Producer: Virgin Games
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Steve Lee

Falcon Patrol 2 is the latest of the Virgin Converts, originally written for the CMB64 this straightforward arcade game now finds itself within the clutches of the world's real game players.

Your side is losing the desert war 3-1 and now the enemy have managed to build up a large chopper force that gives them air superiority, but numbers don't count when they have to go up against the Falcon pilot by none other than…………. (please insert your name). In all there are 16 waves of enemy helicopters to destroy. The lethal quality of the enemy aircraft depends on their colour; Black Transports, Blue Gunships and Red Solos. The former spend most of their time flying about the desert dropping flak batteries and thingies to jam your radar, invariably they are protected by at least one gunship which, wile it can shoot, doesn't go out of its way to chase you. The red solo choppers are really nasty, they are very manoeuvrable and will cause you a great heartache. Your aircraft carries 100 AAM missiles, these can either be air-to-air or air-to-ground, it all rather depends on your attitude when you fire them. If you are very clever you will be able I shoot down enemy aircraft with the ground-to-air missiles, this method is to be preferred to facing the foe head on.

Scattered about the terrain there are landing pads. Should you run low on fuel or ammunition during a mission, a safe, undamaged pad is the only place your plane can be re-armed and re-fueled. The main display shows your little aircraft in the centre against a scrolling desert view seeded with dead trucks, aircraft buildings and fuel dumps. In fact the only objects that escape the decimation are the pyramids, at least the tourist trade should survive the war. At the top left of the screen the current score is shown above the high score together with the number of lives remaining. On the other side a bar chart keeps track of your 'gas' and shows the number of aircraft remaining in the current attack wave, while another instrument tells you how much ammunition you have left. In the upper screen area a simply radar display keeps track of on-coming enemy aircraft, however, don't rely on it too much because the enemy can render it useless by dropping jamming devices

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q/A up/down, O/P left/right, M to fire
Joystick: Kempston
Keyboard play: traditional layout
Use of colour: good
Graphics: nice but oh so boring
Sound: generally poor
Skill levels: progressive difficulty
Lives: 5
Screens: scrolling display

When all the shooting is over and I have climbed out from under my wrecked plane for the umpteenth time, I can truly say that Falcon Patrol is awful. The graphics are, well, OK, pleasant but definitely not wow. I was particularly bored by the enemy, the greatest danger they ever posed was a collision with one of them; but did a great mid air explosion take place? Not a bit, the aircraft trundled off happily while my machine descended gracefully to the ground, as if to land, and then promptly disappeared in a puff of smoke and flame. In fact one thing that really annoyed me was the way my plane seemed to be able to survive anything except landing. If - in the unlikely event of my being shot at - my plane was hit it only registered the fact by cruising calmly earthward and then blowing up. As I could hit planes that were actually on the screen, so making the radar rather useless, there was great difficulty in using the air-to-air missiles because I would nearly always have to fly near the ensuing explosion caused by a hit, this in turn would cause my plane to go through its long and boring death sequence. Sorry Virgin, this might have kept Commodoreans happy but it's not working on the Spectrum.

Falcon Patrol 2 was one of my favourite games on the CBM 64 but the Spectrum version is a big disappointment, I found it totally unplayable and monotonous, after a few goes even the sound started getting up my nose. It does have fairly pleasing scrolling graphics together with a nice opening tune but I really can't give it any more praise. All in all I found it both boring and un-compelling, it lacked challenge.

Falcon Patrol is not dissimilar in style to Defender types. The layout and style are similar but the scenario is different. While I can't call the graphics 3D as the producers claim, this shoot 'em up is just that - a pure shoot the baddie, nothing more, nothing less. A lot has been done with the graphics to reproduce things like buildings, oil drums and palm trees. It looks quite nice too and scrolls quickly. The forward scanning radar is quite useful in following the action of the enemy. Where this game falls down is in the area of content. It's all very well having helicopters chasing after you and having to blow up oil drums (is that what you do with them?), but it does seem to lose something after a short while and you get fed up with the simple action. In fact I got quite cheesed off after half an hour and was pleased to see the back of it. I think this sums the game up.

Roger: It would be easy to heap abuse on this game, but I'm not sure whether it really deserves it!

The format of aerial combat with relatively limited sophistication in VTOL aircraft control, some repetitive scrolling scenery and a variety of unpleasant helicopters bopping about looking for a missile in the laughing gear, is so tired and unoriginal that I started groaning as soon as it was loaded ...

Assuming that it'd take less time to get good at - and bored with - then it takes Pete Shaw to hack into a ham sandwich, I scrambled into action and discovered that it was just a little bit tougher than first expected. Learning 'vectoring' and the technique of diving to fire missiles downwards stretched my involvement and, finally, I got a bit hooked.

Sure, it's corny. Nevertheless, it's competent arcade thuggery and, if valued as such, earns its keep. 3/5 HIT

Dave: Deep down. I've always wanted to blast helicopters out of the sky ... trouble is, most programs don't give you that authenticity. Falcon Patrol 2, on the other hand, fulfills all of my warmongering ambitions. Great stuff ... let's see more, please. 4/5 HIT

Ross: The graphics in this game are amazing ... top marks to Virgin's backroom programmers. A vast improvement over Falcon Patrol. 5/5 HIT

Publisher: Virgin Games
Price: £6.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston

As pilot of a souped-up Hawker jump Jet with the latest in ATG missiles you must blast the enemy helicopters out of the sky. Thrills. Once you have completed one sortie and destroyed a wave of 'copters, you move up a level of competence and take on another wave.

The enemy general is a complete imbecile as his pilots rarely fire at your VTOL jet and occasionally even have a go at each other.

The author has tried to add some realism to the game. If you are hit by shrapnel you dive to the ground and explode. Also you must re-arm and take on fuel from platforms during your mission. One false move and you could crash.

Mediocre 3D graphics and blipish sound are compensated by the manoeuvrability of the aircraft and the ease of aiming the weapons. The game is nevertheless too easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Label: Bug Byte
Author: Steve Lee
Price: £2.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

The problem is Falcon Patrol II - the Spectrum conversion of that old Virgin C64 hit - now from Bug- Byte - requires a good deal of imagination on the players' part if it is to offer any entertainment at all.

It pretends to be about defending your own territory from an onslaught of unnamed-but-you-can-bet-they're-not-part-of-the-Free-West helicopters but the standard of programming is barely better than a type-in-yourself magazine listing.

Anyway, it's side-to-side scrolling with lots of killing and crummy graphics. It's all single character UDGs and attribute problems. At the start of the game, you are depicted on a small take-off pad amidst general scenes of destruction etc. Once your armaments are replenished and fuel tanks filled, it's off into the wide-blue yonder. As you fly around , enemy planes attack you.

The controls are not particularly responsive, and you have to continually battle to keep the plane off the ground.

Yes, I'm quite prepared to believe that this is all supremely accurate simulated gravity, but it's a terrific pain in the butt. Slow response and useless graphics are topped off by the horrific sound.

It's destined to be played for half-an-hour and put in a drawer for all eternity.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Virgin Games
PRICE: £6.95

Falcon Patrol II is a classic on the Commodore 64. Unfortunately the same can be said about the conversion.

The basic idea is to fly your jump jet around over a Beirut style battlefield blasting enemy helicopters and ground emplacements.

The graphics are OK, the sound not too hot and game play eventually extremely boring. Give this one a miss.