Ocean
cassette £12.95/disk £17.95
Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald

Well well well, it looks as if Ocean's another company that's been digging around in the cupboard under the stairs in readiness for Spring Cleaning Time. The cleaning ladies have dragged out ten different titles, blown off the cobwebs and to and behold - all the games have sporting connections, so they can be packed together and labelled Game Set And Match 2 - ten games for the price of, erm, one and a half. But are the games any good? That's the question, and I'm the chum with the answers. Read on.

BASKET MASTER

Side-on viewed monochrome scrolling pitch with two fair sized cartoony players: you versus the computer or a pal. I thought this was going to be quite good at first, but the identical player-sprites soon had me totally confused as to who was who after a jostle. I lost every time, until I sussed out how to win, and then I won every time. Not exactly a challenge if you know what I mean.

CHAMPIONSHIP SPRINT

You view a race track from above and control one of four cars (a pal can control one of the others or the computer can place all three on auto). Forward on the stick speeds you up, back slams on the anchors, and left and right, well - it's obvious, innit. There are eight tracks in all, all of varying difficulty (the number and severity of bends) and each with icons to be avoided or picked up. As a bonus there's a track designer - make up your own layouts. Quite good fun, but it has to be said - the graphics are small: positively picoscopic.

IAN BOTHAM'S TEST MATCH

Scrappy graphics, badly thought-out application and less than compulsive gameplay aim this simulation firmly in the direction of the dumper. A game based on Botham's antics on Australian domestic shuttle flights would've been a lot more fun. If you want a brilliant cricket sim look no further than the one we gave you free at the beginning of last year.

MATCH DAY II

The definitive animated football game for the Spectrum. What more can I say? Apart from that it made Marcus go all wibbly at the edges when he reviewed it. A 'powermeter' for different strength in your shots, 128K sound, music and more options than you could poke a squirrel in the eye with. Let me say it again - the definitive animated football game for the Spectrum.

NICK FALDO PLAYS THE OPEN

Um, unusual this, as I'm used to the Leaderboard trilogy. Erm, a novel approach to a golf sim which shows the action from above. There's a window at the bottom of the screen in in which an arrow icon can be moved about and clicked on to make choices: club weight, direction of shot, entire course map etc. Choose your club, check the distance to the hole, adjust your 'powermeter' and fire. Oh dear. Overshot the green. Have another go. Oh dear... Five hours and 53 shots par later - hoorah, what a hole (oo-er)!

STEVE DAVIS SNOOKER

Almost as boring as the man himself - small cluttered graphics and program tendancy to either lock-up or crash completely. I'm surprised that no-one's done a really good snooker or snooker-based game on the Speccy - I'm sure there'd be great demand for it. This isn't it, anyway.

SUPERBOWL

An American Football sim. The screen is split vertically into two windows. Instructions are entered into the left side while an overhead view of a portion of simplified scrolling pitch is shown on the right. After your team instructions have been entered, a little bit of play is animated (the players are represented as little blocks) and then it's back to the team-orders screen again. I'm afraid I don't really understand the rules for American Football, but one thing I did notice - this sim has got all the stopping and starting of the original game.

SUPER HANG ON

Yaaa Hoooo!! I'm a sucker for racing games - especially motorbike ones - and this is the business. It's view over the handlebar time as you zoom away from the chequered flag in a race against the clock. There are four continents to race over, each of which has a number of stages within. Each time you reach a stage marker, your clock is sproinged back up to full and any time left over is also added - giving you more time on the next Stage (of which there are an amazing 48, as opposed to Enduro Racer's five). Graphically the game is a treat - almost as good as Enduro Racer itself, with the uphill and downhill bits included. It's skill.

TRACK AND FIELD

A joystick waggler that's so crap I almost feel sorry for it. No Daley Thompson's Decathlon this.

WINTER OLYMPIAD

Snowy version of the above with better graphics and, I suppose, marginally better gameplay. Five events: downhill, biathlon, bob-sled, ski-jump slalom.

And there we have it. Game Set And Match 2. Quite a mixed bag in my opinion (and let's face it, that's the one that counts Brian). Erm, I think that two of the enclosed are absolutely brillo (namely Super Hang On and Match Day 2) and are worth getting the compilation for on their own. The rest? Erm, not exactly show-stoppers, are they. So, basically, if you've already got Super hang On and Match Day 2 then you might feel a bit of a plonker for shelling out on this; however, if you haven't then it's worth a look (the game, not your plonker). Right, I'm off to have another go on Super Hang On!

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.

GAME SET AND MATCH 2
£12.95c, £17.96d
Ocean
Match Day II 48/91%
Ian Botham's Test Match N/R
Basket Master 51/73%
Track & Field N/R
Superbowl 29/85%
Winter Olympiad 88 45/44%
Steve Davis Snooker 12/77%
Nick Faldo Plays The Open 20/83%
Super Hang-On 49/85%

MACHINES: Spec/Ams/C64
SUPPLIER: Ocean
PRICE: Spec/Ams/C64 £12.95 cass, £17.95 disk
VERSION TESTED: Spec

MATCH DAY II: The best football simulation available on the Spectrum.

SUPERBOWL: Average simulation that might appeal to fans of the sport.

WINTER OLYMPIAD: Six-event simulation, similar to the Games series.

IAN BOTHAM'S TEST MATCH: An unexciting and bland cricket simulation.

BASKET MASTER: Fairly competent game with naff graphics.

TRACK AND FIELD: Jolly waggling version from a few years back.

NICK FALDO'S GOLF: Good a couple of years ago, but now looking very dodgy.

SUPER HANG-ON: Super indeed; a motorbike race game par excellence.

STEVE DAVIS SNOOKER: Apparently the best of its kind. Who's arguing?

CHAMPIONSHIP SPRINT: Super Sprint with a course designer: it's alright.

Some of the games are a bit ropey, but there's plenty of variety and the whole package should keep a sports fan happy for weeks.