Reviews

The rich, colourful graphics are one thing, the painfully difficult gameplay is another, why does Gomez's speed have to be so confusing? It makes his movement and jumping so needlessly complicated. I've never been able to progress very far in this game and would give this a 2 but I'll be kind and give it an extra point for the graphics alone.

Not really that bad but there's not enough in it to keep me amused for too long. I don't like the graphical clashes as well, it's quite a sore sight to say the least. Peter Gough done much better games later on, but with this I guess everyone starts somewhere.

I never really saw much fuss in this game, it's simply too much of the same and there's little variety in it at all. The only thing that changes is the colour, apart from that the levels are constantly recycled with the same enemies. The music, which is very good, adds a particular amount of interest but it doesn't take long for that interest to fade off.

I hate to be biased but I am in agreement with my brother. This was one of my favourite games growing up, it was fantastic back then and it still plays great even today although controlling your car can be bothersome but it's usually down to your speed and your timing of your turbos that cause that. An excellent game that puts Championship and Super Sprint to shame.

I was always unamused with this game, this simply isn't a lot to it apart from the novelty bits like killing a policeman which ends your game. I suppose it'll keep you interesting for a short time but not for much more than that.

You shouldn't really expect too much from type-in games, that would be like asking an elephant to do cartwheels. This one is an interesting one, a mixture of collecting money and a maths lesson, in which you need to tally up the amount of money collected and enter the total to buy the gold. It's one game you cannot afford to blink in or take your eye off it for a second because if you do you'll miss the amount of money and then you'll just have to guess. Obviously as it's a type-in game the movement is quite tedious and it takes precise timing to get past the moving belts. Could have been worse I suppose.

This game is considered a classic by many but I see two elements of harsh reality with it. The first is the Commodore 64 version is better, which hurts me to say that but it's the truth, and the second is Zynaps, also by Dominic Robinson, is much better as well.

It's an interesting idea of a game, only using the border rather than the screen, but the pattern is always the same in every single game, had it been more random it would have been more enjoyable.

This looks like it plays a bit like Crystal Castles, but it doesn't play as well as Crystal Castles, not even close in fact! The level layouts are just far too confusing to enjoy it.

It looks nice but getting by the enemies is a pain in the ass! They're like they are doped it's so hard to get by them. And when you do happen to collect one item you have to start all over again after death. Even some BASIC games have more playability than this.

Nice enough gameplay that will keep you going for quite a bit but you need plenty of patience with this, and I have none. But it is as the name says, a challenge, and if you love a good challenge I suggest you try this out.

It's quite enjoyable but it becomes a bit bland after a little bit. But I will give credit for it being completely original for 1983.

What a confusing mess! While the original contained a good amount of fun this "reboot" has literally no fun and no gameplay. It's a shambles! Stick to the first Micro Mouse game.

I was incredibly impressed with this game. It plays well, it's nice and smooth, there's good colour and there's a good twist to the gameplay as well. One of the better Breakout clones I have played.

This isn't a great breakout game. The graphics aren't great and the bat design is terrible, sometimes the ball even goes through the bat. Not impressive, quite poor.

American Football games often didn't work in computer game form and this is no different. It's clustered with confused and poor gameplay. At least it tries to be American Football but it's hardly "fantastic".

This is a good conversion but it's far from perfect. The crosshair can be deceptive in movement, one moment it can't reach the enemies quick enough and the next it goes too quick you go past them. The third level is a right bugger once a lot of enemies reach the screen at once, it causes a lot of slowdown on the screen. The game has a good amount of playability and despite being short and repetitive it also has one of the catchiest title musics. I always liked this game but it's not superior to say the least, certainly not for Ocean's standards.

I found this to be very highly amusing and great fun though level 4 is quite a pain. But it's still a pretty enjoyable game.

It sure as heck looks the part with its big detailed sprites but the gameplay is largely ineffective and I lost interest quite quickly.

This is Gauntlet and I'm no fan of Gauntlet. However, not only is this Gauntlet but it's a lame attempt of a Gauntlet clone. David Whittaker's in-game music is excellent but it doesn't save this game at all. With the exception of handful few, Codemasters games were beginning to suck at this point, maybe they were beginning to care less.

Technically this is very good and it plays a lot like tennis unlike many tennis games on the Spectrum. The one gripe I have though is you don't seem to be in control of your racket, it changes hands quite often while you're moving which creates confusion and adds difficulty returning balls. I thought I cracked it mid-game by pressing fire before the ball reaches me and then when you hit it, but eventualy the problem continues to exist in spite of this. I can guess that's a simulated part of the game. And as with most tennis games, being at the top of the screen is a nightmare! But I admire the technical efforts this presents and that despite its negatives it is a lot more playable than the majority of tennis games.

An excellent game, one of my all-time favourite games. It's one game that I don't see a real weakness in it's that great a game. The one thing that annoyed me at the time was there was no two-player option but nowadays I don't mind anymore, none of the Daley Thompson games had a two-player option either. It's definitely one of the best games ever made and this version I prefer at lot more than the arcade version.

There's not a lot to this, it looks very simple but it's far from it. Snowballs are thrown at you randomly and you can't seem to avoid them, plus his jumping is crap. Too frustrating to play at any time of the year let alone Christmas.

While it offers more gameplay that Merry Xmas Santa with three seperate parts to it, but it has much more frustration with having to avoid clouds, presents from red angels, fire coming up ladders and people touching you in the house. But it offers much more than it probably should, and that's why I'm positive about it.

You'd have been very bad to have recieved this on Christmas Day, because it's bad in every way. Horrendous gameplay mixed with dire graphics and annoying tune to throw in the mix. A right Christmas turkey.

I was expecting this to be a lot worse, but it's actually pretty decent. We shouldn't ask for much in a type-in game, and there isn't much in it, but it's quite an enjoyable game and while a number of type-in games are painfully slow, this plays at a nice speed. So I was surprised at the quality of this.

Santa in a shoot-em-up enviroment? Actually this is just Q10 Tankbuster and F1 Tornado redesigned to look like Christmas and it plays exactly the same. So it's not exactly a Christmas game and has nothing to do with it. Getting this for Christmas might be worse than coal.

This is quite decent and plays pretty much how it should for an "official" Santa game. It's a reminder of Alternative's other games, Postman Pat 2 and The Wombles with pretty much the same elements. It's in multiple parts, the first part is good while the others aren't so, especially delivering the presents which is the simply boring. A good effort of a Christmas simulator all the same.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I finally found my password for this thing!

Altered Beast for me was very overrated and the Spectrum port does nothing to convince me overwise. This port is a mess and that has nothing to do with the graphics which I think are actually quite good, it's the dreadful gameplay that gets to me. First of all your player is slow doing his moves so by the time you've hit the enemies you've lost half your health. Also, he only seems to punch when you are crouched or jumping, not while your standing which you only do kicks (unless I'm missing something) which therefore means this is a pretty inaccurate port. And when you are hit you just stand there rather than back off, even when you lost a life, this means that when you are constantly hit by enemies you can lose two lives quickly without knowing it.

Despite the graphics and music being quite good there are a lot of flaws with Altered Beast's gameplay which destroys its chances of being decent. As my brother Jordy stated in his review, this could have been a massive hit for Activision, but instead it's a poor conversion of an already overrated arcade game that is even more unplayable and unenjoyable.

Nice graphics and decent music but it looks like someone at Players forgot that a game needs to have gameplay in it which is what this game significantly lacks.

Slap Fight is a good shooter but not great. The bullets are pretty much invisible and thus progression is really tough and enough to put off casual gamers. It'll take great skill to get through Slap Fight. There's good graphics and it's smooth but gameplay issues let this one down.

Welcome to Titanic. We do hope you enjoy the game, reads the game's title screen. Well I would enjoy the game if there was more to it than wondering around sea looking for the Titanic and randomly hitting an iceberg, just like the Titanic did, only it reads iceburg instead. And all I've seemed to find is World War 2 ships which explode and kill your divers. Other than that there's no real enjoyment in this one. Fun for one game then interest wears thin afterwards.