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!

Domark
£14.99/£19.99

Variety abounds in The Winning Team from Domark. The five games offer different gameplay and graphic styles so it's pretty unlikely boredom will come knocking at your door. In the pack are Klax, APB, Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters, Cyberball and Vindicators - all coin-op greats!

Klax is for puzzle wizards. You have to catch tiles as they roll towards you and flip the correct colours into the bins at the bottom of the screen. In true puzzle game style, things are simple to begin with but soon hot up as tiles get faster and more frequent.

One of my favourite games from the arcade has to be All Points Bulletin, or APB to its friends. Full of speeding police cars, miles of roads and donut shops, you just can't help but get addicted. The action's viewed from above and the landscapes scroll by as you drive the squad car, arresting a quota of criminals to succeed. Great fun.

Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters is an absolute corker of a 3D arcade adventure. Playing a one- or two-player game you have to free the captives and destroy all the robot scum. Nice, eh?

Cyberball is a look into the future of American Football. You may have thought it was a tough game now, but played against giant robots things soon start to hot up even further.

Finally, Vindicators puts you in control of an armoured tank. Battle it out with the enemy for points; a frenzy of shoot-'em-up action.

The Winning Team is a fantastic compilation. Get your hands on five addictive games for only around £3 each! What a complete and utter barg!

Klax: 18/20
APB: 19/20
Robot Monsters: 18/20
Cyberball: 15/20
Vindicators: 16/20

Domark
£14.99 cass/£19.99 disk
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

A compilation called The Winning Team, eh? That might be pre-empting things a bit. Let's have a look.

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE ROBOT MONSTERS

Here we have a 3D isometric shoot-'em-up, with the welcome addition of a simultaneous 2-player mode so you and a chum can work together blasting baddies and rescuing hostages. At first, it seems like a bit of a laff The 3D view and crisp clear graphics work a treat, and the play area appears vast as each level is divided up into platforms. The only snag is that nothing much changes - I think 'samey' is the word I'm looking for because you're bound to find it pretty tedious after a while. But it's still fun while it lasts.
1991 Verdict: 80°

APB

The coin-op version of this was a bit of a hit (at least I saw someone playing it at a service station once) and rather surprisingly it converted quite well to the Speccy. You're Officer Bob, and you have to drive around in your car (in an annoying large-chunk-scrolling sort of way) arresting naughty people. The trouble is that the original arcade was a tad dull, so unfortunately this is a bit too.
1991 Verdict: 69°

VINDICATORS

Not to confused with The Vindicator, of course, which was this rather good multiparter beat/shoot/drive-'em-up. This one's a scroll-around-in-a-tank-'em-up with the unfortunate problem that it's crap. It's just all so slow and unexciting that. well, you just won't want to play it.
1991 Verdict: 40°

KLAX

Ah, this is more like it. Klax is a member of the completely simple yet fiendishly addictive puzzle game club, and was simply corkeroony on all formats. Lots of coloured bricks come at you (with a nice tumbling sort of effect) and you have to catch them in this thingy and drop them to this other thingy, forming specific patterns to score certain points (and cause the respective bricks to vanish). That's it really - simple but brilliant, and although it's not quite up to Tetris standards, it still comes pretty damn close.
1991 Verdict: 85°

CYBERBALL
Let's face it, nobody has the slightest idea how American football works, no matter how much they boast about it. So Cyberball, a futuristic variation of the game (featuring robots instead) is unsurprisingly, rather tricky to play. Add to that the fact that it's jerky with manky graphics and you've probably got it sussed. The 2-player option adds some excitement but it's still all a bit confusing for its own good.
1991 Verdict: 69°

And there we go - 2 rather poor sports sims, a pathetic shoot-'em-up, a brilliant puzzle game and the original APB. It's okay, but you could certainly buy 5 better (re-released) bargs for the price. (Any help?)

Label: Domark
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £14.99 Tape, £19.99 Disk
Reviewer: Alan Dykes

Teamwork always gets the job done! A couple of dolphins will take on several sharks and drive them away in a Transit van when they work together (one of them has to steer and the other works the gears). And Domark's tried and tested games make this compilation a winning team too (but there's not one single fish in it!)

There are five titles on offer here. A.P.B, Escape from the Planet of Robot Monsters, Klax, Cyberball and last but not least, Vindicator. This compilation has to be something of a scoop.

A.P.B., or All Points Bulletin, as it is known to those who watch too much telly, is a crazy, car bendin', cop caper, where you assist Officer Bob (the man on the job) in apprehending a variety of common and/or notorious criminals. This is done over sixteen one day shifts. Each day has a time limit and if Bob can't catch the assigned number of baddies, then he won't earn any bonuses and might even get fired!.

Escape From the Planet of the Robot Monsters, is a fast paced Shoot 'em up that'll scare the pants off anyone who hasn't seen every single one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's action movies. There are so many tasks to carry out, so many robots to destroy and lovely ladles to rescue that it's just as well this game is adapted for two player mode.

Klax is as good here as it is on any other format, though it does depend on individual taste. If you are not a fan of puzzle type games it might be more frustrating than mum switching off the computer before eleven. Gameplay is better under keyboard control as this is far more precise - like a well-aimed swipe from mum - and although the colours can get a little confusing, Klax is a classic puzzler and definitely a worthy addition to the Team.

I must admit I'm not crazy on Cyberball - it's basically American Football with a futuristic storyline, and although I'm a big A.F. fan there's just a bit too much technology here and not enough gameplay. There are an amazing amount of options for offensive and defensive plays and what with players and balls exploding (ooo-er) all over the place it's a pity the game isn't a bit faster. However despite this, Cyberball is still one of the best American Football clone games available on the Spectrum.

It's truly amazing, give a man a tank and he thinks he can take on the world!. In Vindicator you get a chance to do precisely that. Your job is to repel invaders from space in an amazing tank called the SR-88. The game's an entertaining vertically scrolling shoot 'em up with simple control procedures and lots of opportunity to have big gun duels with Enemy tanks. Wham, bang, ptoosh, git that alien invader before he gits you - that's why they call you the Vindicator.

PHIL: I suppose APB is O.K., The rest of the Winning Team is as hot as the tyres on my Ford Capri just after I've skidded through the local shopping centre, and I really fancy those chicks in Robot Monster. Beat up your brother for it if you can but if not, £14.99 isn't bad for a good collection of games.

Domark/Tengen
Spectrum £14.99

A compilation of five of the first releases on the Tengen label - the okay Vindicators and APB, the excellent Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters and Cyberball, and the totally brilliant Klax. For the asking price, this set is tops in the VFM tables, and if you haven't got any of these as yet, you couldn't do better to rush down to your local softshop right now and part with the shekels!