US Gold
£12.99 cass/£19.99 disk
Reviewer: Matt Bielby

In typical modest fashion US Gold has named this latest all hit compilation World Beaters Giants, but, truth to tell, you can see its point. After all, there isn't a game here that any self respecting joystick basher won't know, if not love. But how does this package rate against the industry's best. After all, £19.99 is the cost of most full price 16 bit software, and enough to give most Spectrum owners early heart attacks.

CALIFORNIA GAMES

A bit weird this one: a series of sporting events like one of those Olympic challenge things, but in this case consisting of typical West Coast activities like frisbee throwing, surfing and keeping a bean bag in the air with your foot. Lots of keyboard thumping (guaranteed to trash your Spectrum) to get you going while you perform your cunning stunts, and I suppose there is a degree of Californian feel to the proceedings, but this one totally failed to set me alight. Chunky and colourful graphics but non-existent sound: only great fun when you've mates to play it with.

OUTRUN

The most talked-about game of last year promised much but failed to deliver on most home systems, the Speccy (lucky for us) being a bit of an exception. It's a multiload, which is a bit of a pain, and the action sometimes slows right down to parking speed, but some of the atmosphere of the arcade original is maintained, which is no mean achievement. Music's good too. We gave it an eight in March last year, which sounds a bit generous.

GAUNTLET 2

Wiiicked! The joker in the pack and no mistake, Gauntlet 2 just chews up everything else here and spits it out (? Ed) A stunning update of the original look-down-on-a-nasty-slimy-dungeon-and-move-your-bod-about-avoiding-slithery-nasties spectacular! There's even a character named Thor to play, named after one of our very own art persons. Lots of monsters/traps to avoid/kill (delete as appropriate) and Dungeons And Dragons-style fun for all the family. Worth at least nine (not the eight meanie Phil originally gave it).

ROLLING THUNDER

Never been a great fan of this famous platform shoot 'em up myself, but there's no denying it is fast and tricky. You play an undercover cop scrolling along looking for the big baddie himself novelty coming from the fact that for most of the time there is a catwalk above you that you can jump on should the need arise. It got nine and a megagame award originally. But I'd say eight was more like it.

720°

Really rather nice. Simple but effective graphics as you skate around doing tricks to earn points and go on to greater things while all the time avoiding that perennial skater's nightmare, the killer bees (!). Sharp and clear, it's a lot of fun, so we'll give it a nine and a megagame (or at least we did in Jan 88).

Not a bad collection, but one I find it very hard to get excited about. Probably of most use in that having it lets you join in with your friends ("Outrun was crap on the Speccy." "No it wasn't", "Yes it was.".

COLLECTABLE CONSUMABLES

One of the most popular complaints in LM's forum has always been the price of software, and it's often been used as justification for pirating software. People falling into this reprehensible habit should now make a New Year's resolution to stop because the excuse is utterly pathetic nowadays. Virtually all the big games, and many of the lesser ones, now seem to be automatically rereleased either on budget, or in a compilation. 'Wait and ye shall receive' seems to be the motto for anyone wary of splashing out £10 on a single piece of software.

While compilations are around most of the year, Christmas and the New Year naturally draws the biggest releases with software houses showing off their 'greatest hits' - often with other companies' games to pad out a package. This practise is clearly vital to Gremlin who have no less than five anthologies coming out.

GREEDY GREMLIN

Perhaps due to the number of releases, Gremlin's titles show a distinct lack of imagination. 10 Great Games 3 is obviously the third in a ten game compilation series, but if the title doesn't set the blood racing some of the games should. From Hewson there's two written by Steve Turner; the acclaimed 1985 graphic adventure Dragontorc and the more recent Gauntlet-clone, Ranarama. Also from Hewson is Steve Crow's Firelord, a slightly more conventional arcade adventure.

Somewhat more surprising inclusions than those from Hewson, for whom Gremlin are now distributors, are two Spanish games. These are the boxing simulation, Rocco by Dinamic, and a 1987 US Gold game, Survivors.

Making up the rest of the tape are the classic flight sim from Digital Integration - Fighter Pilot, Leader Board,Impossaball and the disappointing 10th Frame. While most of the big games here are rather old, if you haven't already got them this is pretty good value. Imaginative Gremlin title number two is Ten Mega Games which is a little more up to date with releases such as the flawed beat-'em-up Hercules and the well received Blood Brothers. The top two games are probably Northstar and Cybernoid, but Deflektor is an intriguing puzzle game well worth a look.

Strangely, both Cybernoid and Northstar are also featured on Gremlin's Space Ace collection. The five other five games include the excellent Exolon, Dominic Robinson's horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up Zynaps and the third MASK game - Venom Strikes Back. While fairly expensive, and with some rather mediocre games as padding, the good games more than make up for this.

Another theme-based collection is Gremlin's Flight Ace. Also around the £15 mark this has just six games, most of which are quite long in the tooth. The only fairly recent game is the outstanding ATF which, with the helicopter sim Tomahawk, make this fairly respectable. Somewhat more dubious in value is the third in the 'Ace' theme trilogy - Karate Ace. This has the classic, clone-inspiring Way Of The Exploding Fist, the excellent two-player Bruce Lee and the epic Way Of The Tiger, but these are all quite old. Much of the rest of the games are not much more recent, and generally of distinctly inferior quality. Uchi Mata is truly awful for example. Unless you're a die-hard beat-'em-up fan, it's probably not worth the £12.95 asking price.

THE MIDAS TOUCH

US Gold may have just two compilations out, but one of them is the massive History in The Making, which at £24.95 is probably one of the most expensive Spectrum releases for ages. With 15 games the price-per-game is fairly reasonable, though, and the packaging with four tapes and a booklet is impressive. Unfortunately the games as a whole are weak. CRASH Smashes like the ancient Beach Head, Raid Over Moscow and the more recent Gauntlet fail to compensate for the mediocrity of the rest. This is an admirably wide-ranging history, but £24.95 seems a lot for the eight or so fairly good games - especially when most are now on budget.

Also from US Gold is the boastfully named Giants collection. Although all of the games are fairly recent releases, you only get five for just under 13 quid (tape version), while +3 owners have to fork out an extortionate 20 quid! Moreover the five are, under closer examination, a little dwarfish with only 720° and Out Run of much interest.

A TOUCH OF CLASS

Fists 'N' Throttles is the tantalizing title for a potpourri Olive popular programs from Elite. You can bounce down the courses in Buggy Boy or perform dramatic motorbike leaps in Enduro Racer. Those feline cartoon stars, the Thundercats, also make an appearance. If you haven't got any of the games included then Fists 'N' Throttles represents good value for money. Unfortunately, if you live in Germany, you won't get Ikari Warriors, as it was banned by the West German government (yet German instructions for the game are included in the package!).

Not to be outdone by their competitors, Ocean and imagine have some sumptuous compilations of their own. The sequel Game Set And Match 2 includes nine games ranging from a relaxing game of cricket in Ian Botham's Test Match to the bone-breaking grid iron action of American Football in Superbowl. Jon Ritman's fantabulous footy sim, Match Day II is also included along with the conversion of Sega's Super Hang-On. Burdened with some old and rather weak titles to fill it out this is still well worth considering.

Two sets of coin-op hits are being issued by Imagine. The first, Konami Arcade Collection, has been available for a few months now, and encompasses ten hits of yesteryear, numbering no less than four CRASH Smashes among them. At £9.95 it offers attractive value for money.

Also from Imagine comes a slightly newer selection of games, all Taito coin-op conversions. Taito Coin-op Hits contains eight such games, of which two - Flying Shark and Bubble Bobble - are fairly recent, highly-acclaimed Firebird releases. Breakout fans will be tempted by the inclusion of Arkanoid and its sequel, Revenge Of Doh, while beat-'em-up fans should be excited by Renegade.

The final Ocean release, The in Crowd, contains a real collection of street credible games. Primarily there's the beat-'em-ups Target; Renegade and Barbarian, along with the militarish, but very different, Combat School and Platoon. With Karnov adding a touch of colour, and Gryzor and Predator more jungle action it's well worth the usual Ocean asking price.

Lastly we come to those consistent suppliers of annual anthologies, Beau Jolly, 10 Computer Hits - Volume Five brings together ten middle of the road offerings, with only ...Traz standing out due to it being reviewed in this very issue! But Beau Jolly's pride and joy must be Supreme Challenge, a superb collection of three true mega games (Starglider, Elite and The Sentinel) plus one puzzling (Tetris) and, of course, the obligatory flight sim (Ace 2). At around £2.50 a game it can't be bad - even if you were only getting those three biggies! I dread to see what the documentation will be like: both Starglider and Elite had novellas and very detailed instruction manuals, in an A5 box!

CRASH ISSUE FEATURED IN, AND REVIEW PERCENTAGE GIVEN. N/R DENOTES NOT REVIEWED.

GIANTS
£12.99c, £19.99d
US Gold
Gauntlet II 49/65%
720° 47/81%
Rolling Thunder 50/47%
Out Run 49/72%
California Games 49/36%

(Spec, C64 and Ams; £12.99cs and £19.99dk, C64 disk £14.99)

(Let's face it, if anybody's got a fair amount of good product to offer in a compilation, it's US Gold. A number of Christmas No. 1's under its belt, for sure, and Giants has most of them. This again is choc-a-bloc with coin-ops, like Gauntlet, Rolling Thunder, 720 and OutRun, the only fly in the ointment being California Games. This was hailed as the worst game of all time on certain formats, and just plain vanilla on most others. But the other crucial blockbusters in the package more than make up for CG's complete lack of lustre.

Gauntlet must be one of the best-loved games of all time, in the arcades AND on the small screen. The computer version broke all sales records, and a hail of clones ensued, surely the highest honour for any computer game (imitation being the sincerest, if unwelcome, form of flattery!). 720 and Rolling Thunder had their moments, and to some the Spectrum versions were the best players, oddly enough, but by far the hottest property of all time in the software biz is OutRun. Although US Gold is attempting the same degree of hype and build up with this year's Sega licence, Thunder Blade (they might succeed, and why not?), nothing can really match the excitement of last year's OutRun fever. EVERYONE wanted the game, and most of them bought it. I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't the last we'll see of it either. US Gold spent too much money on it to let it just die away. I feel a budget release coming on before it finally croaks.