like Choplifter where you have to rescue people. It's written in BASIC yet it's a 128K game and if you play on 48K the game crashes when you touch anything, as I found out which left me thinking if the game was broken, unfinished or both, but very much not the case it was more my fault. Well as it's a BASIC game it's slow and not very exciting but at the same time it's fairly competent for what it is and at least you can have some enjoyment with this if you're patient, unlike some other BASIC games.
Upon playing this I thought this game looked familiar, and indeed it was. It was later re-written as Overkill and published by Atlantis, and it's a game I previously reviewed and thought it was a bit crap, and this is very much worse. On one hand it means that to the author's credited, while he did release the same game twice but with certain tweaks to make it appear to be a different game, Overkill was an improvement in the very least. On the other, this is appalling and right up there with The Power House's other games which now makes me wonder if Atlantis made the improvements to the game for Overkill rather than the author. But simply put Disposable Heroes is exactly as its name entitles, disposable, and it's disposable because it's rubbish. And we give companies like Tiertex and Titus a rough ride, did The Power House release anything good? With games like this, Freedom Fighter and of course the almighty SQIJ, I'm guessing no.
You are stuck in an island as the only survivor of a shipwreck and must travel around the island whilst doing various minigames. If you fail a minigame one of your party is killed and there's three of them, yet you were the only survivor so where did these only two come from? I didn't see anywhere in the instructions about you meeting up with two other people. Anyway, amongst the minigames are
The Mathematical Marmosets where you have to guess the correct number of marsosets on screen.
The Memory-Testing Elephant where you memorise a series of light sequences.
Leaping Lemmings where you travel upwards and avoiding lemmings.
Maze of Crocodiles where you travel across a maze and avoiding crocodiles.
And The Kicking Sheep where you need to press the button that matches which leg the sheep kicks.
Should you lose then the animal in the respective game will kill you. You also travel to various settlements to buy food to survive and if you're lucky a villager will want to join your party, but you have to buy him so probably a waste of money if you ask me. This was an interesting one for sure, the minigames do add to the game's charm but some of them drag out a bit and when you have to do them twice in a row it becomes a chore. But all in all, it wasn't bad and I'm intrigued to see if there are anymore minigames to play.
The only thing Spooky about this game is its quality, the lack of more specifically. You have an energy bar yet one touch with a ghost is instant death, what is the point then? If Dr. Ashens hasn't included this in his Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of books somebody needs to forward him this game because it bloody deserves to be listed, because it's atrocious. The lazy loading screen is an instant red flag if I ever saw one as well. I thought Plasma Ball was an atrocious game from Atlantis, turns out this is even worse!
Nice title music in this one and nice animation of the naked fairy winking at you, and it's displaying in full view a bare breast, your child has just bought this game and is witnessing a naked fairy with a tit. I'm sure though he doesn't pay much attention to the title screen anyway and just wants to get on with the game, oh there it is again on the first bloody screen. Well, if there is a chance for my grandson to see these games I'm going to have to wait a good number of years before showing him this one that is for sure. But the time has come for me to look at it today. It is beautifully drawn and nicely coloured, but again I judge on gameplay and well, it's bloody difficult. I like its idea but it's no wonder they gave you eight lives and even then you're going to lose then fairly quickly by pretty much everything. Stormlord was one of those games that was popular in the magazines but not so hot with players because of its brutal difficulty. People say that you being so bad at a game doesn't make it a bad game, well it kind of does because it's down to bad game design and this game serves an ideal example of that.
Stormlord II suffers a similar fate to the original Stormlord in that it was well received in magazine reviews but not so well received with players, only it was much more poorly received, certainly on this site it's poorly received anyway, and I'm about to join them. The design and colour from the first game remains as does the difficulty, but the jumping, oh the jumping, you have to jump three times in succession to reach your peak height what is that all about? Also the first game had the idea of hiding the fairies for you to find in Stormlord, here they just come down from the top of the screen in certain areas and you've got to catch them all which really takes away the magic of the game for me. Oh and this time the fairies are full on naked by the way, so I bet parents were well pleased with their child playing this game that features naked fairies. That aside this is far less cheerful that the first game and now I can see why this is not well received on this site. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can look good all you want but if you play like crap you're going to be crap, and Stormlord II found out because I'm here now saying it's crap.
Simply put you're guessing pairs, what else did you expect? But it can provide some charm because you have a time when you finish it and I thought I'd try to get it done in under a minute, and of course I failed. It plays how it should, it's responsive and it could have been a lot worse. On the flip side however it's not very interesting, bland and when you play it once you probably won't play it ever again, of course I did because I'm fucking mental but your mileage may vary.
It's Centipede! I like Centipede in general. Well the gameplay itself is pretty much Centipede, except rather than the centipede we are shooting little bugs that are already scattered like they would be if you shoot the centipede so many times. It plays really well, it's smooth and the controls work except for up and down being alongside each other and I never understood that in a game. The game autofires which kind of takes the fun away but at the same time it worked well when there's so much on the screen to shoot. I enjoyed this one, one of the best Centipede clones I've played, lovely stuff.
Eagle, 07 Mar 2020 (Rating: 1)
It's a Juliet Software development which usually spells disaster as they wrote a number of crap games, and this is no different. First off the keys are a disaster, K for left, ENTER for right, yes bloody Enter, O for up, Symbol Shift for down, L for fire and B for bomb, these keys absolutely do not work on a modern day keyboard!! The first part of the game is bland but at least it's something to do and you can understand it, unlike some of Juliet's other games like Caverns of Death which was just a disaster from start to finish. I'm thinking to myself, it's not that bad, it's not good but at least it's not as bad as some of their other games and I have at least played and seen worse. Then the worse came! The second part is an ugly, nonsensical mess with no meaning, no understanding and no hope. And now suddenly this is tripe, it gets a 1 and I never want to see it ever again. Fly away Eagle, good riddance and don't ever come back!
This is not the most exciting game but it plays well enough and can be enjoyable to a degree. It's one of those games that is supported for a lightgun and it would definitely be easier to play with a gun, but it's not bad nevertheless.
Kong, 11 Mar 2020 (Rating: 1)
A game that infamously features one of the worst cover arts in history, it's written by the same fella that wrote Frog Run for Anirog which may well be my favourite Frogger clone on the Spectrum. So despite its notorious reputation. its negative score on WoS, and indeed its famously bad cover, my hopes were high for this one. However that hope was extinguished the moment I started playing the game. It's crude, it's ugly and it's abysmal. I played this nine times and only got to the second screen once. The jumping is crap and the barrels are a pain in the arse to jump over as a result, and to avoid as well for that matter. So there it is, Anirog Kong, notably one of the worse games of all-time and I can see exactly why. Donkey Shit.
This isn't much of a game in all honesty. You're just moving a guy on a horse to shoot other guys on horses, and not really shooting them but rather hold the fire button to release some kind of lightning bolt and then let go of it when it's touching them. That's all this game has to offer, there's no levels, there's no lives, you just keep going until you die. It feels like a tech demo more than an game or something straight out of a magazine covertape, but no, you paid £6.95 for this in 1983, that's the modern day equivalent of around £24! Wowzers! But saying that it's at least something to play and something you can get to grips with and especially after Anirog Kong it may as well be the greatest game game on earth! I just can't believe you actually paid money for this.
3DC, 13 Mar 2020 (Rating: 1)
It's another one of these isometric games, oh good just what I needed. This time it's an underwater setting where you control a man, and an eel, an isometric game with two playable characters, can you see where this is going? Yes it's Head over Heels set in the sea. The eel's default keys are absolutely bonkers and does not sit well on a modern day keyboard at all, I have said that before you know, can't remember where but I'm pretty certain I made that point somewhere before, oh yeah about a week ago! So I changed them to something more handy on the fingers, not that it did me any favours, and you'll see why, but still at least you change the keys which is ideal if you want to control the eel properly. Anyway it's an isometric game, I don't like isometric games and that shines like a diamond here because I could not get into this bloody game at all. At least with Crusader, another isometric game I reviewed recently, I was able to explore the rooms and get some sense of enjoyment out of it, this has nothing. It's just endless walking around for nothing except for getting attacked by a bloody octopus. Oh if you jump so many times you're dead. That says it all. And I didn't even get to control the bloody eel after all that, no wait THAT says it all.
It's another shooter from Juliet Software but I have to say it's certainly not as bad as their other games. It is at the very least a game that can be played, but what doesn't help is the screen flashing randomly which hurts the eyes, plus you lose health for it and I have not found a way to prevent such a thing as it's in Spanish. Antares isn't gutwrenchingly bad like Eagle and Caverns of Death but it's ugly, it's boring, it's confusing and it's not fun.
I cannot believe I've never done Blockbusters here. I had the TV Games version in my collection! What is wrong with me? This is one of three games based of the classic UK game show aired on ITV hosted by the late Bob Holness. Whilst I had the third game years ago it is with tradition that I review a series of games in chronological order, and as such I begin this Blockbusters extravaganza with the original release by Macsen Software in 1984. Here's a brief summary of the rules for those not familiar with it. The players are separated by a colour, white and blue, and they have to pick a letter to answer questions corresponding to that letter, so for example for S, an Opera by Rossini is the Barber of ____, in which the answer is Seville. The players have to connect the board corresponding to their colour, so the white player has to connect the board vertically while the blue player must connect horizontally.
The game starts with a pretty nice redition of the classic Blockbusters theme which in my view is one of the greatest theme tunes in game show history along with The Crystal Maze, absolutely love this tune, however this is missing a few notes but it's still nice for what it is. It can only be played with two players and strangely, player one is on the right and player two is on the left, which is a bit odd. I found answering the questions to be fiddely. You give the correct answer yet it tells you off for a spelling error, then you give a wrong answer and still it tells you there's a spelling error at times despite it being completely being wrong. In my case, and I can't remember the question but it was O, traveling around a planet or something? Anyway I put orion initially, which was incorrect becasue the answer is of course orbit, yet it said it was a spelling error and I had to try again, then I inadvertently typed orbiy instead, an obvious spelling mistake, and it was accepted as a correct answer! What the Jesus? And when you do finish a game you are supposed to do a Gold Run, ideally after two wins, but guess what? There is no Gold Run because it was released SEPARATELY! But more on that in another review.
I was personally underwhelmed with this. It feels half-cut especially without the Gold Run. Also don't play with the sound on because it will drive you mad, so please I beg you, press N for no when given to option to save your brain from exploding. Not too bad I guess but it could and should have been better and there are better quiz show games out there on the Spectrum.
And this is the Gold Run portion of Blockbusters which was omitted from the original game. The premise is the same, you answer questions based on the letters shown on the hexagons and make a connection on the board horizontally, but this time it's multiple letters and thus it's a multi-word answer, so for example COE, a hit single from Dexy's Midnight Riders, the answer is Come On Eileen.
It's practically just the Gold Run bit missing from the first game and that's it. It's good to complete once and then after that what is the point? I suppose you could do it in every skill level which just reduces the amount to time you have to complete it but it only gets repetive very quickly. Also, it is re-written from the original game and looks uglier as a result, surely you could have just copied and pasted the same graphics from rhe first game, since it is basically the same game from the game it's based on! Also the theme tune is different and it's only the end portion but with the duh duh duh duh part removed, why? I had to do it in my head everytime as a compromise. Oh course if you've never seen the show or it wasn't shown in your country and you have no idea what I'm on about you won't understand my gripe, but there we are.
The biggest sting of all is this was sold for more money. YES! The original game was sold for £7.95, this was £9.95, TWO POUNDS MORE! So that's £17.90 for the complete Blockbusters experience and none of them particularly stand out as being any good. Macsen certainly knew how to rip you off with your money.
This is the third and final game based on the Blockbusters game show and this one I owned many many years ago. This one was released in 1987 by TV Games, a label of Domark. First off, the theme is shorter and much worse than the original. Second it has Bob Holness in the game! Sure his face twitches all over the place but still, Bob Holness, dearly missed and it is a nice touch and technical achievement in itself. This time you can play against the computer, but don't bother because he just picks letters at random rather than try to win the game and that spoils the fun.
It's presented more favourable to the show, for example the player would say “Can I have a P please Bob?” for hilarity, and Bob would ask questions like he did in the show, for example, “What P is a common breakfast meal?”, the answer would be porridge, well not me because I strongly detest porridge but that's just me! It's quite enjoyable really but again, no Gold Run in the end which again spoils the fun.
So for the proper Blockbusters experience to play at home, make your own game up rather than play these.
Oh God I forgot all about this! Even before the official release of Blockbusters there was this unofficial game that got banned from release and was eventually released again under a new name. It looks and plays the same as Blockbusters, even down to the theme at the start of the game. It plays well enough but it's not worth playing against the computer unless you're playing at level 9, another it is so thick and can't answer a question to save its soul. There's no Gold Run but then as an unofficial game you don't expect there to be. It plays well, I'll go as far to say it plays better than the official game as it's less fiddley and it is more of a competitive challenge if you play at the higher skill, something I felt was lacking in the official game.
And it's an altered version of Block-Buster after it was pulled from release following copyright complaints from Central Television, back in the days when ITV television was regionalised (Central Television, London Television, Granada etc) before they were wholly morphed into ITV. It was re-christened Wender Bender and given a whole new, albeit uglier colour scheme and look. I got some questions from Block-Buster which certainly means some of the questions are carried over but whether all of them are I don't know. Again, nice to play once but the updated look is horrid even though they had no choice. Block-Buster was good, then Central Television had to spoil the fun didn't they?
What a bizarre game this is. I don't quite understand what there is to do here and the lack of instructions doesn't help, but you appear to be flying around a galaxy trying to avoid the little bastards and creating clones of yourself with the M key? Then eventually a yellow asterix appears, you go through it, then fly away from it and then carnage takes place and, then you go through it again, carnage happens again and then the game crashes. I am very confused with this game, I don't know what is happening with it and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the author doesn't know either.
Zybex, 16 Mar 2020 (Rating: 3)
Have to say I didn't enjoy this as much as the others and as much as I'd hoped. It's playable but lacks the enjoyment you expect in a game of this nature. It was cheap, that's all there is to say about it.
I didn't care for this too much. The controls are a pain and it quickly became a bore. Certain Clive Brooker did better games compared to this.
I didn't have much hope for this game given its low original score and its low scores here, and it wasn't long before I could see why. Holy shit what a mess! The idea of a multi-room pinball game is nifty but my god the execution and more specifically the ball physics! What a disaster! The ball just moves randomly around the table at free will which offers no proper feeling of being a pinball game. For this to be published by Topo Soft, one of the more highly respected publishers in Spain, is the real tipping point. I will be surprised if I come across a worse Topo Soft game than this.
This is not a good game but it's not as bad as I anticipated it would be. I didn't have as much control issues as Digital Prawn did but they were still a nuisance and it's just too slow and boring to get on board with, especially when you can't really go too fast or you'll crash. I like the idea but it's far from enjoyable.
Just like Jon Ritman's seminal classic Match Day the years have not been kind to Bear Bovver and it really hasn't aged well with the horrendous sprite and colour clash. The main difference though is at least Match Day is still pretty enjoyable to play where as this simply isn't. This is not as good as I remember it to be.
This is not a good game at all. It looks alright but it sure as hell doesn't play alright. Controlling your ship is a nightmare, it's so easy to crash and one life only adds to the problem. The author wrote two other games because defecting to the C64, I wonder if they are just as bad?
The second of three games released by Austrian Friedrich Zohmann. In my last review I looked at Airspeeder by Mr. Zohmann which was difficult to control and only had one life. So how does this fair? By being equally difficult to control but with no death! Yes you have infinite lives for some reason and as such I completed the game by crashing into walls and enemies with no penalty, how's that for progress. I mean it looks like it could have been a pretty competent game, you have plenty of rooms to explore, you have numerous enemies to shoot, you can shoot walls to progress, but with by going through the entire game with no death, no matter how many times you hit a wall or an enemy, let's be honest, this isn't much of a game, it feels unfinished. There isn't much to say except if you haven't completed a Speccy game before, this is your chance!
The third game written by Friedrich Zohmann, and his final game. This is a Breakout clone with only three levels, it was left unfinished as Zohmann defected to the Commodore 64 and sold all of his Spectrum stuff. It's the most colourful game but them as a Breakout clone it would need to be colourful, but the physics are definitely not right for a Breakout clone. When the ball hits the blocks from the side it's suppsed to rebound off them, this one doesn't and instead proceeds to go though them and hit all the blocks in that particular row which simply does not happen in Breakout at all. The ball only moves in four directions but that was a problem with other Breakout games so I won't hold that against him. It's certainly not the worst Breakout game I've seen but it's still pretty bad. Indeed when you finish level 3 level 4 does load up but when you start it it says you won the game. And there you have it, Friedrich Zohmann's complete Spectrum catalogue and hardly a redeeming quality in sight. Really, it's no wonder for the poor fella moved to C64 but saying that I found nothing on him regarding C64 work so indeed this may have been his final game ever.
I feel I need to be playing at least ONE good game during self-isolation, thankfully Pheenix flies to the rescue. This is a very accurate representation of Phoenix. Looks great and plays right as well with responsive controls. It's as close to the original game as you can get. Really enjoyed this one.
Certainly playable but for me it lacks the charm of the original. This was meant to be a upgrade but really in terms of quality it's more a downgrade to me and I will just stick to the original game.
This is a beautifully written game with colourful graphics and lovely music. I'm better off playing these type of games now with a map otherwise I get lost and lose interest, but having said that this rightfully gets the credit it deserves. I easily prefer this to Odin's Yesod games.
I really like the idea of this but ultimately it was really lacking in long-term enjoyment. Just too fussy for my liking, was never able to get any progress no matter what I did.
Football manager games are always hit and miss because they can be boring and uneventful for one person's liking. Well, Advanced Soccer Simulator is a football manager game that takes things to the next level as up to 8 players can play at the same time, yes EIGHT. I will say that it's a pretty well written football manager game with no waiting, a nice look and the highlights screen is a nice touch, even if it is pretty clumsy with dodgy goals, crap goalies and a football the size of a beach ball. Whilst I personally struggled with maintain interest in this it is well-received amongst the Spectrum community and it is indeed one of the nicer football management games, I just can't imagine eight people playing this and thinking it's a good idea, it's barely a good idea for one person let alone eight.
I spent three minutes with this game. First minute, curiousity, second minute, remorse, third minute, reset. Just far too repetitive to get any sense of enjoyment out of it.
This was the very first time that a Spanish company, Dro Soft in fact, gained licensing rights for a movie, and as it was a movie, an American movie and a franchise that was popular in the UK, it was distributed in the UK by Elite. Now I say the franchise was popular in the UK, the first film certainly was and I loved the first Gremlins film, but the second one is not so good as the Gremlins were more used for comic relief and thus they nor the film could not be taken seriously anymore. I'm not saying it's a terrible film because it definitely is not, but it's certainly nowhere near as good as the first one.
This game however, for me, left a lot to be desired. Sure it looked nice as Spanish games tended to be, but the gameplay was very lacklustre. You're shooting at Gremlins which sounds fun, but more often than not you are cheaply hit due to a combination of delayed controls, not being able to fire while crouching and crap jumping.
Movie license games often leaded towards mediocrity rather than greatness, Gremlins 2 is no exception.
Bedlam, 31 Mar 2020 (Rating: 3)
It's not a bad shooter, it just felt bland to me and there's a degree of slowdown during the game that hurts it considerably. There are mini games throughout the game I believe which may add to the enjoyment for some, but I've only got to the pinball and it doesn't last long, so from my experience it doesn't really add anything to this average shooter.
Atrog, 31 Mar 2020 (Rating: 1)
One of the very worst Spanish releases. Completely pitiful gameplay with horrible graphics and dodgy hit detection. Everything that could possibly go wrong in a game exists in Atrog. How did this get a commercial release?
Delfox, 31 Mar 2020 (Rating: 2)
I don't know what I can say about this game, except it's pretty mental. It's pretty fast, maybe too fast, and the sound is, interesting to say the least and it wasn't ideal for the ears, especially if you're wearing headphones like I was. They were a Christmas present from my son Rocco aka Wonder Boy (look back at my review for that to see why I call him that), the last thing I needed was this game's “sound effects” ruining them. To put it mildly, Dinamic released far better games compared to this.
The last thing I expected, and wanted, from the mediocre Spanish shooter Delfox was an inspired game and Russia delivered in 2000 with Existenz aka Crazy Delfox. It doesn't appear to be as fast as the original and the sound is mostly replaced with a decent tune although it reappears when the boss showed up which did not combine well with the music. You appear to repeat the same process over and over again though that could be a problem with the original game, I didn't have the skill to find out last time nor did I care to either. It's pretty much the same as Delfox but better.
Horace does Pac-Man somewhat and it's a bit of a mixed bag. It doesn't play particularly bad but then again it doesn't play that great either. The teleport areas seemed to work best for the enemies more than Horace which annoyed me greatly, what's the point of having them if they're going to be more of a detriment? I'm beginning to see why everyone speaks of Horace Goes Skiing and not the others.
Horace's most original game, kind of, and also his weakest as it turns out. The second part of jumping to the webs is a pain because of the awkward timing and jumping and part 3 is bloody Space Panic, my nemesis. Horace Goes Skiing is usually the first thing people bring up when Horace is mentioned, perhaps his other games being average and mediocre have something to do with this.
This is not a good Breakout game it has to be said. The bat is pretty fast which makes it hard to hit the ball and I'm convinced the ball went through my bat on more than one occasion. There are better Breakout games and better games from Jonathan Cauldwell.
I hoped this would be better than Demolition but it's more or less the same level of mediocrity in all honesty. It's a better game than the Mr. Micro Crazy Golf game I reviewed years ago but that's the only positive thing I can say about it. It may be less broken but it still lacks quality. I'm inclined to say Accolade's Mini-Putt from 1988 is a better mini golf game.
Two below average games in one pack. One Breakout, the other Mini Golf, neither game is going to hold your interest for very long. Cauldwell done much better games than these two.
Nice idea and nice look, but the jumping is too flawed. You’re a fat square that has to squeeze through small gaps to avoid enemies, it's no fun.
The sequel to Summer Breeze, or at least the default filename is BouncingBob2 so with that I'm assuming it's the second in the series, and well it's Pac-Man, that’s basically all there is to it. It's not bad and I've certainly played worse but it gets boring quickly when you realise you're doing the same maze over and over again. Also what is it with Bob struggling to fit into small gaps?
The final game in the Bouncing Bob trilogy and now it's Berserk meets The Walking Dead. It's alright, bit slow paced and annoying when you run out of bullets at exactly the wrong time, but its playable and may actually be the best of the series.
Perfectly acceptable arcade game. Not much wrong with this except the scrolling can be a hindrance when timing your jumps, apart from that it's a nice simple game to enjoy. There, told you Cauldwell done better games.
The Retro Fusion Game was later expanded and re-titled Rallybug. It added a new game mode, Hangman, where instead of collecting flags you collected letters and had to guess the word at the end of each level with the letters you collected. An incorrect guess costs you fuel. It's not getting a reduced score because it's the same game recycled over to make a new one, it's getting a reduced score because the idea doesn't sit well with me and I much prefered the previous game. Sometimes, simple is better and less is more, or at least that's how I feel with this anyway. Also, I wish the Fusion mode was available in this game to play instead, or maybe it is and I just have the wrong version.
Another football manager game that thinks multiple players playing the game is a good idea, so much it has to tell you by its name doesn't it, which come to think of it makes this give out an instant red flag of having potentially the worst name of any football manager game. This time up to four players can play this, which is only 50% of what Advanced Soccer Simulator offered but still mind-bogling to think a football manager game can be played with more than one player. This may seem similar to most football manager games, and it is, but there are notable exceptions.
In what is the usual norm of these kind of games, you start at the bottom division with a team randomly selected for you, in my case Peterborough United, and have to work your way to the top division via promotion or via job offers to a higher division team if you perform well, in my case I got an offer from Grimsby Town 10th in Division 3, yes please! Usually, you choose a team and you're stuck with them throughout the game until you're sacked and the game ends, here you can move onto a better team if you do well, or if you're not careful you'll join a more rubbish team sitting third from bottom of Division 3 with a goalkeeper that has a 1.8 rating and two strikers with a 4.8 rating combined. Another notable difference is it has zero sound, not that I was expecting much in the sound department but I was expecting the odd beep and blop while going through the menus and results screens, but this has nothing.
There is also almost no waiting time whatsoever which is pretty rare in a football manager game and I like that alot. There's no highlights or match screen as well and instead it just takes you directly to the results screen, which kind of takes the joys of these games away, not that there's much anyway, but you do expcet to see something like this and here you don't. The menu screen has icons that you need to highlight rather than press a number, which again is different, and each one also loads quickly and doesn't have you waiting so long. Hardly anything seems drawn out, and I like that a lot, and it's probably one reason I spent more time at this than I probably should have and I only stopped because my game crashed which was annoying and a lesson to save constantly if I'm playing this again.
It seems to be a cleverly written game with a fair amount of effort and detail put into this and I can definitely see the appeal in this game, from its average score on WOS, the amount of votes it received, Raphie's review and there's even an updated MOD available for download which contains European teams. Clearly MPSM was popular, possibly the most popular football manger game Cult released, and I have to admit I did enjoy this for what it was. It's still not going to set the world alight, it's still not going to grasp much interest and it's still not particularly exciting, but for what it is it holds up as fairly decent and quite enjoyable. It's no Football Manager but it's certainly a better option than a lot of games of the same nature.
It's a Power House release which usually spells doom but it's based on an old Konami arcade game called Time Pilot which is pretty good, and it's by Steven and John Tatlock who went on to do the Agent X games and Chronos, not great games in my book but they are certainly a lot better than what you'd expect in a Power House game. So with decent developers and a good base idea in place, surely this can be a good game, surely this can be one of the finest games The Power House ever produ oh who am I kidding this game is a disaster and you know it! From the off it is so difficult to control your ship because it spins so fast, and because it's so difficult to control your ship it's difficult to shoot any of the enemies. It also doesn't help that your bullets and their bullets are the same colour. There are four levels of play which I assume is difficulty? Well it doesn't matter because the game is nigh on impossible regardless of what you pick. True to form Power House, true to your shitty form.
Eliza, 06 Apr 2020 (Rating: 2)
It does seem to feel like you're having a conversation with a psychiatrist but it does more to frustrate you with its nonsensical wordings and replies. This one I lost interest in fairly quickly.
Not a terrible game by any means but it will certainly leave you frustrated. You have to collect ten coins before exiting the level, but you must avoid spikes which busts your tires and slow you down, hearts which temporarily freeze you and P signs which I assume is for Parking which takes three coins away from you. You also have avoid the bikers in your path or you'll lose a life but you can hoot your horn at them to make them disappear. You also lose a life if you fail to get in the lift properly, you don’t move for ten seconds or you attempt to leave the level prematurely. If you run out of fuel you lose all your remaining lives and the game ends. The game always finds a way to make your progress more complicated than it needs to be, for instance a coin can be placed between a wall and spikes and therefore you must burst your tyres before reaching the coin, plus you can't go through walls yet they can. It's not clever, it's not fun and it's not good, one I'll never play again for sure.
It's a clone of Solomon's Key which I reviewed a while ago and didn't particularly like, and this I think I dislike even more. At least Solomon's Key had nice graphics which was let down by below average gameplay, this doesn't even have that going for it. It has a really ugly colour scheme and it really hurts more when the sprite matches the same colour to make it looks even uglier and on top of that much harder to play than it really needs to be. Others will enjoy this game, that I'm sure of and I'm certain this will get better scores in the long run, but based on my personal opinion, bollocks to it really, and while I'm at it, bollocks to Solomon's Key as well.
With the poor reception here and the low score on WOS I excepting much from this game, and indeed I didn't get very much. But I mean it's not great but it isn't that bad, I have played a lot worse. It's kind of like Robotron except you can't shoot, you just move to collect the women, various other items for points and to avoid the enemies on the screen which move very fast, that's it. Well it was £1.99 so I guess you got what you paid for then. I think if you were able to shoot the enemies this would have been more competent, but as it is you can't and the whole thing comes off as bland as a result. Not saying that, not a hidious game and not one worthy of a 1 score.
Now this on the other hand IS 1 material. Zafarullah Karim wrote just two games as it turns out, Handy Andy, a non-shooty Robotron-type game which I covered in my previous review, and this, which attempts to be Jetpac and absolutely fails. Handy Andy had the problem of enemies moving too fast and were hard to avoid, and this cranks that problem up to 11! In fact if you're really lucky you can lose all of your lives within seconds, yup it's that bad! It's only saving grace was it was cheaper at 99 pence, other than that it's a car crash of a game that should be avoided at all costs.
Sinclair Randomseek did it again, giving me a sequel before the prequel. In this case it presented me Classic Trainer II, but I shall take a look at the first Classic Trainer game beforehand. I found this to be very underwhelming. You can't enter horses for races below their class, though when you enter races that are of their class they still don't win. You end up losing money very quickly with no gain and before you've properly started the game ends. Also, I found it funny that the race screen says “race in progress” where it's actually just a still image of the race ending. This has been done much better.
I had hoped this would improve and learn lessons from the first game, turns out it only adds to them. Now you can enter races based on going as well as distance, the big problem being that the races usually aren't varied. You sometimes get the same race type twice in a row and your horse for that particular race has already raced and lost. You have training to improve your horse's fitness but this does not appear to make a difference. You also have no race screen this time and you are just given the results. I think given you have six horses instead of five, you have a way to improve your horses and you start with considerable more money, £10,000 compared to £1,000 from the original, this would essentially be the better game, but the fact it plays just as arse and thus there is no clear winner. Instead both these games shall be retired to stud never to be seen or heard of again, well not by me anyway.
Juliet Software strikes again with yet another stinker. The sound effects are mental and the gameplay appears to be nonexistent. Why on earth did Mastertronic license this for UK release? Because of this it is by default their most famous game, which is ironic because it is possibly their worst as well. At least Eagle and Antares are games in the very least, this doesn't appear to be anything other than noise, confusion and bullshit.
It's a reasonably good effort at Galaxians but if the slowdown doesn't damper your thrills the giant ship will as it's painfully an easy target to be hit. If not for these drawbacks this easily gets a 4, but a half point lost for each one means 3 it is.
I find it weird that the 128K music can only be heard in 48K mode. And yet when I did discover it I instantly regretted it, because the music happens to be a version of No Limits by 2 Unlimited and now I'm going to have that song in my head for a whole week! And after starting the game I instantly regretted it, because the game is utter rubbish and it will now scar me for the rest of my bloody life! It plays like a target shooting game, similar to say Bronx Street Cop which I reviewed recently, except it's frankly unplayable because the target cursor moves so damn fast that it's almost impossible to shoot anyone. You move and shoot aimlessly, constantly missing as a result and before you know it you're dead, game over, good lord that was bad.
This is frankly a mess even from the first look of the table after the game loads. And this is why a lot of Spectrum games used monochrome graphics because it did not like multiple colurs blending in together and this game is an example of that. But yet when you play the game it's just red and yellow balls, so where's the pink and where's the blue, oh yes that's snooker and there is a snooker game I'm reviewing next from the same people, so this appears to be a switcheroo job. Even then the colours look mangled when they are close to each other. And as for the game, well it's a but crap really, the change of angles is a nice touch but it comes across as bland to me. It plays similar to most other snooker/pool games but seems more ineffective for some reason and potting anything was a chore, more than it needed to be. There's a billiards mode as well but it didn't take long for me to come to the conclusion it wasn't worth looking that. Not for me, there are plenty of games of the same nature that look and play better compared to this.
Indeed it's the same as American 3D Pool but based on snooker, and as it has more colours it looks like an even bigger mess than before. The gameplay is virtually identical except for more balls, a choice of colour when you pot a red and the choice of whether to play the shot or force your opponent to play again after a foul, other than that it's the exact same game which offers little to no improvement from the previous game.
I've played many a Centipede clone on the Spectrum and hoo boy this was not good. Indeed as previously stated it's clunky, jerky and as a result it's hardly any fun. Centipede has been done worse, but it's also been done better, a whole lot better in fact.
To say this isn't much of a game is an understatement. You have to type a code that briefly appears on screen, type it incorrectly, game ends, type it correctly, the war is over and game ends. That's all folks.
If you have played a game and watch game in your life you will know they didn't offer you very much, and this indeed doesn't do that as well, but it was written as a crap game for the crap games competition in 2018, and well it's not crap. It's not great and it's not exciting and it's not going to take long before you're bored of it, but it's not crap.
A very bland shooter with little redeeming features. At first it felt like I was playing Shadowfax but with planes, but later on you get to shoot blocks that are in the way of three bigger enemies, and you need to shoot all of them to progress further and it doesn't seem to give you enough time to shoot them all. The only good thing about Viper III is you paid only £1.99 for it which rewards you with a game that looks and plays exactly what you paid for.
The story so far.....
The village of Womponia, no that's not a real place it's just a pun on Wompa Software, the publishers of this game, is full of harmless villagers. But now some strange arrows have appeared and they fire occasionally killing a person or two. You were elected to help. Note that you “were elected”, you don't want to and you never asked to but a group of people gathered round and decided you were the one to fight these arrows, “ah he's a bastard and I don't like him, let's get him to do it”.
And how do you save these people? By controlling a green bat to block the arrows reaching them. And in some cases you will never ever ever ever ever EVER reach them, because you are on one side, the arrow is in the other and you are simply not quick enough to reach it. And when anyone dies they become a cross, and when the arrow hits a cross they die again because they become zomies. After 15 kills the game ends, and indeed my game ended on 15 kills and it said they're all dead, excpet I had about five or six people that weren't hit so I can't help but feel cheated. Wow, that was bad.
It is worth pointing out that this is Womba Software's only game, it is also worth pointing out that the author Danny Ingram isn't even credited on the database which is a bit mean unless his name on this game is some joke I'm missing like Star Control having Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys credited as the programmer on the game's loading screen. Or perhaps he doesn't want his name credited on this game because he's ashamed of it, and after one solitary go at this game I can't say I blame him if that be the case.
This was supposed to be ZX Computing's Chomper but the controls don't seem to work for some reason, so in its place is Pan Books' Chomper which is effectively the same game as both are Pac-Man clones. And well there isn't a lot to say here except it's Pac-Man and it's slow, it's basic, what did you expect? There are better clones and there are worse clones and it's not a good clone but not necessarily a bad one either. At least the controls worked, unlike the ZX Computing version.
This appears to be like Marble Madness but on a motorbike, and I say appears to be because I never got far in it because of its wonky controls. And it's multi-load which means you have to load the level all over again when it's game over. I do like the idea but execution is absolutely pitiful.
This game confused the hell out of me. You basically go around collecting items on the screen and you can fly your droid across gaps, hence it's name. But, you fly up automatically and you can only move left and right and never up and down, which creates confusion. Also, items can only be collected sideways, so if you land on an item tough tits, you have to move beside it and collect it from its side, this too creates confusion. Then you have a letter platform that has to be landed on before pressing down to activate it, this also creates confusion, especially on level 2 where underneath it is water, you activate it and then you drown for your troubles. It looks quite nice but the game's style and logic is a mess. I'm guessing the game's author Stewart “Stew” Fordyce, who wrote one other game on the Spectrum which I'll look at next, wrote this game looking for a publisher and no-one picked it up, and after playing this myself I can see why nobody did. Good lord that was a mess.
Unlike Hover Droid which was never published and instead self-released by the author Stew Fordyce, this one was published by Wizard Software. And it's basically Manic Miner and a crap one at that. You can only jump when standing still and so jumping on platforms is based on where he stands before you jump, which makes the game is pain and somewhat points. Graphically I have seen worse, but for gameplay, it's up there.
I couldn't get any sense on enjoyment out of this at all. The A and R were all I could get before I get wiped out. This would have been a waste of money then and it's a waste of time now. No thank you, never again.
It's a basic looking Tetris game with line goals per level similar to the arcade version. I'm mixed with the gameplay, it plays better than the original Mirrorsoft conversion because the drop slowly goes down rather than hammers down, but there is a delay in when you blocks drop which is significant, as you could be moving left to tell your next block to go left only to discover that the cutrent block hadn't fully touch yet and that moves instead which buggers your next move and beyond. Also, you'll sometimes get the same shape but in different colours and this confused me greatly with the L blocks. It's nice but its flaws drag it down.
I could have sworn there were plenty of titles of this nature but so far I've only found two. Anyway, you have to arrange the blocks from the left to the right but the small pieces must go on top of the bigger blocks, not the other way round. It won't hold your attention for long I don't think, but the good thing about this is it gives you the automatic solution at the start, all you need to do is capture it with your phone and you're guaranteed a win.
Well my friends, change is upon us. While this site went through the gremlins again a big change happened elsewhere, World of Spectrum, which unbelievably still exists, changed their overall look and design. First of all, it's shit, what a surprise, and secondly, they removed the random game option which was what I mainly used to decide which game I played and reviewed. This means that Sinclair Randomseek, which was primarily responsible for the majority of my 1400+ reviews, is no more, which is good because it means I can finally stop using that car crash of a website now hooray! What it does mean though is I have to find a new method for choosing which game I play and now I have to pick the games myself, which is no easy task as I have so many on my emulator and picking one can take five weeks! But saying that it does mean I can now cheat and deliberately pick a good game, which is precisely what I've done here.
Ah Moon Cresta, you know what? This is really good, it's colourful, it's simple, it's straightforward and it's nice, I don't mind it. The only thing stopping this from getting a 5 is repetition, it's pretty much killing the same enemies and docking and repeat. This ultimately comes down to personal preference, if you don't enjoy these type of games, you won't, if you enjoy these type of games, you will, and I do so thumbs up from me.
Not one of Joffa Smifff's highlights. It's technically sound but it has that problem some shooters have where the bullets camouflages in the background and so you don't see it hitting you, Gemini Wing had it and this does too and it really annoys me. Joffa did better games and there are better games of this nature, Moon Cresta being one of them. Not quite a shitty sequel in the usual sense in that it's not a bad game, but rather an underwhelming one to say the least. Oh and the arcade version is miles better, so stick to that for your Terra Cresta goodness.
On a sombre side note, I can't believe it's now ten years since Joffa passed.
Well things just got weirder with the whole World of Spectrum situation since my last review. There is now a third Classic spinoff to go with the “new” WOS and the original WOS. The Classic version has a random option but only seems to include games hosted on Spectrum Computing, while the original version still has Randomseek but all it's interested in giving me is this one game so hardly random is it? Saying that it's a game I've not reviewed before and so I am duty bound to review it. And I'm glad I did because it's actually quite good. It's a 4k Pac-Man clone written for the 2008 Minigame competition and it plays nice, really responsive controls which was a problem for even good clones, Classic Muncher being an example, but this has no problems with that whatsoever. It all feels samey as the level designs only have minor changes but that's what you'd expect from a game written in 4K. But it's nice, I quite like it, I don't mind it at all, very acceptable clone, well done to the author.
You can blame World of Spectrum Classic's Random game option for this one. It's from Romania in which I believe Spectrum Computing have a huge influx of Romanian games in their archive and this being one of them. From what I played it's a Manic Miner type game where you control the farmer to collect four fuel canisters for your tractor. Since there's no instructions N is left M is right and Q goes up the lift, good luck getting up them as they are quite finicky. After this it goes all Moon Patrol on us except you can't jump and go forwards, you can only jump up whilst still, and you must jump over the gaps, and that's all I've got. Pretty naff and I'm slightly scared to touch another Romanian game from the SC archives if I'm perfectly honest with you.
Weridly, I went back to the original World of Spectrum's Randomseek and it gave me this game, and I haven't done it yet and so here we are. This is a popular game and I can see why, it would have done well if released back in the day I feel. But it's simply not for me, three levels was enough, the movement is far too fussy for my liking.
W*H*B, 28 Aug 2020 (Rating: 4)
I thought of this game when looking at Black Horse and thought I may as well look at it now since I don't have much of a random option anymore, I may as well pick and choose my games now rather than waiting for it to appear at random. And as I thought it is a far better game than Black Horse. The keys are worse by default but if you redefine them to suit you then you can at least get your head around them better. This is still a challenge like Black Horse but there's no silliness of where you can move your piece and where you can't and all that bollocks, it's simply guide your block through a level and manoeuvre it to get it properly to the goal, a much more rewarding and thrilling challenge, unlike Black Horse. I do get what The Dean says that the harder puzzles will put off less patient players, that is me to a tee, but from what I played it was enjoyable and overall a better experience than Black Horse.
Ooooh yeah! Good ol' Columns! I was genuinely excited when this appeared on Spectrum Computing's random game option, which I'm still not a big fan of as you have to go through books, joysticks and other assorted hardware guff and there doesn't seem to be a way to randomly select just games and that's it, but at least it's something and at least it brought up this. However, as it turns out this version of Columns isn't all that great. It's Columns in gameplay, kinda. The object is the same, it's a Match-3 puzzle game, except it's all time-based, this is where the main problem lies. You know in Columns you keep going to mass a big score until you reach the top? Not here, instead your against the clock and your game ends when the clock runs out, the time does increase as your doing well but it's essentially a varient rather than Columns itself and I don't like it so much. That's arcade mode nailed, in Level Mode it's essentially played like the Tetris arcade except you have to reach a certain score in the allotted time to progress. Again why does time have to play a part in this? Columns was never a time based game or certainly the original game wasn't. I was really disappointed with this because the look is there, the style is there, ok the jewels have become stones but we'l let them off with that as putting in jewels is asking for a lawsuit so fair enough, but the whole element of being a time based game ruins it for me and spoils what could have been a solid version of Columns.
Only came across this while entering my Columns review, and so I am duty bound to look at it as well, and I'm pleased because this is more fricking like it. There's no time business to stop me in this one, it's just straight up Columns as it should be. Yes there's no music, yes it's a bit slower, but the gameplay is perfect and I'd happily take this version anyday.
Golf, 31 Aug 2020 (Rating: 2)
These early golf games won't sit well today. It’s basically down to luck-based trial and error with your directions, this one in particular. Whatever direction the line in the top right is pointing is “north” and you have to work out the rest. It's basically more like a directional puzzle game with a broken compass, it's not much fun. I frankly never want to play another one of these games again.
Blitz, 01 Sep 2020 (Rating: 3)
I have found a way to have Spectrum Computing randomise games and only games for me, and so now I'm back in business. For instance there's no way in the world I would have selected this game by myself. It's a Blitz game and I've reviewed a few of these on this site over the years, but this is a much later Blitz game than the ones I've reviewed in the past, from 2012 in fact. And well it's pretty much identical to the majority of Blitz games here, however it does seem to have a more sense of response with the keys so I'll be kind with my score here.
The idea is nifty but that's all I can really say abot it because the game itself is pretty poor in execution. I suppose I shouldn't have expected much from a type-in freebie but the pixy dot has a complete mind of its off that works more against you that for you. As a type-in alone it's a step-up and plays considerably better than some of the others I've played in my life, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good game because it isn't, it's just not gut-wrenchingly bad. Instead it was a mightly frustrating experience that I'd rather not relish again.
A full five years after the original comes its much dreaded sequel and when I say that I mean much dreaded for me...do I possibly HAVE to play this concept again? Well it's in machine code rather than BASIC and overall I have to say it is a far better game than the original. It's still frustrating and it's still not a great game, but it's a step up from the original game in my view. Then again people will say the original is the better game because less is more. Swings and roundabouts.
Was disappointed with this. It's got nice graphics and a jolly tune but once you play it it doesn't take long to realise it's Jet Set Willy, that's all that needs to be known, except this is somehow less enjoyable. It just feels a bit naff to me.
What the bloody hell is with these keys? Enter for up and Space for down?! You are having a laugh! I mean the graphics are nice, but the gameplay wasn't quite up to the Pengo gameplay I know, something was missing from this one. Not too bad but I've played better Pengo clones, and them keys alone dock a point.
It's Defender and it's not good Defender, not at all. There are nice graphics but the gameplay is way below sub-par and well below what you'd expect in a Defender game. The weirdest part is the instructions state “left hand side of bottomt row = REVERSE, right had side of bottom row = SMART BOMB, neither of them worked, I pressed every button whilst remaining static and moving and I neither went the other way or dropped a smart bomb. Very weird, very confusing and very misleading and this game can do one as a direct result. Trust me when I say there are much better Defender clones in the archive compared to this.
Waz, 03 Sep 2020 (Rating: 2)
It's a Snake game that doesn't move by itself. Nope all the movement is by you which to be honest kind of takes the fun away from Snake. Also in this game you can't die by hitting walls or your own tails, only when he was trapped and cannot possible move anymore does your game end. I suppose it's a Snake game a five year old can play and it's okay for one go, but your enjoyment of this game will not last, mine certainly died within the first minute.
From 2016 we have two naughty bubbles called Dou and Bub, can you see what this reminds you of? You control Dou and have to help Bub reach the exit, sounds simple but it is far from it, VERY far from it. For instance Bub is much slower than you, I can only presume he overdid it on mince pies, how a bubble manages that I don't know but there we are. Second, the timer moves so frickin fast, like never mind 30 seconds you have more like 10 seconds and thus you have to be quick, and with spikes, enemies and slowcoach Bub bringing up the rear what chance do you have? Graphics are nice but the gameplay is not very fun, was not impressed with this.
It's another one of these early golf games, just what I needed in my life. But this is quite a special one because it was MIA on the original World of Spectrum and it's been dug up from obscurity by the fine folks at Spectrum Computing. However they listed it as a 16K game and when I loaded it on 16K it was Out of Memory, so I loaded it on 48K and it's fine, so this is a 48K game and not 16K, I had just about had enough of this wrong machine type malarkey on World of Spectrum you know. Anyway, it exceeded my expectations and is actually pretty good. It's another text based golf game much like Virgin's Golf but it works so much better. The only issue was club selection and working out how many yards you are from the hole on your second shot etc, but the former can easily by sorted be screen-grabbing the club selection stats on your phone and working it out from there. So no I don't mind this, it is quite nice and I'm so happy it's been preserved into the Spectrum archive, I started this review with sarcasm and I end it with truth.
A Spanish bike racing game and I have to say a fairly enjoyable one. For whatever reason it screams Super Hang-On at me, a game I criminality have never reviewed yet because of its denied status disqualifying it from Sinclair Randomseek which I will put right in the very next review. I think it's the colours and overall look that seems similar to it. Comparing it to Aspar GP, another Spanish bike racing game I looked at last year, it's more straightforward, much more arcade friendly and ultimately, much more fun. It's slower yes but it's nice and I would really like to do a full championship on this at some point. I feel some people will loathe this game but I can tolerate with this myself.
As promised my next review is Super Hang-On which due to its denied status I never reviewed until now as denied games never showed up on World of Spectrum's Sinclair Randomseek. I had a separate list of denied games and games under the rating of 3 as neither showed up of Randomseek and from time to time I would have used a randomiser of sorts to pick a game from either list, and for whatever reason this was never selected, And yes, pretty much the same colours as in Angel Nieto 500cc, a little bit naughty from Operasoft if I may say so. This is a nice conversion of a nice arcade game, I am so glad they didn't cock this one. It's not perfect and there are grips, such as you can't choose your course, you are given one depending on the side or version you load, also the sound is a minor problem though the ear-bleeding music is a major problem, thankfully you can make it brief and make it go away as quick as you can. But take away those nitpicks and you have a nice racing game with a nice sense of speed and control. Quite well received and it's not hard to see why.
I enjoyed this one, I didn't think I would but I rather did. The rock falling part was a particular annoyance but other than that it plays well, it doesn't stutter like most of these early shooter games do and overall it's nicely written and well made. A nice pleasant surprise if I may say so.
Qang, 05 Sep 2020 (Rating: 2)
This is listed as “inspired by Pang” which got me excited because Pang is a wonderful game with an equally brilliant Spectrum conversion to go with it. However, Pang this may be in look but Pang in gameplay this ain't, very much ain't. In Pang you have to shoot bubbles and they explode, explode them all and you complete the level, and it's all very nice indeed. In Qang however it's very different. Here, you have a ball and eventually a square and you have to shoot the ball into the square to complete a level, at least level 1 anyway, level 2 you have multiple balls and when you hit a ball into a square another ball appears, and then I died and I don't care to play this anymore. It's boring, it's annoying and most of all it's nothing like Pang. And I think from the speech in the beginning it's pronounced “qwong”, may as well be pronounced dung frankly.
I really do not know what to make of this. While the game's concept is so ludicrous, dare I say offensive, and certainly hasn't aged well, the real fact is in spite of the ridiculous plot it's not really a bad game and is in fact quite alright. That's all I can really say about it except it's a prime example of what you got away with in the 1980's, a game like this would never pass in today's market.
Gold!, 06 Sep 2020 (Rating: 3)
Well I found an old list of Spectrum reviews that I had done and forgot about it. Most of the list I had covered though but the bottom five were not, or so I thought was five and it turned out to be a bit more but that's a discussion for another review. Anyway onto this one and there are mulitple parts to the game, first you must enter the castle by guessing the gate-keeper's pass number which is between 1 and 100 within six attempts, it's 1 believe it or not or at least the first time you run it is 1 anyway. Next you have a choice of three doors to enter, again it's 1. After this you must find the gold, look on the right side hand and worked your way through, you'll find it there. Now you have to throw a stone at the hound guarding the exit and you have three attempts. 74 angle is what worked for me. After this your game is done. It's not too bad really, obviously the first game is spoiled by being the same everytime you load it but once it's randomised it can be quite enjoyable for what it is. Certainly not the worst I've played.
Jump, 06 Sep 2020 (Rating: 2)
I had Jump on my list but never mentioned which Jump of the three I had to do, and so to compromise I'm going to do all three of them back to back to back. We begin with this unknown title with no info on who wrote it and when it was made, perhaps this is the one I meant to review because blank meant unknown? Anyway this is not just a clone of Jumping Jack but it's almost a complete bloody ripoff, and it inexplicably makes a mediocre game play even worse. Now I can see why no-one credited, nobody wants to be credited with this crap.
This one is from Espana from 1984 and is inspired by the Taito arcade game Crazy Climber. It also appears to be a rework of the author's previous title El Escalador Loco, which I will cover after these Jumps. I get the idea of the game but what I don't get is the rubbish keys and control scheme which I'm sure is done in an attempt to replicate the arcade game's controls, but they just don't work. I wonder if Crazy Climber has been done by others on the Spectrum, and if so do they have the same controls, and if so we will not get on very well, in fact it may be something to intensely dislike more than Space Panic.
Jump, 06 Sep 2020 (Rating: 2)
It's another Spanish title and one released much later in time, 1991 to be exact. And this one has nothing to do with Crazy Climber or any other arcade game for that matter. This time we control, a mutant of some sorts? There are bugs at the bottom and a snail and we have to hit the, with blocks that you jump on to drop them down, Space Invaders in reverse and with blocks. Innovative, quite, fun, oh hell no. The game is frankly a mess, including the monochrome graphics which makes hard to recognise, so much so that I didn't even realise you had bugs until my third go. The gameplay is pretty awkward, there seems to be no chance of winning and it's all very dull. So there you have it, three games called Jump and none of them are any good. Ah well, might as well ju no don't just piss off and don't come back.
This is the original version of Jump from 1984, it was written one year earlier by the same author, one Jose Manuel Gutierrez Baranano. This too is inspired by Crazy Climber on arcade and I have to say, this is the better game as the controls are much more simplistic and thus I can easily get into it and enjoy it better. I do feel the author was trying in some degree to replicate the controls of the arcade game on Jump and it just didn't sit well with me, whereas this game had much more simplified controls and thus made the game more enjoyable. What shocked me was its original rating on the original World of Spectrum, 3.71 in 7 votes, that is mean. Ok it's not a particularly well written game, it's slow and there is some jerky scrolling to deal with, but the gameplay is fine, I don't mind it, it's pretty good, so no I disagree with the low rating entirely and if I was able to vote I'd happily give it a 7. Very enjoyable, I'm off to play some more of it now.
Piknik, 07 Sep 2020 (Rating: 3)
Continuing with my lost list of reviews, I find it confusing that the game is in Polish and was published by a Polish company but was apparently written by a chap named Graham Ramsden per World of Spectrum. Is it a pseudonym? Was Mr. Ramsden multilingual? Did WoS cock up again? I don't know where the truth lies but it confuses the hell out of me. But anyway, it's based on a game called Whomper Stomper which I've never played before in my life and so I cannot compare how this plays to it, but you are a foot that must stomp on the ants Monty Python style. And to tell you the truth, it ain't bad. Ok it gets very repetitive early on but it's playable and it's an idea that works and can be good fun.
Pucman, 07 Sep 2020 (Rating: 2)
Oh look another Pac-Man clone. Well there isn't much to this really, it's just one level and you have to complete it in the quickest possible time, my best being 43.78 in case you're interested. It's just a basic Pac-Man game with a time trial element and there's not much to say about it, the only reason I'm giving it a 2 is because I've played many worse clones, this one was not that bad.
And completing my lost list of reviews is a game that I think I vividly remember setting this to be among the first reviews to do and seven years later I still haven't reviewed it. Maybe because I couldn't sit myself through the disappointment of this game again, because I never particularly liked this game, in fact 30 years ago I hated this game. However, time has passed on and in advanced age and heading closer towards senior citizenship I don't hate it as much now though I still don't particularly like it that much. It looks really nice and I get the idea of the game, but the shooting is a bit of pain, you seem to lose health quicker than you ought to and on the whole landscape I always found it to be frankly a bit arse. But at least I can now look at the game and say it's not good rather than look at the game and call it a lousy piece of shit every ten seconds. It's not a great game but it does not deserve so much hatred from me any more.
This is quite a famous game in the Spectrum archive for all the wrong reasons, one look at its loading screen will explain all, that's my one and only comment about it. This is also a bit of a weird one in that it's a Joffa Smifff game and a Special FX game not published by Ocean or Imagine, it was published by Software Projects instead. This has all the Joffa traits, the graphics, the sound, the music, the style, the presentation, the humour and of course the difficulty, it's all present and correct. I was going back and forth on whether to give this a 3 or a 4, it's quite a nice game but it's difficult with so much happening at once, then again I enjoyed this more than Cobra, so based on that, Cobra got a 3, and so this shall get a 4.
This is a Speedway game from ET, not that ET but a man named Eddie Thewlis and ET is the name of his software he self-released his games on. He is clearly a massive Speedway fan as all of his games are Speedway games, there are four others all called Speedway in various forms and two more which are MIA, but World Team Championships is enough for today, or ever perhaps. This comes in two sides, British League on side 1 and National League on side 2, yet when I load side 1 I have Sweden vs USA vs World Select vs England, I thought this was the British League? I was expecting I don't know Doncaster or Leeds or Salford or Hull, or something like that, not Sweden and America, what? But then I should have known, it's called WORLD Team Championships after all, so why have the British and National league if it's a World Team oh it's very very confusing. Anyway it's not much of a game except it's a race from one side of the screen to the other, it's basically one of those old horse racing betting games but on bikes. Especially when it says “they are under starter's orders” which you associate with horse racing. Everything is entirely random, you can't change anything to help you win, I won some and lost some and even had a race win taken away because of an objection and a re-run and I lost that re-run. It's not a bad concept in theory but it just doesn't have the excitement to keep you in the game for long, hence I never even bothered to load the second side, one round of this was enough for today, or ever perhaps.
Spanish games generally have a higher degree of difficulty but come on this is impossible! You are constantly attacked by an endless swarm of enemies and even if you try to run away they hit you, try and attack them back they still hit you. In fact, looking up Bestial online gave me this description - “brutal”, which perfectly describes this game's difficulty, you are not the Bestial Warrior but rather this game is and it shall NEVER be beaten. What a farce.
This is simply a poor pinball game with very dodgy ball physics. Pinball game be done in computer game format, Microball proved that three years later, but this is simply not a good example of it.
Saw this mentioned in the reviews for Macadam Bumper and couldn't believe I never reviewed it myself. Though a memorable game it is not without its faults, the ball physics are still a bit funny and the flippers are much wider than they should and thus this messes up the collision detection. But saying that, it's still a far better game than Macadam Bumper and still quite a worthy pinball game given its age.
Batman, 10 Sep 2020 (Rating: 4)
This is a fun little game for sure but is somewhat let down by Batman's poor jumping which I'm sure can be sorted with a item but I never got far into this game to find out. Saying that, it's a nice game with a great look and it deserves the love it gets.
In theory it's a proper Batman game and one that would be more appealing to avid fans. This has two sides, A Bird in the Hand on side A and Fate (or Fete) Worse Than Death on Side B, and I have to say I seem to have not played the second side much because I barely remembered it whereas Bird in the Hand was night and day. I do feel this is a better game than the isometric game and I think this would be my favourite Batman Speccy game as a result because The Movie, whilst still a nice game, is too difficult for me, oh and I reviewed that one yonks ago so don't expcet that one to come next.
Well I said don't expect Batman: The Movie to come next but it doesn't mean I can't do another Batman game, for we have this! Not an official Batman game by any means but I just thought having reviewed the first two Batman games and having already reviewed the Batman Movie game ages ago, I felt I couldn't not at least look at this. Judging by the previous review it's a Freeware game written in Uruguay using 3D Game Maker. Apparently going by what he was saying he was “tired of the Batman”, like was he tired of Batman or did not like Batman or something? Well that might be relevant in the title because here we have Batman: The Puaj Edition, and Puaj is Spanish for yuck, so essentially this can be translated to a degree as Batman: The Shit Edition, and that tells you everything you need about this game, and the fact it was written with 3D Game Maker tells you everything you need about this game because a lot of its games were not very good, in fact some of its games can best be described as a bit shit, and this is no exception. Some of rooms are pointless and leads to a quick death, even the demo shows you how to die in 20 seconds, Stick to the Ocean games as if that wasn't obvious. Well don't say the author didn't warn you, yuck, quite literally.
Well this is a new one. This upon searching is the only bowls game on the Spectrum and possibly one of the only bowls games in the entire universe. It was poorly rated on the original World of Spectrum, an rounded-off average of 4, but I actually quite like this. It's fairly competent and even if you have no knowledge of bowls you will get some idea of the game fairly quickly. However it becomes too predictable as you play it, just move your direction to the left or right, enter your weight between 23 and 26 and you will see what I mean. For any novices to this game, think of horseshoes or curling, and if you're still stumped after that hint then a map and a flashlight should send you on your way.
Nice graphics and the gameplay is Boulder Dash which is nice, but the level design is a bit dodgy for me. Apart from that it's pretty much what you'd expect on a magazine covertape game.
It's a type-in for Sinclair User written by Gary Chalk responsible for the Lone Wolf games. I can't help but ask myself are you sure this was in 1987? I know it's a Type-In so don't expect much Yorick but did SU really accept Type-Ins in 1987? Anyway it's more a board game and yes the game board exists in the archive. On its own it's not much of a game but that's to be expected, I do think the idea is clever but do board games really work on a Spectrum, or any computer game? It's an experiment that I think is too late for me to start but it's a discussion open to others nevertheless. The best part was easily fighting foes as well it seems the only thing worth doing without a board.
It's a game played in a similar vein as arcade games such as Sinistar, except nowhere near as thrilling and much more boring. This was part of the “Chartbusters” compilation along with Cobra, Short Circuit, Green Beret, Yie Ar Kung Fu and The Great Escape, but this would easily be the weakest of the games as the only thing busting out of it was boredom and disdain.
I cannot believe I've never reviewed this. This as any Joffa game is well programmed and brutally difficult, though it is far better than the arcade version so it scores bonus points for that.
Seeing as now I've reviewed all the games in this compilation I can safely review this one.
Cobra 3
Looks great but found it too difficult to properly enjoy.
Mutants 2
Easily the weakest game. The only chart this busted was my boredom levels.
Green Beret 4
Well programmed and far better than its arcade counterpart though brutally tough. Enjoyed this more than Cobra, prehaps it's biasness as I owned this and not Cobra.
Short Circuit 4
First part is excellent, second part is an anti-climax with no ending.
The Great Escape 4
Not a great game but still good and quite enjoyable as long as you have patience.
Yie Ar Kung-Fu 5
Superb fighting game on par with International Karate and Way of the Exploding Fist.
Overall rating 4
After a slow start the compilation picks up steam with some enjoyable titles and rounded off with the excellent Yie Ar Kung Fu.
I liked the graphics and I liked the presentation, but the gameplay is not good. Going by Cruel's review you can get stuck between two craters which effectively ends your game and yep he was right. It was best to not kill tanks in your path until you collect the Poly-crete, but then even that is a chore because tanks are constantly in your way because when you shoot them they become crater, and crater blocks your path because you don't have Poly-crete, mainly because you were blocked in search of it. Too frustrating for me and I'm too old for it, younger me would have probably loved it.
Xarq, 14 Sep 2020 (Rating: 1)
My initial game lasted about five seconds before I died. That alone sums up this game. It's way too fast and way too difficult. At least when you shoot something it doesn't block your path which is refreshing, but you just have almost no control whatsoever because it's so bloody fast. I was really hoping this would be a more enjoyable experience than Panzadrome but it was quite the opposite in many ways.
I can see what they were trying to do and I see why the appeal is there, but the co-op gameplay simply did not sit well with me even after I slowly seem to get the hang of what had and needed to be done. In all, I won't be too critical as the fault is clearly with me rather than this game, but I'm happy I never bought this back in the day because if I did I have been immensely disappointed in paying for a game I effectively can't play by myself.
There's isn't much to this game expect you're typing in numbers to try and hit a target and missing every time. You have 10 shells, after this it shall never be played again, or at least not by me anyway.
This actually wasn't too bad, I expected this to be worse. The gameplay is pretty simple enough but whilst I didn't have much problem with the keyboard response I did have a problem going through gaps because of the size of his sprite. I only got up to the 4th floor where it gets a bit insane with four enemies while you stuggle to fit through a frickin gap. But having said that my expectations were exceeded so well done House of the Living Dead for not being crap like I anticipated.
The arcade original was not great at all and so this wasn't going to be great either. However, I will say it's margainly better than the arcade version as I found this more playable in comparison.
Yeah I'm with Morkin, something dodgy went on to inflate the review scores. I mean it's not a terrible game but it's definitely far from "Crash Smash" material. It's just a bland, boring game and not a lot of fun, you certainly got little in return for your £5.95.
I've been dreading this one. Most people will probably know this by its default Spanish form Un, Dos, Tres or in The Dean's case the Portuguese equivalent, but people like me will know it by another form and that form is the British version called 3-2-1 with the late Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin, and as such that's the version I'm reviewing. Now 3-2-1 was called as such because it was three shows in one, a quiz, a family game and variety show with big guests and even bigger prizes. It was immensely popular back in the day, with up to 16 million viewers in its heyday, but it has to be said it is almost completely unwatchable now because it is astonishingly bad and so much so it frequently appears on worst TV show lists and for good bloody reason. Anyway this is also three games in one, the first is a quiz where you are given a subject and you have to determine if the items mentioned are true or false, so for example home computers, Spectrum, true or false, Colecovision, true or false, Bosch, true or false and so forth, and it works well. The second part is the arcade portion worth you have to guide a couple on clouds to the top to score points, if a cloud hits you, you lose points, and this is dreadful. This being a game alone would not set the world alight and thus being a part of 3-2-1 kills this game's potential in an instant, and this goes on for five minutes and you have to do it three times, once for each couple, there's 15 minutes of my life I'm not getting back. The third part is the prize round, where you have a clue on the table and usually a rhyme but we don't have that here, instead we have a visual clue and you have to choose or refuse. Now the prizes you win here are fictional but you were able to save your results on a tape and send it back to enter a draw to win said prize for real. If you refuse it is discarded and it tells you what you could have entered the draw for, if you choose it it's yours until you choose another item and it gets replaced and discarded. After all the items are refused the item you have left is the one you are entered in the prize draw for. But it's just drawn out at this point and the fact you do this two more times afterwards just adds to the boredom. Plus, some of the items contain the very same prize, like in all three rounds the guitar was Dusty Bun, this absolutely kills the suspense and just makes everything needlessly predictable. This could have been a fun game especially after it's simple quiz that worked wonders, but an annoying arcade section and a boring prize round later and 3-2-1 is nothing more than an average, overrated and overbooked product, much like the show itself. Oh and the Spanish version is identical so I guess you blame that for this game's shortcomings.
Graphically it looks like this could have been a very competent Pac-Man game, but gameplay wise it's lacking. The keys are a bit of a hassle with L for left and enter for right, which on a modern day keyboard does not work at all, I'm thankful I was able to play the game with the Kempston joystick mapped to the cursor keys, I suggest you do the same to avoid having to use the utterly bonkers default left and right keys. Another problem is when you start a game it plays a tune that goes on for just about a few seconds too long for a game like Pac-Man, especially when it does this every time you lose a life, you just want to get on with it but this thing won't let you. And also, I didn't even eat all the dots in screen 2 and it just completed it for me anyway! Bit of a disappointment this actually. I played a much better clone a few weeks ago called Miracle Man and as such I'm off to have another round of that instead.
This is like Metro Cross but on a car and it's really bloody fast, and as it turns out too fast. You spend more time crashing than anything else because of the speed, you're constantly hitting things, you can't time your jumps correctly, the jump is pretty crap anyway, and so it was not as fun as I'd hoped it would be, like at all.
I was hoping this would be good and yeah it thankfully is. It's a really fun platformer with neat graphics, simple and effective gameplay and a cracking intro tune. Can't really complain about it really, it's pretty and deserves some love.
A sequel to a game never released on the Spectrum, this is a Defender clone and is probably as close to the arcade version as you can get. However, its fast pace was a problem and became a real detriment to this game. I mean it is technically solid and it looks great, but it never clicked with me as I hoped due to its sheer speed which made things awkward, confusing and difficult. A real shame as I had high hopes for this one.
It's another Defender game and one mentioned by The Dean in his Guardian II review so I thought I'd have a go at it, and well it's just as mixed as Guardian II really. On one hand the pace is just about right and thus it can be played properly, on the other hand however the collision detection seems iffy to me, plus the keys are a bit rubbish with no joystick control to my knowledge. So in essence technically Guardian II is by far and away the better game, though Orbiter does play a tiny bit better but all accounts both titles are a tad disappointing.
From the maker of the classic Skool Daze and the even better sequel Back to Skool comes a dull and mediocre flight simulator stroke shoot em up that lacks any sort of thrills and enjoyment the aforementioned previous games had. Different kind of game yes but this could have at least had some kind of lasting playability, which it severely lacks.
It's Atic Atac basically and that game is miles better, this as a clone is a bif naff and doesn't do it justice. All this does is remind you that Atic Atac is a better game and you should go play that instead.
Seeing as I have already reviewed all the four games here I may as well do the compilation as well, they are listed here for review after all so why not.
WEC Le Mans 5
For me, the best racing game on the Spectrum, so much better than the overrated arcade original.
Afterburner 3
Afterburner is a great arcade game, this port however is a little off. More fun playing the arcade version by a long way.
Double Dragon 2
A title with so much promise and anticipation turns out to be very flat. One hell of an anti-climax.
Last Ninja 2 2
It looks fantastic but in all honesty I always found this game too boring to enjoy. The music was quite appalling too.
Overall 3
Let's face it, this compilation is all about the brilliant WEC Le Mans. The others are bland, rubbish and vastly overrated. So not so much 100% and more 25%.
Here's a game from the old ZX81 which was ported to the 128K Spectrum by Russell Marks in 2003. To be frank, it's not a great game though the port itself may well be accurate and he admitted himself that the collision detection here is as bad as the 81 version so I admire his honesty. It's not a bad game but it's not a great game and I am certain there are better ZX81 games and there are better versions of Forty Niner compared to this one.
The Olympics may have been postponed but it doesn't mean we can't have any Olympic joy in 2020, just go back and watch London 2012 and Super Saturday all over again if as we're not sick of it already. Or alternatively just play a randomly selected Olympics game from Spain instead, well I say Spain I'm playing the Mastertronic English version but still it's from Spain. And it has the Superman theme in the beginning which I found hilarious. This is a bit of an odd one for the Olympic style of games as in this one you only have one button to press rather than two which I suppose works as you don't have to deal with any rhythmic problems and it's just rapidly press your button as quick as you can. It looks a bit crude but it plays a bit alright. At least it's much better than whatever Track and Field was meant to be anyway.
This surprised me, I wasn't expecting this to be any good but in actual fact I rather like this one. The overly sensitive controls are a nuisance but the gameplay is simple and quite fun. I would have happily paid £1.99 for this back in the day.
This was written by the same fella that wrote Robot Rumpus which was published by Atlantis. However, this game was rejected by Atlantis for being too similar to Robot Rumpus, well I'll be the judge of that. Indeed the collectible element is pretty much the same as the gems collected in Robot Rumpus but the gameplay is different in that rather than collect gems and reaching an exit you are instead working your way down the level and choosing your path as you go along, and rather than lives you have an energy bar which goes down when you hit an enemy or when you make a deacent before touching ground. It's all and all a poorer game compared to Robot Rumpus because the gameplay here doesn't quite work so well it was more a disappointment. Maybe Atlantis didn't turn this game down because it was similar to a game they released a year prior, but it was a bit crap.
Ghoti, 19 Sep 2020 (Rating: 1)
You're a fish and you must eat bubbles, and that's it. However a lot of the game is just being interrupted by a turtle swimming around to steal your bubbles and it ruins the flow of the game. Also bubbles went through even after I was in line with eating it. In the end I ate 10 bubbles on skill level one and I survived and won, then I tried a higher skill and it crashed the game. Rubbish, away with you and I never want to see you again.
This is a strange beast. On first look it looks like another matching pairs game but it doesn't seem to play like it. You basically enter some numbers to open coffins and it reveals skeletons, an arrow pointing at a certain direction, possibly a clue, a boy with thumbs up where the arrows led me to and a sort of workman who resets the bloody board. I want to know more about this game but no instructions don't help. It's an intriguing one but ultimately I am left very confused. Consider this review unfinished, a work in progress or indeed an SOS.
The next three games are from a three-in-one compilation from 5D Software which I shall review each individual game before reviewing said compilation. First game has you cleaning plates and cups and is a disaster. The biggest problem is you can only go one way whilst jumping, the direction he's facing, so if you want to go left first, tough, he will fall to his death. And then the jumping is rubbish too, which is kind of tragic as that's the one thing you'll be doing the most in this game, oh wait it's only the third most thing you'll be doing in this game behind dying and hating it. Now I can see why it's released in a three part cassette, because just try and sell this off individually.
In this game you are the pithead winding gear operator and you are lifing coal tubs to the surface. But I have a feeling the opening text was written to take the piss. At the end it reads “if you are successful you will be rewarded with a view of the golden miners lamp” followed by BIG DEAL, like what? How bloody bizarre. Anyway you're lifting red trays with your crane onto the surface and you need six in six attempts for view of lamp. It's a more boring game than Wash 'n' Stosh but it's the more competent game as you can actually achieve in doing something rather than in Wash 'n' Stosh. But when they said six in six, they meant it, I eventually did it in 18 tries and still it said hard luck and told me to don't give up hope....dope....chuckle...you cheeky bastard. Besides I don't think you can actually do it in six attempts anyway as I believe the blue and magenta ones you need to avoid count amongst that and so you would need six red ones in a row for it to happen, so yeah this game is a cheeky bastard. It's a far better game than Wash 'n' Stosh, hence my score, but don't bother getting it done in six for the Golden Miners Lamp, just do it once, hold a parade, reset and move on with your lives.
Remember when I said the text in The Colliery was written to take the piss? No no no, the text in THIS game is taking the piss! It's either trying to sound Norfolk or Scottish but either way it does not translate well into text and sounds like you're reading it after a few sherries into you, hilarious. And this and The Colliery is by the same chap, one Clifford Brookes to be exact, so this may be a staple across all his games, there is another one of these I'm doing that has two of his games as well so reading the text in those games if any shall be fun. So anyway, you are controlling a crane, you have to lift coloured cars, simple as that, except they have to be picked up in order, green blue and then magenta. And that's the same across all three difficulties, the only difference is the amount of tries y'ave, see what I tried to do there. This probably the best of the three games because it's quite good and I quite like this one. However, it's let down by the objective being exactly the same across three difficulties, I was hoping for more cars for a proper puzzle like experience, but no it's three cars, green blue and magenta and tha' yer lot. It isn't even altered or randomised or anything, it's the same bloody order every single time. Such a shame because this was prety nice for what it was but I can't give it no more than 3 for the reasons I have stated, it's quite a nice game and it's playable but it's just a shame there isn't more to it.
And now as promised, the said compilation my last three reviews have been based one.
Wash 'n' Stosh 1
Simply a disaster and being the default game is a joke because it's easily the worst.
The Colliery 2
More boring but more competent. Game's goal of having six trays and six attempts is pointless and unobtainable so don't bother trying.
The Scrapyard 3
By far and away the best game in the compilation but let down by a lack of randomness in the order of colours to pick up.
Overall 2
Of the three games available only one is worth playing and even that game doesn't offer you very much. On the whole though the compilation cost £3.45 which works out £1.15 per game, so you got what you paid for I guess.
I've decided to look at another three game compilation from 5D Software much like the one I reviewed recently containing the accursed Wash 'n' Stosh which still continues to haunt me in my sleep. And if there are any more too bad because I'm moving on from these after this one and thus I'm not searching, for that's how this one came to light. This one is by R. Massey, responsible for the aforementioned Wash 'n' Stosh and are the only two games he wrote, while the other two are from Cliff Brookes who wrote The Colliery and The Scrapyard on the previous compilation as well, so we could have the very same result of this game of R. Massey being shit and two games from Mr. Brookes being quite competent and playable. But let's see shall we? Paintcraze, or Paint Kraze as the game suggests, fair enough, is a Painter game, paint the screen red, and relax, a nice easy one and indeed a far better concept, except you have a spider to avoid and he is an absolute bastard and can actually kill you instantly upon respawn and before you know it your game ends. What a shame as this is by far an away a better game than Wash 'n' Stosh but is also more frustrating and difficult and as such, on both games I have not made it out of screen 1. So this is a better game but in truth neither game is great and both are to a degree unplayable.
It's a Clifford Brookes game which should mean we get a fairly competent and playable game like his two offerings in the previous compilation, but what we don't get is hilarious text, it is quite notmal which disappoints me a bit. You know what else disappointed me a bit? This game. You're on a hot air balloon and you're being shot at by a deadly hunter in which you must drop sangbags on his head to put him in the water. There are eight rounds to complete but I got up to 4 and then lost. This is a game you can play, it has competence and it has a structure that works, the problem though is it somehow feels blander than The Colliery. It's not terrible by any means, not Wash 'n' Stosh level by any means, but it's just bland, there's almost nothing to it and there's absolutely no reason to play it again after one attempt.
In this game you have to fly Iggy across to the bottom of the house whilst avoiding birds and the sun. This very nearly got a 1 rating as I could not work out its objective and initially thought there wasn't an objective. However I eventually worked it out and well, again it's not great. It's probably the best of the three because you can at least alter the difficulty/speed of the game and in fact the harder/faster option is the better option which sounds a bit rude but there you go. But it's not the standout game that The Scrapyard was so it's all a disappointment in the end.
And now for a conclusive look at the compilation itself.
Paintbrush 2
A simple Painter game let down by bastard spider. A much better offering from R. Massey compared to Wash 'n' Stosh however.
The Battle of Broken Bridge 2
Lacking in quality and re-play value. Somehow feels blander than The Colliery in the previous compilation I looked at.
Icarus Iggingbotham 2
Very nearly got a 1 for an alleged lack of objective but once worked out it's mediocre at best. Its speed/difficulty options give it a sense of re-play value and thus is probably the better game a result but not quite the standout game compared to The Scrapyard previously.
Overall 2
I fel somewhat disappointed with this one. On one hand you have three games which aren't rubbish, that aren't Wash 'n' Stosh quality of bad and there's a far better game from the same author of that game in this, which therefore makes this the better compilation. On the other hand though, what you do get is three mediocre games, three games with the same level of quality, none of which are very good. There isn't a standout game amongst them, which makes this the worse compilation. This was sold for the same price, £3.45, so if this cost more I would have been more aggrieved but again you got exactly what you paid for, three games that are bland, annoying and not very good.
Marble Madness before Marble Madness, yes this predates the Speccy port by a year. I wasn't much of a fan of the Speccy port of Marble Madness, something felt wrong about it, but this one felt the better game for me. The scrolling is better, the response is better, the speed is better though the faster speed acts as a detriment as well so maybe Marble Madness slowness isn't such a bad thing after all. But I do prefer this one to Marble Madness.
Marble Madness after Marble Madness with Marble Madness, what the hell am I talking about? Well, a year after the official release of Marble Madness and two years after the release of its unofficial clone Gyroscope came its unofficial sequel Gyroscope II, written with the Construction Kit from Marble Madness. This to my knowledge is the only game on the Spectrum archive to be written with the Marble Madness Construction Kit and having played this I can now see why. Now again I stress, I was not a fan of the Spectrum port of Marble Madness, and this manages to be even worse. Yes they added more points bonuses in the levels but they only serve as a waste of time, you only have a few seconds to clear each screen or your game ends, and with controls this dodgy you can't afford to waste your time collecting bonuses, just get to the finish already, oh wait that's right the controls are shit so you're having a hard time doing that as well. Marble Madness is not a great game but at the same time it's not a bad game, it just could have been so much better, Gyroscope 1 is a better game for instance, but this is a bad game. And that's why this is the only game on the archive to use the Marble Madness Construction Kit, because it was crap, and this game is proof of that.
Golf, 21 Oct 2020 (Rating: 1)
Here's one I've never seen before, it's from Meow Micros and written by Mick Fowler, which both their libaries being the same I can assume Meow was Fowler's own self-publishing label. The majority of games written by him are MIA but four games have survived via two compilations containing two games each. This one is Golf which will be followed by Bar Billiards. This you would think given its age would be similar to the majority of early golf games, just like two games I reviewed recently, Golf from Virgin Software and Moortown, but oh no this is a very different. Instead the game gives you a different perspective of view, like a first-person view, kind of how the Leaderboard games play which come to think of it I don't think I've reviewed any of them yet. Also, each hole is randomised which is very nifty and very clever. So you have your view and you can play your shot from the tee to the green on this randomised hole and it's very different and very nice, except when you have bunkers and water that is. Say you have a hole 230 yards and it's a par 4 with a bunker diectly in front if you, I'm just gonna use my driver to get it over the bunker and on to the green, nope it hits the bunker. Next hole there's water to your right where the green is, about 90 yards away from the 187 yard hole, surely with a 3 iron you will get it over the water, nope, it's in the water. Basically the ball doesn't travel in the air, it rolls on the ground, you are essentially putting it from the tee to the green. You have to work your way to the green AROUND the bunkers and AROUND the water, that would be why even a 180 yard hole is a par 4. What a load of tripe, I mean there's bad golf games and then there's what ever this is! Next up we have Bar Billiards and later on we're going to have Soccer and I dread to think how they play compared to this!
Oh boy, after the golf game I'm really dreading this one. Bar Billiards if you don't know is a form of billiards played with a ball, some hole and mushroom shaped pegs which called mushrooms here, I swear they are called another name but fair enough we'll go with mushroom. Well, what can I really say? despite the fact that billiards is somehow spelt “billirds” on the game screen and it lingers towards the boring side of things, it's a million times better than the golf game. It's much more like a proper game and I actually enjoyed playing this a bit, especially since I won against the computer, hooray, celebrate! Ok, I'm sure I'm going to come across a better Bar Billiards game at some point, in fact it's bound to happen, but this is fine, it is acceptable, after the disaster that was Golf, Bar Billiards is a breath of fresh air.
And now for a more comprehensive look at the compilat no sod that just load up side 2 and play Bar Billiards, do yourselves a favour and ignore the golf game. I'm still struggling to come to terms with the fact that that somehow exists.
And now for the second of the two Meow Micros compilation on the archives. This time we have Road Race and Soccer, crikey I'm dreading Soccer already. Anyway Road Race, it's a driving game, notice I said driving game, not racing game because racing this ain't. Basically, it's played like a driving test, you have to stay on the road and avoid a fatal crash, and that means going very slowly on the road. This is because the moment you go fast you lose all sense of control and crashing is inevitable, then again you don't have much control to begin with anyway because of the sensitive steering. For games of this nature, take a look at Checkered Flag and never look back.
Soccer, 25 Oct 2020 (Rating: 2)
Bloody Soccer innit? This one's gonna hurt. Especially when the title music is the opening bar to Match of the Day on a continuous loop like an annoying ringtone. It's six a side soccer with the first to five goals wins. And it's a two-player game which means I'm controlling both teams which shall be fun. Well it bloody isn't and I'll tell you why it isn't, because you choose one player on the team to hit the ball, then while the ball is moving you need to try and save the ball with your goalie, which mean switching to the other keys and by this point I had forgotten them which of course meant they scored. In some case you and hit the ball with your goalie only for it to bounced directly off your own defenders and into your own goal. Not totally terrible but Star Soccer does this format of gameplay much much better compared to this.
Two rubbish games for £4.50. Thank heavens there are no more Meow Micros games in existence because I'm happily glad to move on from them. Well, Bar Billiards was half decent but the rest of them I never wish to see again.
It's another of these BASIC number-based type-in games from Grisewood & Dempsey, much like Hit or Miss which I reviewed a bit ago and I'm sure there's a couple more I've reviewed from them over the years. Pretty much all their games are this basic, where there's no graphics and all you get is a grey screen, some text, you type in numbers or letters and that's your lot, and they usually aren't any good. This is basically a math puzzle, it will tell you that the governor's bars should weigh 1000 2000 up to 5000, but the total was xxxxx and it's less than it should be, in this case 14990, 10 grams short, so who was beheaded? I guessed 1, I was correct, game ends. Next game it was 30 grams short, who was beheaded? I guessed 3, correct, game over. Basically it's all down to seeing how many you're short and matching that number to identify which one was beheaded, so if it 10 short it's 1, 20 short it's 2 and 50 short it's 5, simple as that, if you've never completed a Spectrum game before, this is your chance to do so.
I could have sworn I did this one. But anyway, you are in charge of a lemonade stand for a week. You start off with £10 and you need to make as much money as possible. The only gameplay is you have to decide how many cups to make and how much they will cost, before each day you get a report containing the weather which I feel plays a role in how many will sell, because hot days mean people will get thirsty while in stormy or snowy days not so. Other than that it's not really much of a game but not really that bad to consider it as such. Good for one go of curiosity before calling it a night.
This felt flat for me. With the Cash 'n' Grab bar at the top and the mini games it feels a bit like Code Masters's Fruit Machine Simulator games. However, it probably won't take long to realise they are better compared to this, like I played this three times and only got to see one minigame and even that didn't last long.
It's a nice idea but it just becomes too much of a chore for me. Too much testing this and testing that and checking these lasers and those lasers and it just saps the enjoyment away in the long run. If you have enough patience for this kind of thing, please do give it a shot and be sure to post a review and tell me exactly what I'm missing out on because I'm sure there's some charm in it. But for me it's just too tedious and I lost interest rather quickly.
Eggo, 27 Oct 2020 (Rating: 1)
I found this to be totally unplayable. You are too big to fit through gaps properly and are thus an easy target for enemies. Perhaps again I'm missing something but I did not progress at all., nor did I find any amusement in it at all. This was a game stolen and re-released by Harry Price, forget the name nor do I care as I already mentained that I would never review his games bar Collywobles, but it does beg the question of why did Harry Price steal code from shit games?
Lovely graphics here but the gameplay falls a bit on the flat side for me personally. Saying that it was £1.99 and given the other games released on Mastertronic's Bulldog label this is easily the best game I've come across on that particular label.
This unofficial sequel to Scumball was written for the 2008 Crap Games Compilation, so I think we can already see the type of level we're dealing with here. I mean, it's not overly crap but it's still pretty crap as there is little way to avoid the balls on the screen and thus you won't progress very far. Not the worst but as a intended crap game for a crap game compilation it delivers.
Hetty, 28 Oct 2020 (Rating: 2)
Here's another game written for a contest, this one was for the Bytemaniacos 2005 BASIC Contest where it finished 4th place in the Pure category. The title screen reads “Home made crap software”, which I mean I wouldn't go that far mate, this wasn't written for a Crap Games Compilation after all. Going by Google Translate, the goal is to collect seven flowers to progress to the next level. However, some of the flowers are poisonous and touching these means a loss of life and you only have two. There is no way of telling which flower is good and which flower is poisonous so it is basically a game of chance. Also the one level I did complete had more than seven to collect which I appreciate could be a translation issue but still it was annoying. It was BASIC after all and I suppose it has some kind of gameplay to it but yeah I guess it was a bit of home made crap in the end.
It's not a terrible game but it's not particularly good either. I found the control response was off and the gameplay was all a bit too lacklustre to take on board. But perhaps I should give the game some soft of benefit of the doubt given its age, except this game was released in 1989, yes NINETEEN EIGHTY NINE! And how was this game released you ask hmm. Magazine covertape? Public domain? No, it was a commerical release, you paid £3.50 for this, in 1989. Words fail me.
Well it's a space game where you're shooting stuff with your phaser and your torpedos and all seems to be going well for you expect, a) usually nothing happens, and b) when something does happen the game crashes, in my case TWICE! On 16K and 48K both games crashed when something remotely interesting happened. No further comment.
Grand Prix management, not sure how this is going to go down. You sign for one of four teams, Ferrari, McLaren, Williams and Tyrrell, Benetton are in the game as well but for whatever reason they are unplayable which is rather odd. The goal is obviously to win the Formula One World Championship no no it isn't, the goal is to get through one race for the purpose of this review and then call it quits. The game does contain real driver names but I imagine their team allocation is randomised as Nigel Mansell is in a Tyrrell in 1991. The game itself is, well how shall we put it mildly, lacking. You only drive straight, I say drive you're not actually driving it yourself, but the point is there are no corners at all, and all that happens is either you block a car passing you, you get overtaken or you do the overtaking, you also spin which loses time or crash and be forced to retire, like what happened to me because of course it did. Boring boring boring and I didn't bother doing another race after this for good reason. So how does Grand Prix management work exactly, oh yes that's right, it doesn't.
This is a bit of a strange one, you have bangers, mugs and other breakfast fry assorted stuff and you to guide them different rows to presumably please customers, as if you don't you get complaints and too many complaints lead to a warning and I think you have a fair idea of where the rest of this leads to. It's very much like Lemmings only you don't have different commands and instead you have to alternate directions of the platforms in order to guide them to their destination. But it's quite nice, it can get frantic but nevertheless it is an enjoyable game. Also has nice music from Matt Westcott, who does the hosting for this very website, good for him.
Mercs, 31 Oct 2020 (Rating: 3)
A US Gold Capcom conversion from Tiertex, usually not a good sign, but this one was a surprise. This is the official sequel to Commando and it's not a patch on the orginal at all which was a problem with the arcade game as a whole. This port however kind of holds up, again not a patch on the original and the graphics are quite crude and could have been better for 1991 standards, but it's playable and is a bit alright. Especially when you consider what US Gold done with Final Fight the same year which I will cover one day in the future, when you consider what they did with E-SWAT a year earlier. Those two games are horrid and this is far far better than those two games and this is a Tiertex developed game, those two weren’t. This may look as crude but it has the playability this two severely lacked. So definitely not the worst Capcom port and Tiertex developed game by any means.
There's not much to say here except it's Pac-Man, again, it's from Spain, and it's shit. It's likely gonna take Pac-Man a week and a half to get round the grid with the speed he's going at. However they are really generous with apples so they should help us immensely to get past the ghosts, oh no they don't they are just there for puntos and that's it. There isn't a single power pellet in the game plus you have one life and one life only and one hit means instant game over. Can I go back to Miracle Man please? Hell Puc-Man has more appeal and that has one level you can do in about 50 seconds.
Well here's one I'd never heard of before. Released by an Italian company SM Software and written by two Italian chaps Paolo Perrotta and Stefano Carrafa and this was their only game. In this game you control a slinky which is just the best thing ever. I really liked how it looked and how it's designed, but what I didn't appreciate was its difficulty. A lot of the game is based on timing and even getting past the second screen was tough. Saying that, it is a particularly well written game and it's a bit of a shame we don't get to see more of what the authors were capable of doing.
Type-in games can be hit or miss and indeed horse racing betting games can also be hit or miss, I personally like them when they are good and this one isn't all that bad. There are only three horses to bet on but everything works as well as you'd expect in a game of this nature. However, it doesn't appear to be very random, for instance the first five races I did had horse 1 as the winner, and in eleven races horse two only won once. But I suppose that's the downside of having only three horses in a race after all. But still, I do enjoy these games and this one I did enjoy to a degree, these type of games have been done worse however they have also been done better, so this one falls directly in the middle.
I thought this was going to be like Asteroids but it's not, instead you have push garbage pods into the black hole. However, they seem more interested putting themselves into the black hole rather than you doing it and even when you try to do it you either get stuck with them or you just blow up. Can't help but wish this was Asteroids now.
I was quite intriged when I saw this and was willing to give it a go and hoping I'd like it, but no it disappointed me greatly. It's essentially a three part battle between SHADO (you) and the UFOs and the first to 50 points win or if it's 49 all the first to 51. The first part is weird, like you have to lift off but can't fire and you lose them all quickly and that's it next sequence begins, almost as if that is part of the game and it really confused me. The second is one of wonder, moving around until a UFO suddenly appears and kills you, like what how was I supposed to know it was there? Then another one appeared, it disappeared and I score the point, what? Weird stuff. The third is a standard shooter only I didn't last too long at that either, then the sequence of events is looped over. What a bloody bizarre game, well suppose UFO was a bit bizarre to begin with so points for emulating that, but you just seem to die too quickly without much of a chance. Very odd and not to my liking. When or if I get round to getting the hang of it better I will make some edits over time, but other than that not the best offering from AGD it has to be said.
The idea is very good and this deserves to be a good game on that alone. However, it is massively letdown by its poor floaty controls and difficult manoeuvring. A bright and fresh idea but ultimately not a very fun one.
5 in a row yet you can play either 4 in a row or 6 in a row, weird. This is far best played with multiple players since only two or three players can play and you can't play against the computer. It is slow however and some great deal of patience is needed, if you put the emulator's speed up it might help. Not particularly exciting but at the same time there's far worse out there.
Boomer, 02 Nov 2020 (Rating: 2)
This is a bit of a weird one, in that it starts off in Spanish and then switches to English, I'm beginning to think this is no accident. Also, notice the chap is wearing a red top, blue pants and if you use his mouth as a moustache who do you get? Yeah, I refuse to call it a coincidence. So basically this is like Kaboom and Mario is dropping bombs on you and you have to catch them. Problem is there are times you're in one side of the screen, he's dropped a bomb on the other side and there's no hope of you reaching it. I mean it's not terrible and there are far worse type-in games comapred to this but I would be very surprised if you spent more than three minutes playing this.
Another game that can only be played with two players and there's only me playing. At first glance it looks like a dodgems style game, bash into your opponent to score points, no, you hit your opponent he scores points not you, so it's basically a game of moving around and avoiding each other, can't help but feel that my concept is better. You can choose different layouts suchs as town and village and change the game type to play as a tank instead if you wish, but what you can't change is the rules though playing in the city means you have to avoid planes and rockets as well as yourself so that makes this concept work to a degree. So it's a shoddy game if played on default but if you change things up a bit you can some enjoyment with it, unless you're playing alone like I did that is.
By 1991 it's safe to say Code Masters games were on a bit of a decline, the only thing really hanging for them by this point was the Dizzy games and even they were starting to go downwards. This is a good example of how Code Masters games in 1991 weren't what they used to be. This plays a bit like APB but is nowhere near as fun and everything is just a mess. Perhaps the biggest sin of all is when you consider that Andrew Richards did Tilt a year ago and that is a far far far better game in every aspect, and then this monstrosity exists alongside it.
I do like how it’s programmed and all but the gameplay didn't do it for me. In battle situations nothing I did changed that I was soundly beaten and when I went to run, which would be the safest option against a far superior opponent, I still lost a life. Nicely produced but grossly unfair.
It runs very smoothly which surprised me immensely, however it doesn't take long for the fun the wear very thin. It's a bright idea but something fel off with this. You do have infinite lives so you're no under any sort of pressure with failing constantly and you can try as many times as you want, but it doesn't make for a fun game. Nice look, pity about the dodgy gameplay though.
I think I briefly looked at this after reviewing Spectrum Smalltalk and thought not today, and well today has finally arrived for it and I immediately regretted it. It easily gets nowhere and repetitive and it won't take long to give up and think that that was time you gave up for this game and you're never getting it back. A proper conversation? There's more chance of my beloved Southampton topping the Premier League, except we happen to be at the time of this review. Well fancy that!
Tennis, 07 Nov 2020 (Rating: 1)
This is probably one of the worst tennis games I've ever played in my life. Everything in this game is just wrong and it's so bad it's actually hilarious. £5.50 for this?!
It's Pengo again and thankfully this one has better keys compared to Push Off, however something feels off with the gameplay and the control response and this was not as fun as it should have been. It may have better keys but it's a step backwards in terms of quality.
When Hi-Tec done Hanna-Barbera cartoon games, some were alright, some not so but very few were really bad. But this one is by Gremlin on based on a Walt Disney cartoon doesn't come anywhere close to the quality of Hi-Tec Hanna-Barbera games. It's a boring, ugly platformer without a single redeeming quality in sight. Gremlin did far better games compared to this.
Bullfighting isn't enjoyable as a whole and this game is even less enjoyable. It's too complex for the humble home computers with the amount of keys you need to press so why bother. But you know what makes this game more enjoyable? Watching the matador get wiped out by the bull instead! ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY BULL!
These spot the difference game are usually fun but this one didn't work so well for me. Maybe it's because it's a digitised photo in black and white and the fact they it doesn't even give you enough time to get all ten differences.
This game is among the under 3 category on the original World of Spectrum meaning its rating is under 3 and it never showed up on Sinclair Randomseek in the the process. And I feel it was doing us a favour by not showing up on Randomseek because this is bad. It's one of those falldown games but really slow and jerky. You are to avoid the asteroids by using 5 and 8 for left and right and pressing 0 to get past unavoidable asteroids, but this is so limited, like I think three times you can use it and then it's gone forever, so therefore making it bloody pointless. I don't think it's rock bottom bad but it's still pretty bad.
I should have read the previous review before playing this because I was greatly confused, when he said it was a bizarre mix of Spy Hunter and Jet Set Willy he was not kidding. I expected this to be a boring tank shooter and what I didn't expect was to see Jet Set Willy style levels in the demo, it made me think did I have the wrong version or if the screenshot was incorrect. But no, it starts off as a tank shooter, then it turns into a JSW-style platformer and almost a complete bloody ripoff at that. The level designs are similar, the player is essentially Miner Willy, it's a total ripoff. And you have infinite lives in this game because for some reason whoever contribute the z80 snapshot also put a POKE in the game for infinite lives. I feel if it was just the boring tank shooter throughout it would have been a worse experience and the platformer adds to the game but then it's JSW and all its ten million clones killed my enthusiasm for JSW entirely and this is a complete ripoff and is essentially by proxy a clone in itself. So assholes to it really.
May as well go ahead and look at the other Sabotage game I have stored on my emulator. This one is by Zeppelin from 1988 and it too is a multi-genre game. It begins as a standard shooter and then turns into a bloody maze! I mean I don't know what it is with games called Sabotage and switching genres mid-game but it's funny that there's two I've played and both have different genres in the games, how coincidental and bloody bizarre. Anyway like I mentioned first part is a standard shooter and it looks very much like Light Force, saying that that it's nothing out of the ordinary and pretty passible. After beating the boss we move into a maze-type game, there's orb-like objects and a blueprint to collect before returning back the way you enetered, all this whilst avoiding the falling birds and withing a time limit. It's not bad, I was expecting this to kill the game's potential like the platformer did for the previous Sabotage game but it didn't, it was actually pretty decent. Once this is achieved it goes back to the shooter element for level 2 and I presume you collect something else later on but my game ended by this point, pity because I was getting into it. I liked this, it's much better than Quicksilva's Sabotage and while it does stray into the boring side it's playable, the maze part added to the game and didn't kill it like the previous one and all in it was pretty enjoyable.
It's canoeing, I remember doing Wildwater which was the final game released by Bug-Byte Software and it wasn't a good game. This released two years earlier by Players is better but it's still not a good game. You have four courses to choose from and once you complete it that's it, but I suppose they can be completed, unlike in Wildwater. Also there's a designer which allows you to change or re-design the existing courses, which is bold enough to suggest “if you think our courses are shite, let's see YOU have a go and see if YOU can do better”. It isn't particularly a good game but Wildwater is my comparison game and I gave that a 2, this is better so a rating of 3 is justified.
It seems like an interesting maze game where you need to collect all the asterisks scattered around the maze within the time limit. That is until you realise the times goes down way too fast and the keys are not that responsive and there's no way in hell you are going to complete the first labyrinth.
As soon as I saw the words Century City Software I thought to myself “this must be crap”, and that really couldn't be closer to the truth. It's like a weird variant of Head-On played on a horizontal landscape rather than a round circuit and it really doesn't work. There also seems to be an issue with the red car in that he appears to move quicker than you and thus can get you where he's not supposed to, making avoiding him almost impossible. And when he does hit you? Yeah, let's just call it the most drawn out death sequence ever. But my favourite part is the cassette inlay which is just the Mad Scientifist laughing, possibly laughing at you because you spent 2 quid for this this game, or possibly at me because I spent 10 minutes playing this for a review.
A game written by Clive Townsend of Saboteur fame that was never released. According to legend Durell felt the game was not marketable and so they never released it, and I think I see their point as the gameplay is bland and the graphics are pretty bad. But I think things turned out all right for Mr Townsend in the the end as some of the routines in this game were used in Saboteur which simply put is a quintillion times better than this.
And coincidentally the next game presented to me randomly on Spectrum Computing is a Durell Software game, ok technically it came after two text adventures, a ZX81 game, an MIA game and Taffy Turner which I had already done, but still, coincidence. This looks great, I really like the detail in the graphics, but the gameplay felt flat for me.
A Code Masters game was presented to me at random, but not this one, there's a reason this one is being done first. This one I never particularly liked, I found it difficult to control and too easy to hit the mines. I also found shooting the enemies to be pointless and a couple of thines even doing this review it respawned me to a blocked area and I had to reverse out which costs precious seconds.
And here is the Codemasters game randomly selected for me, and it's pretty much Super Stuntman but on the sky, hence its name. I feel it's a better game than Super Stuntman as at least I had a sense of control, that was until the second level where I could only control the crosshair rather than the hot air balloon. So while a better game than Super Stuntman it's still not a great title and I came off feeling disappointed with this game.
It's a clever idea but I haven't survived too long in any of my games and it simply didn't hold my interest for very long in the end. Your mileage may vary.
For some reason this only worked properly on 128K, on 48K it's just a black screen and it crashed on 16K much like the first one did. But this is a better game because it's slower and easier, though it still didn't hold my interest for very long in the end. Your mileage may vary.
It's just another football management game and it plays pretty much the same as they all do, and by 1992 I think we were all getting pretty fed up with these games by this point. The idea is a nifty one though, choosing a club to manage in various leagues around the world, England, Scotland, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Northern Ireland, and even Chile. What I did find odd was that of the jobs listed O'Higgins of Chile and Portadown of Northern Ireland were listed twice for some reason. So I went and picked A. Madrid, Atletico Madrid to be precise, and now I'm playing in the Spanish league, something very intriguing and very different, that is until you actually start playing the game. You would think that by 1992 things would change just a little bit, but nope it's the same ol' boring stuff with all your usual menu options and a crap match screen, and I mean crap, it hardly shows anything. If this was 1986, it would have got off with a pass, but by 1992 releasing games like this was just asking for mediocrity.
Well it's not Defender first and foremost, it's just a standard shooting game with a Defender type design. You can't move forwards or backwards, only up and down and there's no thrusting and no rescuing involved. This wouldn't be a bad thing except the text before starting the game specifically stated that this was the Spectrum version of the arcade game of the same name, no it isn't mate. However, while it may not be Defender, as a standard shooter I have played worse and this was alright for what it was.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. On one hard, for a minigame written in 4K it is quite alright, but on the other hand the hit detection seems dodgy for me which spoils the fun plus level 3 was a right chore and sapped away all my interest. But in all it can be quite enjoyable for one go before finding something better and more interesting to do.
It's another Jumping Jack style game, although this one doesn't try to be a ripoff like that unknown Jump game I looked at. The main problem is it's too slow and you can't jump over the gaps, so if one's coming towards you you cannot avoid it and are doomed to fall. I want to say it's better than Jump so it just doesn't do it for me, so it's about level with it.
It's simply a memorising game where you press the number sequence in order and they appear too quick for you to pay attention to them. Might be appealing to those with quick memory, which obviously rules me out then.
And this is supposed to be a math game of sorts except I can't work the puzzle out. Also that's three type-ins in a row, Spectrum Computing has randomly selected for me, starting to get the feeling it isn't so random after all.
This was immensely disappointing from the Shaw Brothers. I didn't except this to be great but I did not expect this to be as bad as it was. On Spectrum Computing it states was inspired by Cybernoid but this is just a very poor man's Cybernoid. The controls are an absolute nightmare, I had pretty much no control of it at all. The Shaw Brothers have far better games in the archive compared to this
Yeah Centipede! As one or two of you may know I like Centipede as a whole and years ago I had a really good clone of it called Megapede in my collection, and what good fun it was back in the day. Now some clones I've reviewed have been good and some have been bad, this though is directly in the middle. It's not the quickest but it is playable. Is it better than Megapede, hell no. Is there a worse clone than this? Yes, several in fact. So this wasn't a great clone but it was alright and I've come across much worse.
Nice little game this. It's a matching pair game which wouldn't normally set the world alight on its own, but there's different sets and levels to choose from, including Spectrum Heroes including Batman, Miner Willy and Scooby Doo, what's not to like?
There isn't much to say except you are wondering around a maze looking for treasure, you may find some, or some food, or a snake, a bat and other such nasties that will eventually exhaust you to your demise. One go of this is enough.
Well it's better than I was expecting so it has something going to it at least. The problem with this is it's the same throughout and firing can be a pain when it shoots at a row and takes out the one furthest away rather than closest to you. But saying that, I expecting this to be hidious, it's not.
Well it's effectively not bowling as you only get one throw per frame regardless of what you score but it's a nice time filler and no more than that. At least it's better than that Bowling 2000 tripe I reviewed last year.
Not much to say about this this one either, you're a ball and have to avoid other bouncing balls and survive as long as possible. My PB in 50:98 which I'm sure can be beaten. It's not going to hold much interest I don't think but it ain't bad.
A type-in game written by David Perry who went on to write classics such as Earthworm Jim, and it's alright actually. For a type-in it's well written, quite responsive and it's playable. From this alone you just knew this guy was destined for big things.
It's quite good actually but at times unfair when babies, er, die, randomly and you are helpless to save them. Nevertheless I would have happily gotten some entertainment for £1.99 had I bought it.
Zombo, 24 Dec 2020 (Rating: 2)
A couple of years ago I did a bulk of Christmas games and my last one was Zombo's Christmas Capers from 2016 which was unofficially based on the comic of the same name. Well little did I realise that Zombo had his own standard game a year earlier, and well I have to say I'm prefering the Christmas game. You know what sold it me for me? I died and then immediately died again upon respawn when no-one was around me. And with that, I'm not playing this anymore, ever.
Compilation time again. The next four games are from The Arcadian from 1982 which will then be followed by a review of the compilation itself. First up is Invasion, which is Space Invaders. Well, the colours are alright but everything else pretty much isn't, like they don't even scroll across the screen they just like push each other across. And we're shooting darts for some reason, both me and and Invaders, and when one hit you you die, and then there's a good chance you'll die again immediately again afterwards like what happended to me twice. Let's just say Space Invaders has been done much better compared to this.
Next up, Kamikaze which is Scramble, I like Scramble as a whole. Astral Software much like the last one so I assume it was written by the same person. And annoyingly the fire button here is break, which on a modern day keyboard using a modern day emulator is a two button combination. Even if it was one button though I doubt that I would get anywhere in this game anyway because the fire doesn't work so well, the bomb doesn't work so well and this game is pretty crap. Invasion is like a masterpiece compared to this atrocity. Let's just say Scramble has been done much better compared to this.
Now it's Minefield and it's not Astral this time and instead it is J.K. Greye the publishers of this compilation which I'm regretting reviewing already. And now we appear to have done away with arcade inspirations, oh wait hold on this is a version of Snake, not an arcade game by structure but very much an arcade game by design. Except this is Snake but with all the fun taken out of it. See you are a car and you have to drop mines as you move, and that's it, the mines sit there and they never disappear and you are destined to hit one, there is no objective except dropping as many as you can before meeting your inevitable death. Well I mean it's responsive and it's much better than Kamikaze but, let's just say Snake has been done much better compared to this.
Ufo, 26 Dec 2020 (Rating: 2)
UFO, dodge the asteroids and shoot the aliens, so this is version of Asteroids isn't it, oh wait no it isn't it's another falling game avoiding asteroids like Asteroids Ahead, oh good. Well this time you have to shoot aliens, well they're UFOs but let's not criticise for that, and you know what, it's quite alright. It's slow and boring but it's a lot better than Kamikaze and a million times better than Asteroids Ahead, for a game of this concept this was far more like it. Still not a good game mind you but at least it's better than than the one of this same nature I looked at recently. And as this was pretty much the only one of the four that I kind of liked I am duty bound to say this is the best game in the compilation which is funny because it looks the worst. And I can't use that that gag I've done to close my previous three reviews because, well it's not Asteriods and it's better than another game of the same concept.
A rubbish Space Invaders game, an appalling Scramble game, a Snake game with the fun removed and a falldown asteroids avoiding game that's boring but at least a worse game its kind exists. Oh and in case you're interested you paid £4.95 which works out as roughly £1.20 per game. Said it before and I'll say it again, you got what you paid for.
It's another falldown game and this time it's done by my old mate Barry Jones, haven't reviewed his games in a while so when this came up randomly I thought I had to do this one. And it's a Barry Jones game which means annoying sound, I have missed hearing them, no wait no I haven't. Have to say, this was not very good, some of the gaps you need to get through are mean and you simply don't have enough time to react. Also the controls were off, you have left and right and three speed for each, slow, fast and very fast which uses two buttons together and this created a lot of confusion. Not one of Barry's better offerings, The Hit Man for instance is a far better game and I'd certainly rather be playing that compared to this.
Well it's a simple game of hitting the ball with your bat, Pong without an opponent or Breakout without any blocks. Passes time by I guess.
Can we guess what kind of game this is? Clue 1. Papir is paper. Have you got it yet? Ok here's clue 2, the screenshot show a pair of scissors, now you've got it haven't you because I have, it's Rock, Paper, Scissors! And despite being in Czech it's straightforward to play as you only need to press K for kamen which is rock, N for Nuzky which is scissors and P for well you work the rest out. It's quite all right, it works and you can understand the gameplay even if it's a foreign language, however it doesn't offer much at the same time and it won't take long to switch off and play something else. But overall not bad at all.
Twinz!, 27 Dec 2020 (Rating: 4)
It's a matching pair game like Master Brain I reviewed not too long ago and it's really good, possibly better I think. The music gets annoying but this has different levels and you're against the clock and it's great fun. I like these sort of games if they are done right and this is well done right.
It's another Jet Set Willy style and one with quite excruciating music. Oh and the gameplay is no fun either. I don't like Jet Set Willy and I don't like this even more.
Tartan Software released a number of text adventures on the Spectrum and so I was surprised when I saw this and Matching Pairs which I shall look at in my next review. With this one I started wondering if it was actually a game since this game's screenshot only showed a scorecard and there was no evidence that it contained any kind of gameplay, this is the gameplay. Basically there is no course at all, you have to select your club and your shot power based on complete blind luck, you cannot even select your direction or anything. And that will be why Tartan stuck with text adventures, and in fact this to a degree is a text adventure. It's a text-based golf adventure to nowhere that you or rather I will never forget for all the wrong reasons.
And as promised here is Matching Pairs from Tartan which is, well Matching Pairs, I've reviewed a couple of good ones recently but my hopes for this are not high and you blame the bloody golf game for that. It's a versus game this time and you can play against the computer which is quite nice. In this one you have to match numbers, in this case there's a bunch of 1s 2s and 3s scattered around the grid and you and the type the coordinates of two squares to reveal a potential match. So for example, A1 and B2, if they both read 1, it's a match and you score a point plus you can continue to get another match, if not play passes to your opponent. It's quite slow paced and it's not as fun as Master Brain or Twinz, but the vs. element helps and it's good for one go pass the time by. Oh and he beat me, well the computer seems to be a clever little thing in that he appears to remember you past choices and exploits on them to make an easy match. All in all, so much better than Golf Scorecard and comparing to two should be considered a criminal offence.
Really enjoyed this one, simple to play, simple to get into, nice look, nice music and I got a completion. Happy days.
This could have been a great game but on the whole it is letdown by its toughness. Rebelstar is correct, the enemies are far too fast and coming from either direction does not help matters at all, you simply have no time to react and are a sitting duck and glutten for punishment as a result. What a pity.
This is supposed to have three parts. The first is that bloody falldown avoiding the asteroids bit I've covered too much of recently for my liking and this one wasn't as fun as UFO. The second part has you landing on sea and can be quite a pain, took me three attempts to get it right. The third part though appears to be buggy as nothing happens and eventually a subscript wrong message appears and the game crash, this happened on both 16K and 48K. Well, that was a waste of time, I'm off to a real dodgy start this year.
And it's yet another falling game! This time it's a co-op game and you have to move the blocks on each row to help each man fall to the bottom and the first to the bottom wins. Should you land on a mine you go back to the very start. It's not particularly good really, I'm dure it's meant to be played together, but as it's only me I played alternatively, and I had turns that benefitted my opponent more than me. But the neat little thing about the game is when you've finished a game you can just press x to quit the program and move on with you life. No I'm being senile, the neat little thing about the game is when you've finished a game you can play on a brand new course, mind you they all feel the same but it's still a nice little feature. Not a good game and not so much an interesting one apart from playing a new but similar course each game. However, it's not a terrible, it just doesn't have enough to keep you interested for long.
This is a weird football management game which consists of aliens from another planet and you have 100 teams in the league! And they all have silly names, my team being Fruit Salad for instance. However, you appear to only play against a team based on your league position, my first match was against Pet Celery and we lost 3-0, then my next match was against Pet Celery again, which I lost again, 3-2 this time though so an improvement nevertheless. It has all the usual gubbins in a game of this type, buying, selling, training etc but it still has the level of boredom associated with these kind of games, especially after I've played a third match and lost 4-0, and I'm done. It's an interesting footnote in the football manager genre but not a particularly good one.
Trivia, 03 Jan 2021 (Rating: 2)
It's trivia, that's all that needs to be known, three wrong answers and yer out son. Oh and it's not very good, give me Arcade Trivia Quiz anyday.
It's got a nice look but I really did not like how it played. I greatly dislike his jumping in particular, well not so much the jump but more his floaty, gliding landing, that was offputting. Also, the detection seems funny, a couple of times I clearky jumped over the barrell and the fire and it still registered a hit. Said it before and I’ll say it again, The Shaw Brothers done better games.
It's another game ripped off by Harry Price, I know this because I was given the Price version I Ain't Got Nobody presented to me at random, but I'll never review his copycat games and so I'm reviewing the original game instead. So Harry Price's games have one thing in common, they're all stolen from original games, and all the original games I've covered so far have one thing in common, they've all been shit, this one though? Well it's still not that great a game but it's far better than what Eggo was supposed to be. But Dandyboy suggests in his review that this game is overrated and I feel I agree with him.
It's not a bad game and certainly better than I expected it to be. I never bought this one but I would have been happy with with I paid for if I did. The level design partially reminded me of Ghost Hunters which was a game I had back in the day and I never liked it, this I did kind of like and was alright.
Six years after Super Robin Hood came Robin Hood - Legend Quest which is possibly more an upgrade rather than a direct sequel. Released in 1993, it is one of Code Masters' final Spectrum games. Graphically it is a vast improvement and a lot of work clearly went towards this game, but there is one significant gripe with the gameplay. When you go to shoot enemies with your bow it takes Robin forever to prepare his bow to fire, I'm pretty certain it was instant in Super Robin Hood, but it was a very annoying nitpick and enough for me to dock a point. This could have been a fine way for Code Masters to go out and it is still a very well made game especially in the graphics department, but the gameplay lets this one down so much that I'm enclined to call Super Robin Hood a better game.
I never planned to revew this today or any time as it wasn’t on my list but you can thank Super Robin Hood for this one. This one I had in my collection many years ago and I never liked it, and it's safe to say my opinion has not changed over the years. Indeed some elements in the level design appear to be borrowed from Super Robin Hood but the graphics are way uglier, look at the Dizzy games and then look at this, what, happened. The game does give you a choice of two colours, red or blue and I actually think blue is the better option as it makes the game look much more clearer. Saying that it doesn't change the gameplay which is a bit pants. You control a man and if you hold fire you move the crosshair to shoot enemies, though only certain enemies can be shot at, the vampire and the hand for instance, but the spider and the rat you cannot shoot which makes the whole thing pointless in my book. Now you couldn't shoot the spider in Robin Hood but then he only has a bow and arrow, here you have a fucking gun and it still does nothing. Oh and what happens if play with two players? One controls the player and the other controls the crosshair, so that means it's essentially still a one player game and it just gives you an alternate way to control the crosshair. No further comment, except I never liked this one, can you tell?
Well I certainly did not find this as buggy as Raphie states, although it did bug when I ran it on 48K initially before switching to 16K and it ran fine. However, it is still a painfully slow game and good luck reaching the ball when you are on one side and it spawns on the other side because nine times out of ten you won't reach it. Not hideous but still pretty bad and too slow to take seriously.
People compare this to Shao Lin's Road and they have a point, they also say that this is bad and again they have a point, a very valid point actually because this is pretty bad. The fighting is bad because of the questionable hit detection and the daggers are slow and don't even work. The graphics are bad because as stated in a previous review the ninjas look like fat ninjas, again point taken. And why the bloody hell does the screen turn upside down at times? Is it a bug? Is it actually programmed? If so, why?! It's so needless. For games of this kind I feel Oriental Hero is a worse game but this is still pretty bad and deserves to be hated.
This is much more like it. Everything is so much better compared to Kai Temple and this actually stands out as a pretty decent arcade conversation, in fact an enjoyable one that's worth looking at. What else can be said except, GUTS!
L.s.d., 04 Jan 2021 (Rating: 3)
THE DRUGS MAN! THE DRUGS! Actually this has nothing to do with that thankfully as it's actually named £.S.D., so but a name of such doesn't agree with databases I'm gonna call this Pound SD. It's an interesting one to say the least with six different ways to make or lose money. However, it ultimately doesn't have a lasting appeal, once I did all six I felt there was nothing left to do, there is a targer goal to reach but this simply doesn't offer enough to stick around to achieve it. Yes it has six different types of game but only two are remotely interesting, horse racing and dog racing, everything else was a bit naff.
I think this officially serves as a problem between me and more modern Spectrum games, I do feel somewhat reluctant reviewing them for some reason and this shows. I mean it's got a nice look but the gameplay felt off for me and I didn't like it. Maybe this just shows that I should ignore more recent games entirely unless they are obviously very good or obviously very bad. Maybe this will be one to go back to in future to see if my opinion changes for the better. Maybe this will be a review to ignore, yes that'll be it.
This deserves to be listed as one of the worst Speccy games ever, this is appalling. Everything about this game is bad, there's hardly any control with your players, passing doesn't exist, the goalies are shit, the players are confused, it's just badly programmed and badly designed. I even had a player from the other team miss an open goal. I even had a player on my team lose the ball from a throw-in, literally before he's even thrown the ball it's taken away from him by an opposing player and he's moving around the pitch with his arms up ready for a throw-in but with no ball, and so instead he's prancing around the screen like a ballerina, or like John Inman “I'm freeee”. But good lord what a disastrous game this is and this was a fucking tenner as well. Words fail me. There are bad soccer games and then there's this. Like “Macho Man” Randy Savage this game is the cream of the crop but for all the wrong reasons.
By all accounts this is a vastly superior sequel to the appalling Gazza's Super Soccer with so many improvements to the gameplay, even though they appear to be playing with a cricket ball rather than a soccer ball. Also what is with the opposing players' sprites? It's like are we playing against humans? But graphical grumbling aside, it is so much better than the previous Gazza game in so many ways.
This could be fun little game if this is your sort of thing, but ultimately it gets boring too quickly as you're essentially just going in different directions in order to get lost or if you're lucky find some treasure. But when you do though you essentially take part in a quiz, which way to go, which tree, which village, which direction, how many paces, only to be told you got it wrong and the game ends. I'm guessing you had to sail around to gather clues in order to aid you getting this treasure, but can we really be bothered? Likely, no.
Here's an American Football game advertised by sports management heavyweights D&H which was never released due to the company's closure. This seems to be well-written and looks like it could have been the definitive American Football management game had it been released. It didn't have the same flaws most of the other ones had which were essentially Soccer management game re-written for American Football, this one isn't. However, the player selection was not intuitive, it took me forever to work out how to select my best players and then move from one screen to another, and then how to switch from offense to defence. The lack of instructions hurts this considerably. Also, while the match screen is nicely detailed with good information on good plays and how many yards you gained or lost etc, but it was very slow paced, even more so than most Soccer management games. However, this can be changed from a menu I believe and plus you can speed up the emulator so fair enough. It's clear a lot of work and effort went into this game from a clear fan of the sport, clearly sick to death that pretty much all American Football management games were underwhelming and simply football managers re-branded as American Football as if we weren't to know the difference. So while the game strays on the boring side and the menus were a hassle, I admire the effort put into this and it's a real shame for him that this was never released.
Another Isometric game and this one is frankly mental. Saying that however it is a far better game than Fatman and Dobbin's other isometric game 3DC, that I had no fun with, this I did, so at least it has that going for it. Younger me might have enjoyed this even.
It's pretty much a mixture of Snake and Painter but with bricks and you're filling the grid until you're trapped. Not much else to put here other than I've played better. At least the keys were responsive though.
This review is a direct result of an unknown game called Prison Camp which from the screen shot appears to be ripped directly from this game, or at least the main sprite is anyway, and well I haven't done this one and within a minute I can see that I was going to regret this. It's hilariously bad but the way Harry moves around the screen is worth 5 points alone.
You know what's funny? This is supposed to be written as an improvement to Alcatraz Harry and somehow fails. It's more boring, it's more tedious, it's more annoying and the biggest sin of all is Harry no longer walks like a moron.
So like I mentioned Alcatraz Harry's review was a result of a game called Prison Camp which is unknown and turns out to be a complete copy of Alcatraz Harry. But whilst I will never review that particular game it doesn't stop me from looking at another Prison Camp game in response. This one is Dutch from 1985 and was written by Hans Enters, and our dear old mate Martijn van der Heide. And well, less said the better I think, surely he doesn't want to be reminded of this too much.
One of Code Masters' more memorable simulators and yet it's one of the shittest, or at least the Spectrum version is anyway, I'm sure it was good on the other formats, but this Spectrum version I never got on with. But saying that it's better than the Jet Ski garbage they brought out later. The action replay is a pretty nice feature but you see it once and it's impressive, you see it twice and it's not a big deal anymore and it doesn't save this in any way.
It's the sequel nobody has reviewed, or possibly nobody wants to review as this somehow feels worse than the original. The original at least was in colour, this is monochrome, this is faster yet is more uncontrollable, all the bikers are the same colour thanks to the monochrome graphics so they are numbered to separate them and even then I'm still confused with which one I bloody am. It's bad, it's bad and in fact it's donkey shit. BMX Simulator wasn't good but at least it had positives, the graphics are nicer in comparison and the replay was a nice feature to see at least once, whereas this doesn't seem to have any. I take back saying BMX Simulator was one of Code Masters' shitter simulators, this one is, hell this is even worse than the Jet Ski games.
This game is a disaster. I lost my first life the second I started playing and that's the theme of this game, bullets frantically coming from all directions and constantly hitting you and you haven't a hope in hell of getting anywhere. That was when I dismissed this game as a budget shooter and getting exactly what you paid for, then I read WhenIWasCruel's review which he states the following - “original price: full”. Full? Full!? He wasn't wrong, this was £8.95, which absolutely astounds me.
Released in the UK market by Melbourne House as Conquestador, this at first felt like it was going to be an enjoyable game, then I ran out of projectiles and boredom kicked in. This was on to a winner early doors and the graphics are really nicely detailed and colourful and deserved to be loved, but I judge on gameplay and this one didn't quite do it for me which is a shame.
Z, 23 Jan 2021 (Rating: 1)
Z is for Zippy, that's good enough for me, and this one is zippy as a matter of fact cause it's really bloody fast. But that's the only good thing I can say about this, actually hold on being fast is not a good thing because you can't control the bugger. It's also ugly because of the monochrome graphics and the game is boring because of a lack of objection and direction. Even after remaining idle to type up this review the enemies have given up and stopped killing me, the boredom has consumed them as well as it has consumed me.
From dandyboy's review and its original WoS score of 3.18 in 11 votes, I knew I was in for a rough ride and within 10 seconds it delivered. Sure the speed is nice but the shooting hardly works, the graphics are distracting, you die and you don't know why and what hit you, this is shite, there's no other way to describe this. It's ironic that the game has 1 in its title and that is what it scores here, it should be lower and if so it gets minus 58 from me but nevertheless it was chasing fate perhaps.
There are games here that were criminally ripped off by Satan, er I mean Harry Price, and then there was Icicle Works which was ripped off TWICE! Mind Your Head by Tynesoft in 1986 and Gangplank in 1987 by the ironically and prophetically named Pirate Software both stole code from this game. What a bastard. This could have been a decent Boulder Dash game but has letdowns. The scrolling is one and a second is it doesn't seem to give you enough time to complete a level bar the gimme first level and the slowdown associated with the scrolling doesn't help. Pity really because the potential was there but it doesn't quite meet them. But at least it debunks the myth that Harry Price only ripped off shit games to make them even shittier, because this is not terrible by any means.
Saucer, 06 Feb 2021 (Rating: 1)
What is the deal with this game? Why are all the keys aligned vertically? Q, W, E, R and T, why? Why do I get killed immediately after starting the game? Why did I waste time playing this game for a review? Why do I do this to myself? Why? Why?! WHY!!!
Snake, 06 Feb 2021 (Rating: 1)
Well the good news is it's Snake, the bad news is it's pretty bad. The keys are so unresponsive my first game literally ended before it began. I've criticised supposed Snake games for not being Snake in the past, here we have a Snake game and I'm still not satisfied, story of my life.
Duet, 07 Feb 2021 (Rating: 2)
So this is a planned Commando sequel that was to play like Gauntlet. Why? Well it's not a patch on Commando and it's not a patch on Gauntlet, so whatever they were trying to achieve with this one they failed on all accounts. And before this game out on a compilation how much were they planning to sell this for? 8 quid? This has budget price £1.99 written all over it and even then you would have felt pretty ripped off after playing this.
I was presented at random an unknown version of Kung Fu but could have sworn it was similar, and it was. Though I never touched it it appears to be exactly the same as Kung Fu by Your Computer, even The Dean's reviews for both games are identical, so hence I'm reviewing that one instead. And you know what? I really wish I hadn't. First of all it's a two player game, always a problem when there's one person playing and reviewing this game. Secondly the keys were designed by a madman, for the blue fighter we have W E to move, 1 to duck, Caps Shift for K and Z to punch, and for red we have U I, 0 ducks, Enter kicks and L to punch, good luck getting your fingers around them. I know it's a two player game on one keyboard so obviously they have to be closely together for one player and one each side of the keyboard because they correctly predicted social distancing would be in place but what was wrong with W E, A to duck, S to Kick and Z to punch, that would have been so much easier than whatever you got here. And third the hit detection, it is a bit all over the place. Most of the time you will go through your opponent rather than hit him and so effectively beating your opponent is down to chance more than anything. And you need 20 hit points to win, TWENTY, at this rate it'll take me three weeks to get this one done. I only managed three hits in about eleven attempts before calling it quits. I think I'll stick with Yie Ar Kung-Fu thank you very much.
This is a weird one. It's listed as a strategy/war game which is one genre I said I'll never cover on this site along with text adventures, JSW clones, Harry Price's theft catalogue and all those bloody goddam train games that exist, but, cows, who can resist? This was written as part of the 2014 Crap Games Compilation and indeed the author of the game Anders Karlsson, a Swede I presume, is quite a veteran of the Crap Games scene and has written several games for it over the years. Here the objective is take your cows from your side to their side by getting close to them and attacking them, and the attack is basically them drawing a number and the highest one wins the round, two rounds and the battle is yours and the other cow perishes to be on somebody's plate for dinner. Well, I was disappointed with this but then it's a Crap Game so what did I expect? It did its job.
It's definitely something with me and more modern Spectrum games not getting on with each other, but saying that this one was quite a decent one and was a much better game than that Justin game I looked at and I've forgotten the bloody name of, but this was far better.
I think this is a game that has appeared at random for me in the past and I've ignored it for whatever reason, or at least when presented to me at random just now it looked familiar as if to say I had already done it, I had not. But now the time has come for me to do this one, for I want my headstone to read “he tried to play Robotfindskitten once and lived to regret it”, actually no I don't I wish to be cremated when I die but that's just me. Anyway, you are a robot, well a hash but who's judging, and your job is to find kitten. It's based on a game written by Leonard Richardson from 1997 originally on MS-DOS. You are to go around searching various items in your quest to find kitten, which are a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols. Among the items found throughout my game were: a Crudmobile, an old tin can, a marijuana brownie, a sign reading “TO KITTEN” that points in no direction whatsoever, a vase full of artificial floor stuck on the floor, an autographed copy of “Primary Colours” by Anonymous, a quote from Mr. T, reading “I pity the fool who mistakes me for kitten!”, and then Kitten was found, THEN I PRESSED THE RESET BUTTON, and then calm, it's over. Well there's not to say except that's the game, literally. It's not so much the fault of the author of this version, the original game is really that primitive, like hash as the robot, that was at least consistent and correct it was a # in the original. But once you find kitten are you really going to play this again? The likelihood is no.
It's yet another two-player game, or at least it wouldn't let me play by myself so I'm stuck playing a two-player game by myself again which is fastly becoming the story of my life. No instructions here but from what I gather you have to move your pieces close your opponent and attack them to take their spaces, much like in the recently reviewed Battle Cows. My big problem with this is it's too slow paced and the grid is rather large, finishing one game will take a while, and I have other games to play, other things to do and dare I say better, so no thank you.
From 2016, we have Wake Me Up which is thankfully nothing to do with Wham! but rather it's about nightmares. This one has no download link on Spectrum Computing or WoS Classic, so I had to take a z80 snapshot of the RZX walkthrough for the purpose of this review. This is a pretty well-written game, it has an intro cutscene which is very rare for Spectrum games, it's played at a nice speed and it has in-game mini-games which is always a nice touch. It's not the first time I've liked a game from the author, five years prior to this he wrote a game called Stela which is pretty nice and is also worth a look. If you're up for a nice adventure you may want to give this game a shot but like I said no download link is available, so either follow my steps above or find the author's website or something, maybe there's a download there, I don't know. But if you find a way to play this game, please do.
I feared the worst when this showed up and I had to play it, but I was actually pleasantly surprised with this because it's actually pretty good. It's pretty much a mini version of Pac-Man where you control a man to eat all the dots whilst avoiding the arachnid. I actually thought it would be just one screen and that's your lot, but no there are multiple levels which is nice. There are drawbacks of course, one the keys are somewhat unresponsive at times and second the arachnid is easily manipulated so if it's a challenge you're looking for then this won't cut it sadly. But it's still nice for what it is and having played a bulk of bad type-in games lately it's nice to be able to play a good one for a change and I think that reflects on my score for it. I was torn between a 3 or a 4 and eventually I went 4, possibly in comparison to the other type-ins I've played recently in that this is like 50 times better than say Kung-Fu and Saucer. Also, I set the bar low, like really low, and it raised the bar further than even I could have anticipated, and I think that deserves merit. So well done Mutant Arachnid for surprising me in a jolly good way.
I wasn't expecting this to be good but I did not expect it to be this bad. Passing is impossible, the ball is always stolen from you, I've never scored a basket, it's as bad as that bloody Gazza game! Plus, I ran it on 128K knowing that Operasoft games also ran on 128K and had 128K sound, turns out this doesn't have any sound at all. The +3 disk file does have 128K sound but it does not improve on the game quality nor does it change the fact that this game is utter shit. Magic Johnson Basketball was not a great game but is at least a far better game than this.
I'm breaking Yorick Tradition for this next one in that rather than be given a game at random I have handpicked my next game, another Spanish Basketball game for that matter and it shall be directly compared to Golden Basket. While this technically a far better game than Golden Basket it's still not a great game and I'm beginning to think that team basketball and the dear old Spectrum just weren't meant to be together, I say team because one on one games work a bit better. Again passing seems pointless and shooting seems to be entirely random, shoot straight ahead to the basket and it goes diagonal right for some reason, I don't know if it's timing of release or if you need a directional shot but the fact that the instructions are in Spanish doesn't help. It's not a terrible game, not Golden Basket level of terrible, but it's still not remotely enjoyable and it's still not a game I wish to ever play again.
Over the next few reviews I am going to be looking at the Benny Bunny series, all seven of them. Yes, there were SEVEN games in this series, I think there's a reason why this series isn't looked at in the same nature as say the Horace and Dizzy series of games. Beginning with Litterbugs, published on Issue 28 of Sinclair Programs magazine in February 1985. This one isn't bad and with this I can see why the author wrote a second game in this series and beyond, it's quite a simple platformer with a setup that works well. However, you can climb ladders yet cannot climb down for if you do you drop a basket to block the bugs. Also, when you do hit a bug with a basket he will spawn at the same point, and sometimes that's in front of the exit, which means you have to try and manipulate him down the screen for you to get up the screen without him. This was a nuisance but at the same time it made the game work. So not a bad start for Benny Bunny, I have a feeling though that it's going to go pear-shaped from here on.
Part 2 of the Benny Bunny series is The Haunted Belltower, from Issue 31 of Sinclair Programs from May 1985. I had a feeling we were going to go downhill from here after Litterbugs and so far I am proven to be correct. This time you are collecting bells and avoiding bats, once again you cannot climb down ropes only up and also you have nothing to block the bats with this time so if one's coming towards you and you can't escape, too bad. The levels are randomly generated which is a nice touch but it doesn't change that this is far inferior compared to Litterbugs.
From Issue 32 of Sinclair Programs in June 1985 came Burrows, the third game of the Benny Bunny series. And from the screenshot alone it's looking very much like Boulder Dash, except it kind of isn't. You do have gems to collect, you have spiders to avoid and you have boulders to drop on them. But here's the difference you cannot move them and they will not drop unless a spider is directly underneath them. And trying to direct a spider under a boulder is like directing a child to its room, it's not straightforward, I know this being a granddad. Looks like we're downhill now as the second one wasn't good and this one is worse. Surely the only way is up from here right?
The fourth and fifth games of the Benny Bunny series both come from Issue 34 of Sinclair Programs in August 1985. Number 4 is Gold Rush. This is basically like Gilligan's Gold which itself was a clone of an old arcade game called Bagman. Gilligan's Gold was not a good game and this is worse and is easily the worst game of the whole series so far. Up to this point the games have been nicely written but bar the first game the gameplay has let it down, this isn't even nicely written. So four games in and the quality has gone down every single time. This should have been the final nail in Benny Bunny's coffin, but it was far from it.
Also appearing on Issue 34 of Sinclair Programs was Firefighter, the fifth game in the Benny Bunny series and indeed the very reason I'm doing the whole goddamn series. This was selected randomly as my next review and so I felt it was time to do the entire series having put it off for so long and boy am I regretting it now. Here Benny has to put out all the fires by stepping on them or dropping a bucket on them and every screen again is random. Fires appear very quickly and when you step in them you lose energy anyway plus the buckets are over the fires to put them out anyway. On one hand I feel it's a better game than Burrows and Gold Rush but even then on the other hand it's on par with them because while it has an objective it seems almost impossible to complete. Can I stop now please?
Game number 6 of the Benny Bunny series is Monster Mansion, published in September 1985 in the 35th and final issue of Sinclair Programs. Here Benny is babysitting and he's lost the baby, he must find the baby and return it to the nursery by searching rooms and in doing so he must attack enemies with his sword. This is Atic Atac, simple as that. Saying that it is a far better game than the most of the games in this series. I found the baby and succesfully returned to the nursery, and what happens when you do? It disappears again and you repeat the process. Nope, I did it once, that's enough for me. I give this a three because it is so much better than the majority of games in this series, plus it's also better than The Custard Kid, another Atic Atac clone I've previously reviewed. And so that was it, that was the end of the trail for Sinclair Programs magazine and indeed the final chapter for Benny Bun oh wait NO IT BLOODY WASN'T!!
And so here we are, at long last, the seventh and final game of the Benny Bunny series and for this, after the demise of Sinclair Programs magazine, we turn to their sister magazine Sinclair User for Manic Mechanic, published in November 1985, so that's seven games in one year, now that's commitment. This is Burger Time but with spanners. You have to drop all the spanners on the floor to complete a level and you also have what's called an angry customer coming to get you, you have to drop a spanner on him to replenish your energy. This is very important because your energy drops far too quickly otherwise. Well it's not a particularly great game but it is better than Burrows, Gold Rush and Firefighter at least. And that's all folks from Benny Bunny for reals. Of the seven games, two are quite good, two are playable but not fun and three are crap. In truth I think the author should have stopped at Gold Rush and it effectively was a series that overstayed its welcome. Best game? Easily the first one Litterbugs, so much so that I was actually tempted to go back and change it to a 4 but the faults within the game do not justify such a change. Worst game? Gold Rush, it's Bagman done really badly. Gilligan's Gold cloned it poorly and Gold Rush clones it even worse. But anyway, thank goodness it's over. I need a cigarette after that and I don't even smoke.
This is pretty much like Jetpac without the spaceship. You simply hover in space shooting aliens and collecting fuel, and it looks so plain and basic that it doesnt deserve to be any good at all but yet in actual fact it is. It's really good, I enjoyed this one immensely. The two problems I have are it gets repetive, minor problem, however it sometimes doesn't register you're collecting fuel and it just drops through you, bit of a major problem actually especially if you are really running low, that's particularly annoying. But it's still nice and I liked it very much, bit of a pity it was never given a proper commercial release.
It's like Lemonade Stand but with Hot Dogs, oh and it plays for one day and it quits. I think I've said enough about this game already.
I like matching pairs games but this wasn't as fun as it should have been. The cursor square moves too fast which was annoying as it meant I picked the wrong square and then I had forgotten where the previous matching square was. Twinz and Master Brain showed these games can be good fun, but this didn't provide the thrill that I'd hoped for.
The idea is straightforward yet at the same time it's too hectic for me to fully get on board with. I mean once it hits two minutes it's just mental from that point on. I'm sure it'll provide good fun for someone if it's your sort of thing.
Everything's in German here but from what I gather you first have to set traps for your opponent, either a question or a wall, if a question you need to type in a question and answer, so for example What is my name? The answer is Potato. When you're finished you can return home and now it's player two's turn, yes it's another bloody two player game again! Just. My. Luck! However, you can't even type properly at the text goes funny and you can't delete it, plus when you do get a question right you still cannot pass the wall, or at least the one type I typed in the answer properly and I went to go past the wall it said game over. And that's it. What a mess. I want to play Mutant Arachnid again to make up for this disappointment.
Flappy, 27 Mar 2021 (Rating: 3)
It's basically Sokoban but with egg shaped boulders. Not really interesting nor exciting, however it was a bit better than I anticipated so bonus point for that I guess.
I totally forgot about this game, maybe because I thought I'd already done it but it turns out I haven’t. There isn't much I can say that hasn't been said already, but this is really good, in fact I'll chip in and say I find it's better than Commando.
This is proper weird stuff. The default screenshot doesn't offer much and indeed that is largely the gameplay. I managed to press M for some kind of map while pressing R got me to a screen of doors like a 3D Maze game, though it doesn't appear to lead to anything and the rooms all mostly look the same anyway. So is it just a bunch of screens with doors and no objective? And while that went on I pressed space to take me back to the info screen and my funcionamiento had plummeted, meaning it had still be going on while I was nagivating the rooms of nothingness. This game could really do with instructions but whether they exist is anybody's guess.
This is quite a tricky game, you are given a formula at the start of the level and you must collect the formula in that order. To do this you have to go around the level onto the gears, some of them moving clockwise, some of them anti-clockwise, and you have to go around the gear to collect the item. Collect all three pieces of the formula in the correct order and you proceed to the next level, if not you do the level again. The controls are fiddly and confusing but otherwise it's not a bad game once you get your head around it. The game was quite well received at the time and I can see why.
Darts, 27 Mar 2021 (Rating: 2)
Well it's not the worst darts game I've played but you can't face the computer, it can only be played by one player by yourself or two players, the latter being a recurrence in my reviews and it is really starting to get on my nerves. It does have the arcade challenge where you have to beat a score, but that's the total score altogether and not the score with three darts, once you get a 180 you get a 500 point bonus and it rather defeats the purpose frankly.
Guide your helicopter around the maze with the awful 1-5 numbered keys. If it was the 6-0 keys I can at least get around that by mapping it to the cursor keys and the tab key but here I can't and so I pretty much have no hope of getting past the first screen. I say first screen assuming there are multiple screens since you have a fire button, I assume you have enemies to shoot later. But I never got that far and never will as I shall never play this again.
Haven't played a Frogger clone in a while and after this I can't help but feel put off to play another. Simply put this is bad and quite possibly one of the worst Frogger clones I've ever played in my life. If it's not as bad as the A'n'F version it's pretty damn close.
It's another one of these fall down avoiding things kind of games, and this time we're avoiding mushrooms straight from Centipede. Not remotely exciting but it is far better than Asteroids Attack so it deserves a higher mark for that at least.
Loading this was a bit of a hassle but never mind I managed it in the end, it was more my fault than anything. Here we have three things to do, hunt which shoots mooses for food, prospect which is searching for gold and avoid rocks, and trading post which is buying food, water and ammo with money. Occasionally you will have to fend off an ambush from indians. It's not a bad game in general but longevity will be a problem as once you do everything once it just repeats itself a lot. However, I dis enjoy this one enough to have a save file which I shall return to to see if I can muster up anything else from this game.
I'm with kphair, this game does look very familiar to another game, one I've possibly reviewed, and I cannot for the life of me remember it. Anyway this isn't much good really, getting the bonus item is down to chance and when you do go for it there's a chance an enemy will pop up from out of nowhere and kill you. One I'll thankfully put away and never play again.
Well it is a snake game and one with a bit of a difference. For here we have numbers and our snakey friend, Graham I presume is his name, has to eat them in numerical order. Not particularly exciting but at least it's much better than the snake game from 16/48 Magazine I reviewed a couple of months ago so I've definitely played worse.
Well it's a pretty straightforward shooter but it's also quite a slow paced and noisy one. Not the worst I've played for sure but certainly one of the more tedious.
This is quite a popular game and I can safely see why. I love the opening graphics, absolutely bloody gorgeous, and yet the in-game cutscenes and graphics are in monochrome, I'm guessing they used up all the graphic points in the intro. The gameplay is simple and works very well, very arcade friendly and simple enough to be ported accurately. It's no Rainbow Islands and it's no Pang, but it's still a very worthy arcade conversion to look at.
Wall, 05 Apr 2021 (Rating: 2)
It's Breakout and it contains a 128K version Wham!'s Bad Boys, though I don't think it's off Mark Alexander's Wham! Music Box so I won't tell them off for it. This is basically a 128K upgrade of Thro' the Wall, an old Breakout clone from 1982. The game plays pretty much exactly the same but it now has additional in-game tune and it's a pretty annoying one, especially when it seems to stutter when things are moving, yet when you sit still and the ball travels straight upwards it runs quicker. But I suggest you play this game with the music off because it's quite irritating. Tell you what though, it may be a 128K upgrade technically but quality wise it's no upgrade at all, in fact it's no better or possibly slightly worse because of the dreadful music associated with it. Call me senile but if it's a supposed upgrade of an ancient game I expect it to be an improvement and it very much isn't.
This review comes to you by complete accident! I took down some games for future reviews as I work best with a list, and I came across Gunboat but actually wrote down the publisher Piranha instead, whoops. But never mind, here's Piranha anyway from 16/48 Magazine and I've seen this type of game before, Glug Glug was it? Anyway this is a bit naff, the diver moves too slow and the piranhas will end up eating you even if you are above their mouths. I'm certain a BASIC game of this nature could be better and perhaps one exists already, but not today, this is all I can take for now.
Now I look at Gunboat following my glitch mentioned in Piranha's review, and well I now wish I never bothered. This is as unplayable and unenjoyable as Bestial Warrior, but at least you were able to control your man, fire your weapon and you had lives. Here can't even do anything before dying and you only have one life. You basically paid 9 quid for game you can't even last more than ten seconds, unless you bought the Alternative Software version which if so you only paid 2 quid, still it was a waste of money and time on all accounts.
Listed as inspired by Centipede but while the similarities are there this is not quite Centipede, which is a shame because I like my Centipede games. Saying that, as a shooter it's a bit on the bland side but it's passable as well, especially compared to what I've been playing recently. This is like 12 tiers ahead of Gunboat.
UFO, 08 Apr 2021 (Rating: 2)
This is sort of like a Pac-Man game, you eat a dot then eat an enemy and then reach the bottom to bank your enemy. It's not the worst game I've played but the keys are bizarre, like numbered keys but in the wrong order and so when playing with a cursor or sinclair joystick it makes no sense.
I feel immensely disappointed with this because I thought this was something to do with cooking, which now happens to be one of my most favourite things to do personally thanks to the lockdowns. However, it's got nothing to do with cooking, it's about running a business and a lot of these games were like that and some are better than this, a lot better as a matter of fact. This fell flat very quickly and never recovered. I have reviewed a lot of bad games here but a lot of the times it is most expected and thus very few have left me with a great sense of disappointment, this game has achieved that.
I was to look at the Nigel Stuart version but that didn't work for some reason, so here's Russell Marks's 128K conversion of the ZX81 game instead. Now this was written originally by Don Priestley, yes that Don Priestley. But I got to say, this was not good. It's pretty boring waiting for something to appear to shoot it, it was more fun shooting the buildings even though they dock you points and the keys are bonkers. Why on earth is N left and bloody J for right, left and right controls should be BESIDE each other not above one another. Madness. So no I couldn't get on with this one at all.
It's just another basic football manager game. The "lottery-style" player selection is weird and confusing for purists. The match screen simply has the ball move to a different player every minute but doesn't seem as slow compared to others and come to think of it there isn't much loading in this game which makes a nice change.
Possibly the worst game show conversion I've ever played. The rounds are there but with the exception of Mental Agility they are poorly implemented. Then it crashed before the General Knowledge round. Consult would go on to do a perfectly good version of Every Second Counts a year later but this one is better off just forgotten about.
Another one I swear I already did. This is alright, it's fine as a pool game and you can mix up the gameplay like have them pot in numerical order for instance. But I have personal grievances with this game. Firstly the controls are awkward as hell, when I move left it moves right then turns left and vice versa, I did not like these controls at all. Secondly I potted a ball into a x6 and then potted the cue ball and the score counted, I feel it shouldn't count. Like if I pot a nine ball to win then pot the cue ball with it doesn't count, if I pot the pink ball plus the cue ball I don't get my six points added to my break, so that score shouldn't have counted yet it did. It's not a bad game, in fact it's a nice game, but it wasn't a fun game because of these faults that personally annoyed me and got me a bit mad.
This one I had many years ago and I quite like this game many years ago. However I don't really understand what I like about it that much because it's so frickin boring. The graphics are nice but there's nothing in the gameplay that screams thrills and excitement. You're just floating around shooting and collecting things and getting lost. The Great Escape for instance is a pretty boring game now for instance but at least the navigation and exploration in that game can provide some enjoyment, this didn't even have that going for it. So no, nice graphics but boring game all round.
I was hoping this would be fun but I'm afraid it is far from it. You're given a five letter word and you have to worked out a 5x5 grid of anagrams with no letter being the same in any vertical, horizontal or diagonal line. Far too confusing for me, even an anagram solver was no help.
What the heck is with this game? It's meant to be like Manic Miner but the gameplay is a disaster. Why does he only jump one way? This makes everything so much harder than it needs to be.
Trog, 10 Apr 2021 (Rating: 2)
It's Defender again and it's pretty rubbish really. The hit detection seems off in this one. It kind of looks Defender but if definitely does not play Defender. Better clones exist compared to this.
This always glitches four screens in after jumping on the last platform over the spikes. Not only that when you pick the first chap and he falls on screen 3 his face falls off and he looks like a completely different person. Gotta say it, not well written. The author mainly wrote text adventures and only wrote one other arcade game which I shall do next. Perhaps he should have stuck to text adventures, unless they glitch after 4 or 5 screens as well.
And here is that other arcade game from the mysterious Kno of Alien Software who also wrote the bugged La Caza del Homo Sapiens. Now this game can at least be finished to a conclusion, but to call it confusing is an understatement. It's a two player game so once again I was playing two players by myself, how many times has that happened in recent times? Basically stuff fall, you collect and it scores points, sometimes, it seems to work best if you stand completely still. Then if you don't it falls to the ground. For whatever reason the score multiplied for player two. Then the game suddenly ended and the scores were tallied up. Player one ended on 46000 and two lives left meaning he scored 92000 points, while player two ended with 212000 points but no lives, which was why it ended, meaning he scored 0 points and player one was the winnner! It is a game in the very least but man what a confusing one!
I loaded up the wrong one! It was meant to be the Your Spectrum version and this is the Your Computer version, never mind I've started so I'll finish. In the first game the computer took all night thinking of a move when it was so obvious for him to block my three in a row and he played elsewhere, meaning it's an easy placement for connect 4 and I win the round. What a farce. But then he recovered to outsmart me in the next two games to win outright, well there was more but I made it best of 3. The computer is either inconsistent or the game increases difficulty with each round, which would begin to explain why he practically handed me to first game. As for the game itself, well it's alright but it's no better than the Atlantis version and that got a 3 so I have to say 2 for that and the first round alone.
And here's the Connect 4 game I was supposed to review if only for my mishap in playing the wrong one for 15 minutes before realising it was the wrong one. I should have known, this has a review already and the other didn't, no one's fault but mine but never mind let's get right to it. I'm conflicted about this one. It feels more slower and boring compared to the Your Computer version, however it also feels more proper with a much clever opponent especially on hard which makes the difference for me. I didn't mind this version really. I'm not entirely sure if it's better than the Atlantis version but the question really is is it better than the Your Computer version? And I think it's a narrow yes in that it felt like a proper game and a proper challenge, rather the computer can randomly give up and hand you an easy victory when it feels like it like it did in the previous game. So for that alone, I have to give this the nod, the acknowledgement as a better game and subsequently the higher mark.
Football manager games are usually slow but this takes the piss. After selecting your team they are drawn into groups and is a process that takes forever! Thank goodness for speed up on emulators. And then my team Rangers (for no reason, I'm a Southampton fan) came up last, surely that's not always the case is it? First match vs Napoli walloped 4-0, the match screen being nothing but a timer and the stadium from the loading screen, but when there's a goal the crowd get animated and the border goes crazy, well it's different at least. Then the other results appear on screen and this takes forever as well. From the other menus, training either results in no change or their fitness suffers and the transfer market works like an auction. But annoying to enter a player or a bid the game insist to begin with 0, so for number 4 I have to type 04, to make a £600,000 I have to type 0600000, which is just stupid. I think I'm preferring British Super League, the last manager I reviewed before this one, as that had far less waiting compared to this. Nice idea giving this is group based European soccer before the Champions League, but it's just too slow. Oh and I lost 2-0 to Malmo and 4-0 again, this time to Tottenham. Three defeats and no goals, says it all.
I'm not too familiar with Snow Bros, the arcade game this is based on, but going on this it seems like a nice game. It's more or less a snow themed Bubble Bobble, it's quite cute and has gameplay that works once you get to grips with it. You throw snowballs at enemies multiple times before they become big snowballs and you eventually get to roll them onto the others. Fairly enjoyable stuff.
This was no fun. What fun is it to have your car the same colour as everyone else and when you're close together you can't tell which one you are? What fun is it when you can't even control the bastard vehicle and you're instead bouncing around the track like a pinball having an epileptic fit? What fun is it that you spent £2.99 on a game as pathetic and grossly unrewarding as this? What fun is it that you just spent a few moments of your life reading my review about this awful hideous excuse of a rally game? What fun is it? Here's a hint, two words first letters F and A and you can work out the rest for yourselves.
This, while without question is a classic game for so many reasons, it is a game that I frankly never really had the patience to sit through continually. It was, as far as I can tell, the first of its kind, and there have been other games on the market that tried to emulate this and none have come close to doing so. It's a nice game but it's a fiddly game and you do need a degree of patience to get by this one
Never knew this one existed until discovering it on World of Spectrum. The same style as Formula One is present but this seems more fussy with a constance for pitting, something that wasn't much of an issue in Formula One. There I only needed to use my pit crew like once or twice where as here I have to do so about four or five times, longer races yes but still it was highly annoying. I do like how you don't spend money on your bike as that was a problem for me in the previous game but the bike setup itself is fussy as well and much more simpler in Formula One. I never had much patience for that game and I definitely will not have patience for this game. Much preferring Formula One compared to this.
This was a bit of a big deal back in the day with the game advertising a steering wheel for the game which would certainly have been one of the first peripheral hardwares released on a home computer or console. Ultimately it appears the game, initially set for release by Spirit, was never released and eventually saw light from Mastertronic as Formula One Simulator, with no obvious mention of the steering wheel because that got canned as well. And after one playthrough of this will show you exactly why this game did not get a release initially, because it's pitiful. The keys positions aren't great but not disastrous and I was able to work around them, but it didn't stop the car's controls being awkward especially with the wonky braking. Also, the game is played in a first-person perspective complete with the hands locked on the steering wheel, and I mean locked because when turning the wheel doesn't even move. What is the point of having a game with a potential steering wheel option is the steering wheel itself doesn't move. Also the steering wheel is listed in the options but it only seems to move right on the cursor keys. But this is astonishingly bad. Take a look at Chequered Flag one year earlier and you will see my point completely.
I can't get off the fourth screen, but I find this strangely addicting. It works well and it's good fun. One day I will get past the fourth screen, I only stopped because I have more games to review, but I like it and can easily get hooked to it.
I'm pleased this game got a second chance to shine on the archive, but I have to say the original is best. I found the original addicting while this I did not share the same enthusiasm for.
You're shooting tanks and after five misses your game ends. As The Dean states no scoring makes it pointless. A high score board would have been the only redeeming thing about this game and it doesn't even have that.
Juliet Software strike again! From one look at it it looks like a colourful decent Breakout clone, and from the first seconds of gameplay you will notice it's fast and responsive, have we finally found the definitive Juliet Software game? The answer of course is no because of course this was a Juliet Software developed game and of course all Juliet Software developed games are shit. You can ask yourself, well surely they couldn't bugger up Breakout can they? Well by George they did! For instance, it only hits blocks singularity so no multi-hits in this game. Also you lose your lives way too early here. The ball wasn't even past the bat and still I lost a life. Yep, Juliet Software cocked up Breakout all right
From Spanish Breakout to German Space Invaders and this one is just as bad. It's jerky, the enemy bullet is the same as yours so you can't tell if one is coming or going, half the time yours doesn't even work and you can't even see there's coming towards you. And you know what else? The Invaders don't even move down the screen which is basically the whole bloody point of Space Invaders. I suppose the only main difference is this was a type-in while Brick Breaker was a commercial release, so with this you weren't ripped off, so in essence this wins. I tell who doesn't win though, you or more precisely me for playing them.
From Spanish Breakout to German Space Invaders to Australian Frogger! Well actually it's not really Frogger as you just have to cross your frogs across the road and that's it. Even if you get all five the game loops your score resets and you begin again. But some of the sounds and designs are familiar, that's because they were re-used for another game, that game being Horace Goes Skiing. So there you go the origins of Horace Goes Skiing came directly from this game, or please don't tell it's the other way round this came after.
I had a real hard time with this game, and even after reading Digital Prawn's review I still had a hard time with this game! You have to shoot a letter up the screen and have it land on top of the top of the top ring as he called it so we'll go with ring, but there are blockers in the way of your shot constantly and even when you do get past them and you do get it on the ring, it has to be dead centre, just a bit outside and tough titties, no points for you. Very frustrating, annoying and not very fun at all.
This game is a train wreck, one of those games that's so bad it's hilarious. There are multiple events each having you press space to throw, jump or a burst of speed in the running events and in the latter the speed burst hardly works, even after pressing it it just fails to register. Also the 800m joins in at the halfway point which basically means you've put the 400m in twice, that is just lazy, lazy programming. Then after all the events are finished we sim through the non-playable events such as 1500m, 5000m, boxing and judo etc and of all these events I only won one gold in lightweight boxing, everything else we lost. And then have "make note" of these scores for side two where you then enter what you scored in side one, meaning you can just cheat and say you won every event! And also, yes unbelievably there's more, the inconsistency in this game is astounding. In side 2 we have the marathon in between events, five stages in all. In stage 3 and 4 I was nowhere near the front of the pack but by the final stage I was the first one to appear on screen and ended up winning! This is so fricking bad. There are a lot of events so you did get some degree of value for money, it wasn't like it's six events and your done, but perhaps there's too many events and most of them are poorly implemented anyway. I nearly died in laughter playing this game, because it's so inconsistent and absolutely dreadful in every conceivable way and yet it was bloody funny at the same time. On hilarity this get five fucking stars all day long, but on quality it's a 1 and it's lucky to even get that. Never again Jesus, never again.
The Power House brings us yet another disaster with this ugly unplayable game. It is one of five Power House games listed on the Original World of Spectrum's top 100 worst games list, it doesn't take very long to discover why.
It's just a basic looking shooter and nothing more than that. The are three phases, phase 1's shooting orbs or something around that region and phase 2 is Pheenix birds, then I died so I don't know what phase 3 is, oh well to that then. It's got a basic, simple look but it was not worth a fiver. Not terrible but not pretty either.
It's like Auto Chef except it's based on the airline, obviously. Within the first seconds of the game I had a crew strike and a hijack and then I was liquidated and the game ended. Third game I insured cover for a hikack, still got hijacked and still got liquidated. It seems the game punishes you for every choice you make which makes the whole thing bloody pointless. I was going into this hoping it would be better than Auto Chef and it turns out to be even worse!
Lawn, 24 Apr 2021 (Rating: 1)
The next few games are from a 5 in 1 compilation called Double Value Cassette from Valuesoft and author Neil Briffett. I will post a review for each game individually and then post a review for the compilation itself. First up is Lawn which is lawn mowing simulation before Lawn Mower Simulator was a thing. It's pretty dull, the game is slow and the keys are very unresponsive. Play the game on hard and it's much better but the key response is still a problem. There are only three lawns to do and that's it.
Ascot, 24 Apr 2021 (Rating: 1)
Next up from Valuesoft's Double Value Cassette is Ascot, a horse racing betting game. And speaking of betting I would have placed a safe bet that this game would be better than Lawn, turns out it's even slower, more boring and thus even worse. And also they look more like labradors than horses. Also two games into the compilation and there's no sound in either of them.
Next up on Valuesoft's Double Value Cassette is Deathman. Here you have been found guilty of playing Valuesoft games and are given the only fit punishment of playing Deathman, which given the quality of the first two games Lawn and Ascot they may be on to something. Here I have to guess the word one letter at a time, yes this is hangman, except here you can die by hanging, guillotine or by firing squad. But apart from the method of execution the in-game rules are exactly the same. This is easily the best game in this compilation so far, and I'm willing to predict as a whole, as there's different difficulties and different ways you can die and the variety stands out. It's still not a great game mind you but just try and compare it to Lawn and Ascot, actually don't do that you might get a migraine.
Game 4 of Valuesoft's Double Value Cassette is Bomber 2. And it's Blitz and I've played a thousand of these over the years or at least it feels like it. I've played better frankly, the timing seems way off here to me.
And the final game of the Double Value Cassette is Deathtrap Mine. In this one you have to collect the five bags of gold in order to bribe your escape. But in between this you have to take part in some minigames, such as the Egotistical Gorilla where you have to type in his name that flashes up for half a second. I swear I reviewed something like this possibly last year or even a couple of years now and I can't remember the bloody name of it. When I do find it I will edit this review and insert it in for no-one to see or even care about, including yours truly. With all the minigames going on this is by default the best game in this compilation. However that mystery game I reviewed of a similar nature was better. But still, it took it to the last game but finally this compilation has something worth playing for more than a minute.
(It was Spectrum Safari and indeed it is better than this)
Well time for the inevitable where I round up the entire compilation. Ultimately it's five games and none of them are any good. The first two games, Lawn and Ascot, really bring this thing down with its boring, tedious and silent gameplay. Ideally you want your compilation to start on a good note to set the mood and I don't think this compilation could have begun in a more bum note if it tried. Deathman is a step up and I use that term loosely, Bomber 2 is one of the 4176 Blitz games on the Spectrum and it's been done so much better compared to this and Deathtrap Mine was at least a competent way to round off the compilation and is the only one worth having a look at. But really the safest thing to do with this is simply to not bother. Oh and in case you're curious, this went in the shops for £7.95 which works out to be £1.59 per game. I say it once more, these games were therefore cheap and exactly what you paid for.
United, 26 Apr 2021 (Rating: 3)
It's yet another football manager game, but I have to say while it was very slow paced it was actually enjoyable. It starts off weird in that you have no players and you have to buy them from scratch, like a draft pretty much. Then when starting a game I had to choose to play clean or hard 1-10, I went 4 and had to set 4 levels on my players and it so bloody confusing. Having eventually gotten out of it I just went clean 0 every time going forward to avoid that BS again. The match isn't the usual static screen however, instead you get the ball moving around the pitch and shots take place, whether you score or it's saved or intercepted by the sweeper. But I have to say, this was not bad, it's slow, it's a bit boring because it's slow, but it offered a bit of difference and that makes a difference.
Punchy, 26 Apr 2021 (Rating: 3)
Have to be honest, I quite like this one. It's a much better Hunchback game than the officially licensed game. The speech however is hilariously bad. What on earth is he trying to say? Also what is with the text in the high score screen with the T looking like a J? Sirrah has ajjained one of jhe jop eighj scores of jhis fine day. I thought Crazy Cars' A looking like an O was bad but this is something else! But aside from that it's the gameplay that scores points for me and this wasn't bad at all.
Off-topic note - if anyone comes across the “incorrect response received from application” screen when posting or editing a review you will need to sign out and then sign in again, it will likely read “incorrect response” which at this point you have to press back on your browser, enter your password again and you should be set. And you'll need to do this multiple times as well which is annoying. But just a heads-up in case anyone else is having the same problem and can't post anything as a result. This will be deleted when the issue is fixed. Onto the review now.
I like the graphics and I really like the music, but the gameplay stunk for me. It's so bloody difficult controlling your spaceship and shooting at enemies did me no good at all. Absolutely gutted with how this played because with the graphics and especially the music this deserved to be good, but it's not.
Why change your rules and your setup and make no sense of it? Trivial Pursuit as a structure is perfection, the biggest problem with the Spectrum port not being anything to do with the rules but with the fact that you can cheat by telling it your always right. The problem with this is the same fault exists and they've removed the game board and instead we travel to different planets in order to correctly answer questions to obtain certain items. They have turned Trivial Pursuit from a fun board game to a boring quiz game. Also, it's 2045AD and Earth is a dying planet, well thanks for telling us that when it's now 24 years away and we're in a pandemic! But anyway, this is crap, I'll take the board game please.
I quite like these match pairs games and have reviewed two good ones in Twins and Master Brain. This though? I want to like it but something feels a bit off. I think it's meant to be played like a two player and the one with the most pairs wins. Also is the grid too big perhaps? It's not a bad game but Twinz and Master Brain are much better in comparison.
Orbit, 29 Apr 2021 (Rating: 1)
It's Blitz again, well sort of. You're dropping bombs on buildings like Blitz but this time you're shooting eneny fighters with your laser, and it just doesn't work. For instance the laser takes too long to fire and this becomes a problem when trying to shoot an enemy directly near you. Also, too many times an enemy appeared at the end of the screen just as you enter it leaving you totally helpless. Nice idea to try and shake up the same ol Blitz gameplay but it completely fails, hell that bloody Blitz game I played on that Double Value Cassette nonsense played better than this and that was shite.
I quite like this but there is a problem with the shooting, sometimes it doesn't fire when you want it to and it leaves you a sitting duck for destruction. However, I was expecting much much worse and thankfully it's not. I would have happily paid £1.99 or whatever it was back in the day,
Bozxle, 29 Apr 2021 (Rating: 2)
I don't really like Sokoban much, that reflects on my feelings for this game, it's a bit naff. I mean it's looks nice and it looks proper, but I've never got on with Sokoban's gameplay and this is no exception. But the one thing I don't understand is you have a fire button, and what does this fire button do? It quits the game, when there's a separate quit button, so why the flipping hell have you given me TWO quit buttons? Very odd indeed. Also I played another Sokoban-type game called Flappy a while ago and this is no better than that. Oh look I seem to have found a third quit button as a matter of fa oh wait that was the reset button, ahem never mind.
It's sort of like a mixture of Bubble Bus' Brainstorm and Starquake with a blend of Jetpac. It's quite alright actually, there is a problem with dying easily and constantly and it's certainly enough to lose a point but it is not to Bestial Warrior's level. It's quite playable and quite enjoyable, not bad at all really. There are good 3s and not so good 3s, those that are disappointing and not what you hoped for are the bad 3s while the good 3s are those that were better than you expected and this falls onto that category.
Simply guide your drag racer across the screen by changing its gear pressing 1 2 3 and 4 at the right time, failure to do so will result in a blow engine. Not much of a game really, can be finished in under 20 seconds and there are no levels. Well, that was a quick one.
An interesting darts game but ultimately a poorly implemented one. Certainly a better darts game than Eric Bristow's Pro Darts but the scoring is far too random, which I suppose is kind of random but part of a good darts game is the skill involved, which is what this severely lacks.
This is really bad. The keys are in a straight line, Caps Shift left Z down, X up and C right, why even do this? It makes the game more bloody hard than it already is! Bonkers! Thankfully I used the kempston controls with the cursor but it still plays like arse. You are supposed to be collecting diamonds and avoiding enemies but there's simply far too many of them and good luck avoiding them with keys this bad. And you know how tough this game is? So much so that the author has added controls of Shift and M for more lives. You know what else? Shift and L takes you automatically to the next level. But wait come here, there's more, there's Shift and A, you know what that does? I'll tell you what that does, it aborts the game, which having played this trust me it is the best thing you can possibly do.
It's another Atic Atac style game that's boring and probably even more uninspired than The Custard Kid which sums it all up for me. Stick to the real thing.
Oh Dro Soft, I used to see you as the top software publisher of Spain, but after your Juliet Software games, your disappointing Capcom conversations and now this sorry excuse for a licence I am really starting to reconsider that theory. This is bloody awful. The graphics are appalling, the fighting is dull and mostly consists of the fighters waving their legs about hitting thin air, the music if you could call it that is just random noise, this is atrocious. It was only released in Spain and none of the UK market houses touched this game and for good frickin reason.
I start this review with a complaint! The game is listed in English but in actual fact it's in Romanian! Insert angry face emoji here. Anyway Simplex is a collection of mini-games, nine in total, some are obvious some aren't and the menus being in Romanian and not English, thank you World of Spectrum once again, are a problem with the less obvious ones. After much deliberation as to how I'm going to work this review I have decided that I shall do this one in the same way that I have started doing compilations and play and review each game individually first before giving it a final rating.
Wall 1
It's the same bloody game as Thru the Wall but re-skinned and contains the exact same faults, how many times did this game get cloned? At this rate it's probably now the second most cloned game on the Spectrum behind Jet Set Willy!
Hanoi 2
Hanoi is that Towers game where you move pieces around to arrange them in order of size from biggest to smallest on the right hand side, except this has levels so at least it'll keep you going for a bit and it has much more appeal than the bloody breakout game.
Cursa 1
It's the first less obvious one and it's horse racing betting or something similar to it and you don't even place a bet. Choose a number between 1 and 9, I went 1 because I didn't know what I was doing, watch the numbers race and that's it. Once the race ends you're back to the main menu.
Ruleta 1
Ruleta looks like it could be Roulette, but imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was actually oh who am I kidding it is Roulette. Here I was only able to proceed to the wheel, which isn't in this version, until I bet ALL of my money, and of course I bloody lost, well bollocks to this game then.
Labirint 1
Labirint on the other hand looks like it could be some kind of Labyrinth maze game but in actual fact it is Pac-Man! This is the screenshot game and I can see why because it is appalling, so appalling it may be the worst Pac-Man game I have ever played in my life! The ghost moves exactly the same direction as you do and thus you can easily manipulate it and trap it in order for easy progression.
Papagalul 1
It's a memory sequence game with letters. I think you have to press the letter on screen within a time limit but the keys are so unresponsive you get disqualified even after pressing the letter.
Formula 1 1
This is one of those race track games, fall down a continuous track collecting pills or something and avoiding cars. One level of this was enough.
Black Jack 2
Black Jack is exactly that, and it's not terrible but once you enter a bet you can't change it and there's an issue with key response, I went for another card and it didn't give me one, pressed it again it gave me two and I bust. Also it gave me a Jack Pot after hitting 21 with four cards, no dear a Black Jack is 21 with two cards and two cards only. Amateurs. Saying that compared to the others it's not that bad.
Spinzuratoarea 1
And finally we have, well however you pronounce this. This could have been anything, a spin the wheel type game, fruit machine, frisbee throwing, potato juggling, but as it turns out it's Hangman. Hangman where you enter a word and then guess the word you just entered. I'm guessing it's a two player.
Overall -50
Bloody hell what did I just spend the past hour playing? Nine games, only two of them are worth a damn, three if you count the horrific Pac-Man just to see for yourself how horrific it really is, but on the wider scale none of them are any real good. And that is it for Simplex, forever, forever. For. Ever. And ever, and ever, and ever, AND EVER!
I've reviewed all these so don't mind if I do while I compile a new list of games to review.
Shadow Warriors 3
This always looked like a great game but its intense difficulty made it too frustrating for me to enjoy it properly.
Golden Axe 4
Holds its own to be a nice playable port as well as containing a wonderful title tune.
Total Recall 3
Well polished and certainly looks the part but it's brutal in terms of difficulty as you only have one life.
Ivan Ironman Stewart's Super Off Road 3
Was disappointed with this. It's hard to identify your car when everyone is clustered together and they are all the same colour, something that wasn't a problem in the Sprint ports.
Overall 3
Not a bad compilation really with none of the games being particularly bad.
This is dreadful. The jumping is just terrible, the level layout is a nightmare, everything is just so wrong and so bad. This game is also and probably best known as Short's Fuse since the original Bombscare was MIA for years, but playing this will leave you with a short fuse.
Might as well go ahead and look at the other Bombscare game on the database. And no it's not a sequel, you thank the original World of Spectrum for how it's listed in this site since that's where most of the this site's database is directly based on, in fact they shared the same server and everything I believe. Anyway enough about that dead site we're taking about Bombscare and well this looks like it could be a fun little game when you get your head around it, or rather if. Going by Cruel's when he states he didn't know what to do with the items, er what are the items exactly? Most of them didn't seem to do a thing. I did get a gun, or at least it looked like a gun and yet I died before I could use it. Then another item teleported me back to the start and I died almost immediately afterwards. I then got teleported again to an area which contained an exit, naturally I went to the exit and I failed because the bomb was still active, but I left with my life and got a 10,000 points bonus and I'm calling it a moral victory. It's confusing and the items appear to be mostly useless but at least it's playable unlike that other bloody Bombscare game.
I believe you are suppose to find an exit but it get too boring too quickly. You can however create your own mazes to play on, I made mine piss easy and so I won, I shall call it a triumphant completion and thus never play this ever again.
I've played some bad Donkey Kong in my life and this one is up there among the worst I've ever played. What chance do you have of reaching the top when you can't even jump forward, you don't even have a hammer to hit the barrels and you appear to be stuffing your face with cream buns during the level. I thought the goal was to rescue the princess not get diabetes. There is nothing more I can sat about this game other than it is an astounding pile of donkey cack.
Simply bounce the ball on the box, easy right? No, you have to press down directly as it touches the box and sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. I've played a lot of rubbish games lately, this one isn't quite as bad as Killer Kong and Bombscare but it's still a pretty bad game.
Have to say, this wasn't a bad football management game. There's almost no waiting for loading which allows you to maintain the flow of the game which ultimately maintains the enjoyment value. There was also no need to speed up the emulator for this game which makes a change. Plus I did rather well at first before fading away and failing to qualify. But still, one of the more pleasant experiences I've had with one of these games. Oh and Davey's right, the kits look like mutants, once you see it you cannot unsee it.
This is a "Pools Predictor" game that works more like a Database game rather than a management game. By one run you are curious and by another you a bored and unamused.
Bronx, 02 Jun 2021 (Rating: 2)
Another Spanish game and this time it's one I am at least aware of. It's a fighting game and one that serves as overly ambitious especially in the graphics department but ultimately looks and feels more sluggish and clumsy. The attribute leakage from the sprites is quite nasty and the fighting is not pleasant. You have a weapon that's useless, collision detection is seemingly random and your opponent can score points by hitting you on the head even when you're crouching down, how the hell does that work? In the end the best possible way I found to progress was not with combos or head shots or using my pathetically pointless weapon, but rather progression was achieved by repeatedly hitting my opponent in the nuts, that alone says it all really. It's not a terrible game and it's not deserving of a 1 because it's not Karateka bad, but it is a weak and clumsy beat em up that was big is presentation but minute in delivery.
It's Tetris and it's from a chap named Michael Batty who's biggest claim to fame, or perhaps infamy, is being responsible for the god awful sequel to the highly overrated Full Throttle. Full Throttle is not a good game but it did not deserve the abysmal sequel it received. This game however is Tetris and a game Batty wrote initially in 1989 and never finished it until 1996. And being published under the name Church of the Latter Day Speccy and having a completely bastardised rendition of Hark the Herold Angels Sing at the title screen gives you the hint that we're going all religious with this one. But once you get past all that it's pretty much Tetris and it's pretty competent too. It's colourful, straightforward, plays at a nice pace, the music during the game is much more tolerable, it's fine. I mean there doesn't seem to be much of an objective and you keep going till you die but that pretty much was Tetris really. Yeah didn't see a lot wrong with this apart from the horrific title music and once again it's a Tetris game that is much better than the officially licensed version.
Basically it's a wild west shootout between you and Slim Joey and there isn't really much to it. He moves quick and you move painfully slow, so slow it will take him like half a week to reach Joey and even then he's more likely to be shot because he's too damn slow to avoid the oncoming bullets. It also said you can only survive two hits yet you need three points to win. Anyway I won on both the easiest and hardest setting and so I declare myself master of the wild west. It's not great but not hideous either.
It's an isometric game, a genre of games I cannot get on with now, but this had potential though ultimately falls flat. A lot of isometric games had awkward control issues were you can only move forward in the direction he is facing and spinning your man only adds to the confusion, here the controls are much more straightforward and exploring the rooms was much more simplified compared to other isometric games I've played in the past. The problem though is the rooms themselves are a confusing mess especially when the game changes colour randomly, so what looks like a different path turns out to be the very same one you just took like a minute only a different colour. Then I died and scored no points and that was the end of that, also less said about that tune the better. Aw such a shame because it had potential and I was enjoying for a bit before realising I had practically been going in circles for about 90 seconds. But at least it's a step up from most isometric games I've played and with a bit more patience I might have gotten somewhere with it.
Review number 1700 for me and it's this for some reason, oh yes because I get my games randomly selected for me that will be why. It's a card game popular in Bavaria that I know absolutely nothing about and lost heavily in two games I played. Being in German and being slow paced doesn't help. I'll kindly stick to poker if you don't mind.
It's another Spanish game with incredibly high difficulty. The graphics I have to say are really nice but the gameplay is almost useless as the hit detection is very questionable and something the attacks do not register, and do not register I mean he just stands there and doesn't even do his punch. Nice graphics but weak gameplay knocks this down.
These old school golf games are very much hit or miss but this one was actually quite pleasant. The shot direction element is much more straightforward which direction being the same as in a clock which may be more a hindrance for other players and I get why, but I totally got on board with it myself. Plus every hole is random which is a very nice touch. This was fine, in fact I played a 9-hole game and actually finished it, albeit I finished 6-over par, but still I sat through which deserves merit. Kind of wish I did an 18-hole game now but I didn't have time. But I will play this one again for sure.
Review number 1703. If you pay attention to the Most Active Users section of the stats page, then it is quite a milestone. However, it is one I personally do not relish or take any kind of satisfaction from, particularly because of the game I'm playing. It's a quiz game that lacked any excitement for me. Even when I managed to get four questions right for the bonus thing it did nothing for me, maybe because I lost all my bonus which was annoying. Arcade Trivia Quiz is a far better quiz game so check that out if you haven't already.
Bingo, 22 Jun 2021 (Rating: 2)
Well, it's a moment that has been coming for a while and that moment has arrived. This is my 1704th review which means I am now the most active user on this site, overtaking The Dean of Games, who we actually haven't seen all year in fact, November 2020 was his most recent review, Buggy Blast in fact, genuinely hope he's alright. Well I may be number one on the most active users list but that is merely a statistic as I will always be second place behind The Dean and he will always be number one to me, what a legend.
And how do I “celebrate” this “landmark” occasion? By reviewing one of the greatest games of all time? Or possibly even the worst? Nope I'm just gonna do my usual and have the game randomly selected to me by Spectrum Computing, because trust me there are no hoorays in this review and it's very much business as usual, for if there was I would have reached this mark a lot sooner than I have and I actually halted in the hope that this day would not surpass, but here we are.
Anyway, onto the “landmark” review, and it's Bingo! Hooray! Okay remember when I said there were no hoorays in this review? Well be quiet and let's get to it. Yeah I got excited when this showed up randomly and well it's not very good. First, there's multiple players, four in total, which means essentially you're playing with four cards at the same time, oh come on I can hardly deal with looking at one card let alone bloody four of them. Secondly, when a number is call you have to press a key other than B to mark that number, B of course being the key you press to call bingo and that would be stupid to call bingo after one number. You have to be quick to mark off your number otherwise you miss it, but that wasn't much of a problem as I just ended up pressing the button after every number as soon as it was called. Because you have four cards no number is duplicated so you won't have two 67's across the cards. Plus there are 100 numbers including zero and 96 numbers across four cards, this means you will only not have four numbers when playing the game, which in a way is unrealistic but I guess it's a compromise to make things easer to play. But by just pressing a key to mark the card and have the vast majority of the numbers on the cards takes the fun of it away. I did at least get a bingo with my second card so I will take it as a moral victory, then I pressed reset, that too I shall take as a moral victory.
This game was riddled with copyright problems for being too close to the satirical puppet show Spitting Image and was thus re-issued as Split Personalities. It's a very popular puzzle game and I never got to grips with it at all. And I read of people finishing the game multiple times and I can't even complete the first one, I'm rubbish. The graphics are really good and the idea is clever but it always came off as confusing for me, it did back then and it does so even more now. Never was one of my favourites.
Pretty much Splitting Images but with a new name and I think new random items but the same gameplay exists and see my review for Splitting Images for my detailed thoughts because I am not going to repeat myself here.
Coches, 30 Jun 2021 (Rating: 1)
Coches is a 2013 racing game that pits you and another driver in a square track to see who is the true king of the road. Well we will never ever find out the answer, as 1. This is a two-player game and there's only one of me. 2. The controls are very bad, it's impossible to go fast without crashing and your car simply spins when doing turns so it's easy to end up going in the wrong direction when you just want to make a turn. And 3. There are no laps in this race. You just go round and round and round and that's it. Turns out it isn't really a race after all. Well, that's the end of that and I'm starting to wonder if this was even finished and did it really need a review? Well I do have the most reviews on this site after all so why the heck not hahaha ha haaaaa, God I really hope The Dean of Games comes back and knocks me off my perch some day.
Now how's this for coincidence? Last review I did was a pointless car racing game and now we have a pointless bicycle race! So yes, this is a cycling game and there is almost nothing to this game at all. No sound during the game, no opponents to speak of, also no fun at all. Follow The Dean's guide and you're set. Also I finished it in 20 minutes and 28 seconds, well a couple of minutes in reality thanks to speeding up the emulator, but still, win. Or rather more feels like defeat because you just wasted time playing this.
Heart Stealer by itself is a nice little game though a tad on the easy side. This is an alternative version where the chap moves by himself and you just have to jump and that's it. It doesn't even work on a couple of levels. Did this really need to happen? Just comes across as lazy and unnecessary for me. I'll just stick to the original version thanks.
I was absolutely excited to play this game and that excitement was sapped away within the first seconds upon discovering it was based that bloody VVVV game. And predictably this has absolutely none of the joy present in the original. If it was a different name I wouldn't have made such a fuss, but for it to be the direct sequel to Heart Stealer and having almost nothing to do with collecting hearts, I am lost for words. I'll just stick to the original version thanks. This can die in a burning ditch for all I care, bollocks to it.
It's Pac-Man from France, why this never appeared when I did Spanish Breakout, German Space Invaders and Australian Frogger I'll never know. Anyway it isn't a bad Pac-Man game by any means, it plays at a decent pace and there's certainly a lot that play slower and thus worse. However, it seems to be the same level repeated over and over again, and it's very generous with power pellets and so you will likely breeze through the game like I did. Not the worst but it doesn't have a lot going for it at the same time.
It's Draughts and that's all you can really say about it. Well except it's slow and the colour leaks on the boards to make it look very unpleasant. I'm sure it's been done better elsewhere.
Go on! Go on! Go on! Go on! Have your personality tested by computer! Well I cannot help but feel that this was written to take the piss given it's loaded with teenage toilet humour. I tried to pick the sensible answers as well as the not saying option and it determined I was "rather strange", then I picked some of the more bizarre options and it said I was "rather nice". Well, that was a waste of time, is it any real surprise that no-one is credited for it.
Well flipping heck I never expected to see this on the Spectrum. Fort Boyard is a long running French adventure game show which still runs today in fact, and there have been many version of it around the world including here in Britain, two versions in fact. It was on Channel 5 initially with Leslie Grantham, Dirty Den from Eastenders as Boyard and page 3 model Melinda Messenger hosting, and it was brilliant in the first couple of series' and then it all got a bit samey and we were fed up with it in the end. Then Challenge TV had a go and boy oh boy was it shit from start to finish. Christopher Ellison from The Bill took over as Boyard and completely missed the point of how an evil, egotistical swine should be portrayed and hosting was the then-unknown and still-unknown Jodie Penfold who didn't appear to do much before or after for that matter, gee I wonder why. And noticed I haven't talked about the game, why is this? Because it's dreadful. The premise is kind of the same from the show as you need keys, but the challenges are gone and instead it's just a boring adventure maze game with no colour, no enjoyment and no soul. You know what, I'm hardly surprised, I expected this to be poor and well it is.
Wow I am immensely disappointed. I really hoped this was going to be good and truth be told it ain't. I mean it ain't bad and it's simple enough, but you play against one opponent on one race depending on length, the longest one being a complete drag, and that's it. You can have as many as six horses on the screen, but when you do it slows everything right down plus you control five of them and there's still only one opponent. Man what a disappointment.
Have to say I agree with the others. Graphically it's alright but the gameplay is off and confusing. Seemed to get better with each attempt but it still doesn't have a lot going for it for me to actually like it, or play it ever again for that matter because chances are I'm not.
This wasn't bad, in fact I quite enjoyed it. There isn't much to it in fairness, the races are very quick and you spend more time buying parts for your cars more than anything, but it works. Plus I finished 2nd in the Championship behind Prost, I'll happily take that.
This was frustrating to play. It comes in two parts, first you have to guess which items are in the four blue jars of either books, eggs, coconuts or hamburgers. After making your guess you are told that your item is either right and in the correct place, right and in the wrong place, or nothing meaning it's wrong. It does not have to be four different items I believe as I didn't have an egg and this proved to be my undoing. Because on the next part you have to navigate through a maze and if you run into an animal you need to give it what it desires, so an owl wants a book, a gorilla wants a coconut and a snake wants an egg and I haven't got any bloody eggs, I refuse to call that a coincidence. Nice idea but just too bloody frustrating and more down to chance than anything.
Well it's not the most exciting Centipede game I've played and within the first minute I had already determined that it's no better than Megapede. You do have the different speeds to play at but that's about all you can say about this, other than I've played better and I bought a far better one in Megapede.
Awari, 17 Jul 2021 (Rating: 3)
I was proper confused with this at first but oddily though it is quite addictive and the more I played it the more I seemed to like it. It seems that you have to take points from a box as well as banking them in your main box which is what I was fixed for doing. After nine games I finally won and now I think I have this game sussed out. Confusing and it really needs a tutorial for beginners like me but it can be good fun once you've worked it out.
Badlands is a spiritual sequel to Super Sprint and Championship Sprint and I really enjoyed this one. It's got a good pace, the controls are fine and the game is good fun. The sound is a bit irritating but other than that it's fine. Much prefer this over say Ironman Stewart Racing which had a problem of identifying who you were when mixed with the other drivers. I had no real problems with this actually.
It's basically horse racing but with boats. There's four to choose from, black, blue, red or mauve which will be purple or pink depending on your preference. You have £100 and you must bet on the one you want to win. Somehow I managed to get some big bets in including £200 on mauve, meaning I ammased £800 and can now afford to buy my own speedboat, and the game ended, so that was a completion which I totally did not expect to happen. Well, I expected this to be shite and it was far from it. It's still not great but it's worth a look for curiosity's sake.
This isn't bad and is certainly better than I anticipated it to be. The gameplay works fine up to when you have to activate the bombs by pressing the buttons to light up the valves, that is just luck for me and when you fail the game ends, pity. But I would have happily paid £1.99 and gotten some fun out of it.
This was supposed to be the Melbourne House version but I couldn't get it to run because it's asking to remove the joystick, but we can't because none is plugged in and you cannot command the emulator to play without one, and surely it doesn't mean my USB keyboard does it? So here's a German game of the same name instead and is Scramble without dropping bombs and one life, a life that does not last too long. I spent longer doing up this review than surviving in this game, which says it all really.
And here's another unknown game and this time one randomly given to me, and it's Play Your Cards Right! Well I say that it's just the higher or lower element to it and it's first to 3 wins and that's that. Not much more to say about it other than it's probably worth playing once and after that you'll probably never play it again.
It's a driving game that boring from the off and never improves. All you seem to do is avoiding other cars and puddles and even when you get near one you can't brake in time to avoid it. No this is cack and I never want to see it again.
This is weird. You create stuff like robots, spheres, give them weapons and make them move automatically. My robot Sidney got under attack and was destroyed, while my sphere Cubert only moved to one room and apparently his search was complete and he can't be bothered doing anything anymore, and for that matter nor can I. But amusingly you can just immediately launch for a quick game over, which was more exciting than the actual game.
It's a helicopter shooter game similar to Airwolf and it's just as bloody difficult. I had a hard time controlling my copter, especially when another flew towards me and I couldn't really control it to hit him. Also, you pretty much have destroy everything, because if you let one enemy past they'll destroy your base which is instant game over. I hadn't really touched on many Russian language games here and I can't work out why, oh wait playing games like this is probably why.
It's Head-On and it's probably the worst one I've ever played. I can't last more than five seconds without dying plus you start in a random area, even directly in the tiny centre with no time to escape meaning absolute certain death. It was the only game P. Tolland wrote, I think I can see why.
Another Russian game though in English so not quite the same as that other one I looked at and am trying to forget it existed. It's a nice idea but it's too frustrating for me to sit through and play. Saying that, it can be rather enjoyable so I'll give it an extra mark for pleasing me.
Gee, remember when this was a thing everybody? Well back in 1991 CDS Microsystems came up with the ridiculously insidious concept way before Florentino Perez attempted such a monstrosity. And who do we have in this “Superleague” then? In order of selection, Arsenal, Rangers, Barcelona, AC Milan, Marseilles, Bayern Munich, Liverpool and PSV Eindhoven. Well they managed to correctly predict four of the teams right 30 years on. I chose Bayern just because, and picking Bayern I thought “well it's not going to make much sense since the players will be English”, but no in actual fact the squads are accurate, Scottish international Alan McInally for instance is in my team, can't help but think that's a bit naughty because I mean, did you get a licence to use real life player names in your game CDS? Hate to draw to conclusions but the likelihood, is no. Anyway, whilst it's more graphically represented compared to most football manager games it's still a bit naff. You spend most of the time doing next to nothing and when something does come up like tactics selection, you have to bloody wait for the time rather than go to it immediately or at least it didn't let me. So I just waited till I was late and then proceeded, better late than never. As for the match screen, it too relies on graphics more with pictures appearing on screen as the action happens, almost reminiscent of Roy of the Rovers. Also, there's no sound anywhere in the game at all. And first match I lost, how predictable. Well what do I make of it? It's a drag. Graphics and presentation wise it's a bit of a step up I guess compared to say just text and a bunch of loading, but however there is a lot of waiting, like right now it's 12:02 I have a board meeting at 16:00 and I get told off because I'm early, so now I have to wait till 16:00 for the board meeting to commence. This is actually more painful to wait than loading! It tries to go above and beyond to be a compelling football manager game rather than the same ol' BASIC nonsense we had dealt with before, but in the end the BASIC football manager games had a setup and structure that at least worked whereas this doesn't. Oh and the board meeting? Well he saw I was leavng without doing my work and so he sacked me, after one match. And how much did this cost? £12.99 for tape and £14.99 for disk. Well, my experience with European Superleague did not last long, which is pretty ironic given the real European Superleague set up 30 years later went kapoot in about 72 hours after its creation. There's nothing left for me to say except fuck the concept and everyone involved in it.
Boggle, 21 Aug 2021 (Rating: 1)
Man the intro took forever in this one! My patience has already worn out this isn't a good start! Well it's Boggle, a word game I actually know little about apart from it's a board game and I saw one in a charity shop, Barnardo's I think, before lockdown, kind of wish I bought it now, then again I know little about it so that would have been foolish of me. Anyway you are given a bunch of letters and you have to create words using the letters on the board much like finding words on a wordsearch puzzle. The bigger the word the more points you earn but crucially you only score points for words your opponent doesn't find. And how does this game actually play? By writing down the words within the time limit, yes it's a Spectrum program that does absolutely bloody nothing and all the work is done by pen and paper and the game simply acts as a guide. This might be the closest thing to saying we can't be bothered converting this as you can get. Absolutely bloody astounding. That's like doing a Monopoly game without the board and the program only rolls the dice and you have to do everything else yourself. I wish I bought that board game from Barnardo's now, no wait no I don't.
I was thinking this would either be a racing game or a vehicle combat game, it's actually kinda the latter but more a puzzle game and it doesn't work. First you're denied access to the shop cause you need 35 coins, then you're denied in another shop cause you need weapons, and I didn't get the chance to get any. Nice idea but it totally stunk for me, this make Motor Massacre look like a million bucks.
To begin I love how the title screen reads "Warning! This is NOT a wargame!" Well thank heavens for that because that genre is a no go for me thank you very much. Apparently after much confusion it's a Battleship type game with a grid that way too large to gain any kind of success from. All of my missiles were too far away as if the game is just trolling you and there is no target. I would go choose a different option rather than logon to see if anything different happens, but really I cannot be bothered to spend another minute with this.
Gem Chaser is a wonderful game and highly addictive. This sequel though? It didn't quite do it for me. I like the added goals of Colour Matcher, Star Catcher and Fast Mover, but the controls were a bit iffy and not as fluid as they were in the original. It's nice in style and presentation but in terms of gameplay, the original Gem Chaser is still king.
Well there isn't much to really state about this except it's Breakout and one of the Spectrum's earliest versions. I shouldn't really criticise the game too much given its age but when you're playing as the world's smallest baton it's just asking to be disliked. Also when you miss a new row is added and it just slows everything right down everytime and makes the whole thing drag. Safe to say, Breakout was done much better as time when on.
Apparently you are a centipede shooting other centipedes, and this does look like it could have been a fun little game. However, the key layout is dreadful. You have Q and A for up and down, L and Enter for left and right and 1 to fire, it is an ugly layout and I do not like it one bit, it made things super confusing for me. I then wanted to use the Kempston controls with the controls keys and tab to fire and it just sat there and autofired without moving. This could have been a good game but the controls ruin it for me.
Well bloody hell it's Countdown! Yes the letters and numbers game on Channel 4 which has gone on for the past 478 years and is still going strong today. If you're not familiar with Countdown, you first have to choose between either a vowel or a consonant to give you nine letters and you must find a word, ideally the best word possible, from the nine letters on the board and you score points based on if it's a valid word and how many letters you use. So for example your letters are WARONKEAP, I go for APRON and he goes for WORK then I score five points and he scores nothing, but if we both select WANKER we both score six points, and yes that actually happened on the show, we had a pair of wankers, their words not mine. Then after three rounds of letters which go to numbers, or more precisely maths and this is the death nail for me. You chose a selection of numbers from three rows 0 to 4 and I went two of each because I'm lazy. So I have 50, 100, 9, 5, 9, 7 and the target number is 193. For this part you have to enter your sums in formula, say 1+1=2 2+12=14 etc, but I for the life of me have never worked one out certainly not in this version anyway, so like I said it is usually the death nail for me when playing this game. Then it's another three rounds of letters and another round of numbers and then the last round where you are given a nine letter anagram that you have to solve, simple as that. So does it translate well on computer game form? Well for starters it's a two player game because, well it is a two player game, but I mean you can't play the computer so you are forced to go alone and heavily fix it in your favour, and by heavily fix I mean insert any nine letter word, say WARONKEAP from earlier and then it is up to the Guardian Of The Dictionary to determine if the word is valid of not and by that I mean bloody you need to type either Y or N and of course you're typing Y for yes, because cheating. For me, the letters are easily the holy grail and the numbers can kindly piss off. I suppose it is as accurate a conversion as you're going to get really, everything about the show is present, the rules are the same but is all come across as a bit boring just like the show itself frankly. It's either you're thing or it isn't and it was never mine so bollocks to it I say.
Well this is a weird one to come at random directly after Countdown, because wasn't there an American gameshow of this by the same name? Well this isn't it and instead it's another matching pairs game, hooray I like these especially if they're done right...except this isn't done right because the squares aren't numbered. Nope, YOU have to work out YOURSELF what numbered square is what, especially for ones you've already guessed. Talk about a design flaw. And among the items for find are card symbols, a tree, the letters STE for some reason, a house, and upside shovel, and wait for it...a nazi swastika, I shit you not. Anyway I suppose it's decent enough to finish the grid at least once and declare yourself champion of the world but it's been done better and I've reviewed better matching pairs games compared to this.
To be honest, from first look at this I thought it was a Speedway game as Lambourne Games have quite the collection of Speedway games in their catalogue, but it turns out to be running or more precisely, the 1500 metres. From the 48 runners listed you get to represent between five and twelve that they select for you, which is a bit meany if you ask me. At the start you train the runners, including ones which you don't represent which is confusing, and during which three of my runners got injured which is very meany if you ask me. Then the race draw is being made and subscript wrong error appeared, game over, and thus happend ever bloody time I picked 12 runners, so I just went with 5 and hooray we are finally in and this is where things get really confusing, I chose five runners, we have five runners in this race and you basically have control of every single one of them in the race and have to do commands for them and thus results in the slowest race ever, and this rate it's going to take like five weeks to complete this one race. But that was just single race, what happens if you do a championship? Are you one runner in a quest to best the rest and become champion of the world? No you're ALL of them! Yes that's right you take control of all 48 runners. Good grief! If you have the patience for this game then good luck to you because I certainly did not. No thank you forever in a day to this one.
I'm here sitting thinking “I could have sworn I reviewed this one, I remember playing it. Maybe I typed one out to publish and then the site went belly up and I forgot about it or even lost it or something like that, but never mind let's look at it now.” Then I loaded the game and suddenly remembered....I couldn’t start the game, that's why I haven't reviewed it. For some reason the keyboard setting doesn't work here so I just mapped the kempston joystick to the keyboard and finally I am off and running with this game, and it's quite nice actually. First off, there's fuck all 3D about it, are we really surprised? It's basically Amidar except you're having to avoid a wondering lunatic and plus you've a time limit, but it's simple to get into and can be quite fun and I did rather like it. However, the controls are a bit fiddly, at times unresponsive and you only have one life, so one hit and your game ends. But there were more positives than negatives and it's easily the best game I've reviewed in a while if my recent reviews are anything to go by. With that in mind I might be a little generous with my rating but hey I like it and I'm a miserable git, so it did its job.
There's not much really I can say about this game except when one thinks of Sir Clive Sinclair in a Spectrum game, this is the game that springs to mind for some reason. For this was the one game I thought of reviewing in his honour and others have done exactly that before me. It's a lovely little game with nice colourful graphics and simple yet challenging and frustrating gameplay. Good timing and patience is required in which my lack of the latter should be well known here by now. But it's one that you will find yourself getting better at with each attempt, or maybe you'll have my luck and get to the fourth screen in your first attempt and then not get off the first screen in the next three attempts, bah. And now all that's left to do is to raise a glass to Sir Clive, the innovator, the genius, the legend, thank you and God bless you. You will be missed.
Ketmar's going for my total at this rate! Nice to see a good bunch of reviews posted here lately, well done, and now here's one of mine to bring the whole atmosphere right back down again, because that's how it usually turns out, I don't make the rules. Anyway, I've reviewed a number of Frogger games in my time here and there's no end to that yet as here's Frogger from Deanysoft, Dean Hickingbottom to be precise, an old friend of World of Spectrum before everything went to shit. He wrote a number of games for Alternative Software and their sub label Again Again back in the day such as Australian Rules Football, Gilbert and Punch & Judy as well as the unreleased Ninja Grannies, yes that really is a thing. According to Dean it was written in 1992 on the Amstrad CPC for his wife and then converted to the Spectrum but was only recovered and finished in 2009. This looks really nice actually, it's smooth, cute and colourful but perhaps a bit too fast particularly on the logs. And speaking of the logs it's there where we have the game's biggest flaw. Now usually Frogger simply moves up the screen but here he walks and shuffles up the screen including when on the logs. This made timing very difficult and was a personal annoyance of mine. It is a nice game and I've played far worse clones to be overly critical of it, but the log section annoyed me greatly. Not perfect but pleasant enough in the very least.
And now from an unofficial version of Frogger and the millionth one I've reviewed at that to an unofficial version of Burger Time in which you can count the number of clones on one hand, in fact this is the only entry for the Burger Time name. It was written for the 2003 Bytemaniacos BASIC contest where it finished in 6th place, well I say that Spectrum Computing also lists Moon Patrol and Pitfall ZX as 6th so perhaps it was a three-way tie or something. Anyway, BASIC aside this is not a good version of Burger Time. First off it's slow but then again being in BASIC are we really surprised? Secondly the enemies for the most part are confused and not interested. And thirdly and most importantly, when you construct your burgers neatly and tidily for all to see, if they land on an enemy it squashes them or at least I could have sworm they did, the point is here they just go through the enemies and they carry on wondering around looking dazed and confused as if nothing happened. I think this might be why it didn't win the contest, let's just leave it at that and call it a night. Tell you what though I'm bloody hungry now.
From 2018 and from Portugal, this appears to be an updated version of Striker, one of the most overrated games in the history of gaming. This though is a lot nicer, there's no loading or waiting, everything's more straightforward and at least you are in the action here, with Striker you hardly played a match so what was the point. The shooting however is a little iffy and the collision detection is questionable as in there were times my shots clearly went past the goalie and still he either saved it or hit the post, annoying. Then I was dropped despite scoring four goals in six games, bastard, I request a transfer immediately! But still it's a nice enough game for what it is and it's so much better than Striker.
Poker, 02 Oct 2021 (Rating: 3)
I love poker so I got excited when this came up randomly. However, this is five card poker rather than the standard two card hold 'em game played today but I guess hold'em wasn't well known outside America as it is today so fair enough. It is pretty well written for its time I have to say, well that is up to when the computer players raise over each other constantly and it all gets a little ridiculous, repetitive and annoying. Also, I never won a hand, literally, never. I had two pair but was beaten by a better two pair, I had three 3s but was beaten by the Devil's Hand of three 6s, and then I eventually lost all my money with a flush and losing to a full house. I mean I like how it's written but it does seem a bit unfair, plus its slow pace and repetition is going to put players off. Could have been better, could have been worse but downright mean and dare I say, possibly a bit rigged, or maybe I'm just huffing,
Powerplay - The Game of the Gods, starring Hercules, Cyclops, Minotaur and Satyr. Makes you think it's an adventure game, from the title alone you'd think it's an ice hockey game, but nope, Powerplay is actually a quiz game. That got me looking forward to this as I do like a good quiz game, and note I said "good" quiz game, because this isn't. For starters it's yet another game played with multiple players and there's only me present for this review. Two to four players can play I went with four because I'm stupid and that means I have to control four players at once. Second, the game is played by answering questions based on the directional button you press and the keys are not laid out properly for it. So example,
What does the username YOR mean? Up is You Old Rat, left is YOR is a wanker, right is A short form of Yorick and down is Three letters he typed at random. You then need to press either Q W E or A for your answer, which is not laid out at all and was very annoying, so best to play this with the cursor keys if possible. Oh and by the way the answer is Right, my real name is Yorick and YOR is short and was inspired by XOR a puzzle game I had years ago and always liked so there.
Anyway I started again with the Kempston controls mapped to the cursor keys and the game was moving by itself and was impossible to play as a result. Then I mapped the Interface 1 controls to the cursor keys and voila, third time lucky I'm in and well it's naff. You answer questions to move pieces around the board like a board or chess and four questions in we get a repeat question, the capital city of Finland, I think that would be why it's on the screenshot. This whole game just gets boring very quickly and the lack of sound only adds to it. It took me longer to set up the game than it did to actually play it, story of my life.
Man this is a difficult game. The keyboard layout is odd and even using the cursor keys firing your arrow is a matter of chance, oh and they can shoot behind and you can't or at least I didn't find a way to, I struggled to fire at all! But difficulty aside there is no denying that for 1984 this game looked impressive. Compared to the majority of games released in 1984, this game was a huge technical leap. The smooth gameplay, the in-game music, the intro cutscene, really amazing stuff, it's just too bad it's so bloody difficult.
American Football management games rarely work and this is no exception. It's basically a reskinned Rugby Boss which fair enough this predates Rubgy Boss by two years but still, having reviewed that earlier I can say that and just did so there. But there is a lot wrong with this game, it's split into two divisions with promotion and relegation, which isn't how American Football works. You can buy and sell players, again not how American Football works. You have a starting squad of 11 players, again not how American Football works, in fact as far from it as you possibly could. And when the game is played out you only score touchdowns and that's it apart from the odd conversions here or there. You do realise you can score a field goal chaps. But the best bit was I won two matches out of two and then I got sacked for going bankrupt as I bought players to improve my squad and replace a player who was transferred without my initiative. Well, bollocks to this game then.
Oh, why did I agree to do this one? It's a 2015 game and history has shown that I don't tend to get on with the more modern Spectrum games, however I at least can get my head around due it's rather simplistic style. You're a lander and you have to rescue people whilst avoiding asteroids, buildings and other such nasties. It's not bad really but it's one of those where I liked it the first time and the more I played it this more I disliked it, probably because it's repetitive and the asteroids appear at random making avoiding them a matter of luck, especially when you're approaching the end and one appears in front of you with no way of avoiding it. Oh and this happened more than once so I refuse to call it a coincidence. But not bad at all which makes a change for a modern game.
This is absolutely unplayable. I get the part of throwing what looks like a boomerang at the enemies, but there's a ball and something crawling on the ground, you cannot seem to get those and they always get you no matter what. I never got far into this as a result. What a bloody mess.
Spectrum Computing presented me the ZX81 version at random and I haven't found a way to do ZX81 games yet, so here's the Spectrum version instead because I'm in a good mood today and that good mood was quickly sourred away with the sound in this game. But saying this it's not a bad game at all, it's decent enough, it's competent but it's highly repetitive and gets boring after you beat the ship the first time because it just repeats itself, but then again it's 1982 so what did you expect? But not bad at all really, rather pleasant for one game and after that not much.
As the name suggests it's a plaftorm game where you jump or climb onto platforms to collect the items, and you know what, for its age it isn't terrible by any means. However, and it's a pretty big however, it's got this problem where if you want to jump he will only jump the way he's facing, and if you are on a platform of one square and a wall to your right and your only option is to jump a long gap to your left, tough tits you're dead son. Shame because I was rather liking it until I reached this problem, twice.
It's a 2015 game from the Crap Games Compilation and already it's showing as it's “transferring data” to load the level and my oh my it's taking forever and then when it loaded it crashed, oh the hilarity ha ha ha very funny. Ok I'm being cruel, I was running on 128K mode, I tried again on 48K and yes it's slow to load but it did load, hooray. And well you control a line around a maze from the start to the end, and having done so I was told I was too slow, I was too slow? Speak for yourself you cheeky bastard. Well there isn't much too this really, there's three levels in all and I have a feeling you only see one of them. As a crap game it does its job which means technically this should be getting a 5 but I'm afraid this site doesn't quite work that way as crap means crap and crap means 1 out of 5 for you. Still, a moral victory given what it was specifically designed to be, a crap game.
The next games will be from the Farmer Jack series, three games and then a compilation featuring all three games. And I'm pretty excited actually because they are written by Bob Smith who did the rather excellent Gem Chaser and he's done other good games too, so I was really looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. It's based on Mr. Do and plays similar to Dig Dug but on a tractor, you know, because he's a farmer, and you have to collect all the fruits whilst moving around the field and using boulders to crush the enemies. So more a cross between Dig Dug and Boulder Dash come to think of it, but it plays really nicely, it's cute, colourful, the sound is excellent, but I was not as good at this as I'd hoped. After four attempts though I managed to get to level 6 with two lives and then lost both of them within three seconds, flaming typical. But yep I hoped this would be good given who wrote it and I was not disappointed. I hope the other two games are just as good.
The second game in the Farmer Jack series and it's based on a game called Lady Bug which I have never played, but it's a rather odd Pac-Man variant with gates you go through and enemies coming out one at a time. It also has a pretty weird colour sceme that doesn't look anywhere near as nice as Harvest Havoc. It also has hearts to collect which I think multiplied your score, as well as letters. But this I found to be the biggest detriment. You have letters and then you have SPECIAL and EXTRA, special I'm guessing makes you super and destroy the enemies and extra I'm presuming gives you an extra life. Now when I collected letters like R and C, they usually did not count towards these words, so I found it pretty much useless to collect them and there was no point in collecting them apart from they were necessary to complete the level, as in one level I got all the pills and needed the A to finish it. But I did not get with this one so much and very easily Harvest Havoc is a better game, I mean this is not a bad game by any means, but it could have been better and I'm thinking its faults lie with the game its based on rather than this game as a whole, but whatever the case I really hope this is not the beginning of a downward spiral for this series and it's more a blip on the radar.
First things first, same bloody title music and title sequence in all three Farmer Jack games, not sure how I feel about that frankly. Anyway it's the third and final game in the Farmer Jack series, and this one is Pac-Man, Pac-Man combined with Lock 'n' Chase where the enemies steal your pills and thus steal your points. But the thing is, I can block them with crates but I cannot find a way to get rid of them and so their purpose for me was to assist me in completing the level which makes the whole bloody thing pointless. Indeed as a result I got to level 10, the furthest I've ever gone in any of the Farmer Jack games, yet languished in 6th position on the high score board. It's a better game than Hedge Monkeys but doesn't quite match the enjoyment of Harvest Havoc.
So now having just done the Farmer Jack series, I can now look at its compilation of the three games in the series together as one. Harvest Havoc is easily the best game in the series and I do feel it should have been left at that. But no it garnered two rather needless and pointless sequels that, while alright, they didn't really add to the series like I hoped.
Rabbit, 17 Oct 2021 (Rating: 2)
And now the next games I'm reviewing are from a compilation called Pathfinder. Per usual, I am reviewing each game individually before reviewing the compilation in question as a finale so to speak.
First up is Rabbit, lead the rabbit through the maze using the arrow keys, fair enough. Well this isn't much of a game, it's just a rabbit in a maze eating carrots, you get to the gap in the end, and that's it. There are no enemies, no hazards, no time limit and there's no need to eat all the carrots because there's no score, no bonus, no lives, no ways to lose, no anything, at all. Please don't tell me this whole compilation is basically just this? It's called Pathfinder after all you know.
Game two of Pathfinder and it's Kangaroo Maze and my instant reaction was please don't tell me it's the same as Rabbit but with a kangaroo? Well I'm guessing no because you can jump, because, you know, it's a kangaroo and they hop. But one look at the level you're presented and indeed it is similar to Rabbit, except while it looks similar the game plays differently. Here, we cannot move the kangaroo by the arrow keys, no, we move him via combinations, yes. You press an arrow key to determine his direction, then press a number to determine the number of moves and repeat across the maze until you reach the goal, make a wrong move and it's back to the start. This at least is more a challenge compared to Rabbit but it's a pain in the arse. You can like trial your run to see if you are doing well thus far but then rather than continue where it left off, if you make another trial run the kangaroo starts all over again and that was a pain. Well at least it wasn't completely identical to Rabbit but indeed it doesn't mean it's good, in fact, it's pretty shit.
Already from the instructions this seems very different. Help the, thing, looks like a mutant of sorts, through the park using the arrow keys. He must eat the picnic on the way. First he must eat the apple, then 2 bananas, then 3 pears and finally he must drink four cups of tea, FOUR CUPS OF TEA, bloody hell somebody's not sleeping well tonight. Well it's the same as Rabbit really, you control whatever he's supposed to be getting items to order and this time there is no set goal to the path, you just reach the right side of the screen and you win. Plus this has two difficulties, one gives you squares to walk through, the other you're just walking through a hedge. Well it's a better game than the Kangaroo game but it's no better than the Rabbit game.
Frogs, 17 Oct 2021 (Rating: 1)
It's the same game, again. You're a frog and must collect the other frogs whilst avoiding water lilys. There are six to collect but even one is enough for win. Boring. And thank goodness that's the last of Pathfinder.
Four games all similar to one another and none of them are any good. You're a rabbit, a kangaroo, a mutant, thing, still don't quite know what that was franky, nor do I care, and a frog and the goal is simply to make a path and reach the other side. No enemies, no time, no score, no anything. Very boring, very lifeless, very pointless. And in case you're curious it cost £5.95 for four games so just under £1.50 per game, and given the quality of the games on offer is it any real surprise it was that cheap.
Well what is there to say? It's an anagram game and anagram games are not my forte, especially when you have to link them together as in a crossword environment and crosswords too are not my forte so talk about an ugly combination.
Rotate, 18 Nov 2021 (Rating: 2)
Rotate is exactly that. You have a grid of 24 numbers 4 rows and 6 columns and you must rotate them so that they show on the grid in numerical order. I was going fine till I got to 12 then I broke my grid and then sulked immensely. I suppose with saved states it's something that might amuse you and it certainly amused my albeit very briefly before everything went to shit.
Yes, even Paddington Beat had his own Speccy game and well it's pretty crap. The idea is simple enough, you got around collecting butterflies to score points and avoid hedgehogs and wasps, but moving Paddington around isn't so fun, His sprite constantly flickers which was offputting and he has a problem getting through tight gaps which again was offputting especially when I was convinced I was getting through and his hat caught the edge and I lost a life. And this game was marketed to children namely 5-8 years old, can't see them having fun with this at all frankly.
Caza, 20 Nov 2021 (Rating: 2)
Listed as MIA and yet the compilation is available to download and hence I'm playing it, it's a dog fight and that by I mean you're a plane that has to shoot another plane. In fact you need to shoot down ten enemy planes before your fuel depletes. This I could not work out initially but then eventually completed it once I worked out the controls, it's QZIPO. It's slow and tedious and quite boring but I am pleased to have been able to work out this game by myself and end up finishing it.
This, like Caza, comes from Issue 9 of Soft Spectrum, a Spanish magazine. I'm not going to go through all the games here, just ones that caught my eye, like this one which appears to be a version of Keno. You have to pick a bunch of numbers and then if they come up you win, much like the Lottery of course. But this is like that Boggle game I looked at where you have to make note of the numbers elsewhere and then the computer picks the numbers for you to see if you've won. In that case I pick numbers 2, 3, 11, 14, 22, 23, 28, 31, 34, 37, 43 and 47. And only 37 and 28 showed up which means I only got two which means I lost, what a rig. Again, not much of a game and much of the gameplay involves pen and paper rather than in-game.
The 400 Metres! Here you're rapidly pressing Q to run your man to the finish line and I did it in 44 seconds. And that's it. Not much to speak off here except it's good for one go and I've seen worse.
Lunar, 20 Nov 2021 (Rating: 2)
It's a space shooter with a huge ship and you shoot what looks to be giant popcorn or possibly nuggets. The ship is really well drawn actually, but the game is not so good as the firing is iffy and because you are so huge you are quite an easy target.
Pesos, 20 Nov 2021 (Rating: 2)
It's Weightlifting and you're just tapping left and right, more or less wiggling the joystick basically, and he'll complete his lift and you're done. And you keep going till he fails or your fingers are in pain, I stopped because of the latter. Again it's certainly not the worst I've played but it's that scenario again where you'll play it once and you've seen all it has to offer and you'll never play it again.
Zigzag Golf has thankfully nothing to do with those puppets on The Big Breakfast years ago but it's a golf game where the ball only moves in a zig-zag. You have to determine how much zig and zag to use in order to putt the ball in the hole and there are nine holes in total. I was able to get it in 19 strokes which isn't too bad at all really. This is one of the many, many games from this publisher and pretty much all of them have the same primitive basic graphics and gameplay, though this one is certainly not one of their worst offerings.
It's another isometric game, oh goodie I can't get on with these anyone so this shall be fun. And this one is from what was then Yugoslavia. It has that same control issue where you have to spin him round facing the way you want and then you move him, a problem that wasn't present in Nosferatu, another isometric game I covered a while back that I actually quite liked. But I have to say, this looks bloody fantastic, really good graphics in this one. And the movement is very smooth and he has a nice somersault when he jumps, plus he fires and I turned an enemy into a spider, well there's more action here than in most isometric games I've played. The movement was confusing however, particularly moving left and right as in a massive panic you are likely to press the wrong button which only adds to the confusion, I never liked that in isometric games which was why I was so pleased that it wasn't a problem in Nosferatu. But if not for the controls this would have been a big hit with me. Genuinely impressed with how this looked and it's well worth a look if you're into these types of games.
Tuma 7, 04 Dec 2021 (Rating: 1)
Whooo boy this is bad! The game is in two parts, part one you're on a motorbike and on part two you're on foot with a big fucking gun and I mean BIG it's as big as he is from christ sake! Have to say the graphics are nicely detailed and chunky and colourful and that deserves merit, but the gameplay is utterly useless. The bike I found constantly crashed when you're going at any real speed and on foot you move slowly along and spend more time on a moving platform for some reason, then when I got the shoot the enemy I couldn't shoot him, like that's the whole bloody point isn't it? Goodness me what a blinking disaster. Easily one of the worst Spanish releases you will find and if ever a 0 rating was needed this game deserves it.
It's German pinball and holy goodness this is terrible. The ball physics are insane and it has a mind of its own. But you know what tops it all? This is a pinball game called Flipper, pinball machines have flippers, this inexplicably does not even have flippers, they have blockers. How the fucking hell can you possibly call a pinball game Flipper and you don't have flippers. That's like calling a game Racing Cars and there are no cars. Very bizarre indeed.
It's another poker game, well in actuality it's more video poker of aces or better rules, which is actually mean as most of the video poker games require jacks or better. Anyway should you get a winning hand you get to the high low bonus game. Well this isn't a bad game rather, the main question is whether you will devote time to this game or not, and the likelihood is no.
Also, why is this listed as Poker [1] rather than among the dozen games listed as Poker? Ask World of Spectrum. And yes there is a Poker [2] but it's in Russian, so no review from me unless I hire Ivan Drago as my translator.
Chess, 12 Dec 2021 (Rating: 3)
From one recreational game in Poker to another in Chess, and well what is there to say? It's Chess, and Chess is boring, sorry, not sorry, But saying that it is nicely programmed and put together really well particularly for its age. If you’re an avid player this should provide enough charm for you and if you're looking to learn this might not be a bad place to start.
This is a super odd game and one I found to be totally unplayable. The graphics are quite nice and they're colourful but the gameplay is just bad. Why does jump and pick up have to be the same button? He looks like an absolute twit jumping to pick up a key. And what is with his bloody neck? Also if you press space there's a space shooter mini-game for some reason which seems to have absolutely no relevance to the game whatsoever. And there's no sound effects at all. Oh and it's the only game Wizard Computer Games released on the Spectrum and the only game Mal Gilliot is credited for. It also has Steve Evans credited wrote did the excellent Who Dares Wins II as well as Microball, a really good Pinball game, and he also produced this monstrosity, and by monstrosity I mean Willie Wobbler's grotesque neck.
Take 4, 06 Feb 2022 (Rating: 1)
It looks to be Connect 4 yet I connected four even 5 and still didn't win. Does this keep going till all the pieces are used then determine a winner? Also it's two players yet again. Seems largely pointless to me. Oh well.
Tennis Master, yet it says Tennis Champ on the title screen and I happen to have a game on my emulator called Tennis Champ as well, oh dear I can already see where this is heading. This is a weird one in that the game alludes that you can create your own tournament of your own name of choice, but in actually fact you don't. You can set up the draw but then nothing else happens aftwr that, plus if you were to add players into the match it only goes up to 100 so if you did a 256 player draw like I did, you're stumped, and if you did 512 like I did initially you're stumped even more because the game just crashed. Or you can just make two players up out of thin air, but on this occasion I went players 100 vs 99, Javer Sanchez vs Tom Wilkison, I can only presume they are Javier Sanchez but shortened because it wouldn't fit and Tom Wilkinson but written with a stuck n on the keyboard that has a 50% chance of being registered, I know the feeling because that's my space key on my laptop. Anyway the gameplay is simply a match being simulated with the option of raising the game which I presume makes your player work harder but I found this confusing as at one point I attempted to raise the game of Wilkison as he was 4-2 down in the set and I assumed it was Wilkison as he was serving, in the end the change rating went down for Sanchez and he ended up winning the game instead. Anyway Sanchez won 3 sets to 2 in a tightly fought contest and I frankly feel like a mug about it having spent twenty minutes of my life with this game. This just felt like a complete waste. This brings me back to ATP Tour Simulator, a Czech tennis management game I looked at previously, there you had control of your player's destiny, you didn't have control of him during the match but you were at least able to determine his performance by training him and improving him, this has none of that. The only thing to determine is how or when you raise their game and even that itself is optional, if you turn it off the game just proceeds and you literally do nothing but watch. Plus, the whole tournament element is utterly pointless as you can do anything after the draw is made plus doing anything from 128 players onwards is useless because there are only 100 players present in the memory. What an absolute waste of time and effort.
Well I predicted this would be the same as Tennis Master since that said Tennis Champ on the title screen and this happens to be Tennis Champ and indeed I am correct, this is the same game. Not sure if it's entirely the same but the game is virtually identical. The setup is the same, the mechanics are the same, the players are the same, 100 vs 99, Javer Sanchez vs Tom Wilkison. I've written enough about this game already. See my Tennis Master review for a more in depth insight. I can only hope this was a fuck up on World of Spectrum listing Tennis Master as a dubious separate entry because frankly this should be in one entry. And franky I should have just done Tennis Champ and ignored Tennis Master entirely but too late to go back now plus I don't want to because I'd rather prefer it didn't exist full stop.
The next two games are from a two-game compilation from Power Software which will then be followed by a review of the compilation itself. First up is Bouncing Berty, and it's Q*Bert written by the chap who gave us Postman Pat much later in the Speccy's life. And well it's bloody appalling. The ball moves so bloody fast that I died without even moving and my end ended quicker than I can say what hit me. The controls are bollocks as usual, I never got on with Q*Bert's controls but this takes the cake I think. You have Q and A fair enough, then P and I'm expecting O or more realistically L, but no it's ENTER which absolutely no fricking sense on a modern day keyboard whatsoever, I know that wasn't in mind when it was written but come on. Better clones exist, I'm sure worse do as well but certainly better do.
And now following on from Bouncing Berty we have Eskimo Capers. And it's Pengo written by the same chap who gave us, well Billy Bluebottle and that's it. And this one has numbered keys oh good, and mapping the Cursor or Interface II joysticks did not work which just adds to the fun. Luckily, it allows Kempston controls so finally I am in. And well, the controls are just as bad. I will say though it is a better game than Bouncing Berty and it's not overly terrible but it is still not a great game at all. The controls seemed delayed especially when pushing the blocks. Again, better clones exist.
Two arcade clones. Q*Bert and Pengo, and none of them are good, Bouncing Berty particularly being bloody dreadful. Eskimo Capers isn't that bad but it's still bad and not worth your time. And to sum it all up, this compilation was £3.50 for two games, whereas Power Software also released Billy Bluebottle, a game I will cover next, which was £5.95 and Catwalk, a game I have at least reviewed already, which was also £5.95 and all released in 1984, though these two were in 16K while the others are 48K and this may be why these games are much cheaper. However, I think we can safely say that with these two games, you got exactly what you paid for.
Might as well look at this one since it's the last remaining game from Power Software I have to do. And it's a rather confusing game and one that I have reached the conclusion that nobody seems to know how to play it. I think the idea is to save your fly friend who is trapped in a room with rising water, but how? The bottom room I don't think opens, the pot at the top left corner only moves to the middle and then the top again, none of the items seem to do anything apart from block the enemies and evem that doesn't last long, it's just confusing. There are no instructions and I found three videos on YouTube and all of them are short, which sums it all up. Plus none of the real exclusive or mainly Spectrum channels I know of have touched this game, not the RZX Archive, not Kim Justice, not Njenkin, even the old Spectrum Nostalgia channel before he fucked off and got married, none of them have touched this game. Hopefully one day someone will point us all in the right direction and show is exactly how this game is meant to be played, but until then, it's a mystery.
Always wanted to do an educational game but my random picks never selected them, but by chance one has finally appeared, and it happens to be maths and I regret this idea already. It comes in two sides and in each side is a game. Side A is Numbers, and it's a bloody shooter, was not expecting that! There are three modes, individual numbers, fractions and decimals, and you have to shoot the aliens that are on the right answer. So example 5-7 and you answer 0, you get hit and you lose a life. The second game is Kippers, first of all what the fuck? And second it's a game where you pick a square from the 8x8 grid, example A4. I think you need to predictly guess the right square which they end up giving you on the chart on the left depending on how far you've gone. Well that mode was a complete letdown and I don't know how it can be educational. The first mode absolutely works and that on its own would have been ideal and worthy enough but this second game is not worth looking at at all and brings the whole thing down for me. Shame.
Released in the UK by Kixx as Colosseum, this is one of the many Spanish games US Gold released on their Kixx budget label over the years. Now you would think that they didn't do a good job of it even from the menu as by pressing any button other than what's shown we get the credits which are in another language, but that I think is Latin so nice attention to detail there, Topo Soft obviously told US Gold “translate this because it's Spanish, don't translate this it's Latin and part of the game's presentation”, nice. And I tell you what, I rather like this one. It has a nice sense of speed and response and can actually be good fun. A good tip I found is to attack the enemies from a above, for I found that attacking from the bottom gives them a head start. But even then you have to avoid boulders and brick walls which can be a problem because of the speed. It is difficult but it's a Spanish release and the Spanish companies were known to make their games so brually difficult and this, while not brutal and you can at least do something on it unlike say Bestial Warrior, but still it's really hard. However, I did rather enjoy this one.
It's another one of those wild west shoot out games, you're a cowboy facing another cowboy and you have to shoot each other so many times to win. Except in this one your opponent just stands there as you shoot him, that's because it's a two player game, again. And that is the end of that then.
Aliens, 11 Mar 2022 (Rating: 1)
Shoot the aliens with your laser, and it never stops flickering which makes the whole thing a mess, pretty much unplayable and a complete waste of time. Amusingly however you can just hold the fire button and the alien just sits there, yes you're not going to be hitting it but hey at least you're not going to die.
Well this has to be one of the strangest games I have ever seen. You are Professor Hilfe and your laboratory is on fire. To help you you must find all the parts of FRANKIE the robot scattered around the level. And it gets stranger, what on earth is Hilfe supposed to be? Anyway, this is quite alright actually, the response levels of the keys are far greater than I expected it to be and the gameplay is straightforward enough once you get your head around it. But you can only carry one piece of FRANKIE at a time and when you do the other pieces block your path, which got annoying very quickly. Plus when you die with the piece collected you still carry that piece when you respawn, which again got annoying quickly. But this surprised the hell out of me, it's actually quite playable and enjoyable.
Might as well go ahead and look at this one next since this and Aliquid Simplex were the only two arcade games written by Mr. David Aspinall. Aluquid Simplex was a bit of an oddball and this is already heading in that direction. First of all, why is this in Spanish? Secondly, why is it so fast? Third, why can't I move my snake? And last, how is it game over already when I haven't done anything? What in the blue hell? I'm guessing there's a cock up in the writing process and with that I mean someone has written it by scratch sent it World of Spectrum and fucked up in the process because bloody hell it's unplayable.
It's another two player game and one with a rubbish keyboard layout. You have to collect two treasure vases or destroy your opponent, except I crashed into a mine and player 2 won without doing anything, which perfectly sums up the game or rather my experiences with it.
It's horse racing from D&H Games and you know exactly what that means. Boring gameplay and loads of loading and boy I mean lots of loading, the waiting in this runs on forever, even WITH the emulator sped up! Like in the beginning you had to wait almost an eternity, then start the tape again for yet MORE loading! There are a number of options in this game such as training, auction and the bookies, and in the bookies we have a tipster who advised me that for the Prince Charles Novice Stakes I should tip on Petroc, then it changed to Cumrew, then it changed again and settled on Notus, which like Petroc sits at 56/1 odds while Cumrew is at 22/1...I cannot help but feel conned by this “tipster”. Anyway I betted £100 on Cumrew. And for the race itself the horses are represented by numbers which reminded me of that Four Minutes from Glory game I reviewed a while back as the runners there were represented by numbers. But at least here the horses, sorry the numbers, move by themselves and you're not spending half of your day working out their different commands like you did in FMFG. And well you know what? My bet came up and Cumrew actually won! And the cherry on top was that Notus finished second. I take back everything I said about the tipster, he clearly knows his stuff, I say the the tipster could easily be a she can it? Oh Yorick you misogynist bastard. Anyway you can also enter your own horses into the races, I did that next and it came last, go figure. I mean I can see why this would appeal to people but for me it's just another boring management game with hideously long waiting times, the football ones don't do much for me so what chance does this have? To be honest, I would find it much more appealing to just stick to the betting and do away with the whole manage your horses guff.
It's a Romanian game which doesn't really bode too well at all as I find the majority of Romanians games to be, putting it politely, not good. One though that does come to is Simplex which was bloody awful and I'm still struggling to process it out of my mind! However, this one was decent which makes a refreshing change. You control a chap who must collect things and collecting all with progress to the next level, and there are baddies and obstacles such as spikes to avoid also. It has a simple concept and it works, it was actually pretty enjoyable for what it was, I did not mind it. What I did mind however was you can sometimes lose a life upon respawn and thus you are two lives down rather than one. Also, it's a short game, there are only five levels in the game before it loops back to the start. But aside from that it's not a bad game at all and is actually quite nice. These chaps also done Tractor which was not a good game and this is a far better game.
Yes, it's the sequel to probably the best Romanian game I've played! And the title screen is identical to the original, even down to not putting 2 on the title. And the gameplay is identical too, you control a thing to collect things and you jump and float etc etc. The levels though now more maze-based, plus the spikes have become faces for some reason. But the faults are the same, you die, you respawn and you can instantly die again, and some of the ground enemies I found really tough to avoid. It's still better than the majority of other Romanian games I've played in the past but it's no better than the original.
Handpicked this one myself, AMS Soft responsible for the quite rubbish Tractor and the surprisingly playable Extra Cocoteca have a Boxing game! Yes, Box Haois is a boxing game and I just had to give this a shot, and well it's not good. I was hoping this would be a competitor to the mediocre boxing game Devastating Blow but those hopes were quickly dashed. The boxer movement is slow and the collision detection is off, plus there is only one knockdown, if you knock him down you face another opponent and when I say another I mean the same bloody one, but if he knocks you down, game over. It's not terrible but it is very underwhelming. I think Devastating Blow turns out to be a better game, hell Boks from Poland might be better than this.
And now from Romania to Czechia, or Czechoslovakia as it was known then given this is a 1990 game, and from Boxing to Tennis or more specifically Tennis Management. The idea of a tennis player management game is certainly an original one but good luck going through the Czech menus in order to make this experience worthwhile. I played this using save states and Google translate so I got a vague idea of how the game works, but everything I did changed nothing apart from the fact that I was battered in straight sets every single time which is more than frustrating. I felt giving this a 2 would be harsh as it's an original idea, an interesting concept and the only real problem was the language barrier, seeing that the only thing I know about the language is that bloody bizarre Jozin z Bazin song from the 70s that even Metallica covered. However it does draw towards the boring side much like football management games and as a result, will it really hold your interest for long even if you crack the language? It's a novel idea and one that's certainly worth the look, but unless you know the language your experience is most likely to be a case of trail and error.
I don't normally do adventure type games myself as they are not my forte, but this certainly looked appealing with its bright and beautiful colourful graphics, and it has quite a nice tune to boot as well. However, and predictably, the gameplay for me was quite bland. I entered a house and nothing happened, I reached a dead end and someone else appeared and murdered me, and it's back to the start. It doesn't help that the man moves rather slowly, I mean you didn't move the quickest in say Dun Darach but he's even slower here. And then there are different commands to go through which maybe could have helped me in that cottage from earlier. We can fill, dig, perhaps talk to someone, maybe that bloke who murdered me earlier, we can save which is pointless now as we have save states, and then it gave me an option to start the tape, I cancelled and it corrupted and crashed. Again gotta say it, these type of games are not my forte, you're going to need to spend a considerable amount of time on this game to get anywhere, but I struggle to see any kind of lasting replay value with this, its slow pace does not help. If this is your kind of game however, give it look and tell us how it's really done, and by that I mean doing so by posting a review of your own which no-one will read. A sad reality if ever there was one.
It certainly looks the part with its nicely detailed graphics and from the screenshots alone I felt this was going to be an interesting game to play. However, it proved not to be as the gameplay turned out to be utterly repetitive and largely useless. The icons you fiddle with during the game seem to have no real input and indeed two of them takes you to a different screen, and when you return to the icons all the changes you make are wiped out. Then we get the joust which involves you mainly moving a crosshair to aim at your opponent. I was able to get one or two hits on him and knocked him off once but I usually end up getting out-classed which once that happens you’re done for. Then it’s harvest time, no real idea what happens here, but in two previous attempts the militia ate all the food and the game seemed to be over, on my third go I’ve at least survived three years by luck and pure chance but that’s enough for me. This could have been a fun little game to play, but it’s not, instead it’s bland, repetitive and pointless. And this was 10 quid in 1985, talk about an overpriced piece of junk. Immensely disappointing.
Ooh 1800th review. This is from the Giant Book of Spectrum Arcade Games book and there isn’t much to say about it except it’s a BASIC old game where you control a line through a maze and you will likely not succeed in completing the maze. Can’t remember if I’ve done any other games from this book and I imagine most of them as just as primitive as this. It’s not a terrible game and it’s not one I’d call rubbish, but it’s safe to say I will likely never play this again and not will I ever want to.
Thing!, 17 Mar 2022 (Rating: 3)
This was well received in the magazines back in the day and I can see why because it is a well-written game and it was interesting at the start going through the different kiosk and searching for items, but then it got old pretty quickly. Most of the items you can’t use and I assume to give them to other people, for I used the round of ammunition which was handy but I would have thought the can of food would have replenished your energy and health but it did nothing. Perhaps you get meds somewhere down the line, this capsule contains Ibuprofen, take twice a day, and this capsule contains Voltarol, rub three times a day. Plus kiosk D was painfully long and the constant ticking sound of the Thing walking was doing my head in. Might be fun if you have time and patience, in this case mine ran out approximately 23 years ago.
There isn’t much to say about this except it’s just another crappy isometric games written with 3D Game Maker. Exploration appears to be far minimal however and when you die you always respawn at the top corner like you do at the start of the game. There’s only three of these I’ve ever got on with, Batman, Head Over Heels and to a lesser extent Nosferatu, everything else I do not care for and this game has only added to that theory.
A covergame original from Your Sinclair in February 1993 and my what a confusing game this turned out to be. First off, it cannot be played solo and can only be played with 2, 3 or 4 players, and there’s only one of me, it is a recurrence that I wish was extinguished. You first have to place counters on the board and you do so with the goal of getting your counters close to each other to make a line. I believe the goal is to create hexagons, going solely by the Hex in the title, but after the initial counter placement you can only move counters one space at a time, and this is where things get confusing for the controls are an absolute pain in the gonads! It gets to the points where the game cannot determine what is left and what is right and moving around the board became a chore as a result of this. This might have been much more enjoyable if not for that and it ruined the whole thing for me. The only thing “hexcellent” about this game is the fricking migraine I’ve received from it!
I do love a good trivia game so I got excited when I saw this, however it is an Outlet game and runs on a disk and I am usually reluctant to run disk games as this is my second emulator because the first one's disk drive corrupted. But push came to shove and I went for it. Up to four players can play and the 1st to 20 points wins, provided they answer two from each category correctly, well there's just me playing so sod that. The categories are 50's, 60's, 70's, 80, and General, and the second question of the whole game featured Gary bloody Glitter, well safe to say this game has not aged well. Then I got a question about Honey of The Honeycombs twice, oh good repeat questions in quick succession. Then I got a question about Sylvia singing about a country, which I got wrong, very next question was about Sylvia singing about a country, oh good repeat questions back to back, oh and I got it right that time. This is not a well written quiz, it's got too many repeat questions, the questions are sometimes worded oddly, a couple of the questions had typos, this just wasn't very fun at all, which is a shame because I do enjoy quiz games when they are fun, but this was far from it.
Bomber, 18 Mar 2022 (Rating: 2)
This was meant to be Oil Tycoon by Global Games but it appears to be broken, the screenshot is what it is for a reason because it crashes every time you try to continue from that screen. So never mind let's look at Global's two other games instead, beginning with Bomber. It's a Blitz game and it's a difficult one. I have to say the key response here was good but the game itself is just hard, so hard I find it impossible to get off the first screen, I say first screen perhaps this is the only screen which is why it's so difficult. I have played worse, more unresponsive Blitz games but I've also played more fun Blitz games compared to this.
And now it's golf with Grandpa Joe Plays The Open. I seemed to remember seeing this one, isn't there a video of it on YouTube? Anyway it's rubbish, basically it's one of those old school golf games where you type in a direction and number to determine the balls travels, but with a twist. As well as the rough which slows your ball down we have astroturf which bounces your ball all over the place and by god they were not kidding. This makes this game more like pinball than golf. I gave up after four holes. And the course itself happens to be called "Glenlackofeagles", yeah there's certainly a lack of something here, you know, a game?
It's Star Wars related, obviously. Here you have a laser and eight targets where Darth Vader can appear from any of them and you must shoot him or you will lose a life, he is blue apparently. R2-D2 can also appears and shooting him with end your game immediate regardless of lives left, he is in magenta apparently, and I say apparently because a yellow icon appeared, I shot it and it was R2-D2, you said he was in magenta! And as a reward for shooting him we get a painfully slow drawing of R2-D2 with some screeching noises, which I can only assume was R2-D2 dying, joy. So basically it turns out Darth Vader is in black and R2 is in yellow, making the whole instructions sequence useless. Second go all went well as I continually shot Vaders around the screen, then R2 appeared again and I shot him again because I was too trigger-happy, and that's the end of that. Got to say I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't anything like this and you know, it's not terrible. The movement is finicky which will be a problem when it speeds up in later levels but once you realise what you're doing it's straightforward enough. Not as terrible as I anticipated it to be.
Man this was an annoying game. First you have to land on a platform and that took me FOUR attempts! After finally succeeding you now have to shoot your way through as you descent. Level 1 no problem, level 2 however killed me instantly, twice. And that was the end of that. Simply put, it’s a bit naff.
This was presented to me at random, it is a compilation from Erbe Software of Spain featuring five games that I've already reviewed, so fine let's do a review of this as a result. There is a second one of these, A Toda Maquina II, however I can't do that one yet as it features the presently unreviewed Galaxy Force, so when I get round to doing it I'll do that said compilation after. Anyway onto the review.
Batman 4
A fun little isometric game but is somewhat let down by Batman's poor jumping.
Rambo III 2
A quite dull game with hardly any redeeming features apart from pretty title music.
Robocop 4
Great graphics, fabulous music and excellent use of sampled speech, too bad I plain suck at it to enjoy it more.
Dragon Ninja 3
It sure looks alright and again has wonderful music, but the gameplay, particularly the higher and lower platform element, was just too fussy for me.
Afterburner 3
An average port of a great arcade game. Not a lot of fun and if not for Rambo III this would have been the weakest title.
Overall 3
Well this didn't turn out to be too bad really. You have five games containing just one bad game, two games that are alright and two games that are really worth playing. I wish I could tell you its price and then work out if it's really value for money or not, but like I said it's Spanish, so I'll just cheat and say yes because it's got Batman and Robocop in it.
Oh good a CSSCGC game, this should go well. You have to find ye flask by typing in an X coordinate and a Y coordinate, and I've already established that it's almost impossible to find it as you can pretty much type in anything, even 10000 by 4726378 and it still searches. The chances of winning as a close to nil as you can get. Not much else to say really, it's crap, job done.
This wasn't on my emulator, why is this? Because it was originally MIA in the World of Spectrum days and has been preserved by the fine folks at Spectrum Computing. It's Pac-Man from 1982 and that's all you can really say about it, movement is as slow as you'd except but the keys are at least responsive so it has that going for it. There are obviously better clones as time went on but also there are worse ones as time went on.
I promised I'd do this, I've done it now and I really wish I hadn't. Galaxy Force has always been inferior to After Burner, but that inferiority shines like a diamond on the Spectrum. After Burner is not a great conversion but it is at least playable, this isn't. It's jerky, it's ugly, it hurts my eyes, it is a mess. Half the time I could not even see what was happening and what I was shooting, yet somehow I finished the first level. Level 2 has some colour going for it but it just makes it even more hurtful on the eye. The top part I can at least see, but the bottom part with the colours, the patterns and the bad scrolling, I cannot see anything. Oh and the music ain't great as well and it's from the same chap who did the music for Altered Beast. again much inferior by comparison. And to top it off, multiload. when I die and refused to continue, because why would you, I have to rewind and reload the game, up yours. This was what I can best describe as an overly ambitious conversion on the Spectrum and perhaps it is one that should have been left untouched, because this is bad, in fact one of the worst arcade conversions I've played.
And now having done Galaxy Force I can now proceed with doing the second and final A Toda Maquina compilation from Erbe Software. This time we have just the four games compared to the five in its predecessor.
Altered Beast 2
Poor graphics and choppy gameplay ruin what could have been a promising arcade conversion.
Galaxy Force 1
A jerky and ugly conversion where half the time I could not see what was happening. One of worst arcade conversions on the Speccy.
Operation Thunderbolt 3
An ineffective conversion that's simply no better than Operation Wolf. Too much happens at once which hampers the gameplay.
Chase HQ 4
Very well programmed and the speech is fantastic, but controlling your car can be very awkward and frustrating. Good but a shade under brilliance.
Overall 2
Four games and there's only one maybe two games worth playing. All in all it is a weaker compilation compared to its predecessor.
Like Dragonia, these types of games are not my forte, maybe they were in my younger days, but that certainly is not the case nowadays. Already I am put off by the number of keys you need to press during the game, and though an icon mode exists it says keyboard control is faster. But this is where it already makes no sense, the instructions say control method 1 is keyboard and control method 2 is icon, yet the game says that icon control is 1 and total control is 2, what? Christ I'm confused already and I haven't even bloody started yet. I picked total control and indeed I imagine this is the way to play the game as moving an arrow constantly would have been a chore, but saying that I had a hard time with the movement aspect of the game, for you move north south west east like text adventures, and they are QAOP, the standard control keys on a Spectrum game, but I keep pressing NSW and E for it because my brains tells me to. I get why they are that way and the fault lies with me but it was a constant annoyance and made me wonder was I better off using the icon control instead. Predictably you just wonder around screen to screen getting endlessly lost, picking up and buying items and fighting some enemies, I even had a fight with a crocodile were Prince Kyle was killed yet the foe was defeated anyway, at least he died in honour and glory or some shit like that. But this plays far, far better than Evil Crown did. This is much more enjoyable and you at least have routes to go, enemies to fight and you at least have a quest. It's still boring me of course but it does hold up well for what it is.
Well this one isn't rocket science, you get a bunch of jumbled letter on the screen and you have to guess the word it makes up, you all know how anagrams work I'm sure. It's good for a couple of quick games think it's alright and then never play it again.
I was thinking this was Bomberman with mice, but no you have to drop bombs on what are said to be mice but look more like mites. This becomes a drags very quickly as you can only drop one bombs at a time, even when it's just gone past the supposed mice and you have to painfully watch it slowly exit the screen before you can drop another one. I managed a score of 8 somehow. Not much more I can say about this except it's very tedious and not very good.
Another MIA game recovered by Spectrum Computing, it is a Spanish game from 1995 that doesn't have a lot going for it. You're a ball wearing shades for some reason that had to collect musical notes for some reason, and that's it. You have to jump over bad guys but good luck doing that particularly when there's a ceiling about you, and you cannot jump forwards. And when you die, it's back to the very start for you. This was bland and tedious, not as tedious as say Bombermice but it's just as bad. It has a nice look to it but the gameplay totally lets it down.
Having done other Hunchback clones in the past, I say other the only one I can remember doing is Punchy, but whatever, it's time finally to look at the official conversion of the arcade game by Ocean, and holy shit it's bad! The controls are a pain in the ass, the jumping is rubbish, level 2 is a nightmare because you can never get the jump right despite it looking like you landed on the platform, and then even level 3 is the easiest level on Punchy and here it's a pain because of the bad controls. I never thought I'd be sitting here saying Punchy's the better game but here we are, this certainly looks nicer but it plays more badly. That has taken me aback.
I am lost for words. I went to this thinking that surely this has to be better than Hunchback, and it turns out it's far worse. The controls in this are worse, the gameplay in this is worse, the levels in this are worse, everything is worse. Hunchback is a bad game, this is worse and I never ever thought I'd be saying that. In fact take Hunchback, Hunchback II and Punchy and if I was told Punchy was the better game of the three I would have cut your arms and legs off, no way is that the better game, turns out it bloody is! I've been doing these nine years and this is the most shocked I've ever been in nine years doing these reviews. Absolutely astounding.
Lemans, 28 Mar 2022 (Rating: 1)
Drive around a track and finish to win, and that's pretty much it. There's just one track and one lap in the entire game. And from the name I feel it's based on the Le Mans 24 Hours race, except this one lasts around 24 seconds. Not really an awful game by any means but then it's not really much of a game either.
This one is familiar to me, that will be because I bought this game and I was stunned to see I never reviewed this yet. I might have liked this back then but I do not care for it now. It does have nice graphics and I do like the explosion sequence when you die, but the gameplay is pretty flat. It is almost like Defender but on the ground and it just doesn't work, perhaps that will be why it was never reviewed until now.
It's another wonder-from-screeen-to-screen game from Spain that isn't all that interesting. The main problem with this game is that avoid the enemies are a hassle because Ruffo is too damn big, is it any wonder why you get so many lives to start with? At least this one was from a magazine, Microhobby to be precise because if this was a commercial release and you paid money for it you would have been well ripped off.
This is a weird little game and one that I feel was designed for shock value and to piss off religious people more than anything. Graphically and technically it is impressive but it seems the designer did so much work into producing the graphics and technical qualities and forgot about the gameplay because there isn't much to shout about here. If this were a budget game, I'd cut it some slack, but this was 7 quid, well maybe the graphics alone are worth that price but the gameplay sure as heck isn't.
This is pretty much Cybernoid and there have been a few clones floating around, Task Force and Shark come to mind and neither were able to match up to Cybernoid and this doesn't either. The graphics and the music are really nice, but again, and I'm sounding like a broken record, the gameplay lets this one down. Shooting the enemies is fine but it's the movement that is troublesome, that and your ship is frickin huge! it makes avoiding the enemies more hassle than it needs to be and if not for that this would have been much better reviewed, but alas it just falls under the mediocre tag and will likely never be played again except to enjoy the music all over again.
Well this wasn't the Humpty Dumpty game I was looking for when I booted it on my emulator, but fine it'll do and then I'll look at the one I was supposed to do next time. Tell you what else I wasn't anticipating this to be? A bloody maths game aimed for children, and you know it's made for children when it constantly tells you you are too old to play the game from 11 upwards, yep you need to be 10 and under to play this game. There's four games in total, a standard maths game, a game of how many are on the screen, Number Invaders, yes really, where you shoot the correct answer, and then a maze game where reaching an X means you answer a maths questions en route to the goal. I mean it's alright for what it is I suppose, though I doubt children under the age of 11 are going to be really impressed with this now, would they have back then even because no offense, Humpty looks rather grotesque in this game.
And now, after a minor detour, it's time for the intended Humpty Dumpty game, or more precisely, The Humpty Dumpty Mystery, which is what I had it downloaded as hence when I loaded Humpty Dumpty it was the wrong one. Basically Humpty Dumpty has been pushed by one of the King's Men, and you must interrogate by asking questions, such as did he have blue eyes and did he have a black hat? Yes it's pretty much Guess Who? The Computer Game. But it is quite nice for what it is though it is more fun trying to guess without asking any questions, which I did manage on my fifth attempt. But that's only the first game, for there is a second game and in this game you see who pushed Humpty and have to correctly describe him by pressing the number that corresponds to the colouir, and this is far less fun than the first game. I'm giving this a 3 and then figured well if YOU enjoyed and you feel it done its job then why doesn't it get a 4? This second game is why it doesn't get a 4. Again I can't really see younger players getting into this now but back then I think they certainly would have, so as long as they stick to the game that loaded and don't bother loading the second game in it.
And here's the bonus game that came with The Humpty Dumpty Mystery, or rather it's side B so no need to open the rom itself. This time we must discover who killed Cock Robin or more precisely, who, where and when. It basically plays like one of them Mastermind or Codebreaker type games where you type in number and it tells you how many you have right. There are different levels in this games, three, four five and six different options to choose from. I mean again it does the job of entertaining, well I say the little ones this feels a bit dark for them, murder and all that, but it is no better than the Humpty Dumpty game.
Of all the Alternative Software licensed games I've played this has to be among the very worst. It's just unplayable. Huxley's jump is atrocious, jumping over creepy crawlers is almost non-existent because of his crap jump, and the game ends when you run out of score which usually happens very quickly. And playing easy and hard made absolutely no difference to me whatsoever. This sucks, it's one of the very worst game I've played from Alternative, it's worse than Postman Pat, it's worse than Fireman Sam, it's worse than Sooty and Sweep, it's even worse than BMX Ninja, it's THAT bad.
Chiron, 06 Apr 2022 (Rating: 3)
This is from Crash magazine in 1988 by Lee Briggs in his only Spectrum entry. It looks and plays exactly how a budget shooter would but I was confused by the gameplay at first in that he would either use a bomb or shoot and then alternate randomly with no real warning, then I discovered that he shoots when moving and uses a bomb whilst idle, ah that explains it. It's not terrible by any means and it's a sort of game I'd have paid £1.99 for and thought really nothing of it apart from it leans towards the boring side very very quickly. But saying that it's far from the worse covertape game I've played and it much looks as well-written as an ordinary budget game would, like you could have shown me this game and told me it was from Mastertronic Plus or Bulldog Software or one of their other budget label, that cost £1.99 or even possibly £2.99 and I would have believed you.
Well this one is a bit of a shot in the dark. It's listed as an education game and is from Mirrorsoft and Ivan Berg Software responsible for their version of BBC Mastermind which wasn't very good. According to the introduction, "The purpose of these three personality tests is to give you an insight into your own personality. The scores are suggestive and approximate, rather than definitive and precise" well that's already a waste of money then isn't it? Know your own personality (in a round-off approximate way), so rather than knowing we'll just guess, I know it's a Spectrum program and all but come on you got endorsement and support from a professor and a doctor after all, put them to good use! So yes we have three tests, and you have to bloody load them separately on Side B, this is already having a detrimental effect on our personality. And here's something else that has a detrimental effect on personality, the test goes on way too long, to the point that I stopped giving a shit and I just answered questions willy nilly just to get it over with and thus likely my "personality" makes no sense, well it wasn't anyway since it was "suggestive" and "approximate". Bloody hell what a waste of time that was. And this was £9.95, so it was a waste of money too as it turns out.
Tremor, 06 Apr 2022 (Rating: 3)
It's another game of running around and shooting things, yay, this time with a robot of sorts and I have to say a rather odd looking one at that, I thought the thing above him was a quiff and I'm kind of saddened that it's not. Anyway I like its look and I like the idea of the game but it fails somewhat on execution, which admittedly was a problem in a lot of Tim Closs' game, but this one is easily among the best I've seen from him and it turns out it was one of his earlier arcade titles. But there was Bomber Bob which was a mediocre Bomb Jack game, European 5-a-Side was an appalling soccer game and then there was Skateboard Kidz which was absolutely dreadful. this trumps all three of them combined and the latter two came after this. As a game alone, not that great, but it certainly looked the part and compared to his other work, it stands out.
Spectrum Computing presented me DigiTape - Your Sinclair issue 08, which has two arcade games I've not reviewed yet, so let's do them now. This one given its name would imply that it's a nice little game about spotting trains, WRONG! No, this game involves you control Ed and he has to spot the missing word in the article and to do that he pulls down pages to reveal words, and revealing the train means you start losing time, and for a game bearing the word Trainspotter, it makes zero sense. And you know what else makes no sense? This game makes no sense. I'm not even sure what I'm meant to be looking for? A word that only appears once? Level 1 game me a bunch of numbers in one and that turned out to correct! And even then you have to avoid the ball constantly nagging at you and pissing you off. This was absolutely dire, it made no sense whatsoever and I never want to see it again.
It's Boulder Dash, simple as that really. And it's a far better game than The Trainspotter Game because you instantly know what you're meant to be doing. The problem though is it's too fast and it's quite difficult to play because of its fast speed, and so it will not take you long to prefer playing Boulder Dash.
Cagara, 06 Apr 2022 (Rating: 1)
There isn't much I can say here that hasn't been said already. Everything is bad, the gameplay, the plot, the design. everything is just, well shit going by the previous reviews. Poor Ste Cork, he wrote Canyon Warrior, he wrote Rescue and he also wrote this, can't win em all eh?
It's an Amidar clone and one I want to like, however I can't. You move slow, they seem to move quicker than you, the keys are a bit unresponsive and the fire button which briefly makes the enemies disappear I found to be largely useless. Amidar has been done better on the Speccy compared to this.
I'm quite keen on these multi-sport Olympic type games so was quite pleased to have been presented this one. We have 100m, 400m. 110m Hurdles, 400m Hurdles and the Hammer Throw. For the running events you have to move your effort up and down to determine your speed, or power as it's written here, and if you go too fast you fall over, and that happened to me a lot. The hurdles are the same except you jump over hurdles, see, if you don't jump you fall but you can continue albeit way behind the others. And the Hammer? Well I've no idea what's going on here, either I don't throw it at all or when I do it's a minute distance. Pressing anything other than fire results in no throw so button mashing for instance doesn't work, like this event doesn't work for this particular event. It's a refreshing change from button mashing, but I just feel winning is a matter of chance rather than skill and that element should never exist in these kind of game so that was a proper turn off for me. I think I'll just stick to Hyper Sports and Decathlon thank you very much.
It's listed as an educational game but it's really just a game about going right or left through a maze into the goal. It confused me a couple of times but it's a matter of putting yourself in that situation and telling it to go your left or right depending on where he's facing. Not bad for a couple of gos and then five minutes later it's time for something else.
And also from Peak Mathematics who brought us Left and Right comes Your Next Move, yet it says Your Next Turn and The 8 Compass Points on the title screen, weird. And in this game you are Otto the spider and you have to tell him which way he needs to face the spider, N, NE, E, etc, etc. This was way blander compared to Left and Right despite the fact that in that game you only moved two directions and here you move eight, but this is slower and seems to have no end, like no screen to say yay congrats you won, winner is you and all that jazz. And at least with left and right there was a puzzle and a challenge to it, this doesn't really have anything. So no, much preferred Left and Right to this.
You are a prisoner in Nazi Germany who attempts to escape from Colditz Castle, and to do this you must navigate your way through the many rooms of the castle, collecting items along the way and participating in various mini-games, such as crawl without being seen, shoot the guard and communicate in German. If you are caught three times, you will be executed. If you escape, well I don't know what happens actually as I've never managed it. But this is pretty good actually, the mini-games add to the game and it's a good time filler more than anything. There is a lack of sound and only carrying three items can be a hassle but I did enjoy this for what it was. Some of Barry Jones' games are bad but some of them are good as well, Hit Man I remember being a good little game and this too is pretty good as well.
Well going by the previous reviews and whatever it was that resembled music at the title screen my expectations for this were relatively low. And indeed early doors this was looking like a bust as the Kempston controls were frankly mental and I was moving by myself. Thankfully though the Teclado keys were straightforward and indeed the more I played it the more it actually warmed to me. I mean it's Head-On and I've played far worse clones compared to this. The game looks nice enough and the keys response is just right for this sort of game. Maybe I'm just being kind but I did enjoy this and that surprised me, especially given how things were headed at the beginning.
APB, 06 Apr 2022 (Rating: 3)
This one falls under the category of How Have I Not Done This One Yet? This could have been a brilliant arcade conversion, the gameplay is pretty much dead accurate from the original, but there are particular flaws that knock this down for me. First, the graphics are monchrome which makes it hard to recognise the other vehicles, particularly those that were a different colour in the arcade game, you now have to recognise them by design. But the biggest drawback for me was the scrolling. This made controlling more difficult than it needed to be, even level 1, the easiest level in the whole game, was a challenge because of it. It is worth a look for sure but it is far from perfect.
Gecko, 28 May 2022 (Rating: 2)
It's a type-in game written in BASIC and so I think we have an idea of what to expect from this. This absolutely confused me at first as the idea of the game is the catch the gecko and the number caught would be shown at the window, but none of that was happening. He walks through me nothing happens, then he kills me, he changes colour, absolutely confused. Then I worked the game out. You jump over the white geckos, then when he turns green you have to catch him, annoyingly he doesn't do it all the time but most of the time he will. This was very close to getting a 1 and labelled as unplayable until I worked it out, so instead it gets a 2 and labelled as alright but not something you're gonna spend a lot of time on.
I am amazed I never reviewed this until now because I owned this game many many years ago. This is reminiscent of Crystal Castles and I always liked this game although I've completely forgotten how to correctly do level 3 and that comes with not playing the game in many years more than anything. But always was a game I enjoyed playing and thus it's another game that I couldn't believe I reviewed earlier and could have sworn I did.
I was presented a two game compilation called Fruit Machine + Pontoon by Astro Software, and so I am game to review each game individually before doing the compilation itself. And so to Fruit Machine, and well it was exactly as I expected for 16K and 1982. But it is a confusing one as to how you win, I was initially fixated on the middle line, so any time a hold or nudge sequence happened my goal was to get a line on the middle one, and I managed that with two nudges. But then I got a line on the top row and won £2, so now I realise that it's any row for a win, that was until six spins later when I got another line on the top row and won nothing. Then two spins later I got a diagonal line and won £10, for a DIAGONAL LINE?!! And then naturally another two spins later I got another diagonal line and won nothing before the inevitable happened and I lost all my dosh. I'm just going to put this down as not well written.
You know what? In my nine years and over 1800 reviews on this site, I've never done a game called Pontoon. I may have done a Pontoon game by another name and I may have done Blackjack, but never a Pontoon game by the name Pontoon and that is astonishing and thankfully that changes now. Now this is a game I know, it is basically Blackjack except we twist instead of hit but the rules are the same, and it is a better game than Astro's other offering Fruit Machine. However, I have my grievances with this game, in that it is not user-friendly for the beginner, it is no problem with me because I know this game but it you have never played Pontoon before and you are playing this game, you will struggle and I will tell you why. Firstly, I would have liked this game to tell you what you have during the game, like if you are dealt 7 and 3, that's 10, then you twist and are given an queen, we known that's a 10 and you have a 20 but if you are new how are you to know since the game doesn't tell you? Also and most critically, if you managed to get 21, the game STILL insists on asking you to twist or stick and I think, again purely for the beginner, it should automatically stick at 21 for you and this doesn't. Also ties count as losses and the dealer seemed to twist on 17 and either win by scoring 20 or bust by going under, the general rule is the dealer always sticks at 17, but a couple of times he did not. So naturally as I know this game, I did enjoy it, but I had to dock it a couple of points for the faults I mentioned throughout this review. On its own, it get a 4 by default, but the negatives outweigh the positives and I am sure there is a better Pontoon game out there that is beginner friendly and doesn't try to shaft you by making you hit on 21 and have him hit on 17 to beat you, hence I've settled for a 2.
A Fruit Machine game which works as you'd expect for it's ram and age and a Pontoon game that could and should have been higher rated by me but has one fault too many to make that possible. Oh and if you're curious it was £4.50 for both games for £2.25 per game in 1982. Can't help but feel Fruit Machine is exactly what you paid for while Pontoon would be a steal at that price if it weren't for the various grievances I mentioned in that particular review.
Well this has to be one of the weirdest entries I've ever come across, for the game is listed as Invader Cube yet the game loads and runs and plays as 3D-OXO. Now I thought it was the fault of World of Spectrum, because you know like that's never happened before right? Tsk what a surprise I thought. However, it was advertised as Invader Cube and it was even released in a compilation called Mind Games as Invader Cube, yet even the screenshot for it shows 3D-OXO. What in the blithering shit?! I mean I can see why it's called Invader Cube, because the little counters are Space Invaders, and with that now I can see why they stuck with 3D-OXO. Anyway it's 3D Noughts and Crosses and I frankly never got on with the 3D version, less is more and I cannot stress that about noughts and crosses enough, yes there's more chance of a tie but it's simple and effective, unlike this where the gameplay is just as confusing as its bloody name. For my noughts and crosses fix, I'll just stick to the classic version thank you very much, like I just stick to the ordinary crosswords without doing the cryptic bollocks. I've said it before and I'll say it again, less is more.
And here's one more game I should have reviewed sooner, for I owned this as well much like Crazy Castles, and this too is a game I always liked. Yes it gets slow because so much happens at once at times, yes it can get boring easily, but I always liked playing it now and it's one of the few times I stopped playing while I was ahead otherwise I would be here for another two hours playing it. Nice little game from Peter Gough, who in my view is a very underrated programmer.
Eye, 28 May 2022 (Rating: 1)
Imagine paying £9.95 for a game that can end on a single turn? In this game, you place counters on a board and then you can move counters according to how many you are allowed to move, in my case two. My opponent on the other hand switching the board's direction and suddenly his colour flashes and he wins. How much was this again? Then I did a game with four computer players, first turn to red he flips the board red flashes and red is the winner. How much was this again? Well thankfully I never bought and nor will I ever play it again. Apparently a real life version exists, presumably a puzzle toy of sorts similar to the Rubik's Cube, just stick to that version, no in fact just stick to the Rubik's Cube, no sod that I'll stick to me crosswords thanks.
It's noughts and crosses mixed with five-in-a-row and it's enjoyable. The grid itself just seems a bit too big for my taste plus I played three games and lost three, but it was quite enjoyable and trounces Invader Base/3D OXO, which proves my point of less being more, ok the grid is bigger and you need five to win rather than three but still it's one grid rather than playing with four and so I'd take this anyday.
This Crash covertape game comes from Brazil of all places. And well it's a mixed bag really, it contains minigames such as Hangman, Breakout and Slots, the Hangman part works but everything else is lacking. The Breakout game sees the ball move only in fixed angles, and if you somehow get your ball going upwards there's no other option but to lose a life to proceed, oh and it always goes through blocks from time to time as well. The slots I never seem to win, there was also a game featuring Stormtrooper and I lost a life, God knows what else this game has. It's very different and creative and I commend them for that, but it just lacks in polish and execution in parts, the Breakout game especially wasn't done particularly well. I feel it partly deserves a higher score and it partly deserves a lower score, so putting it down the middle was the fairest result.
For some odd reason you're an ostrich in space and you shoot enemies. From the screenshot alone I was expecting this to be a Joust type game and well I was miles wrong. But I have to say this was a pleasant surprise, it's neat, plays and responds well and especially when you compare this to other Alpha--Omega/Power House games, Deathball, Dervish, Disaposable Heroes, Freedom Fighter, SQIJ anyone? This was a breath of fresh air compared to all of those combined.
Simon Morris, who wrote one of Alpha-Omega's rare good games Oblivion in 1986, also wrote Space Jack two years later in 1988, and well, what happened? All the joy of Oblivion is gone and instead we have a virtually unplayable shooter with crap movement and crap shooting. Staying alive is pretty much impossible here. Oblivion exceeded Alpha-Omega's reputation by a long way, but in The Power House days there was no such thing, it was just make a game and make it as crap as possible and this certainly fits the bill.
OTWOC, 28 May 2022 (Rating: 2)
This certainly looks alright but the gameplay doesn't do it for me. The first level is too fast and it's hard to shoot the rocks as a result, then level 2 comes and it's too slow and jerky which again make it hard to shoot anything. Not overly terrible, the background is very pretty and all but this is probably a case of a programmer trying to produce more of what the Spectrum is capable of.
This game never really sat well with me. It looks nice and the shooting elements are fun to a degree but it's just too bad noting else seems to be and it becomes bland and boring rather quickly. And I say the shooting elements are fun to a degree because there comes a point where too much happens at once and it's difficult to keep up. It ain't bad but I wish it could offer me more, like on paper it feels it should but it never did for me and it's a shame.
Another game I thought I already covered but apparently not. Always like this game, in fact I feel it may be one of the best Battleships games I've played on the Spectrum, it's simple and to the point, the pace is perfect, it's really good fun and may be even better playing with a friend.
Durell's games have always been hit and miss for me. While they look superb for their time their games never really played the best for me and this is one such example. While this indeed looks great the gameplay did nothing for me, which I appreciate is a fault with me and not the game, but this has been a problem in other Durell games and so much so that I am beginning to notice a pattern emerging. From memory the lone exception has been Saboteur, that game doesn't look quite as nice as this but plays really well. On gameplay alone this easily gets a 2, but I feel this game doesn't deserve that based on how it looks and I accept I have been too harsh on some of my reviews in the past and that simply comes down to being an old, miserable, senile git more than anything. It looks nice but it did absolutely nothing to amuse me and make me want to play it again.
I'm not sure what I was expecting here but it certainly wasn't another Manic Miner inspired game. But this one from Spanish company Ventamatic has a difference, you can SHOOT! YES! HE HAS A GUN! Well I say that it's merely just a stun gun and it freezes them momentarily to allow you to progress past them but still it's very different. He can also kick as well but it appears to do the same thing and I found it to be largely useless as he'll end up either jumping or getting hit anyway because you moved too close to the enemy. It's biggest detriment however is that you cannot jump and fire together which would have been so helpful in some of the levels, but no it is not to be. Well it's certainly a different spin on the ol' Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy platformers and it certainly puts others like Anteroo the Mutant to shame. Not all bad but I wish there was more to it to like it more.
No, it not a version on that game with colours and a mat, you know the one, but instead it's a weird shooter with weird enemies to shoot. I have to say I was impressed with this, it looks and plays really well for what it is, but it can get too clustered for my taste. It was also quite difficult getting the items at times particularly ones you needed most like ammo. But saying that, I admire its look and feel, clearly the programmers had a goal to exceed the Spectrum's limitations and they absolutely succeeded.
Out of curiosity I looked to see if there was a version of the classic Milton Bradley game Twister on the Spectrum. Surprise surprise there wasn't, but there was a Fruit Machine called Twister and I like these type of games and so I'm all for it. This one comes from the Czech Republic and is from 1998, and is pretty good fun. It looks nice and has some nice music and it plays as a fruit machine game should do. However, there are multiple games within the machine, like standard Twister which gives you a gamble game if you obtain one of the winning reels, and then if you have money in the ClubMeter, you can play one of the other games that increases your winning lines but increases the bet with it, and honestly, it added pretty much nothing to the game for me, I was doing just fine with the need of them and once I got to them my winnings evaporated, so assholes to them frankly. It doesn't offer much compared to say the Fruit Machine Simulators from Codemasters, but it does offer a similar vein of enjoyment in spite of this and I certainly enjoyed this more than Arcade Fruit Machine from Zeppelin. But I feel also, and I've said this before, less is more, again I was doing just fine with the basic game and when I took the chance of doing the other games it did nothing for me. But all in all, it's good fun for what it is.
Ahhh!!, 30 May 2022 (Rating: 3)
I wasn't really expecting much from this, especially when I died the very second I launched the game, but you know it's actually not bad, it's not great but I have certainly played a lot worse.It's competent, you know what you're doing, the graphics are clear, it plays at a good pace, it's responsive and the detection is right. So not too bad at all, quite pleasant actually.
John Pitcher, who wrote Mindstone an adventure I've covered on this site, was a bit of a naughty man. For he wrote a type-in game called Krakatoa 2012 and with minor modifications he sent it to not one magazine, but two, and I'll be covering both today like some kind of masochist. Here's the version he sent to SInclair User, and well the idea is there, rescuing ten islanders back to the mothership safely, but the execution is greatly flawed. You see the enemies can hit you and when you respawn they can hit you immediately afterwards again, and again, and if you're really not careful again, and again and again, and suddenly half your shield is instantly gone. This is largely unplayable for that very reason and seeing there's two of them I shudder what the other one will be like, well too bad I'm not reviewing it for the simple reason that I can't get it to run, but I imagine I could just get away with copying and pasting this review onto it because it'll pretty much be the same game anyway, didn't stop The Dean from doing it that way, but I hate this game and so I won't. Besides, he's a God and I'm just a mere mortal, so best just to leave it, one and done, never again.
And I may as well look at this one next since it's the only other game written by Mindstone and Krakatoa 2012 author John Pitcher. This too is from Sinclair User and thankfully a likely non-working second version does not exist, thought I began the worse when this game took its time to run, but run it did and now I want to run, run away as fast as I can, but alas I must continue so on we go. It plays similar to Krakatoa where instead of rescuing islanders and returning them to your ship you are rescuing canisters and returning them to your ship. However, this is a far better game than Krakatoa, the controls are nice, the gameplay is much more straightforward and the gameplay is adequate and only gets really difficult as you progress rather than immediately after starting the game. Perfectly acceptable, I'm more than happy with that one and compared to Krakatoa 2012 it gets a mark of 12 because it is leaps and bounds ahead of it.
Another one that I could have sworn I'd already done, for I remember this game very well and I remember it for being very bad, I never bought it but a dear friend of mine, who I'd known from school and deceased many years bless him, had this game and hated it, and because of that I never played it until emulation and by then he was no longer with us to remind me of his hatred for this game. But he was right you know, this game was bad. But when brought to my attention now I had somewhat renewed hope for this game, and they were quickly dashed within the first second of gameplay. The crap jumping, the crap fighting, the constant deaths, everything in this game is horrendous. This turned out to be far worse than I remembered it to be and for that it deserves the score it gets.
Miss you Steve, you were bloody right.
Compilation time again. This time I am covering the first two instalments of Thrill Time Gold from Elite, 1 and 2 to be precise. There was also a third one as well as a Platinum edition, but they contain games I haven't covered yet whereas the first two contains games I have already done. Same as before, this review will feature a brief summary of the games included followed by a final summary,
Batty 5
A very worthy Breakout/Arkanoid clone that's up there among the best. It has everything you want in a Breakout clone
Bomb Jack 5
A very accurate conversion of a brilliant arcade game. One of this finest arcade conversions on the Spectrum.
Ghost 'n Goblins 3
I never liked the arcade game and predictably I didn't find much love for the Speccy version either. I never got very far in this even with nine lives.
Paperboy 4
While not the best conversion out there it sure is just as playable and just as fun. Always full of enjoyment and thrills.
Turbo Esprit 3
It's very well programmed but you're required to pretty much do more than one thing at a time and I never got on with that at all. Alternating from the map to the game screen and steering the car was always a nuisance for me.
Overall 4
Pretty damn good compilation I say. Batty and Bomb Jack are easily the standout games here and while Ghost 'n Goblins and Turbo Esprit were letdowns on a personal perspective, they are not bad games in their own right. Elite were one of the best companies around in this era and this compilation is proof of that.
Time now for a look at the second Thrill Time Gold compilation from Elite. Same again, brief summary of the games included which I had already done prior to this followed by a final score and final summary,
Frank Bruno's Boxing 3
Based on Nintendo's boxing game Punch Out under the name of Frank Bruno. It's alright really but I had a hard time getting to grips with the controls. Barry McGuigan's Boxing game is much better than this.
Airwolf 2
This could have been special if the gameplay was more balanced and less awkward. Too frustrating for my interest.
Sabotuer! 4
Always been a fun game to play. The overall design is excellent and leaps and bounds ahead of the majority of games released around this time.
Scooby-Doo 3
Rather simple to play and get into and was quite enjoybale but the random appearances of the enemies is what spoils it for me.
Battle Ships 4
Always like this game, in fact I feel it may be one of the best Battleships games I've played on the Spectrum. It's simple and to the point, the pace is perfect, it's really good fun and may be even better playing with a friend.
Overall 3
Well the first compilation was better in my view. This does have good titles in Sabouteur and Battle Ships but then it also has Airwolf. The first Thrill Time Gold on the otherhand had Bomb Jack and Batty which are among the finest Speccy games around. Not all bad but stick with the first compilation
It's a Perry and Bruty game but I've got to say it's not one of their better offerings. It does have that classic Perry/Bruty look but the gameplay came off as bland to me. Simply put, they've done better.
This game contains a feature that I never ever got on with, Icon/Menu Driven Control. Where moving your man with keys is not enough, you have to use the icons to do things and that put me off very quickly, never liked it then and don't like it now. And come to think of it this is pretty much a re-skinned Barbarian, and I mean the Melbourne House version and not the Palace Software one with decapitations, even the jumping animation is pretty much the same. The graphics are nice and if it is your kind of game you may well like it, but I never did and never had the patience to.
This is a version of Bank Panic and for this I shall be comparing this to West Back, another game inspired by Bank Panic and incidentally both are Spanish. Having played West Bank before this and then playing this after, I have concluded that this is actually better than West Bank. The controls are lot simpler, the characters are more distinguished being in colour rather than monochrome, they have some animation and they aren't just cardboard cutouts, and the sound is really nice too. And this was a magazine game were as West Bank was a commercial release. West Bank isn't a bad game but it's just not great, I knew it could have been done better and here it is, proven. I would have loved for this to be commercially released back in the day because I would have bought it and really enjoyed it. Best version of Bank Panic I've played.
He is a master of his work, daring, cunning, intuitive and clever. He is an expect at spotting clues, interrogation and solving even the most complex of cases. No matter the obstacles, falsehoods and red herrings that stand in his way, he always brings the guilty criminals to justice. He is...The Detective! Except you do none of that and you're just shooting various things, and that's it. But I mean for 1983 it's not a bad ol' game and I suppose for fairness I should be comparing this to Arcadia from 1982 and this is slightly better as while it is choppy at first it does speeds up as you shoot enemies while in Arcadia you got this constant lag. And what are we shooting here? Thimbles? Hat? Mouths?! Weird. Anyway highly misleading but not all bad once you get your head around it.
I like Shaw Brothers games but this is not one of them. It has the same look in virtually all of their games but the gameplay is ass. You can only withstand four hits before you die, but you end up losing them very quickly. His jump though is the worst bit. Screen 1 he can jump fine, second screen he can only jumps a wee teeny bit, third screen he jumps normally again, fourth screen he only jumps teeny bits again, what is with that? This annoyed the hell out of the me and is possibly one of the weakest games the Shaw Brothers wrote, which will be why it ended up on a magazine covertape rather than a commercial release.
I didn't have much expectations for this game initially, but my God it turned out to be disastrous. The keyboard layout is atrocious, you press T for up, B for down, F for left, H for right, U for fire and 5 for bomb, just put your fingers on your keyboard at this layout, this does not work today at all. Also, you press 5 for bomb but he also goes down, and if you go down to the bottom you die. And so predictably I struggled, but fortunately I then mapped my keyboard to the Kempston joystick, which it the cursor keys to move and Tab to fire while to bomb you press down and fire together. And so I was able to play the game, and well the laser you have is largely useless and when you go to bomb the items at the bottom you stand a great chance of dying as you move down with it. And so inevitably I just did another game and stood there, only bombing occasionally, and nothing happened except I hit a few things and died by moving too close to the top of the screen let alone the bottom, and then finally an enemy appeared and so we can use our laser. except I died, twice, in quick succession, and it was game over. Just. Like. That. Bollocks to this game, it's crap.
This is absolutely unplayable. Apparently you have to shoot the bears onto your ship without getting hit by the alien, but it's so easy to get trapped as you can only move up and down via the elevators and you cannot shoot the alien for it is INDESTRUCTIBLE. Don't Panic they say, with a shitty gun and an alien you can't kill coming towards you, what else are you gonna do?
Can you see why I hand-picked this one? Hmmmmm. As Boris you has to go around a grid and defuse bombs, bombs that are counting down that is, otherwise if you move towards a bomb that's stationary you will die, and if that numbered counter reaches zero you will die, so more precisely you're racing towards a number but let's not get into that. It sound simple until you realise you can only move along a path once and you cannot go through gaps, meaning if you're not careful you can actually trap a bomb and become unable to access it leading to inevitable resignation, er I mean death. I don't know what I was expecting but I tell you what, it's pretty good in fact. It is probably a bit slow for my liking, well it's in BASIC so what did we expect, and it can get very annoying very quickly, but it's playable and it's quite fun. It doesn't quite make it to 4 but it is a very high 3 nevertheless. And I am quite disappointed to learn it was author K.P. Holloway's only credited game.
Can you see why I hand-picked this one as well? Hmmmmm. It's from Magnum Computing's 60 Spectrum Games compilation in 1986 and is from author Grant Reekie, and this too is the only game he wrote. Now I wasn't expecting much in my previous review Bomber Boris, can you see a pattern emerging here, but that turned out to be pretty good. This, again I'm not expecting much other than you're the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, you build a party, you make decisions, you make a twat of yourself, your country hates you and then you lose the election and must resign from your party as a result. I wasn't far wrong. In this game you make decisions in order to become "popular", and by this you gain percentage. The options we have in the menu are, we can visit a foreign country, visit towns in Britain, appear on chat show because of course we can, make publicity campaign, make political broadcast and insult the opposition party, which turns out to be Bad Sams Party, odd. And of course we have to try and be "popular" so immediately going on the offence and insulting the opposition is likely the wrong choice to make, but of course I picked it anyway because I'm Prime Minister and I'm a loony. I say his policies stink, he says I stink more than him, he has the best insult and gains 1%, yup this is the level we are dealing with in this game. Next I visit Brixton, and if I go on a short journey to Brixton and I am liked, I will earn 2%, so what do I have to do to be liked exactly? As it turns out nothing as it is entirely by chance. Well none of that matters because I am very well liked as it turns out, lovely. Next I did a political campaign and gained 7%, nice, now I'm on 23%. I then tried to appear on a chat show but you need at least 50% and then to make a political broadcast you need at least 60%, you know what that means? More publicity campaigns and insults, oh and I visited America because we're pals and all that. The first three insults I did were exactly the same, your policies stink, you stink more, you lose 1%, that was literally the most interesting option of them all and I'm tired of it already, tell you what else I'm tired of, this game. Then I visited Edinburgh and no-one likes me, what a surprise, then there was an ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT!! YES!! It was unsuccessful but I lost another 2% and adding the 3% we lost by simply stepping foot in Edinburgh, that's 5% down. Eventually nobody likes me in Japan, nor in Cardiff, and then I blow my remaining money on publicity campaigns and visits to America and Brixton and now I'm skint, all that's left to do is insult the opposition, after which there are finally other insults shown, until inevitably I reach the magic 0%, and nothing happens, what? Insult the party again, OOPS!!, I think I'm toast now. Indeed the Baddy Party have taken over and decide to outlaw Spectrums, the C64 fanboy bastards! Well that was a waste of time, it's tedious, repetitive and almost entirely no fun at all, who'd want to be a politician eh? I think I'll quickly get back to Bomber Boris now.
The title screen describes this as "a very poor clone of the popular little game Sokoban". It's not the fact that it's a very poor clone of Sokoban that upsets me, it's the fact that it's Sokoban full stop that upsets me. The scrolling text also says that "it shouldn't keep you entertained for more than two minutes", well have to say I appreciate Thomas Small's honesty in this one, in fact he's pretty much done the review for me! Well he was honest with us and so I will be frank and honest with him in return, I quite like this. I struggle to sit through a Sokoban game but I sat through this one and actually finished it, it's a very short game, around six levels or so but I wasn't counting. The look is primitive yes, but the speed is good, the key response it frankly excellent, I have played far worse clones compared to this, it's simple and effective and plays well, albeit let down by the lack of graphics and being really short. But I was prepared to end this review by simply saying it's a very poor clone of Sokoban that won't keep you entertained for more than two minutes and don't blame me, he said that at the start before I even played the damn thing, I had that typed in and all and was prepared to just add bit to it in between as I played the game, but all that is out the window because it turned out to be competent and quite pleasing. Who would have funked it? I'm sure it's been done better but it's certainly been done far worse of the Spectrum. So very poor? You haven't seen some of the other clones I've played Mr. Small.
It's a painter game and a very noisy one, I am too old for such noises. It's another one with a rubbish keyboard layout where on a modern keyboard it demands you to press both shifts, left shift for left and right shift to fire at the thief. Annoyingly, the brush moves down by default when you don't press anything or you let go of a control, when you more right and not press anything after you would assume he would continue to go right until another direction is pressed, but no he just goes down and that was enough to deduct a point as it greatly got on my nerves. While it's not a terrible game I have come across better games of this concept in the past.
This I hoped would be good but it is far from it I'm afraid. You simply have to guide your ship around the level to collect the orbs, I say simply when controlling the ship is an absolute nightmare. And you have a gun and it's largely useless, you can first use it at level 3 (Password: Europa) but positioning your ship in order to shoot is again a nightmare. Not a game I will ever play again. Oh and it's a version of Gravitar by the way, remind me never to come across that game then as well.
This is likely based on Pachinko, or possibly Plinko from The Price is Right, except while the idea is pleasant the execution is far from it. I just find it too easy to put the barrels in an existing space and the earthquakes, which are supposed to shuffle the gates, didn't really help. For a game that's supposed to require skill you sure need plenty of luck and chance to succeed.
It's football management again, oh goodie. Well this one has music which is already different, but then you press a button and the music stops and the status quo is resumed. Selecting your team here is bonkers as they are in reverse alphabetical order of position, so for Division 1 the top team is Wimbledon and the bottom team is Arsenal, what maniac thought it was a good idea to order them that way? Anyway I am York in Division 4 because you start in Division 4 regardless and they are top of Division 4 by default, also they sound similar to YOR, so there you go a bit of patriotism somewhat even though I am a Southampton fan for my sins. And then not only that, for picking your team even the players are in reverse order, so the attackers are at the top and the goalies are at the bottom, plus I've David Seaman playing up front for us for some reason. This does offer match highlights which looks very similar to Football Manager, however both teams are the same colour so who is who exactly here? Basically it's whoever is shooting where, do if it reads York 0 Wrexham 0 then we are shooting right, and in the second half it is reversed and it'll read York to the right then we are shooting left, oh and we thumped Wrexham 3-0, see I knew picking the top team would work wonders. This doesn't have a lot of options to play with compared to other management games, like there's no training or transfer market until after a game is finished, but there's also minimal loading time which is exactly what you'd expect for a game of this nature written in machine code rather than BASIC. But the highlights, while a nice touch, are a little bizarre and unrealistic as the ball has a mind of its own, it can be booted clear by the defence and then suddenly stop in mid-air and bounce down in a straight line which is quite the visual. Also when the players on the pitch crowd together and clash, they can magical disappear, and so four players on the pitch suddenly becomes none. It's not a terrible football management game by any means and I've certainly come across far worse, but it's trying to look like Football Manager and it is no Football Manager, saying that it trounces the third one and now I suddenly feel ill remember that exists. But if you're looking a football management game where you can just plow through without really giving a crap about the options and you just want to pick up and play, this is a pretty good option for that.
Savage, 08 Jun 2022 (Rating: 4)
It's another Perry and Bruty game and it only took 15 seconds for me to determine it was a better game than the last Perry/Bruty game I reviewed Captain Planet. It has the similar classic look but the graphics are indeed better and the gameplay is better too, albeit it's pretty tough. Plus, there are three parts which the other parts need a password, now I haven't bothered with that for this review, but it being in three parts can only mean one thing, the dreaded multi-load which is never a good sign. But saying that, as a game alone, it is good but for me not quite Perry and Bruty's best work, though it's much better than the last one I looked at. It was pretty well received back in the day such as a 9/10 from Your Sinclair and you can clearly see why.
Well, never thought I'd be coming across this one but here we are. This is from Mirrorsoft who also done that Know Your Personality bollocks I did a while back and who seem to have a number of educational games under their belt, including this and another Mr. Men game from the same developer that I'll cover next. This has two sides and two games on each. Side 1 has Mr. Greedy's Ice Cream Hunt, which sees Mr. Greedy navigate through a maze to reach the ice cream that looks more like a bucket, like did the ice cream really have to be the same colour as the background? Anyway, you can't lose as if you hit a wall nothing happens. There's only five levels and then you repeat the same mazes again with the only difference being the location of the bucket, er I mean Ice Cream. The second game on Side 1 is Mr Silly's Hat Games where you have to pick the right hat he requests and he wears them over each other and becomes some crazed balancing act. Again you can't lose as you can't even pick a wrong hat and the fire option only works if you select the right hat. Onto side 2 now with two games featuring Mr. Forgetful, how he has two games in this thing I have no idea. First up is his Wardrobe Game which is basically a matching pairs game that featuring shoes, match a shoe from the top row and the bottom row and six matches wins. In this one you CAN get a wrong answer but there's no punishment which again means you can't lose. And finally we have Mr. Forgetful again, for some reason, and his Letter Game, and it's exactly the same as his Wardrobe Game except the shoes are now letters, and so that will be why he has two games in this, the lazy bastards. Well the Wardrobe was the best game on this thing as it is at least a game that can provide a challenge and then the letter game came and ruined it all. The Ice Cream game is basically a maze and the Hat game isn't much of a game as you can't even pick the wrong hat. All in all, good for about a minute and then it's time for something else mummy.
It's Mr. Men again. This time we have four games on one side, and the game select screen has a square alternating on each one and tells you to press any key rather than press 1-4, so you can essentially pick the wrong game. Anyway first up is Mr. Tickle's Jigsaw puzzle and already the game looks very primitive compared to the last one. Here we have four sides each containing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, you have to move the platforms so that the gap matches the position of the yellow piece. Next is Mr. Tickle and Mr. Grumpy, which plays the same as the previous game except you have to level the platform to Mr. Grumpy, type DR meaning Down and Right and Mr. Tickle than gives Mr. Grumpy a tickle, every, single, time, what word did I use? Primitive? Yes that'll be it. Next is Mr. Lazy where you control a worm that has to knock an apple off the tree and hit Mr. Lazy to wake him up, except moving the worm is an absolute bastard! To do so you have to use commands such as m to move, l for left and r for right, but rather than tell him to keep moving left you have to keep telling him to move, and so a typical puzzle looks something like mrmmmrm, why? And this is aimed at 4-8 year olds?! Anyway the final game is Mr. Men versus Mr. Tickle, which is like chess and the goal is for the four of you to trap the one of him. How can I describe this? Oh yes, primitive. And I've been resetting the Spectrum and reloading the game where it turns out from the instructions that Caps Shift and Z returns you to the menu, wish I discovered that sooner. This is far worse than First Steps with the Mr. Men, so much so that I am now tempting to go back and give that a 3 rating. It seems harsh to give this a 1 for what it is but comparing this to the other Mr. Men game this is appalling. The games are primitive, bad and in Mr. Lazy's case they make no sense. The jigsaw game is a drag, the tickle game has no challenge and therefore the last game is the best game as it has a challenge to it. Would a child be entertained by this back then? Don't know and frankly I don't care.
Anima, 11 Jun 2022 (Rating: 4)
More recent Spectrum titles are not normally to my liking, I say more recent this one's already seven years old but anything after 2018 can't be reviewed because this site's database is outdated likely forever, so there that's my excuse for calling this more recent anyway. But that's besides the point, the point is for the most part I cannot get on with them, but then there are good exceptions to those expectations and this is pretty darn good exception. This is really good as a matter of fact, it's look and style reminds me of a Shaw Brothers game which I'm sure wasn't the intention given it's a Spanish developed game but I for one recognise these similarities in the very least. Simple graphics, simple gameplay, you travel across the level shooting various enemies and collect angels for extra lives. It's very simplistic and yet it's very effective and works wonders. The one complaint I have is some of the colour choices, like I get why they are the way they are but it just made this a bit too hard to see for my liking, but it is only merely a minor complaint, apart from that, this rules and I like it a lot. But the saddest thing of all is, it is the only game from the authors, they haven't done another game since and that's a shame because I for one would have really looked forward to see what else they could produce. But as it is, this is their one and only title and it is a good 'un in more ways than one, for this was written for the bitbitjam#2 2015 competition, and it won, and I approve of this.
I'm slightly cheating with the next review as it's one I've handpicked myself rather than given to me at random. This too was an entrant in the bitbitjam#2 2015 contest where it finished 2nd behind Anima. And looking at all the entries listed, from the screenshots alone I figured it was between Anima and Black Star for the top prize and wondered if this came in 2nd, and I wasn't wrong. And because of this I hoped that this would be just as good as Anima, and I wasn't wrong. It's basically a version of Space Invaders, shoot all the enemies on screen to clear a wave and a new one begins, simple as that and again it's effective and it works. However, I can easily see how Anima won and not this, because Anima offered more gameplay and this doesn't offer all that much. Also, my minor complaint with Anima was its choice of colour on some of the screens, and here my minor complaint again is the choice of colour on its only screen, or more so the lack of colour. Everything is white with a black background, which includes you, the enemies, the bullets and the moon on the bottom corner of the screen. I found my ship camouflaging with the moon on more than one occasion and that combined with the enemy bullets became a nuisance very quickly. Also there was a minor issue with collision detection in that the bullets would go through one enemy and hit the enemy above it, which is probably due to the way their movement routines worked. It is a good game and one I would have happily paid £2.99 or £3.99 back in the day, but if I was judging on either this or Anima in the bitbitjam contest myself, then Anima wins by a neck by simply offering more of a game, but this too is a nice little game to check out.
This is a bit of a weird one in the Spectrum archives as it was originally set out as a German game called Platform, only now it's in English and published by Big K as Platform Leaper. To further add to the confusion Platform is listed here but the Spectrum Computing link directs to Platform Leaper. Anyway, you have to jump from platform to platform in order to reach the top to finish a level, the problem with this though was how do you jump? Q and W move left and right but I could not figure out how to jump at all, luckily though it was the German version to the rescue and indeed it told you how to jump, it is Symbol Shift, which in today's keyboards in Right Shift, along with the direction you wish to go and you must take a running start before jumping. So now having worked everything out I can now play the game properly for the sake of the review, and I've got to be honest, I wasn't expecting to be any good, and it's not, but it's not terrible. There is a degree of playability towards it but the running start element will throw people off, especially when you don't have instructions unless you download a version of another language and successfully translate like I did. I could say we're in completely the wrong direction from Anima and Black Star but then we were always going to be as they are more recent titles written in Machine Code and this is from 1984 written in BASIC, but saying that, while it's not great, I expected this to be shit, and it's not that either. But it's slow, it's confusing unless you translate the German version to work out its full controls and the levels from what I gather are the same, or at least one and two are, but level three is different but frankly I don't care enough to find out. So it is a typical BASIC game with not a lot going for it, but my expectations were low and it exceeded them so it has that going for it.
It's Boulder Dash and as the story goes with Boulder Dash clones it usually doesn't take long for me to prefer playing Boulder Dash, or it is a game I never got on with? Not entirely sure. I do like its look but I did not enjoy its gameplay so much, The goal here is to eliminate all the enemies on the screen to clear a level, and call me old fashioned but I much prefer my Boulder Dash games to be played when you collected items such as diamonds, rubies and if we're lucky enough money, because fuel prices and all that jazz. The addition of bombs are nice on paper but again it didn't work out as I'd hoped as first he wouldn't drop the bombs and then when he eventually did he blew himself up, typical. Simply put, there are better Boulder Dash clones than this, heck there's a better clone you got free in a covertape.
It's Boulder Dash again and this was the free game I mentioned in my previous review Down to Earth, and I can't believe I haven't reviewed this one yet! I mentioned it assuming I had already covered it, turns out I hadn't, oh well let's do it now then. I stated that this was a better Boulder Dash clone compared to Down to Earth and indeed I was correct. It simply looks better and plays better and has the classic simple gameplay of collecting diamonds in order to complete the level. I get Down to Earth was trying to be different with destroying enemies to clear the level and that has to be commended, but it simply did not work so well whereas this does. So simply put, this is a really good Boulder Dash clone, and I feel it should be noted that the game's author Michael Batty also wrote a very playable Tetris clone called Spectris, but then he also gave us Full Throttle 2, no thank you. But ignore that and play this instead, because it's really good and very favourable to Boulder Dash, maybe even better as it turns out. And yes I haven't done the Boulder Dash games but in this case I know I haven't done them because I have four of them to go through, but I really thought I had done this and it turned out I hadn't, but it's done now and so I sleep happily tonight.
It's pretty much played like a board game with counters and with a bit of a draughts element to it, and it gets bland and confusing very quickly. I just gave up midway through and had the computer hint me the moves and I copied what they suggested, otherwise I was just a rabbit lost in the headlights. That was until it told me to move a counter to a particular square, but when I went to do it I could not move to that square, and that was the end of that. But the biggest challenge is not even within the gameplay, nope, the biggest challenge was getting into the game full stop. For you are greeted with a password protection scheme in which you have to locate the word within the page, paragraph and sentence to find the word it wants, and this took me forever to work out until I finally managed, and when I did I just created a z80 file and put it on the zip folder and now I will never go through that turmoil and again. And yet I feel it was a waste of time and effort as the game itself is largely uinderwhelming and thus I will likely never go through it ever again. But if you are interested in it, get past the password screen bollocks and then create a savestate at the controls menu and never look back, in fact I want to now submit my z80 file to Spectrum Computing so that no-one suffers what I suffered because frankly no-one deserves such carnage, Oh and I never bothered to sit through to the end either and just resetted my emulator after I finished typing this up because it's not good, in fact it's pretty shite. Which means by default I win and that pleases me.
Yup can't believe I never touched upon this one sooner. So Super Gran, a very popular children's TV show from Tyne Tees Television, which has Granny Smith, played by Scottish actress Gudrun Ure, acquire superpowers, hence Super Gran. Although it only ran for two series, it was a massive success, airing in over sixty countries worldwide and it even won an Emmy! And the best bit? At the time of this review, Gudrun Ure is still alive today, aged 96, beautiful. And with a show as popular as this of course it gets a bloody game and so, behold! There were two games actually, the second is Super Gran - The Adventure, a text adventure which is not my forte and so we shall skip that and jump straight into this one. Both are done by Tynesoft so the connection between the show and game is there geographically at least. It's a multilevel arcade game with different games. First up is a shooter with Super Gran on her propeller-powered bicycle shooting what appear to be clones of Super Gran, you can shoot in all sorts of directions which can become a hindrance as you can end up shooting the wrong direction and become an easy target. The second sees Super Gran with her anti-gravity belt, and with it she must avoid planes, cars and balloons and collect cats to avoid them getting run over. Game 3 appears to be a car race of sorts, but I never got that far so bollocks to it. Well, a lot of Tynesoft's games are not great and this one isn't either. The shooting is awkward, so too is the flying, as I say, I never got far. It is however a much better game that Auf Wiedersehen Pet, also from Tynesoft, so it has that going for it at least.
After finishing off Super Gran, I couldn't resist but to pick this next one by myself. It's an educational game that was played in schools and is still for sale today at a very expensive price, because 4Mation are assholes like that. The first thing we do is find the magic tree of the 12 you are given, you can wrong 11 times in a row and still be able to progress with the last one, super duper. Then it's onto the Kingdom of the Mountains where the game gets super awkward and rude. It asks if you have a password, which I don't, fair enough, then it asks "Do you see a cave", I answered no and it replied "Yes you can", and then it asked "Do you want to go in", again I answered no and it replied "Yes you do" and it just forces you in, charming. Anyway, the King and Queen of the Mountains have been locked away by a wicked witch and we must rescue their children, six of them, King's got some pretty fast sperm don't he? First we must rescue Esther and we have the King and Queen's raven to help us. There are different educational challenges throughout the game, the first of which is to find the word "hidden" in the cottage before we can enter. Then we have different rooms to enter and each one has a scenario regarding your next move, pick up a broom or don't look in the pot or not, throw something at the snake etc etc, and it feels like a riddle more than anything. With Esther rescued and no I'm not spoiling it, we now have a password for the Kingdom of the Mountains, and after answering yes it asked "are you sure you have one", like would little Yorick tell any lies about a password? Bloody hell. Anyway Tom is next to rescue in the Giant's Garden, and now a talking toadstool has been enlisted to help, because, yes. We have to reach the other side of the garden with the help of some creatures, a worm, a bee, a snail, a spider and a butterfly. This makes much more sense than the first puzzle, you're given a scenario, you choose which creature can help you, very simple, very effective, much more like it, although the way the scenes are played out are weird, like how big are these creatures to be able to help you or perhaps how tiny are you? So onto side two and this time we need to rescue Clare and Anna in the City of the Dragons, and this time we are greeted by...Ah-Choo who has a chronic sneezing problem. In this game we have to tame four baby dragons by giving them their favourite food and putting a collar on them, or something like that, I messed up, failed and my quest came to a premature end, or perhaps this went on way longer than it should have. I mean it seems like a well-written game but in essence it's billed as an educational game but it doesn't really feel educational. Would young Yorick learn anything from this, no. 4Mation likes to think this is a big thing for kids, for schools, but really it's not, it's just a bland adventure game with boring puzzles and almost no replay value at all. It certainly wasn't worth what they charged for it back in the day and it certainty isn't worth what they are charging now for an up-to-date version of it.
This is pretty much Operation Wolf, a bunch of enemies appear on screen, you shoot them or use your grenades and if you shoot all the required number of enemies you progress to the next level. It has a pretty basic look and it probably not going to a real hit for some gamers because of this but me personally, I am fine with it. From memory I think I've reviewed a couple of bad Jonathan Cauldwell games lately so it's nice to play one that is pretty decent for a change. I feel this would have been a good magazine covertape game and nothing more than that, however, this was a commercial release. But as a commercial release it appeared in a compilation of ten games costing £4.99, which is less than 50p a game, and that my friends is value for money.
Halaga, 02 Jul 2022 (Rating: 1)
Can we guess what this is? I bet you can just from reading the title, yes it's Space Invaders! Oh wait the other one. Yes, it's a clone of Galaga and it's fricking appalling. It's got chunky graphics which is quite nice except they cause considerable slowdown, but despite this their bullets seem to be unaffected by the slowdown and will hit you at rapid speed even when you have no time to react to avoid them. What also doesn't help is you can die immediately after respawn. I have yet to clear the first screen and never will because I no longer care for it, this is tripe and it may even be the worse Galaxa/Galaxian game I have ever played.
Another game I could have sworn I did ages ago and as it appears I never did. Here we control Bertie the Bee and we have to collect fruit, seems simple right? However, if we get trapped in the web or hit the edge of the screen, a big fucking spider appears to eat you, my partner hates spiders but even I was freaked out a bit upon seeing it, jeepers creepers. I have to say, the graphics are really nice and the spider particularly is excellent, I mean this is 1984 and look what was being produced here, absolutely astonishing. However the gameplay is the big letdown here as there isn't really much of it. You just fly around collecting fruit and the likelihood you will not last long, oh and you have one life as well it appears, as once the spider gets you it's back to the start and back to 0 points. It's a shame it doesn't offer more because this would have been a good title for 1984 with graphics this good, but instead it's a game you'll likely play for about 3 minutes then put it away and never touch it again. And this was £4.95 which isn't really that steep for 1984 but you would expect more of a game for your money compared to what you get here.
Simon, 15 Jul 2022 (Rating: 3)
There's not much I can say about this really. If you know how Simon works then you'll know how this game works, well expect it has a bit of a weird key setup representing the colours, E is Red R is Yellow U is Green and I is Blue, which yes they are in the top row in order, the E and R are together, then there's a gap and then U and I are together, fair enough, but when Red appears your brain is likely to tell you to press R because Red begins with R see? I would have preferred 1234 myself but that's just me! I mean it's not the worst, it does its job, what more can you expect from this kind of game really?
Alchemist, by the late Ian Weatherburn, is undoubtedly a well-written game and some nice colourful graphics that still look really good today. It's a game I really want to like, but there are just far too many keys for my taste and it ultimately left me confused and constantly pressing the wrong button most of the time. As a result, I suck at this game. It was well received back in the day and it deserved to be, but the older I get the more I like my games to be straightforward, pick up and play and intuitive, and this sadly isn't with so many keys to press.
I've never seen the cartoon it's based on and so I cannot give you any references related to it, and after playing this I don't think I am in any hurry to locate any episodes on YouTube because this was tedious. The potential's there, you get rid of various enemies with snot (yes, really) and play some minigames along the way, but like I said, it was a drag. The whole meat of the game is to get rid of the enemies and escape from Drill, hence its title, but it is largely tedious and uninteresting and the real fun of the game, the minigames, are a nice touch but they are so sparse that finding one appears to be a matter of chance, unless I'm missing something that is. If this was a typical Alternative Software budget game, which it was re-released as, I wouldn't have minded it so much, but this was published by Again Again which may have been an Alternative label back then, but they certainly own it now, and it was TEN BLOODY POUNDS! For something which has pretty much the same thrill level as almost all of Alternative's licensed budget titles, which is almost nil. I wonder if the 16-bit versions are better? Nah don't really care to be honest.
What a weird title. Is it meant to read McWash? M.C. Wash? I have no idea. And speaking of having no idea, this game confused the hell out of me at first and the German instructions did not help. However, with the powers of translation I was able to work out that there are five buckets to collect to fill the bath and every time you pick up a bucket you need to return in to the bathtub. Plus, there are only six screen so there isn't much faffing about to do in order to locate one. There are also sponges that you have to avoid and if they touch you whilst holding a bucket then you lose the bucket. You need to fill up the bath before time expires. This is actually really decent once you get your head around it and work out what you're meant to be doing. The keys are responsible and the movement is quick, it's pretty well written for a BASIC game. There is an element of skill needed to outsmart the sponges and maneuver past them once you get the bucket, because once you get one they get really frenzied towards you. I feel that rather than the game being called Mc Wash Goes Bathing it should really have been called Attack of the Mutant Sponges, I think that would have sold well. It is somewhat let down by the scrolling though it is merely a minor complaint on my part. Repetition is another problem, there are 11 levels I believe and only the amount of sponges in the level changes, apart from that I believe the layouts are identical as I could not notice any difference. But overall it is surprisingly quite good.
From the screenshot alone I thought "hmm is this going to be like Pippo I wonder?" I mean they're both the same year so it was feasible, but while they do look similar their gameplays are entirely different. For in Pippo you had to colour in the squares, here you have to avoid the red squares as well as the Mad Crusher and collect the moneybags which you have to return to you base. Jesus this was bloody hard, you really need to work out the order that the colours change in order to time your moves correctly, but even then the Mad Crusher is lurking on you and he is a bugger, and also moving your man is a bugger too. No this wasn't good, the author Peter Cooke also wrote 20 Tons, a BASIC looking Boulder Dash clone and that's a better game than this.
This is quite a jolly game with a nice look with simple yet devilish gameplay. From memory there were meant to be 100 levels but only 50 made it onto the final version, but that's still plenty to keep you entertained. It can be frustrating because, of course, but it works and it is a bit of a shame that the author never found time to expand the game further or even produce another game, Sid Spider is David Pegg's one and only entry. Pity because I for one would have been intrigued to see what else he was capable of and maybe Sid Spider could have had a nice little series like Benny Bunny did for instance. I'm rambling now, this is good, worth playing if you haven't already done so.
While loading up The Adventures of Sid Spider, I saw this and thought it was too good to ignore, even if it means my last three reviews have begun with The, my fault as I handpicked this one and I really wish I hadn't, because it's appalling. There are multiple levels in the game, first you have to scare away the wolves, then you have to jump over the ice cracks and walruses, then it turns into Donkey Kong for some reason and you have to jump over snowballs and scare away wolves again in order to reach the top, then we're jumping over more ice cracks and walruses, and this time penguins for some reason, then it's Donkey Kong twice more, then more penguins and then I stopped giving a shit about it and gave up. This game wouldn't be so terrible if the controls worked properly, because here they do not. Just how many times did I lose a life because St. Bernard did not co-operate with the controls? The game being slow and jerky as well did not help matters either. This is crap even for 1983 standards, and Sinclair User gave it 7 our of 10. How? Why? If this has not been considered among of the worst games in Speccy history it bloody well should, because it's dogshit.
It's another educational game from Mirrorsoft, blimey they did do a number of these. There are two games present, Sum Vaders and Robot Tables. Sum Vaders is basically sums, adding or subtracting, and you have to work out the sum from the spaceship and the alien and guess correctly to blow up the alien. In Robot Tables it's basically the multiply times tables, the number given to the robot machine must match the sum and the order of the times tables, and you must accept or reject correctly in order for robots to be built or the rejected pieces to be turned to rubble. It isn't too bad really but Sum Vaders is the better game for me as while Robot Tables does present more of a challenge it can really drag on a bit whereas Sum Vaders was simple and to the point. Sum Vaders on its own would have sufficed nicely but the addition of Robot Tables, while adds to the game, only serves as a detriment. But if you have to play this game for any reason, stick to Sum Vaders.
Turns out there was a Mr. Men game I missed, this too is from Mirrorsoft but was developed by Widgit Software responsible for my last review Quick Thinking. There are two sides to this, side A has various games related to Mr. Funny, Mr. Silly and Mr. Noisy. Firstly, we can see what the Mr. Men are up to, which serves as a tutorial more than anything, then you can read, write and decide what they are. Then we've more and most, first identifying the next one to smelly, which in this case smellier, and then most being the most of it, smelliest, ok I'm lying it was small, smaller and smallest but I changed it to smell for hilarity, and no-one laughed and then this site will probably crash for another 12 weeks and thus no-one will read it anyway, gee, that was worth it! Anyway, I'm rambling, we've next got right or wrong is where the game will ask you if you can see a particular Mr. Men, e.g. a small Mr. Silly, either answer yes or no, opposites where you pick two word that are opposite to each other from a choice of words, high and low being opposites, and then the last one is basically typing a sequence of words from what you've learned up to this point to make them appear, like Mr. Noisy is fat, which is rude but they implemented the design here and not me, so there. Side B is all about Mr. Bounce, we can see where he goes which again serves as the tutorial, then read and write where he goes, see where he goes next and then help him find food, which is the most amusing one of the lot and yet I can't get it to work, flaming typical. I think personally if they had left it as Side A and done away with Side B then it would be a novel game, not great but at least acceptable for the younger players to enjoy, but they've tried to add a Side B to the game and it brings it all down. It's certainly no better than First Steps with the Mr. Men but is at least a more competent game compared to Here and There with the Mr. Men. But after this, hopefully that is the end of the Mr. Men for me because I am now sick of seeing them.
It's Hangman, which I'm certain I did one of these in my most recent reviews that aren't exactly recently now, and you thank Covid for that! Well, I say it's Hangman except it isn't. Yes, the base of the game is the same but instead of hanging some poor bastard we're now putting a custard pie to his face, which looks more like jelly but let's not get into that. It's quite nice and amusing actually, but once you achieve each scenario (dry face and custard face) it's probably not going to hold your interest for much longer.
Record, 31 Oct 2022 (Rating: 1)
It's Formula One, except it ain't. Here you drive your car along a squiggly line and have to move left or right depending on what way the straight swivels. And that's it, no actual corners to speak of. Checkered Flag this ain't.
It's hurdles, except it ain't, gee this is becoming quite the running gag isn't it? You're supposed to jump over the hurdles in time pressing 0 and run to the finish in the quickest possible time, like Sally Gunnell and Colin Jackson used to do back in the day. Except none of that actually matters when you can just hold down 0 to simply float over all the hurdles, which makes this game fundamentally broken, and I mean broken, the game doesn't stop until you land and even then you still may have to do it once more for it to register a completion. Well as a consolation at least it was a magazine covertape game and not a commercial release.
Salto, 31 Oct 2022 (Rating: 1)
And now we've diving, except, and there he goes again, the premise is there and you have to dive into the water, the problem though is it's the same area every time. If the area of water you've to dive into changed it would be more challenging and more of a game, but it ain't. But at least it's not as fundamentally broken as that bloody hurdles game I just did from the same tape, so that's worth, well nothing because it's boring.
The exact same as Obstaculos except it's just running and we've done away with the hurdles. Need I say more? I'm only on Issue 2 of Libreria de Software Spectrum and I'm losing the will already. I never even planned to do any reviews either, and there's three in a row I've ended up doing!
It's a space shooter, well that makes a change, only it's just you and one UFO to shoot, and like Obstaculos you can just cheat by holding 0, oh and you can't move as well. Again, not much of a game. I feel like my post-Covid return to this site has been somewhat of a running gag of badly-written Spanish covertape games that don't offer much enjoyment, just like these reviews come to think of it.
Another Spanish covertape game, this time from MicroHobby, and it's Head-On except the level layout is more faithful to Pac-Man. Seems like a good idea on paper, however, there are no enemies and you play the same level over and over which takes the gloss away really. But it does control well and the pace is good as well, there are three difficulties with the game being faster with each one. Shame it doesn't offer more than it does, but compared to the other ones from Libreria de Software Spectrum this is the God of all Gods that ever lived.
And finally, because it's the 31st of October, time for some spookiness with The Evil Dead. Now obviously, it's based on the legendary horror film The Evil Dead, and being a film of legend inevitably a game based on it was going to be released, and when I say “released” I mean it was released on the B-Side of Cauldron, yes this game never got a standalone release and within four minutes of playing the damn thing you will see why, It's just a boring adventure type game when you enter various rooms, there are items to collect, enemies to kill, doing these scores points, and that's really all there is to say. Apparently from research, because no instructions exist, if you score enough points the Book of the Evil Dead appears but that never happened with me, mainly because I never cared enough to find out as it all became anti-climatical and hideously tedious very quickly. I went into this thinking this was going to be like Gauntlet, and it kind of is but with all the fun away from it, plus I think this game slightly predates Gauntlet so gee that was worth comparing the two! But it's just nothing more than a bland representation of The Evil Dead. It would not at all surprise me if the initial game had nothing to do with The Evil Dead, then they grabbed a licence, performed minor tweaks to the game, job's a good'un. I mean it's not as bad as Friday the 13th but it is still quite bad, and they knew it was bad so hence they put it on the B-Side of Cauldron instead of releasing it by itself.
Merry Christmas everyone, I mean Happy Halloween! Uggggghhhh...bloody Covid.
The next reviews, provided this site survives, will be a compilation of Super Digger and Chase from Abacus Programs and from Andrew Blackburn, first off I shall do the games individually followed by the compilation itself. First up is Super Digger which happens to be Space Panic, oh goodie I dislike this game. But I tell you what, this actually is pretty nice. You can play different mazes and at different speeds and maybe it was the slower speed that did it for me but I was able to get into this which is a surprise given my feelings towards Space Panic. I then tried a faster speed and indeed, all the demons came flooding back. But no this isn't bad at all, I expected far worse from this and it turned out to be mild and pleasant.
Chase, 02 Nov 2022 (Rating: 2)
And now following on from Super Digger, a surprisingly playable clone of Space Panic an arcade game I dislike, we have Chase which is Head-On and I like Head-On, but this clone on the other hand did not do it for me. The other player is a bastard, he's too clever and crafty and creates more dots as he goes by, leaving me to think if this screen is even completable. The speed is fine and the key response is adequate, but the difficulty is what brings this down, and unlike the previous game you have no other options, no other mazes, no other speeds, nothing. Can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm much preferring Super Digger compared to this, and I would never have betted on that at the start.
Two arcade clones, one of Space Panic, a game I don't like, and Head-On, a game I do like, yet Super Digger is the better game of the two. Who on earth could have forseen this? Space Digger is a decent game with multiple levels and speeds while Chase is a standard but difficult game with no other alternate modes or skill levels and a bastard of an opponent. Oh and if you're curious Andrew Blackburn, the man responsible for this compilation, has no further credits attached to him. And in terms of price, it varies depending on source. Spectrum Computing lists the price at £5.95 while the SPOT/SPEX based on the original World of Spectrum lists is at £4.95, so in essence you're getting roughly £2.50 or 3 quid per game, which for 1984 I think is about right, Space Digger certainly is worth 3 quid hell I could have paid a fiver for it perhaps and gotten my money's worth.
A simple game where you hit the spiders that come down and if one reaches the bottom you are toast. The .txt document located in the z80 zip file mentions this as "a crap game written in BASIC", well it's in BASIC yes but it's far from crap, it's not great because it's limited and repetitive but the keys respond well and it's not running in like five frames a week speed, it's actually quite adequate for what it is. And it must be popular as three MODS based on this game exist. Arachnidos from 1984 is based on this game as are War Stars and Galaxia 20 which are from 2020 as such will not be reviewed here as they don't exist on this site. I'm mulling over whether this gets a 2 or a 3, it's too short, basic and primitive for a 4 rating as it doesn't offer very much and it's definitely not crap enough for a 1 rating. I went with 3 in the end because it's straightforward, it's simple, it has good key response and I liked it, so well done Tarantulas, you amused me with your BASIC simplicity.
It's a conversion of a Konami arcade game known in Europe as Life Force, so why they went with its Japanese title here I have no idea. It's published by Konami themselves as well who didn't have a good track record on the Spectrum it has to be said. Their first release Jail Break, another arcade conversion, was critically panned which was quite the start. The reviews for this were more mixed but leaning towards the more positive side, but I feel quite mixed about this as well, on the negative side however. The graphics are nice, I'm not going to mess with those, I mean the loading screen is gorgeous, not the monster, he is one ugly motherfucker, but it is brilliantly drawn and colourful, as are the whole graphics here. But the gameplay once more is a let down. It is slow, which you can tolerate as you get a speed up powerup if you're lucky, but it can be a major hinderance if you don't because it is brutal in its difficulty. Now for once I can say I can play the arcade game for comparison purposes, my son Rocco has this on his Xbox, so I had a go on it and let's just say as an arcade conversion, it is no way a good one. Renegade and Cabal are two Spectrum conversions that trounce the Arcade counterparts in every conceivable way, but Salamander however will not be among that list. Graphically, it is very nice, but for gameplay it is merely a bland difficult shell of its arcade self that serves as now fun whatsoever.
It's another shooter, and another arcade conversion as it turns out. Sadly however, it has nothing to do with Scramble, instead it's a conversion of the Sega arcade game Scramble Spirits which I don't remember playing. Already I'm pissed off with these keys, T, F, Z. X, Space and then W to change formation, I hate this layout, no wonder Sinclair 2 is chosen by default. This is a game I must have come across at some point and it was exactly how I remember it, monochrome blue, meaty sound effects and fast and pretty smooth gameplay, smooth until there more enemies on screen that is, but still I've seen a lot worse framerate on these games compared to this. The keyboard controls aren't as bad as I anticipated but the up down keys are confusing, left and right isn't so bad and you can only change formation when you pick up another plane to fight alongside you but up and down was a major problem. So I then played with the the keys mapped to Kempston joystick, left and right are reversed and thus they now become the major problem. Perhaps I should have stuck with the default option of Sinclair 2 and finally the controls make sense third time around, except I'm still crap. It's not a terrible game but it's severely let down by a problem a number of these shooters have, Terra Cresta, Gemini Wing. Slap Fight to name a few, the bullets are quite transparent and hard to see, which makes progression all the more difficult, even if they give you five lives and five credits. I've played worse but it's no Flying Shark, so stick to that for shooty goodness.
A Spanish shooter from 2014, it's based on an arcade game from 1980 by Cidelsa, I assume called Destroyer, I didn't look beforehand because I'm an idiot. So essentially I've been given three arcade shooters in succession at random by Spectrum Computing, come back Sinclair Randomseek all is forgiven! Anyway it's like Space Invaders and it's alright really. The graphics are pretty and the gameplay is exactly how it should be and it is responsive, but it is pretty tough. The enemy bullets come towards you diagonally which I found difficult to plan my move getting past them. Also I'm certain a few of my bullets went through the enemies and if that's the case then that docks away marks I'm afraid. But it's competent enough and I've certainly played far worse games of this nature.
From the Crap Games Competition in 2008, you have to alternatively press N and M to increase your level of anger by holding your breath, their words not mine, no actual lungs were harmed while typing up this review. Well basically as it says you press N and M to build up the anger meter and bring down the oxygen meter, and when you run out of oxygen you die, except you win and you travel to the white light and being again, rinse and repeat. Oh and there is no way you can lose. I've left the game running sped up while typing this up and nothing's happened, so a win is guaranteed. Well, it's crap, mission accomplished.
This one is bittersweet, for it was written by Andy Remic who sadly died earlier this year bless him. You are a worm who has to foil a plot by the Dastardly Dr. Dick, yes really, and to do this he is bestowed with the power, of spit, yes really. Basically you go to an uncharted square and either you have to choose a speed of spit and spit on baddies or you have to play a bonus game where if you stop at the green box with a tick, you gain and life, and if you stop on a green box with a x, you lose a life. The game is colourful I'll give it that and the humour is there, but I found the spit element to be largely useless as you are almost always swarm by enemies no matter what the speed is. And I say the game is colourful, that was until I saw the dark blue screen on one of the levels, crickey. Well, bless Andy Remic, very sorry to learn he died, but I think I picked the wrong game from him, oh wait what I am saying it was given to me at random, thank you Spectrum Computing. I'm willing to bet there are better games from Andy compared to this, one day I shall find out for myself. Rest in Peace Andy.
You're a helicopter and you have to bomb the city, sound a bit familiar to you? Blitz ring any bells? Well except you have to avoid the enemies on the screen, and it really means avoid them, for the bombs can hit the houses and the trees, but they go RIGHT THROUGH THE ENEMIES! Yup, they can kill you but you cannot kill them, absolute bollocks. This is naff, it's basically Blitz but with the added bonus of enemies on screen and by bonus I mean you can't bloody kill them. Typing this review took longer than playing the game, that says it all.
This game was set to be reviewed two years ago but the controls didn't work and Pan Books' Chomper took its place. However, I have since discovered that the keys given in the instructions are wrong and you simply use the cursor keys to move, so now finally I can review this game and now I really wish I hadn't and I'll probably wind up regretting it for the rest of my life however long God grants me. What is there to say? It's Pac-Man written in BASIC and it's slow and boring and not very interesting, and I think that's all you need to know. Worth the wait? I'll let you come to your own conclusions. And now having worked so hard to get playing the game, it shall ultimately never be played again.
Oh Raffaele Cecco, one of the finest programmers in the Spectrum's history, giving us gems such as Equinox, Exolon and Cybernoid, and then also this. It's based on an old arcade game, Shoot-Out I believe, except you're a cop and not a cowboy, hence the name. It's as colourful as you'd expect from a Cecco game, but man it's bloody tough. Bullets and cocktails come from all directions and having to dodge them all as well as shoot your targets with the crosshair is quite a challenge. So yes, just to recap, you have to move your cop to avoid the enemy's fire AND move your crosshair to shoot them, I mean it worked in Cabal but this is no Cabal and it certainly does not work here, not in the slightest. And now I feel like a rambling old git by criticising the work of a man revered by the Speccy faithful over a game that's celebrated among his other classic work, oh wait it isn't. Nope this one has been pretty much forgotten about and perhaps for good reason. In fact the man said so himself going by Cruel's review, saying "it really was not too good" and that he did it "especially for the money". And you know what? He was right. Stick to Equinox and Exolon rather than this.
