Producer: Gremlin Graphics
Retail Price: £7.99
Author: Gremlin Graphics in-house

In Death Wish he killed a few punks, in Death Wish 2 he killed a few more... but in this Death Wish 3 film licence, street vigilante Paul Kersey is out to slaughter the world. Well, perhaps not the world, but certainly a lot of the bums and street vermin who skulk in the streets of New York.

Kersey patrols a 3-D construction of the Big Apple's streets. Using compass and map, he can pinpoint the punks he's searching for - and find the weapons he needs to wipe them out.

With a Magnum, a pump-action shotgun, a machine gun and a rocket launcher clanking in his bulging pockets, our hero begins his cleanup campaign, using each weapon till its magazine is empty. When he's finally weaponless, Kersey gives a resigned shrug and must go in search of protection.

But he isn't alone in his fight against the forces of evil -the boys in blue are on his side, supplying information on where riots are breaking out in the violent city centre.

As Kersey, you earn points for each piece of New York low life rubbed out. But take care - these gang warriors sure ain't boy scouts, and they're armed with guns and clubs.

And though our vigilante has a heavy bulletproof vest chafing at his chest, it can only take so much. Wear and tear on this protective undergarment is shown by an icon, and a bar indicates how seriously Kersey is injured.

It may be a jungle out there, but our Charles Bronson look-a-like can find a brief respite by hiding in rundown tenement rooms. Once inside he can sneak a peek through windows, and fire shots into that mad, mad world out there. Plugging a creep from this position earns you higher points - but be on guard for surprise attacks from behind.

Points are lost it you mow down one of New York's helpless law-abiding inhabitants, and the cops are bound to get a little irritated if Kersey bumps off too many of their men.

And just so too many corpses don't lie rotting on the pavement, medics dash on to drag the odd cadaver away - and Kersey certainly keeps them busy.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: well-defined, with colourful backgrounds - colliding characters are messy, though
Sound: a fair tune, not much atmosphere

The graphics are good, with brilliant characters, but the gameplay and the way Bronson moves are poor. It seems the object is to destroy any moving object - and killing someone with a rocket launcher is a mite barbaric, reducing them to just a pile of dust! There are some neat touches, such as the ladies of the night walking about, tempting you, and the way you can shoot out of windows. Death Wish 3 is graphically attractive, but it won't appeal for long - especially as you can't turn off the irritating tune.
NICK [54%]

There's been too much attention paid to the sicker parts of Death Wish 3 - the gore left by a bazooka blast, the realistic twitching of the characters when they're hit by a volley of shots - at the expense of the game. Navigating the angular streets and the mazelike interior of the buildings isn't easy, even after an awful lot of practice, and this might put off beginners. And getting duffed up is pretty tedious; if more than one baddie has a go it can take a long time and a huge amount of energy to get away, which often costs you the game. I can't recommend Death Wish 3.
BEN [34%]

Death Wish 3 is dull. The mindless carnage might appeal to real sadists - but it gets tedious. The title tune isn't bad, but though the graphics and characters are quite clear, they're unattractive. Despite its image, this can't be recommended even to fans of the Death Wish films.
MIKE [48%]

Bring out the Bronson, Mum! Join New York's angriest vigilante as he stalks the streets wasting gooks and geeks with his 475 Wildey Magnum. Or would it be safer to join Rachael Smith with the Speccy version?

FAX BOX
Game: Death Wish 3
Publisher: Gremlin
Price: £7.99
Joystick: Most

Come on punk - make my breakfast! The time's come to clean up the streets, so hand me my Smith and Wesson dustpan - this tottie's on the rampage!

Hey, stay vigilant, vigilantes, because it's tough out there on the streets. In fact, unless you're a full-blooded do-it-to-them-before-they-do-it-to-you psychopath, you might as well load up some nice little game of mass murder, because this is something else... Death Wish III is genocide.

But who cares because you're wasting the punks, the muggers, the little old ladies (whoops, got a bit trigger happy there) as you take the law into your own hands (and if he's a big hunky PC I'd happily take him into my hands - knoworrimean?!!). This is not a game for pinko commie faggots, bleedin' heart liberals or anybody else to the left of Gengis Khan!

Based on the famous fillum (Easy Quiz for Movie Buffs - What were the first two called?), this features a sprite which shows only slightly more emotion than old stone face, Chas Bronson. So with a shout of "Spill pixels, scum!" it's time to choose your weapon and step out into the heat.

Time for some road safety. Watch your step, and I don't mean the usual problem of incontinent doggies. From the moment you place your size nines on the pavement, you're a target. Luckily you picked up a bullet-proof vest from M&S but it can only take the shock out of so many shots - and a hit on the heart will severely shorten your vigilante-ing.

You've a choice of three weapons, at least until the ammo runs out. First up is the 'famous 475 Wildey Magnum' and I don't think they're talking about a big bottle of bubbly!

Second there's a machine gun, which blasts out machine code shot in short bursts and blows the barbarians away. Finally, my favourite, the rocket launcher, which reduces the trash to piles of ash, but is rather slower in action.

Funny they call all that blasting 'keeping the peace', but there are innocent pedestrians to protect, such as the gormless grannies who wander into your line of fire. Try not to put down too many pensioners or you'll give the paramedics problems.

The police turn a blind eye to your rough justice, and occasionally help you out with the odd shot, but bump off a few officers by accident and you'll find they're far less friendly. There are also less-innocent bystanders, in the form of mean-street-walkers, and their spritely soliciting is just one of the comic touches that lighten the blood-letting.

Another impressive feature is that the city is geographically fully realised, so that you can stroll round a real warren of streets which stay the same when you re-visit them. The related problem is that it's easy to get lost, even with the help of a compass and map.

You see the action side-on, with controls to move left and right. The up and down keys switch you through ninety degrees, clockwise and anti-clockwise, and the map swivels to match up with the horizontal movement. It takes a little getting used to, but persist and you'll soon be running to the scene of the action like a native New Yorker.

Don't spend all of your time cutting down creeps in the open air, though. You can actually enter most of the buildings and if you're lucky you'll find extra weapons or maybe a gang boss. These fat cats slouch behind their desks, just waiting for you to top them for muchos brownie points.

You could also take a shot or two from the window. This is a whole different shooting gallery as you aim he crosshairs then pump hot pixels. But don't drop your guard for too long or you may let the punks take you from behind.

For once the words tie-in aren't the kiss of death. This is a shoot 'em up with a difference and it's packed with clever touches. So load your Spectrum immediately... with dum-dums, dummy!

Label: Gremlin
Author: In-house
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K enhanced
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

Charles Bronson - moustachioed man, advanced tactical street-cleaner, and man with the largest bazooka in the Western hemisphere - has finally been given his very own game.

Death Wish III, based on the film (or excused on the basis that there is a film called Death Wish III and why not make a game out of it), it involves the man, the bazooka and five down-town riots to be quelled.

And the way to quell those riots is to get in there and pulp those bad guys. Because Death Wish III is, well, it's rather violent really.

What we have here, essentially, is a left-right horizontal flip-screen affair. We begin with Charlie, the moustache, and a bullet proof vest, armed to the teeth - with a pump-action shotgun, or some other such frippery - surrounded by villains of a very ugly nature. And all Charlie has to do is take out the villains.

To do this, Charlie has a choice of four weapons, each with varied strengths of ammunition, but all with the capability of reducing your average punk, passerby or pedestrian to dead meat. All weapons have limited ammunition, so it's handy indeed that there are the odd rifle, bazooka and shot-gun lying around the deserted buildings for Charlie to go and pick up.

First of all though, he has to locate that weapon. Thankfully, that's not too hard a task, since the bottom half of the screen is taken up with a compass, a map, and a panel indicating the type of weapon you are currently holding and how many shots you have left. The compass shows the four cardinal points - North, South, East and West - and the appropriate point will flash according to which way you are facing. The map shows your position in the area in general by a small floating blob and extra weapons are indicated by pulling back, or pushing up the joystick to change his direction, and carrying on around the block (as our American cousins would no doubt put it).

Eventually you'll find a door to the building you're passing. Enter it by pressing Return. Once inside you can search around until you reach your new gun and then carry on with the important business of knocking off the thugs.

Incidentally for extra points thugs can be knocked off from inside the buildings by firing through the windows. Also to be knocked off, or just blown up, are tables, chairs and the odd TV set. none of which give you any sort of points score whatsoever, but provide a few seconds of light entertainment.

Not that Death Wish III needs moments of light entertainment. It has plenty of excitement in its own right. The baddies come along thick and fast, and the multiple weapons each produce differing effects. An ordinary pistol just knocks the guys over and leaves them in a heap on the floor. Your actual bazooka reduces them to something unrecognisable. Very gratifying.

There are also diversions: hookers, who try to tempt Charlie into things Jeffrey Archer never did, old grannies who get mugged and then fight back viciously using handbags and feet in a shocking display of violence against the younger members of the community Medics run across the screen, defying bullets to drag the wounded off to recover in hospital.

Then there are policemen. The cops are there to help, but the odd one tends to get into the line of fire, and when such a thing happens, and a cop gets wasted, then you're in trouble. Police being the vengeful creatures that they are, you may well find that there's an extra gang chasing you, and this time, they're in uniform.

There's no denying that Death Wish III is a nicely put together game, it looks good, and the 128 version features some really Death Wish music (courtesy of Ben Dalglish) but the gameplay is actually rather standard stuff.

And it is mind-boggiingly violent - and you maybe think that's a problem. Or not. Whilst reducing people to lumps of meat seems great fun to begin with but after a while, it's just more of the same. Which psychologists will no doubt reckon is a bad thing.

Whilst the map was an impressive idea, I found it hard to work out which way to turn, and lingering over a decision of that kind tended to leave me badly battered, since the thugs don't wait for you to move before they get in there and kick the hell out of you. It's also difficult at times to tell your character from the mob that surrounds you, so escape is quite difficult.

I've no doubts that Death Wish III will sell like the proverbial hot cakes because it promises lots of violence, but I'm not sure that that is going to prove as absorbing as Gremlin seem to think. And the game, ultimately, is neither state-of-the-art nor hugely original.

MACHINES: Spectrum/Amstrad/C64
SUPPLIER: Gremlin
PRICE: £7.99 (Spec), £8.99 (Ams), £9.99 (64), £14.99 (discs)
VERSIONS TESTED: Spectrum/Amstrad/C64

As street vigilante Paul Kersey you've gotta have guts to relieve the street gangs and muggers of theirs. You take the role that Charles Bronson made famous, along with a pledge to rid the city of scum.

The city is displayed in 3D. You can point your man at any compass point then run him along the screen street in either direction firing past the punks who carry knives, machettes, guns, lead piping and choppers. You've got a choice of four weapons, including an automatic pistol, machine gun, rifle, sawn-off shotgun and bazooka, each of which has a limited amount of ammo. If one of the guns runs out of bullets or missiles it's discarded and you must enter buildings and find new weapons.

The buildings comprise of several rooms and offer opportunities to make bonus points. You can look out of a window onto the street, line your gun sight and blow away more villains. The points for window targets are almost double that of street shots, so it often pays to enter as many buildings as you can.

Always remember that the bad guys are the ones carrying weapons and not wearing blue uniforms. If you blow away a little old lady or pulp a policeman, points are taken away from your total and you could end up with a minus score. Once you've hit a policeman, you've clearly broken the law and they'll start to fire at you, although they'll mainly be concerned with shooting the punks. On occasions the little old ladies also get in on the vigilante act. They use their handbags, no doubt filled with bricks, to bash muggers over the head. Go to it grannie.

The streets also contain characters which confuse your line of fire. The prostitutes, for instance, raise their skirts in the hope that you'll pay more attention to them than to their bosses. You may think the men in white coats who walk on when you've blown away three of more punks are there to confuse you, but the opposite is true. They're there to pull the bodies off the screen, and a good job they do of it too.

You may think you're invincible with all that armour and a bullet proof vest to boot, but you can be killed by constant stabbing, hammering or shooting by gang members. The injury status display creeps slowly from green to yellow and then to red.

Despite the violent nature of Death Wish III, the game is technically excellent with brilliant graphics and a three channel sound track from the film's title music. Some of the screens show graphic gore and lewdness, particularly on the Commodore version, but no doubt others will pass judgement on this Gremlin title - probably without seeing it first. So, all I will say is that it's an excellent game which is shockingly realistic!