Gremlin
£12.99
Reviewer: Matt Bielby

This is a real shoot 'em up fans' compilation. So what if the gameplay for most of these is more or less the same - flip from screen to screen blasting alien nasties - if there is enough addictive fun to keep you coming back again for 'just one more try'. Yep, there are no real duff games here at all, and at £12.99 it's a bargain squire. The only problem will be that all you keen little games players will probably have most of these already.

Anyway, let us take a gander at what you get for your money.

ZYNAPS

This really is archetypal stuff - one lone spaceship scrolling through a host of aliens - in the mould of R-Type and so many other arcade games. There are extra weapons to pick up - like you do - and attack patterns to memorise and everything is exceptionally clean and smooth. Sprite design isn't particularly stunning though. The collision detection seemed slightly out to me as well - you find yourself screaming "What hit me?!" every few minutes - but that said it plays rather well. Back in August '87 when we first reviewed it we gave it an 8.

EXOLON

This one got a megagame and I see no reason to dispute that score. This really is a corker, with the most gorgeous explosive effects when you destroy anything big - like a rock or a gun emplacement You play a little man in a space suit - or father a series of space suits, because the game lets you change into extra tough'n'beefy exoskeletons occasionally to make wading through the nasties a little easier.

Besides the various waves of hostile aliens - including sneaky little beggars that come up behind you (oo-er) - there are also funny things that shoot you into the air if you stand on them, teleports which take you elsewhere m the killing fields, and plenty of alternative routes to take. It all adds up to a pretty spectacular shoot em up with a hint of strategy and addictiveness coming out of its eyeballs. Not only that, but the central sprite has a lovely walk(!). A classic from programmer Rafaelle Cecco, about whom more later.

XEVIOUS

Another spaceship shoot em up, but vertically scrolling this time. Big mother ships abound - surprise, surprise - and there are some quite devious touches like floating mirrors that reflect your fire back at you. US Gold originally converted this one, and went for the fast, smooth speed rather than the stunning graphics route. Though this does make it fun to play, the look of the thing is pretty basic, and I would award it seven now rather than the eight we originally gave it.

TRANTOR

Another ex-megagame, Trantor is a graphically sound platform game which bridges the gap between shoot 'em up and pure arcade adventure. Sound is great, sprites are very large for the Spectrum and move nicely, and there's heaps of violence. Takes some thinking about, and is pretty hard - at least, I tended to die a lot! - but well worth the nine we gave it.

NORTHSTAR

Arguably the weakest of the bunch, but by no means a total waste of time You play a little man with a bionic arm a la Bionic Commandos - lovely running action, by the way - in a horizontal shoot 'em up. At least it would be a shoot em up if there were any guns involved. Instead it's more like tag - 'if I touch you you're dead' sort of thing. We only gave it a six, which is a touch mean, but then it is a bit slow.

CYBERNOID

The biggie in most people's minds, and deservedly so. Cybernoid is a megagame and a half. It's very hard, very clever, and goes off the scale in addictiveness. Lots of extra weapon add ons - including a whirling mace - to add to your ship from the corpses of dead aliens, and a heavy strategy element. Each new screen features a new problem which is going to take quite a few lives to work a route through. Brilliant stuff from Cecco.

VENOM STRIKES BACK

Last of the MASK games - and happily the best. Big Matt, the hero, moonwalks along shooting lumping things, wobbling things and floating things. I remember playing it on the C64 (boo, hiss) and it was a lot better than here, but still not too shabby an effort. Rather suffers in comparison to Exolon, though.

And there we have it. An excellent compilation if you don't have any of these games, with no real weak links, but perhaps not quite so much of a must buy if you've got Cecco's two contributions already.

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.

SPACE ACE
£14.99c, £17.99d
Gremlin
Xevious 37/64%
Venom Strikes Back 53/91%
Cybernoid 51/94%
Northstar 50/90%
Zynaps 42/91%
Trantor- The Last Stormtrooper 46/68%
Exolon 43/90%