Ocean
£14.95 cass
Reviewer: David McCandless

The In Crowd is an impressive looking box with a clever name, one you might ostentatiously leave lying on the coffee table when your friends are around. And it's contents are no less impressive. Six cassettes, containing eight famous hits and five megagames. But all seem to involve murder and genocide on a grand scale, so is there enough variety and architecture in there to attract your average gameplayer?

KARNOV

This game puts you in charge of Karnov, bulky Bolshevik hero, on a quest to recover the fabled treasure of Babylon from the evil dragon Ryu.

Unfortunately monster-infested countryside stands in our hero's way. Inhabited by ghosts, demons, ostriches, golems, dinosaurs and everything remotely ugly and carnivorous. But, luckily, burly Karnov has a fascinating genetic defect: he can breathe fire. And, luckier still, there are bonus icons hanging about, giving our Russkie extra-speed, extra-firepower, ladders, wings, bombs, you name it, he's got it.

The graphics in Karnov are excellent - huge, bold and uniquely colourful. Each scrolling level palpitates with colour. And a wealth of scenery awaits a budding adventurer: jungles, caverns, pyramids, castles, and wastelands. A special strategy is needed for this game Shoot, sweat - and gallons of each.

GRYZOR

A great throbbing alien heart is pulsating in the depths of another world and you're deployed to trek across scrolling jungles and through intricate mazes to cause a little strategic coronary in the heart department. Of course, no alien planet would be an alien planet without aliens - and this planet more so. Thousands of the green things attack you from all sides as you rush to collect bigger and better weaponry.

This excellent shoot 'em up is not just another one of those twenty-levelled assaults on alien kind. It's singled out by the smooth scrolling, the unrelenting action and the sheer diversity of levels. Some sections scroll horizontally, some vertically and some in three dimensions. Seeing is believing Gryzor is fast, fancy and fun to play.

COMBAT SCHOOL

This game shoves you unceremoniously into the jack boots of a new recruit, facing a series of tortuous tests of mind, body and joystick. The tests include the assault course, the shooting range, and the customary scrap with the large-jowled instructor.

Combat School is a great game with excellent fluid graphics and a wide range of events to suckle your attention, but it is very difficult and the fact you have to reload each event when you die doesn't help. The competitive element is there but it doesn't shine through.

PLATOON

This game is a multi-sectioned shoot 'em up lost in a jungle setting, with a vain attempt at capturing the atmosphere and motives of the movie. You direct your lone infantryman through a maze of forestry and underground tunnels. Survive by shooting and lobbing grenades and collecting specific objects to carry out your mission. The graphics adequate but again this game is too difficult and discouraging to a novice gameplayer.

CRAZY CARS 2

This is probably the weakest of this prize bunch. It's a bland, view-from-behind racing game, where you and the computer-controlled opponents bullet along an endless meandering road. The graphics are weak and badly animated. The road just goes on for ever and ever and ever...

PREDATOR

Based on the gut-busting thriller of the same name, Predator places you in the middle of a moist jungle. Your mercenary pals have been skinned alive and hung up to dry, the trees are swarming with Sandinista rebels, and to cap it all a gigantic game-hunting alien's on the prowl. You sprint across the screen, shooting at the rebels who converge on you.

Occasionally, the alien gets a bead on you and you have to avoid its gun sight as well. The graphics are great and the scrolling smooth, but there's very little to the game and it's nigh on impossible to actually achieve anything.

TARGET RENEGADE

You're a hell-bent martial-arts man out to exact vegeance on modest gangster, Mr Big, for abducting your girl friend right at the height of your romance. Through car-parks, sordid streets and dirty parks, our man must wade into swarms of punks, prostitutes, Hells Angels and football supporters, dealing death, kicks and knees to the groins of his enemies.

Target Renegade is still a brilliant game today, chopping Double Dragon thoroughly in the windpipe. Impeccable animation, demanding gameplay and sheer satisfaction - they're all here. But the game really shines when you use the plural player option and join a friend in carving up the opposition.

BARBARIAN

You are a muscle bound warrior, condemned to engage forever in hand-to-sword combat in an arena. Using a combination of slicing sword techniques, you must hack and chop your way through a series of monsters and guardians.

With top-notch animation and very realistic figure graphics, and the challenge of progressively tougher opponents. Barbarian is a welcome adaption of the martial-arts game and a brilliant combat experience to boot.

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.

THE IN CROWD
£12.95c,17.95d
Ocean
Combat School 48/93%
Gryzor 49/49%
Barbarian 41/85%
Predator 51/66%
Platoon 50/93%
Karnov 52/76%
Crazy Cars 52/65%
Target: Renegade 52/90%

(Spec, C64 and Ams; £12.95cs)

Two from the Ocean label and one from the once proud software house, now mere cypher label, Imagine. One of the very hottest compilations out now is The In Crowd, which apart from being an ancient and excellent Brian Ferry tune is also Ocean's compilation flagship this year. Firstly there's Barbarian (Maria's chubbies version), Crazy Cars, Karnov, Gryzor, Predator, Combat School, Target: Renegade, and Platoon. A good 80 quid's worth of games just one year ago, and now you can get them for £13! My personal favourite on this list must be Target: Renegade, the best beat-em-up I've ever played, and the only game I ever stayed up all night trying to beat on the C64. Platoon I found a bit disappointing, but having to produce a war game which doesn't glorify war is a bit of a tough brief, so it's only to be expected I suppose.