A pretty ducky game?

Producer: Firebird
Bird Feed: £7.99 cass
Author: Probe

A dwarf and a duck venture into a strange building called the Night House. 'There'll be tons o' treasure in 'ere' says Shorty. 'And it says in the blurb that if we find ten special keys, we can get to the Calculations Room, whatever that is.'

'Quack!' agrees Ducky. So off they set through cobwebbed rooms, Ducky flying directly above Shorty's head: 'I hope you don't get too scared by the spooky things round here,' warns Shorty, 'or I'll need to wash my hair when I gets 'ome'.

On entering a doorway, the duo drop appear in a ominous looking expanse. Here, in a murky corridor live some of the weirdest flying creatures Ducky has ever seen. 'They don't look like my mates,' he informs Shorty. 'Ouch! One just hit me - gerra move on will ya, Shorty!'

But Shorty is about as fast as a tortoise on crutches. '(tell you what,'says Ducky, 'I'll fly on ahead to look for the treasure chests and you can follow me when I find one.'

'But 'ow will I know where you are?' enquires Shorty.

'Simple,' replies Ducky. 'You see, this split-screen technique allows us both to be shown at the same time. And if we're together, we can even see a map'.

'Ingenious!' enthuses Shorty. 'Pity it's such a crappy, boring game really. Flipping daft graphics an' all - does my bottom really wobble like that?'

'I'm afraid so-ever since you went on the Nick Roberts high-fat diet!' quacks Ducky.

PHIL [28%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: sloppy, flabby sprites search dreary corridors
Sound: fetch me my hearing-aid
Options: one or two players? Probably best with none

Oh dear. There isn't really anything in the least bit endearing about Dynamic Duo. It's boring, unattractive and initially confusing, due to both poor instructions and a very badly laid out screen display. What's more, when you do work out the irksome controls the actual game is disappointingly shallow - just run around, shoot things and grab treasure. Two-player games are usually popular in the Towers, but this wasn't. It's probably best playing it in one-player mode, flipping between the characters, so you can't blame anyone else for your mistakes.
MIKE [30%]

Firebird
£17.99 cass
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

If you're looking for proof that excessive use of computers induces mental instability, take a look at the plot behind Dymanic Duo. I did, and swallowed hard. I held the instructions upside down. I held them under an ultra-violet lamp. I set fire to them. And I still haven't a clue what they're getting at. I'll do my best though, so take a couple of aspirin and read on.

You're a duck, and also a dwarf. You're exploring a large house, trying to find the Calculation Room, but first you have to find ten pieces of a key. These remove a number of fake Phantom Rooms from the map, allowing you to find the real one. Naturally, there are loads of baddies flying around, trying to stop you, but worst of all is the Grim Reaper, who chases you around and will kill you on contact. "You" being a dwarf. And also a duck!

See the problem?

The best thing to do in these situations is to load it up and see, so I did. Bad move. Confusion became despair as I grappled with thousands of awkwardly positioned controls and squinted awkwardly at the screen.

The screen is split into two halves, one for the dwarf, and one for the duck. The two characters can be controlled independently, either by yourself with a bit of finger-yoga or by two players (preferable). When the two characters join together however, something they can apparently do, the bottom half of the screen becomes a map of the house, showing the room layout and the position of the pursuing Grim Reaper.

Graphically (and everything else-ly for that matter), things are a little confused at first, but some cutely drawn sprites soon emerge, along with some rapid if jerky scrolling. It's all done in a tasteful shade of monochrome, like practically everything else these days, but this tends to go unnoticed in the general havoc surrounding the gameplay.

It's considerably easier with two players. According to the instructions you'll stand a better chance of success if the two characters split up, as they each have different characteristics, but they'll need to rejoin in order to travel between the different floors that make up the house. Both are armed to the teeth (whatever that means) and need to be, as the Grim Reaper's hordes are everywhere.

There are other peculiarities, such as orbs which can be rolled along the ground until they they explode leaving you free to walk through into the next room. Rather alarming, though, was the tendency for the dwarf to walk through passing doors at, will, with no prompting from me.

Other elements of the game leave a lot to be desired, such as the rather squalid front-end and the almost complete lack of sound FX, let alone music, but the overall effect is fairly pleasing. It's the way it plays that counts after all and in this respect it's not bad at all. A little lacking in variety perhaps, but certainly not bad.

In fact, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before. And with all due respect, I'm not sure that I want to again, but playing it is certainly an experience I won't forget in a while.

If you can find someone with similar inclinations willing to play it with you, Dynamic Duo could prove quite a worthy investment. It's not perfect, but should pack enough raw action (yuck) to keep most people happy.

Label: Firebird
Author: Probe
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

I treasure the memory of one episode of New Faces when Tony Hatch wanted to give some poor clod nought out of ten for star quality. Come on, said the compere, everyone's got to have some star quality, you can't give him nought. You're wrong, said Scarface Hatch; this man (an inept Tommy Cooper-style comedy magician) will never, ever make it in a million years. And he was right.

I feel the same way about Dynamic Duo. While it's got a couple of good ideas, the whole affair has been so shabbily cobbled together all you're left with is an incomprehensible frenzy of moving things and split screens.

Cutesy animal games have always made me faint with indifference; the only exception was Head Over Heels, which was very clever and nicely programmed. Dynamic Duo pinches the same idea, but isn't.

You control two supposedly lovely-wovely creatures, a dwarf and a duck, described in the instructions as a "winged bird", presumably as opposed to a finned bird. Your aim is to explore the Night House, a scary castle, searching for the ten keys hidden in treasure chests. When combined, the ten keys admit you to the Calculation Room, which hides the secret of the destruction of the Dark Powers.

The design and animation of the main characters is dire, and to make matters worse, the action takes place in a thin strip in the top third of the screen. This doesn't allow much space for exciting background designs or interesting baddies.

Just to double the dullness, the two characters can split up and explore separate areas of the map. The duck can fly faster, but only the dwarf can open the chests, so you have to divide your forces and toggle between controlling one and the other to complete the game. When the two are together, they can drop through trapdoors onto lower levels by using the Down control. They can also move upwards through doors by using - yes, you guessed it - the Down control again. Mental. The trouble is that once you've separated, it's almost impossible to get the two to combine again so that you can pass through the trapdoors. Mental again.

At the end of each level is a barrier which can be destroyed by pushing a boulder into it, and zapping it until it explodes. Each creature has a limited number of zaps, shown in the score panel in the bottom third of the screen. What two lovely-wovely fluffy animals are doing with high-energy weapons is not adequately explained.

Sound effects are minimal, and control awful. It's very difficult to regulate speed and direction with a joystick, and you can't redefine and control keys, which are ridiculous; 1, Q, CAPS SHIFT and Z for player 1, and Y, L, ENTER, P for player two. Again - a thoughtless mistake.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.99
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £14.99
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £12.99

LORD LOOVE A DUCK

Despite Firebird's ambitious title, there's little dynamic about this reworking of the old key-collecting theme - it's the sort of game that gives 8-bits a bad name for indistinct graphics and jarring music. And it's also a disappointment from programmers Probe Software, who did pretty well for the same software house with Savage (over 70% in TGM014).

Only the two-player option gives it any buyability, because some people just can't get enough of each other's company. Like the dwarf and the duck, for instance - when this wimpy duo venture into the ominously-named Night House in search of the mysteriously-named Calculations Room, they slick together, with the duck riding on his fat friend's head.

But as the two make their way around, falling through holes to go down and disappearing through doors to go up (nothing as posh as ladders in this program, guv), the duck can fly off to search for parts of the Calculations Room's key.

Anyhow, the basic idea is to collect all ten parts at the key, using a simple diagrammatic map, piece them together and go for a quick calculation. Given the dwarf's extraordinarily laid-back pace, the best strategy is to send the duck out looking for chests which contain key parts, and then bring the dwarf to collect them - he's got to make himself useful sometime.

Assorted flying skulls, eyes, and other cliches of pixelated evil make frequent appearances, but as their flight patterns are fairly predictable it's just a matter of shooting from the right position.

Scoring 98.7 on the TGM index of Pointlessness, Dynamic Duo is about as worthwhile as a key to the Calculations Room. There's not much to distinguish the three versions, but read on nonetheless...