Reviews

Greetings!

When my parents got me a Spectrum 128K in 1987 they also bought three games with it, this, Metro Cross and Dead or Alive.

This was the game I loaded onto my Spectrum first because it was football and I remember I was not too keen on this game at first because it wasn't the standard football game I hoped for and you control the ball rather than a player, but the idea of being the goal-hungry star player enthralled me the more I played it. The incident cards were a right laugh sometimes too.

It still holds up as a playable game today in fact as long as you put up with its limitations.

One of the three Speccy games I got with my Spectrum in 1987 and I loved this game. Nowadays it's a bit bland, other versions are better and I love the arcade music and that's missing here, but the gameplay itself is in tact and it's great fun still after all these years.

One of the three Speccy games bought by my parents with my Spectrum. It was the poorest of the three it has to be said and one I never really liked, much preferring the other two games which were more fun to play compared to this. This was too frustrating because of how easy it was to lose all your ammo.

And I completely forgot about the free game with it, but that wasn't worth remembering much anyway. :)

The first game I picked for my parents to buy for the Speccy, because it was football, obviously. I loved this game back in the day and spent many hours on it but now it's very primitive and definitely shows its age, but I can't give it less than 4 because of the nostalgia it brings me.

I loved Match Day but it doesn't look too well today sadly, Match Day 2 on the other hand looks great still today. Smaller graphics they may be but much more nicer looking. The Kickometer for me added a new element to the game as now you could do soft kicks for passes and hard kicks for shooting. This also had a full league mode as well as a cup mode which added more to the game.

But both are great football games on the Speccy, which is rare because a lot of them were crap, but Match Day 2 stands out for me as one of the very best. Loved this game! :)

I never knew a sequel for this existed until years later and it was a good job I didn't because I certainly would have bought it and found myself a bit disappointed with it.

It's alright but I didn't really enjoy the route-based gameplay that made scoring a goal down to simply standing on the right spot on the route rather than actually firing a ball into the goal.

This was more luck and memory based rather than skill, and so I much prefer the first game to this.

This was the last Speccy game I bought and it's simply excellent. Loved this game. This is one of the best Tennis games on the Speccy for me. It has a great look and plays really well too. An ace of a game. :)

Another game I loved. Simply one of the best arcade conversions ever made for the Speccy. The sampled speech is fantastic and it plays brilliantly too. For me, this can only get a 5.

I remember being so excited seeing this on the shelf and thinking I just have to buy it and it was going to be even better than the original, oh Ste you stupid boy. This was and still is a massive disappointment. It's not an appalling game but it is so very inferior to Chase H.Q. that it would be very hard to classify this as a sequel on face value even though it is a licensed one.

This was a waste of money.

I bought too many footie games for my own good and when the chance came to buy four in one tape, I just had to. :)

This had 11-a-Side Soccer, Indoor Soccer, Soccer Skills and Street Soccer and I notice you can review those individually but I won’t and will stick to doing the one for the compilation itself.

11-a-Side is your standard football game, Indoor Soccer is the same except the ball bounces off the wall, Soccer Skills was a training game where you did certain drills and Street Soccer was football in the streets.

It did feel like the same game three times over with Soccer Skills being the most original game and would have been a neat little game on its own, albeit a short one.

It wasn’t too bad really but the footie games all felt too much of the same which spoiled things a bit.

How can I give this game anything other than a 5? It is simply perfection and easily among my favourite Speccy games ever. Yes there was no two-player option but I was the only boy in the family and the only one interested in games, so it wasn’t a problem to me. :) I am pleased that this is currently number one in this site, well deserved.

One the main reasons I eventually stopped buying Speccy games. Final Fight is a wonderful arcade game and is still easily one of my favourites, so I couldn't wait to play it on the Spectrum and it was awful beyond words.

The graphics are dreadful and the gameplay is slow, choppy, jerky and sloppy. I was so gutted with this. With this, I knew the Speccy scene was dying. So much time and attention was put on the 16-bit systems and 8-bit games were becoming half-assed and lifeless because companies didn’t care for it anymore, Final Fight is a good example of that.

I think I only bought two more games after Final Fight before my departure from the Speccy scene and moved onto the Super Nintendo.

Without a doubt one of the Speccy’s finest arcade conversions. The fighting was fantastic. Flying kicks, punch them when they’re down, throw them off the edge, brilliant!

I am one of those who played this before playing the arcade version, and I tell you it is so easy to see how good a job they did with the game, especially the controls. The arcade game's controls are naff. The conversions thankfully simplified them to make it much easier to play and thus more enjoyable.

I think my mate got the Commodore 64 version and it was pretty good too, but the Speccy version is tops. :)

This isn't really a bad game but it’s one that gets boring quite quickly. Really don’t like the way the car jumps whilst you’re driving, really puts me off. But it is still decent compared to Titus’ usual crap standard.

And yeah, weirdest looking A ever for sure. Crozy Cors is o bit olright but not greot. :)

This was brilliant on the arcades and the Spectrum version is equally fantastic too! :)

The graphics are amazing and it was great that it retained the same fun gameplay without making it look and feel inferior to the original. The level music really adds to the game as well.

This can only get a 5 from me. Simply brilliant.

I never bought this on the Spectrum and so when I did play it on an emulator the first time around I thought it was an emulation issue, surely it cannot be this slow. But no, it is the real deal and it is truly gutting. :(

The arcade game isn’t like the most spectacular game but it was good fun, so I hoped and somewhat expected this to be just as fun, but it is not and far from it in fact.

The slow pace is a killer and it is not the only problem the game suffers from. It is unresponsive for the most part, the graphics are poor and the sound is terrible. There is a lot wrong with this port.

This was a real shame. This could have been a really fun game to play had it lived up to the same thrill and excitement of the arcade game, not perfectly but just as fun at least, but it is a million miles away from it. Very very poor and very disappointing.

I bought the Kixx budget release and I really liked how it played with a combination of platformer, puzzle and strategy.

Yes, the gameplay would feel off to the casual gamer. It is challenging and at times demanding as it requires a blend of patience, timing and perfection, with one wrong move potentially leading to a lose of a life. Challenging but it is very unique.

The graphics are nice enough, not as cute and colourful as the arcade but they are decent enough. The sound is pretty decent too, I really like the opening tune.

I feel if I paid full price for this I might have been expecting more and maybe would have felt a little disappointed. Having paid it on budget though I was reasonably satisfied with this. :)

This game has all the makings to be a classic. Stunning colourful graphics, pure platforming gameplay and excellent music and sound all stand out to make this an exceptional title.

There is just one problem, it's really difficult. Too difficult.

The controls are a pain and controlling Gomez is the catalyst of its faults. If you look at most other platforms games the main character usually moves at one speed most of the time, but for some reason Gomez moves at an accelerated pace, which while realistic doesn’t go well with the game and only makes things more confusing that it needs to be. His jumping is a pain also because he jumps so high.

This drawback is a significant one because it largely affects hows the game plays and how you play the game, for the most part badly. It’s one of the most important elements of a platform game and on this occasion Ocean got it badly wrong. As a result of this I did not see a lot of the game until I saw a walkthrough.

This could have been one of the finest games on the Speccy and from Ocean if not for the awkwardness of controlling the main character. Instead it is a classic case of what might have been.

The Running Man game is based on film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger which in turn is based on a Stephen King book.

Here Arnold Schwarzenegger portrays a character named Ben Richards, aka The Butcher of Bakersfield, who is framed for the Bakersfield Massacre, where hundreds of civilians were killed during a rally. During his escape from police custody he is discovered by television host Damon Killian, who is played by the late Richard Dawson, who as a presenter was most famous for hosting Family Feud, the US version of Family Fortunes. Killian wants Richards to participate in his hit game show The Running Man, where criminals are chosen to compete and have to run, fight and survive through a series of professional killers, known as stalkers, including Professor Subzero, Dynamo and Fireball.

The movie I particularly enjoy, but the game though does it very little justice.

It does feature an ok intro with a pretty nice “I'll Be Back” speech, but it is played with music which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t relate to the film.

While the intro can be seen as passible, the gameplay is a major letdown. The jump is appalling and the punch is absolutely useless. Most of the time you’re punching in thin air without doing any damage to your opponent. So you are better off kicking your opponents instead, and especially dogs, because kicking a dog replenishes your health, only in computer games.

I find that the game isn’t truly that bad, the fighting is alright as long as you kick your opponent rather than punch him. However, getting your way through the level is the main chore of the game because of his jump, the level design and the randomness of the dogs.

It's worth pointing out also that the graphics are not that great as well as there is no hint the characters in the game are even from the movie, because it looks nothing like them, especially the stalkers. But you would think that being a licensed game an attempt would have been made to make the main sprite look a little bit like Arnold but it doesn’t.

The Running Man is not completely terrible, I found it to be a little more playable than I expected and compared to others, but it is still a pretty bad game and it is safe to say the movie is much, much better. I am just thankful I got this in a compilation with three better games included along with it.

I was massively disappointed with this game. The box art looked cool, the loading screen was awesome, the music was epic, I was so pumped to start playing the game. When I did however, my enthusiasm died very quickly because the game plays pretty badly. It’s hard to control the ball, it’s hard to tackle, it’s harder to shoot.

I was gutted upon realising this wasn't that great a game. The presentation is excellent but the overall product lacks real quality.