Tengen/Domark
£9.99/£14.99

Early in the 21st century the game of Gridiron Football took a violent turn for the batter/worse (whichever you prefer). Injured players had body parts replaced with bionics. With some players ending up with over 50% of their bodies replaced, the idea popped up to have all metal players! By 2022 huge robots over 20ft tall have replaced human players. It is into this futuristic battleground that you are thrown.

First pick a team. In practice mode choose between the Los Angeles Assassins or the New York Enforcers. Then move into pro mode with the San Francisco Hitmen, Chicago Killers, Miami Terminators and Dallas Destroyers.

If you watch Gridiron Football on Channel 4 on Sunday evenings you'll know what happens (this game is very similar). Each team takes it in turns to carry the ball up to their opponents' end zone to score touchdowns. The game starts with you being on the offensive. Choose from the menu of running plays, passing plays or option plays and one of tour formations.

Time to play! An incentive to fast play and gaining that extra yardage is provided by the ball: 350 pounds of steel full of high explosive! This ball starts cool, but as play progresses becomes warm, hot, and finally critical. The only way to stop it exploding is to carry it over the de-fuse line. If you make it to the end or loss the ball you go on the defensive, similar to offensive play with a list of options appearing.

So go out there and cause some aggro! But hang on, this game is great in the arcades, but what's happened to it?. The small stick like robots judder round the pitch more like geriatric dormice than big butch machines. The title tune may be creditable, but from there on in it's all downhill! Programming on this obviously never made the end-zone.

MARK [38%]

Definitely not my cup of tea this. I couldn't stand playing it for more than ten minutes. It takes absolutely ages to load, alright if you're in for a real stunner, but not if you're greeted by naff futuristic American Football. Nothing against American Football, but I object when it's played at this speed: it's unbelievably slow. The robot players crawl about the screen in a generally annoying way and aren't even very well drawn. Graphics are mostly very poor, and in black and white too. Sound is equally bad with average tunes and the odd effect, including something I think was meant to be a crowd cheering.
NICK [45%]

Domark/Tengen
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk (128K only)
Reviewer: David Wilson

Since the dawn of creation man has pondered three all-important questions... 'What is the meaning of life?', 'What came first, the chicken or the egg?' and 'How on earth do you play American Football?'. Well, if you think today's version of the game is complex just wait ill the 21st century! It's become so violent that humans don't want to play anymore! Oh no, instead it's the poor robots who take their place (and the pasting!). And this is what Cyberball is all about!

If you're not that familiar with American footie, here's a brief synopsis... Huge teams of humans run about in a game broken into several plays. Each consists of four 'downs'. Each down is an attempt to keep possession of the ball and move it up the field ten yards. Fail at your fourth attempt (Or 'down'? Ed) (Right, you're getting the hang of it!) and you lose possession to your opponents. Cyberball is played by huge teams of massive metal robots (or in the case of the Speccy by teams of seven monochrome robot sprites). The rest is similar, except that as an added incentive to gain the ten yards the ball is timed to explode!!! Eek!

Now, in each down you have to choose a 'play' (or routine) for your team to perform and there are loads of them depends on whether you're defending or attacking. You have a time limit in which to choose these plays (which is nowhere near long enough to figure out exactly what you should be doing!).

Right, into the gameplay, the pitch scrolls vertically up and down with the action and the teams move likewise (but slowly) chasing the ball. By clicking the fire button you can choose which player to control in defence. In attack you first control the receiver. From the 'play' you've selected, you'll have several options for places to throw the ball, and these will be marked by crosses on the screen. Your robots will start to move toward these as play begins. the ball goes to your receiver and then you choose which cross to throw the ball to. As soon as it's thrown, his cross is highlighted and you take control of the robot nearest to it. Move over it, catch the ball and then leg it toward the goal line pronto! Do this enough times and you win the game (and get lots of cash). Simple, isn't it? Er... no. It's actually very complicated.

In two-player games you're both on the same team, one catching and one passing. There's a limited amount of sound, the nicest bit being the sort of static noise that approximates to cheering as you kick off. There are lots of subtleties here including robots with different speeds and damaged robots not performing so well, but none of this is really apparent on the Speccy because of the jerky gameplay. Still, all this having been said, after I'd persevered I was actually able to make some progress! (Gasp! Ed) Here's Davey's trusty tip - instead of throwing the ball away as soon as you get it (like I used to do when we played rugby at school), you should make the receiver hold onto it for a but until your players are in the right place to catch the pass.

Anyway, Cyberball sounded like a great idea for a game, but I'm afraid that Domark could well have been a trifle over-ambitious with the Speccy version. With the memory limitation, of course, the teams are both monochrome (although your opponents area is a bit darker), and the gameplay is a tad on the slow side. I suppose it's quite a specialist game. I mean even if you like the idea of small monochrome robots bashing each other, you still need to get to grips with the rules of American footie!

REPLAY

Re-pla, vt To play again. n

That section in YS which covers re-released games. (We just thought you'd like to know.)

Hit Squad
£3.99
061 832 6633
Reviewer: Leigh Loveday

I'm not a huge fan of sports sims (with the possible exception of a bit of tennis), nor do I have a great love for complicated games. So when Cyberball, probably the world's most complicated sports sim, glared up at me from the Jiffy bag, my initial resentment quickly turned to horror as I realised I was going to have to try and play the blimmin' thing.

After a brief period of blubbing, I gave it a shot. Discarding the feebly superficial instructions, I flunked my way through a series of bewildering tactics screens only to flounder in the turgid gameplay.

Loads of beefy robots chugging around smashing lumps off each other and trying to score a touchdown before the ball explodes - great in theory, crap in practice. The presentation is fine, but as the game plays more slowly than a half-dead inebriated sloth with chronic verrucas, by the time anything starts happening you've completely forgotten the tactics you'd chosen. Not that they meant much in the first place.

So, unless you're one of the world's top American Football players or a whopping great fan of the original coin-op, I'm afraid you'd have more success trying to decipher a rap by MC Kinky.

Label: Domark
Price: £8.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

This could just have been the most exciting game ever. Imagine; all the thrills and action of American football - attacking plays, strategic defenses, complex gameplans; but instead of humans, the players are giant bloodthirsty robots with exploding balls. Footballs, I mean.

Now if you're interested in American footie, and can tell a defensive sack from a running bleeder, this might sound like your idea of heaven. Even if you're not interested, the idea of a cross between a sports sim and Apocalypse Now might catch your interest. Trouble is, the idea is exciting but things don't quite seem to come together into an exciting GAME.

Cyberball comes in an over-sized box with a little 60-page game manual which explains the history of the sport, how to play the game, and the winning strategies. Once you get the idea, giant robots have replaced human players because the sport got too dangerous - you can choose one or two-player mode, and control options. After that it's largely a matter of practice; as far as I can make out the arcade elements are much less important than the strategies you choose from the multiple-choice menus between plays.

The two teams, the Destroyers and the Terminators, face off down a vertically-scrolling perspective screen; one team is in Offensive mode, with one highlighted robot under direct control, selecting Running, Passing or Option Plays. The other team is in Defensive mode, the object being to choose the best Short, Medium or Long strategy to help you tackle the player before he passes.

The offensive player's aim is to score touchdowns by running across the defender's line, then to score conversions. Trouble is, your players can be damaged by tackles, causing them to lose control of the ball, and the ball itself becomes critically super-heated as play continues, and will explode if not reset by crossing the baseline.

If you like learning jargon like "Wide receiver in motion - pitch to left back swinging wide - wide receiver comes round for hand-off and follows surge left!" then you'll enjoy this game. It's very nicely put together and has cute little graphics. I can't help feeling, though, that it would have made more sense as a head-bashing arcade smash-'em-up, rather than the rather laboured strategic challenge it is now.

Label: Hit Squad
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Paul Anglin

American football has got a little rough these days (well rougher) and so people like you and I have decided to stop playing and leave it up to enormous robots to entertain us. Oh yeah, and they thought a pigskin ball was a bit girlie so they decided to use a bomb instead.

This is basically American football (apart from the above changes) with a smaller pitch. Traditionally American football is bit complicated for us Brits to play (as well as relatively uninteresting) and Cyberball carries that tradition, but succeeds in making it worse.

It's nothing to do with the menus, which are actually very well set out. It's the game itself that provides the confusion. Both team look very much the same and the ball blends in perfectly with the background which is highly annoying. Also the responsiveness of the players is about equal to that of a crippled centipede.

Graphically Cyberball isn't terrible, it's just that the two team look very similar to each other and as the pitch also uses the same colours as the players and the ball the result total confusion. Sound is nothing amazing but it's okay. Unfortunately due to cofusing graphics and terrible responsiveness this game is an absolute nightmare to play and prolonged effort (if you can be bothered) really makes no odds. A disappointment.

ALAN:
There's only three things I like about Americans; hamburgers, west coast girls and their version of football. However I have yet to play a Spectrum version of American Football that captures its true feel. Cyberball is another in a long line of attempts that captures the feeling of sheer frustration more than anything else.

Domark
Spectrum £9.99, Amiga £24.99

In the 21st century, American Football is played by giant 20 foot high armoured robots - one or two humans control the entire team from positions of safety high above the goal line.

The object of the game is easy - you've got to get the ball over your opponents goal line to score points. The trouble is that the ball is explosive, and as soon as its in your possession its internal fuse begins to burn. You have four attempts to move the ball ten yards upfield to the defuse line - make it and the fuse is reset for another four turns. Fail and the ball explodes, the opponent takes possession of a new ball and starts to make his way back upfield towards your goal-line.

During offensive play you control the quarterback robot at all times, unless you choose to throw the ball to a receiver robot, whereupon control is passed over as soon as the ball leaves the quarterback's metal mitts. All the other robots follow pre-programmed movements which you select before each down - the list is enormous, and each is accompanied by a picture which details all robot activity.

When you're playing on the defensive you can control any one of the robots - all you've got to do is stop the opponent from reaching the defuse line in four goes to regain possession. Again, there are many defensive moves accessible at the start of each play.

Spectrum Cassette: 9.99, Diskette: £14.99

Originally reviewed: TGM030

Oh dear, this is disappointing. After the rather good Amiga version comes this naff Speccy conversion. Both the sprites and backdrops are mono, the characters look nothing like tough 20-foot-tall mean dude robots, and the movement (if you can call it that) is glitchy. Save your money.