Producer: Melbourne House
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Javier Cano Emilio Martinez, Jose Manuel Munoz

Back in the days when life was cheap and baddies were numerous, Battle Hero Redhan faced an awesome task: he volunteered to rescue Taleria from the hands of his deadliest enemies. His quest will take him deep through the dark lands into territory unfamiliar to him, and his power will be challenged by many evil beings: Glauring the fire dragon, Kulwoor the magician's Lord, and Zwolhan the Lord of the Circle of the Blazing Spheres.

In order to release Taleria, Redhan must find three 'star stones', concealed in three of the many chests scattered throughout this strange land. The chests are opened automatically when Redhan walks into them and release a mystical swirling vapour. Extra lives or a new arsenal of arrows might be added to Redhan's inventory of objects. but some of the chests release strange demons or cast wicked curses which change Redhan's physical shape for a short while. Redhan never knows what lies hidden in the chests, until he walks into them. And it's too much of a gamble not to open the chests, because they might just contain one of the precious 'star stones'.

Redhan may look pretty diminufive as he embarks on his mission, but he does have a few weapons to help him out. Six arrows rest in his quiver and can be shot at the guardians if they get too close. Redhan can also perform a superhigh jump or a running long jump - very handy for bridging any perilous gaps.

The guardians manifest themselves in various forms, such as master archers, manic lancers, and knights wielding huge swords, and all of them can be killed by shooting at or stomping on them - if Redhan jumps from a reasonable height onto a character's head, then they disappear in a puff of white smoke.

On the lower levels of the mountain citadel, an even greater threat is encountered... huge tarantulas scuttle along the ground at a faster pace than Redhan, and must be destroyed as quickly as possible. Some of the spiders are more advanced than others and hurl burning fire balls in Redhan's direction. If Redhan doesn't leap out of the way in time, he is burnt to a cinder.

To make the going a little easier there are several teleports scattered throughout the citadel. These look ominous as they consist of a huge mouth lined with very nasty teeth, but if Redhan walks into one, he is magically transported to another part of the mystical citadel to face yet more perils on the rescue mission.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q high jump, A long jump, O left, P right, M fire, N select
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: pretty
Graphics: cute, some neat animations
Sound: jolly little tunette at the start
Skill levels: one
Screens: around 100

Although Conquestador isn't one of the worst games I've played, it certainly isn't one of the best. The graphics are reasonable, but the game is only mildly playable and addictive. Letting your man change into an aardvark is an interesting experience, and the game, though lacking an original format, plays differently to a lot of similar-looking games. This is far from one of the best games that MELBOURNE HOUSE has produced; I hope they're not letting their standards slip, because we've yet to see the long awaited Fist II.

There have been so many arcade adventures like this that if is now hard to say anything nice about a new one. At first sight Conquestador looks as though it could be a really good game. Further play reveals that it doesn't go into much depth, so it isn't really much fun to play. There are only a few types of location, so once you have seen them all there isn't anything to spur you on to complete the game. The graphics are very Underwurldesque; large colourful characters and pretty backgrounds. The sound is lacking, but the spot effects are adequate. On the whole I don't recommend this game as it becomes monotonous after a short time.

MELBOURNE HOUSE seem to have got out of the 'fighting' games rut and have, via ERBE SOFT, almost come up with a good game. The basic look of the game is very similar to all the other arcade adventures of this ilk, eg: Robot Messiah. Conquestador strikes me as being very simple to play and it contains very little to keep the player contented for very long. The graphics are large and colourful, but a lot of flicker occurs when two characters pass over each other. This happens often on any one screen. and I found the game very slow and unplayable. Conquestador represents nothing new on the software market, and is lacking in many areas.

Melbourne House
£7.95

It is the whim of nearly every reviewer I know these days to slag off any platform game that comes within 3.5 miles of them saying 'that was done two years ago, and this idea came from that game..' and so on. But sometimes you can stumble across a real gem and it doesn't matter if the idea isn't totally original - the game is just an improvement on all its inspiration.

In this latest Melbourne House rave, you play the part of a Spanish Knight hunting round a mysterious castle in search of three jewels. As usual your way is blocked by nasties, in this case they're wizards and Guards and the like, who all have this tendancy to want to kill you with their bows and arrows. Luckily, you've got a bow and arrow too, plus scattered throughout the castle you'll find treasure chests, some which hold extra weapon-type goodies, and some which hold potions. My first encounter with the potions turned me into an odd-loking creature with a big nose, which I didn't seem to do me a lot of good, so I take that to be one of the bad ones.

Although this is a platform game, and most would consider platform games to be a little long in the tooth, Conquestador succeeds where others have failed by learning from its mistakes. The graphics aren't small and fiddly like JSW, but then they're not grossly outsized like Popeye. The attributes have been dealt with so neatly that you can hardly notice any colour clash at all, and the sound is quite simply unbelievable for a Spectrum while playing a fast moving arcade game.

But the one thing that I did find enjoyable with this game was that I could get a little further each time I played it, not too much as to give the whole thing away, but just enough to make me have just one more go...

Really the only bad thing I can say about the whole program is that Melbourne House has used a very brave fast loader. It look me several attempts with a high quality computer cassette recorder to get it in. I hope it's changed slightly for the commercially available version.

And all I can say after that strange outburst of deep meaningful prose from a usually more sedate TP is that I've been beaten by Conquestador - buy it!

Label: Melbourne House
Author: ERBE
Price: £7.95
Joystick: Kempston
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Conquestador is the game with everything. Attribute problems, naff unoriginal plot, boring design, it's dated, cliched, tedious, vastly overpriced and it has a terrible name.

If Mastertronic or Firebird had released this one it might just crack it as a nothing-special £1.99 cheapie.

Melbourne House is trying to get £7.95 for the stupid thing. Things must be bad.

What is it? Well it has this comic knight trying to collect three magic star stones. These are hidden among some forty caskets - each of which looks exactly the same.

Your little knight wanders around a vaguely Spellboundish world (except that the sprites are very inferior, more flickery and less inventive). The main obstacle in this game is continuous assault by bow-wielding knights. These are all exactly the same as well, although they vary in colour.

I always think the mark of a really bad game is the size of the bounce when the jump button is used - games with really enormous bounces that have you zipping right over the screen are always bad. Guess what happens here.

Exciting things you can do in this game include, replenishing arrows, replenishing lives and finding keys. Even more exciting things include turning into a dragon (the game itself gets half a star for that) and transporting (this features an opening and closing giant mouth and wins the game the other half star it deserves.

Actually the best thing about the game was the press release which actually made the game sound pretty good until you realise it resorts to that old PR standby - not telling the whole truth. Thus the game we are told has "solid, finely detailed perspective graphics". It doesn't. And we are told the game will "have you reacting faster than you can think". Does that seem to mean that the game is not as as slow as it seems, or am I going mad?

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Melbourne House/ERBE
PRICE: £7.95

Take that varlet! And that! And that! But I'll have this copy of Conquestador, thank you very much. Why? Because it's really neat, fun to play and awesomely addictive!

Which is all very strange really as Conquestador , programmed by ERBE software from Spain, isn't very original in its design or even its theme. It just looks very nice and plays even better.

Enter the world of Conquestador and you become Redhan, battle scarred champion of a thousand conflicts. Armed only with a bow and a limited supply of arrows, Redhan is on a quest to find the blazing Star Stones taken from the world by the Lord of Magicians, Kulwoor, and hidden in his mountain citadel.

Redhan has to explore the citadel in search of 40 caskets which may, or may not, contain the jewels he seeks. Some give him extra weapons, others have beneficial potions, but some contain horrible curses which can do things like turn him into a pig. I quite liked being the pig, I must admit.

The magician's slave warriors fill every room and cavern. Red can can zap them with his bow - but as arrows are in short supply it's a good tactic to try and kill them by jumping on their heads. It works - believe me! There are also dodgy creatures which scuttle about the lower regions of the castle to deal with.

And then there's the brooding, fire-breathing dragon Glaurung and Kulwoor the Master Mage to deal with.

You'll find yourself getting killed off pretty easily to start with - this is a deceptively easy looking game to play.

However, although it may look like every other arcade adventure you've played, it turns out to much faster than you think its going to be!

Jumping about the many platforms of the many rooms is easy. Redhan has a real spring in his step which means no frustrating attempts at leaping to that all important ledge when a nasty is coming at you.

The graphics are large, colourful and well drawn. Hardly any colour clashes at all. Animation isn't bad.

Beware of the little green bowmen - they shoot at you on sight. A good tactic is to let them shoot at you and then leap out of the way of the arrow. Zap them with one of your arrows when you land. Conquestador is a classic arcade adventure which would grace even the most choosy gamesters collection. It looks good, sounds good, and by golly it does you good!