Reviews

A summer event movie like this comes very rarely in the life of a pre-teen and back in about 1989 Tim Burtons take on Batman was really the one to see...

Unfortunately like everyone else who really wanted to see it, I was just slightly too young to be allowed in - and my parents weren't about to lie for me either.

So instead I got this game (several months later) in my Christmas sock. It multiloaded it's way on to my Beer-mat speccy over 5 levels of glorious monochrome.

There is no doubt that the first and last levels are the best - a brilliant scrolling platformer that plays very well even today. Some people play robocop and feel that this is worse - I don't agree. Robocop is too easy whereas Batman provides a good challenge. You are constantly getting that bit further with each go, drawing you back to try again.

The second and forth levels provide variety - whilst they do not stand on their own very well, the change to a simple arcade game is good even though the batmobile and batwing seem a bit underpowered...

For some reason the batwing suffers damage on contact with balloons(!) and the batmobile is bashed around by VW beetles and needs to turn left at every corner (I'm sure there must be a more direct route to the batcave than this!).

There's also a puzzle level that is a little weak for this sort of game.

All in all that was a good Christmas thanks to this game. Its a bit tough as it took me a couple of months to master. If you were lucky enough to own a 128k speccy then this game loaded in one part and had a VERY good soundtrack - including different music for each level. The graphics are also excellent throughout the game and hang together very well - it does all feel like one game rather than several bits 'stuck' together as some other multilevel games could.

And I did finally see that movie a couple of years later. It was okay, but I'd struggle to tell you much about it.

Luckily I can still remember the game well enough to knock that joker off the museum roof! One of my favourite spectrum games.

Having just seen one of the most slick and stylish comedies of the 1980's, it's hardly an adrenaline rush to start procedings by opening a franchise account and buying equipment with which to catch ghosts.

At this point the game aspires to capture all the excitement of a visit to the bank. It succeeds.

There's no hint of the dry wit and humour that shot through the film, even a beeper approximation of the music falls flat.

This is the point when (even back in the 80's) the gamer mourns the loss of another potentially great movie licence and moves on to other things.

But for some reason once I'd got over the initial dissapointment, I carried on driving my cheap badly drawn car around, collecting ghosts, catching slimers and stopping marshmallow men.

After a few plays I even had enough money to buy some serious hardware and a badly drawn car almost too big to fit on the badly animated road.

So this game has something - I've still no idea what.

The graphics are uninspiring, the sound is awful and the gameplay is at best serviceable. Yet it somehow kept me playing.

It's not often a game I consciously don't like keeps me playing for more than a few minutes. I actually loaded this up and kept playing for weeks.

Spooky.

Back in the days of 8-bit computing, many spectrum tape boxes lined the shelves of Boots and Smiths all boasting of cartoon graphics.

Even some full priced games didn't achieve the look particularly well which makes it pretty amazing that £1.99 could buy you this little platform game.

It's worth remembering that most games in this price bracket lacked a loading screen and often only greeted you with a basic menu in sinclair font for you to select a joystick.

By contrast, this game is better presented than many full price games of the era. Great music and quality sprites are everywhere and you start to wonder if the shop gave you the wrong tape.

Now I'm not going to pretend that this is the greatest game you could load on your spectrum.

It's mostly a 'dodge the baddies' affair where at each stage you have to get to an object, collect it and return it to the cauldron.

A really unforgiving timer bar hurtles across the screen as you try to achieve this and the collision detection with the baddies is far too sensitive. Jumps have to be timed to perfection to avoid seeing the admittedly fine death animation again and again.

I've no doubt there is someone out there who can complete this in one life. But for me the difficulty is far too high.

But both screens (yes I'm that bad at it!) I got to see of this game were fabulous. The game looks terrific with beautifully drawn and animated sprites moving over colourful backgrounds.

And when it's all over a humorous game over animation pulls you back for one more go.

Flawed, but still a great little game.

Shockway rider literally knocked your head off (repeatedly) with a high paced original arcade concept that played very smoothly but wasn't kind to beginners... or anyone else really.

You are playing for your lives here.

There are 3 conveyer belts of different speed and enemies that can kill you on contact.

Each level has it's own way of gaining lives and it is this that you need to master to proceed in the game.

You may need to shoot a set number of enemies, targets or collect items. But you must gain lives faster than you are losing them or it's game over time.

Practice does help you beat this game as you get better at avoiding those enemies but luck does play it's part.

I got this game on a magazine covertape and played it for months afterwards. It is one I used to be able to go a long way in but now struggle to complete more than a few levels without dieing.

Well worth persisting with - It is a great idea! Just a little too frustrating to be a real classic.

US Gold must have been mad to take this one on.

And they nearly got away with it.

You see the spectrum version of SF2 shows a great deal of promise - especially when you have a look at what our C64 playing friends had to deal with.

Sprites are well drawn, animation is serviceable but jerky, sound effects are sparse but functional and all the World Warrior characters are available looking and behaving as their arcade counterparts do.

So what the problem?

The problem is that you just spent 30 minutes of your life (that you're never going to get back) trying to load in what when shrunk down to the speccy is a fairly basic one-on-one fighter.

Every character had to be multiloaded in - and there wasn't even an option to repeat a fight you'd just spent ages loading.

Barely a fraction of the moves from the arcade parent have made it onto the spec and some are incomplete whilst most just don't work as they should. Some characters have moves that only work from the left side of the screen for example - suggesting that the game was released without being finished.

SF2 is one arcade that requires tactics and skill to master - but all of the games subtleties have been lost.

Even with speeded up .tap files on an emulator I'm not sure this is a good demo of what the speccy is capable of. Several games such as Shadow Warriors and HKM had used large sprites in a beat-em-up more succesfully years before this came out.

A daft title to take on for the spectrum then.

Like the arcade game Pong, Knight Lore is one of those games that owes it's status to being a pioneer.

There is no doubt that on release, Knight Lore advanced the medium of videogames to a new level.

Unfortunately, (again like Pong) we are looking at a game that has aged really badly. I mean it's one thing acknowledging Pong or Knight Lores' place in history, it's another convincing anyone that here is a timeless classic that deserves repeated plays.

Starting with the positives, the graphics on Knight Lore were brilliant, especially considering there were no role models for this type of game at the time.

At this point there were no floor tiles to help the gamer gauge their position in the room, making the game a little difficult in places.

There was also the twist - a good play mechanic where you were turned into a werewolf - capable of jumping higher.

Unfortunately, what dates Knight Lore is the fatal combination of a truely terrible control scheme and the dreaded slowdown.

Added to that was the fact that when you overcome the games flaws you are essentially playing a very simple 'collect-em-up'. It's hardly the most inspiring gameplay and would feel slow even without the slowdown - which is quite bad in places.

But then - if you bought this game all those years ago, you probably got over it's flaws back then and can't imagine why I'm making such a big deal out of them!

The first full price game I ever bought.

Admittedly it took me over 20 years to finally complete the game without cheats. But still what a masterpiece.

For me the appeal of these isometric games was having a 3d world to explore inside your spectrum. This game goes much further than that - there are 5 different planets to liberate. Each of these worlds has it's own style and the can be explored in the order you choose.

Other gamers liked the puzzles of these 3d games. Well no problems here either. The 2 different characters can team up or be separated ensuring a far greater variety of puzzles than most isometric games. There are some great rooms in this game to try and get your head around.

Then of course there are those players who liked a bit of action with their puzzling. Head over Heals plays very well here. There are some jumping and dodging skills to be learned, as well as a bit of shooting. Often knowing what to do is half the battle but the game never feels unfair.

Obviously you also need to make the graphics appealing. Here again Head over Heels scores. It is by far the most gorgeous looking of the room based isometric games. There are brilliant flashes of humour in the design of both head and heels and the inhabitants of the strange places you visit.

It's not perfect. There are a few cases of slowdown where there are many baddies or movable blocks on screen at once. These are rare enough to be forgiveable and don't detract much from the experience. I also didn't like the 128K music - much prefering the 48k beeper effects, but each to their own.

So a great looking game that appeals to the explorer, puzzler or actioner in you.

For what seems like the majority of spectrum gamers, the history of platformers is very simple.

First there was Manic Miner, then came Jet Set Willy followed by everything else. Of course if you preferred things a little more arcadey then you are likely to mention Chuckie Egg.

Now I don't doubt for a minute that these were brilliant games. Among some of the very best early titles in fact. I owned and played all three of them. But the platform game I have the most nostalgia for is Roller Coaster.

Lets begin with the bad points. It's tough, really unforgiving. You won't get very far on your first go, probably not even on your tenth go. I never even thought seriously about completing the game. This was a game more about exploring that bit further with each go.

It had to be honest a better location than any of the other platformers of the day. You were there in the rollercoaster park after hours and all the rides were still switched on. The graphics were a very imaginative take on the theme park with all of the rides there for the player who could get far enough to enjoy (and survive) them.

There were also flashy things to collect - I believe there were spectrum gamers that did that sort of thing. But for me this gem was all about getting to new screens and finding new rides.

For me anyway, a much loved classic.

A game my brother hated.

Back in the eighties that alone would be good enough reason to be playing it whenever I got to the computer first. Luckily it is also a classic spectrum game with some of the finest cartoon graphics ever to be seen on the spec.

This was pretty much the first time I ever saw full colour graphics walking around the screen. Graphics that looked and behaved in the way the characters on the cartoons did.

Well … every one except the title character of course. Because in this game Popeye was to be blunt a bit of a wuss. Spinach didn't enable him to escape from irons, knock Bluto senseless and rescue Olive Oil in time for the end credits. No in this game Popeye was devoid of any offensive moves whatsoever. Pretty much anyone including the birds could beat him up.

It could be a little frustrating at times. Due to the timing of Bluto and those birds it was sometimes easy for Popeye to lose a life, eat his spinach, then stand up just in time to be knocked down by something else. The game also played rather slowly.

But given the amazing graphics on the screen, it was just great to play this. There wasn't a lot to explore but each screen had layers of complexity and usually a puzzle or two to solve before bringing all those hearts back to Olive Oil that were needed to complete the game.

Definitely worth a go on the emulator if you've never tried it. Though it might be worth turning the cpu speed up slightly!

Even today most racing games are disposable.

Back in the eighties, most racers suffered the same problem with added technical problems inherent in trying to convey speed in a 2 colour spectrum game. Without the power to move polygons, many racers simply had you racing against the clock, or against scripted 'ghostly' cars that seemed to sit there on the track waiting to be overtaken.

All of this makes ChaseHQ on the spectrum a complete masterpiece of it's day. The 'chase down and ram off the road' gameplay was different to what other racing games were offering and was beautifully executed given the limitations of the spectrum.

The one issue I have with this game is that I personally don't find it that addictive. For me this is a one or two go game rather than something I can spend ages playing. I also didn't feel that there was much progression. Sometimes it did jujst feel like doing the same thing over and over with not much difficulty curve.

Still a great conversion of the coin-op to the humble spec.

Another one of these games where whoever made it had paid a lot of money for a licence I'd never even heard of.

Apparently the black and white spy were 'well known'(!?) in MAD magazine in the eighties.

But when a game is this good - who cares?

This object of this is to collect the bag and the four items needed to get on the plane out of the embassy. You could only carry one object without the bag so it was really the vital thing to find first.

You had to search all of the objects in each of the rooms to find these items. And when you had them an exit door would appear so you could make your escape.

Not so easy when you are up against another spy who is trying to do just the same thing.

The two spies could set booby traps for each other, making doors or objects lethal. This resulted in some great death animations that were always much funnier when they happened to someone else.

If the two spies were in the same room together then all of the objects they were carrying were hidden again in that room and a duel began.

This was the weak point of the game - since a duel was just the 2 spies waving their swords at each other and due to a glitch the spy that attacked from the right always seemed to win.

Despite this flaw, the game never felt broken. This is still a game that I load up and play today. If you've never had a go, it is well worth wasting some time on.

The spectrums last Christmas - from memory I make this 1991.

This was the last year a Spectrum owner could hope to receive a full priced game in their stocking on Christmas morning.

But what a swansong the spectrum had. Lemmings, WWF, Hudson Hawk, SmashTV (tho' I hated it), Turtles - the coin op, Audiogenics Rugby, Pit Fighter, Simpsons, Final Fight, Rodland, Double Dragon 3, Cisco Heat, Super Space Invaders, Heroquest, F16 Combat Pilot and probably more that I can't remember.

In hindsight Terminator 2 is actually one of the weaker titles released in time for that Christmas. And like usual I had not seen the film when I played the game. From what people who had seen Arnie's finest could tell me this was a high-octane actionfest.

So I was a bit surprised when I loaded it up to find a slow fighter (really slow). A couple of spy hunter style car chases and some sliding block puzzles. (I don't usually associate sliding block puzzles with action films or fun for that matter...)

I was also surprised to complete it on the same day I got it.

To be fair the spectrum version of this game is actually pretty good as at the time this game was a renowned stinker on other formats.

The graphics are beautifully drawn and animate well in the fight scenes. Sound effects and music are also present and correct.

It's just a shame that there is so little gameplay.

The fight scenes are too slow - you can complete them all with just the headbutt move. Level 2 is so fast that you are just better off ignoring it and steering the bike over to the right of the screen and holding up until the level is over. The other driving section and the puzzles are far too easy and the whole game can be completed in a couple of minutes.

Ocean had been masters of the movie licence multi-level game. Batman and Robocop showed several different gameplay styles between levels that really worked well. Terminator 2 just lacks the scale of these past efforts which is a real shame.

So i enjoyed it for the graphics and the sound. Completed it. And then moved on to one of the many better games that were available that Christmas.

This was (If the big 3 magazines were to be believed) one of the best games to get for Christmas if you were lucky enough to own a spectrum in 1991.

Lucky, lucky you...

Though criminally never released, the spectrum had managed a really good conversion of Robotron back in the eighties. Everything including the 8 way firing that enabled the character to run one way and shoot another had been possible back then on the humble spectrum. So it really was not asking too much for the spectrum to manage a reasonable approximation of Smash TV.

Ummm ... evidently it was. That firing mechanic (crucial to the 'feel' of the game) was the first thing the programmers decided we didn't need.

Oh we wouldn't be needing much of rest of the accompanying gameplay either.

Then there were the graphics. A stream of random flying saucers, balls, wiggly worms, things, and more things arrived in the play area. These enemies were badly drawn over a pointless background that's only function in life was to add constant colour clash to proceedings.

The player moved quite badly, the fact that you coudln't direct your fire meant you were constantly running, which was a shame as there was just no feeling of weight to the sprites.

I don't believe for a second that the speccy was incapable of a decent version of this game. All this really called for was essentially a version of Gauntlet that didn't scroll with power-ups, the correct firing mechanic and some special effects. God only knows what went wrong.

It pains me to say it, but if you want to know what could have been, play the C64 version.

One of the things I missed most on the speccy back in the eighties was a good conversion of Mr. Do.

To be fair I never played Mr. Do until years later - but I had played Mr. Wiz (a great BBC unofficial conversion by superior software) and wanted to play something just as good as that on the speccy.

Well, I finally did. In 2008.

This conversion really gives a great feeling of the arcade. There's a good feeling of weight to the sprites which have a lot of character and the whole thing just 'plays well'.

Just like Mr. Wiz I'm rubbish at it. But like all good arcades it never feels unfair and drags me back for another go.