Producer: Fantasy Software
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.50
Language: Machine code
Author: David Harper

While you are struggling to save the universe from the infinitely evil Scarthax, spare a thought for Ziggy's daring friend, the infinitely beautiful Dezzy, who's dashing to aid her super hero comrade when she runs into a dreadful space storm and is thrown into a part of space she doesn't know well. The space ship is damaged, and seeking somewhere safe to repair it, finds herself heading for a supposedly deserted old Drive in planetoid in a disused asteroid mining belt. To her surprise the Drive in is flashing its neon welcoming signs. She enters and the doors slam shut! Dezzy has entered Scarthax's trap!

Your task is to help Dezzy escape. Within the Drive in is a maze of rooms inhabited by 28 different types of alien. Dezzy can escape by assembling an old intergalactic spaceship, parts of which may be found within the 189 rooms. Energy is in short supply, and you must find ways of replenishing it. Some rooms contain automatic garages, swap shops, banks and time machines. There are also useful objects to be collected, four being allowed at a time. Some of these will let you do different things and aid in your task, some will be useful to swap for energy. Some rooms need keys to enter and exit, others are controlled by traffic lights. The discovered parts of the ship must be reassembled in room 189 in the correct sequence, which you must also discover.

Points are scored for destroying aliens, and a percentage is awarded for the amount of the game you have completed. Each room in the game is represented by a single screen with exit and entry points marked. Four boxes above the playing area are used to show what you are carrying, and the Fantasy logo changes colour progressively as your energy runs down.

COMMENTS

Control keys: user definable, four direction and fire, plus keys 1 to 4 for pick up/drop
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2, Protek, AGF
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: good
Graphics: very good, varied and imaginative
Sound: average
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 1
Screens: 189

I don't think Fantasy are too pleased with this game as until now I've not seen any adverts for it. When I first played Drive In it didn't really appeal to me, but now I've found with much more play that I enjoy it. It actually plays like a lot of other Fantasy games except that around the rooms (most of which are easily accessible) there is a time machine that looks like a clock and which gives you, in effect, extra lives by giving you back all your power (in return for some points loss). There is a distinct lack of aliens (only 28 different types!) even though they clutter up the rooms making it difficult to get from one side to the other without losing power. There is also a shelter provided in some of the more crowded rooms where you can hide from the aliens until the lights change. All in all I found playing this game quite pleasant but it was a bit hard to grasp the idea of what you were supposed to be doing at the beginning.

I think Fantasy have left the object of Drive In a bit obscure, letting you find out many things for yourself, which in many games isn't a bad point, but in this game, it seems to me, to be its downfall. The reasoning behind this is that it is very difficult to work out what several objects are capable of doing. The game itself is more of an intensive shoot em up than anything else. This will appeal to many people, although I think the strategy in programming just shoot em up games is not developing enough, people require more thought and drive, and here actually shooting down aliens is really a very simple task, unlike the same task in, say, Doomsday Castle . I became bored quickly with this game because l didn't seem to be getting anywhere with it, which is a shame, because the graphics are large and very nicely animated. Perhaps people demand more than just unskilful shoot em ups these days.

Drive In has split itself into two distinct games, an alien zapper and a maze/strategy game. It would be easy to say that Drive In probably has the action that maybe Backpackers slightly lacks, but it wouldn't be entirely true, for killing aliens is too easy, they become merely a colourful hindrance to the second task of identifying useful objects, ship parts and learning what does what. In all of this the graphics are very nice, plenty of different and imaginative aliens, and lots of animation. Drive In makes a good, lightweight game which will probably appeal to many, but in the end it isn't all that addictive.

THE DRIVE-IN
Fantasy Software
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.50
Joystick: Sinclair, Protek, Kempston

Drive In from Fantasy has not, as the name might suggest, anything to do with burgers and movies - instead it is set round a drive-in garage some- where in space.

Dezzy's space ship is disintegrating. With no spare parts she finds an old drive-in where hopefully she will be able to find some rusty replacements.

The garage is a confusing jumble of rooms and objects, half of which seem to have little to do with the game. The object is to pick up spare parts which must then be assembled in Room 189 - the only room with a number.

Some rooms contain banks, swap shops and time machines which must be used if Dezzy is to survive.

You will come across the symbols of those facilities early on in the game but identifying each takes rather longer. Objects placed in the bank are swallowed and never seen again.

Certainly a game to tax your ingenuity and patience and one which might tempt you to throw your joystick away in frustration.

PRICE: £5.50
GAME TYPE: Arcade

Some games you can load into your computer and play as soon as they appear on screen, without even glancing at the story on the cassette insert. Drive-In, the new release from Fantasy is not like that at all. It is complex. Really complex.

To start with there are lots of different rooms, 189 in all, each complete with two different brands of energy sapping alien. Then you have to find the parts to build a space ship, although you can only carry four things at a time. You must carry them to room 189, which you must, of course, find, and then assemble them in the correct order.

To help you on your way there are garages, swap shops, banks and time machines. Even reading the cassette insert will be no help here, and you are left to work out for yourself which of these machines is which, what they all do, and how you make them do it.

You will need all your wits about you for this game. A map is essential, and making notes on what you have collected is also important. There is a maze so, following adventure techniques, you must enter it carrying enough objects to enable you to map it. You must remember what is going on everywhere, and you must either zap the aliens, or act fairly nippy in order to avoid them.

Clues? Well, just this once. The map is wrap-round vertically, so if you keep moving upwards you will unsuspectingly find yourself at the bottom of the map. Room 189 is down and to the right of the start. You cannot remove anything from a swapshop until you have put something in the bank. Now go and solve the rest yourself.

Totally addictive, with the complexity of all the other arcade games from Fantasy, Drive-In is produced by Fantasy Software, Fauconberg Lodge, 27a St George's Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Spectrum
Fantasy
Arcade Adventure
£5.50

Good stock Fantasy stuff - 189 screens, 28 different aliens and various objects to be collected. If this software house were a movie star it would he Clint Eastwood - there is a strict unvarying formula to all their products which must presumably be popular with the user.

This is one of those games where you have to reassemble your spaceship by collecting all the various bits. A slight twist is added by the fact that the central character - the one doing all the zipping about and zapping is a superheroine called Dezzy. Beautiful she may be but a big space suit and only a few pixels make it hard to tell. What happened to Ziggy, the customary star of Fantasy games? Well, Dezzy is on her way to help him. Lured into an abandoned drive in by the villain of the piece she has to piece together an old starship to escape. This must be assembled in the correct sequence inside room 189.

You can use a joystick or keyboard to control the character and there is a redefining option. You use keys 1-4 to pick up and drop objects when Dezzy is directly over them.

You can also score by shooting the aliens, of course, but when the points score reaches 10,000 it resets to zero and the percentage completed of the game increases. You don't just collect objects - you can also trade them for other objects and some of the rooms have automatic garages, banks and time machines. These can all be used to assist you complete the game. It's a little bit like a poor man's Atic Atac, but for people who like compiling maps and puzzling over functions of gadgets, I'm sure it'll be a great hit.