BIGBOX THRILLS!

What's the best way to catch up on all the great games that appeared on the Spectrum a while back. One: go out and buy every single one and spend a fortune? Tow: pop around to your mate's house and nick his copies? Or three: take a trip down to your local software shop and snap up one of the great new compilations? Well, one's only for the stupid, two's only for complete basts, so it must be three! NICK ROBERTS gives you the low-down on the current hits in compilation land!

Code Masters
£2.99

At that sort of price you can't go wrong, really. All the packs are themed but that doesn't mean there's a lack of variety because there's plenty of different game styles to contend with (you would not believe it, etc etc...).

Quattro Firepower has 3D Star Fighter a space blaster, MiG 29, a flying-into-the-screen blaster, Operation Gunship a great, if a little tricky, fly and bomb affair, and the Terra Cognita scrolly shoot-'em-up.

REPLAY

Out goes Barg B, and in comes something nearly exactly the same (but covering the rereleases). PILLAR AND PELLEY remain your hosts.

CodeMasters
£2.99
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

Quattro Firepower, eh? Sounds rather loud and action-packed, doesn't it? Or beepy and blurry, depending on how high your expectations of CodeMasters games are. Let's find out...

OPERATION GUNSHIP

Jump into your helicopter and snatch back eight POW chums in this mono, overhead-scrolling shoot-'em-up. Hardly the most thrill-packed scenario, I'm sure you'll agree, but Op Gunship's got a few surprises up its sleeve, not the least of which is its real arcade-game style.

The circular-scrolling islands you fly over always have something extra and unexpected round the corner, and the enemy are so ridiculously prevalent that if you want to get out safely it's best to wreck most of the landscape. The graphics get a bit hard on the eyes after a while, but it's still a terribly addictive game that's been well-designed in all departments. In fact, it's so sharp you could give it a suit and call it Mister Sharpy. Ouch.

TERRA COGNITA

An inoffensive shoot-'em-up in which you're travelling around at ground level and bumping into lots of things. The playing area's a huge vertically-scrolling maze affair, with a liberal sprinkling of bonus tiles. Unfortunately one set of tiles 'time shifts' you all the way back to the start, which might have been a good idea when they thought it up, but ends up being just plain crap. Still, once you get into it, TCog is quite addictive. Basically, you wonder what's going to happen next. And the graphics are less cluttered than they they usually are. I like it!

MIG 29 FIGHTER

Mig 29 is basically an Afterburner clone which tries to go one further than its 'inspiration'. This means that you get limited ammo and add-on weapons as well as ground and air opponents. Alas, it doesn't succeed. Its more fun to watch someone else zooming about than having a go yourself. Dodge! Fire! Dodge again! Then go and do something more interesting instead.

3D STARFIGHTER

Starfighter's got lots of, erm, starfighting bits, with you blasting down a corridor in a similar style to, erm, Star Wars, actually. Apart from the vaguely strategic element of having to give different ships different cargoes (or something), and also the inclusion of a simultaneous two-player option, it all gets very tedious. A miss methinks.

So - worth buying for Op Gunship and Terra Cognita. The other two are duds, but for such a small payout you're hardly going to be breaking the bank, are you?

Label: Codemasters
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Another decent four-title compilation from the Codies, Quattro Firepower doesn't feature any classics, but has enough action to keep you occupied for some time.

Terra Cognita is the least wonderful of the titles; it looks like a decent vertically-scrolling alien shoot-'em-up, but has jerky movements and targets which are barely distinguishable against the mono background.

Mig 29 is an Afterburner-style aerial blast with decent animation, good use of colour and raving speed. Again, it's a bit too frantic to require more than a constant pressure on the fire button, but it's good fun.

The Oliver Twins' Operation Gunship reminds me of an old Broderbrund title, where you pilot a helicopter seen from above, destroying a series of enemy emplacement on a chain of islands. Plenty of detail makes this a good blast.

Lastly, 3D Starfighter, another Oliver effort, is a sort of Star Trek variant, featuring a 3-D flight through space followed by a difficult docking manoeuvre with your mothership as you refuel for the next fight against the evil Thargons.

Not a bad selection, then, and at the price, not to be missed.

GARTH SEZ:
It's just got to be the greatest value for money since the SU Ten Pack Tape. The Codies only release brilliant software every now and then, but Quattro Firepower shows the level of value they're prepared to give. Maybe that's why they're the most successful budget Spectrum label.