Producer: Martech
Retail Price: £8.99 cassette, £12.99 disk
Author: Jas Austin and Dave Dew

Fasten your seat belt for a space age demolition derby! The Fury is a futuristic racing game for daring drivers. The race takes place on a looping track called the Rim which floats in space. The Fury itself is a gateway to a strange dimension which, if hit, can transport the car to another part of the track.

The season consists of 25 races of which there are three basic types: a Time Run which is a race against the clock with no weapons allowed; a Killing Race in which the player's aim is to destroy as many Noids (novice drivers) as possible, and a Tag Race where one car carries the 'IT' tag which does constant damage to the car, but can be passed to another car by colliding with it.

You start with the cheapest type of car - the Avenger. This has poor performance and low shield protection. Before each race, the player has the option of buying a new car, but only if he has enough money; this is earned by doing well in races. The cars range from the cheap Avenger to the state of the art, but very expensive, Anome. There are also specialist cars such as the Waster which is good for Killing Races but too slow for other competitions.

The equipment menu allows the player to purchase fuel and weapons and, when necessary, have his car repaired. Weapons (only to be used in Killing Races) include missiles, machine guns and two types of flame thrower.

During the race a collision with computer-controlled racers will cause damage to the player's car (indicated on a diagram below the main playing area). If you're not driving in an exciting enough fashion (bad for viewing figures), the judges will track your car with a cross hair and destroy it.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: lacking in colour but fairly detailed
Sound: the odd blip with some very low-key crash effects
Options: definable keys

The instructions to The Fury are very long and detailed, even giving a history of RIM racing. The first thing you realise is the first very high danger level of this sport - you can't help getting blown up! The graphics are pretty bland but the way the perspective of the cars changes as they move up and down the RIM, gives them a sense of solidity. The process of accumulating money to buy better and better cars keeps you interested, as do the options of buying various weapons. I particularly like the missiles which have smoke trailing from them. My only gripe is that the action itself could have been a bit more exciting - perhaps a few track obstacles. However, the game is very absorbing and mixes strategy with arcade action to good effect.
PHIL [85%]

Not another race game, I thought but after extensive play, I came to the conclusion that The Fury is entertaining - at least for a while. The presentation is polished. I especially liked the cross hairs used to make your choice on the options screen. Fellow racers, bumping and jostling around the track, are well-defined and do their best to make sure that the player doesn't survive the race in one piece. On later laps Interesting weapons can be added to increase your chances of survival (there's a price on your head, after all) which adds to the general variety. So stay lucky, and pray that you live long enough to spend that bounty money.
MARK [73%]

A space age demolition derby! Well - what will they think of next! The Fury is an excellently presented race game with attractive background graphics but not much lasting appeal. All the cars move smoothly and can look quite impressive when they're equipped with weapons. Gameplay is very difficult at first: cars ramming you and firing at you make it hard to travel in a straight line. Once you've got used to the road hogs, the contest starts to get quite enjoyable. The different races add some variety and with names such as Killer you can guess what to expect from the opposition! The Fury is fun for a while but I don't expect you'll be playing it for long.
NICK [63%]

Martech
£8.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

I was a little surprised when I first loaded this one up. No small, fluffy animals to be seen. And the packaging looked a bit inappropriate as well. I concentrated for a while, and then it clicked... 'Furry' is spelt with a double R.

What with the multitude of mostly-identical racing games currently available, wouldn't it be nice if someone took the old format by the ear and gave it a good tweaking? Well, by jingo, that's exactly what Martech has done! In The Fury, not only do you have to beat your opponents to the finish line, you've got to beat the lard out of 'em as well? This is what the punters have been crying out for.

In case you weren't aware, and I certainly wasn't until now, by the year 2045 the hip thing to do at the weekends will be Rim Racing. What this involves is driving your liquid-nitrogen powered car around the Rim, which is part of an artificial planet called Devs, which in turn orbits Jupiter. (Cynical cough!) This form of sport is going to receive blanket coverage in the media, possibly becoming even more popular than Gardener's Question Time, mainly due to a weird phenomenon called 'The Fury', which pops up and whisks people away mysteriously in the middle of the race.

Of course, simply whizzing round a track could get a little tedious after a while, so drivers are given the option of fitting weapons to their vehicles. By this stage you'll probably have noticed the slower cars that trog around the track, are piloted by the learner-drivers, known as Noids (or Nerds if you-live outside New York). Line up behind one, blip the fire-button to activate your cannon/flame-thrower/missile and Fatoom! No more Noid - but loadsa Galactic Groats for your Junior Savers Account.

Ah yes, the money (listen good, 'cos this is the Strategic Bit). Having acquired a good supply of the folding stuff, by winning races and blowing people up, you'll then be able to nip down to the shops and spend it. A new car might be nice, if you can't be bothered to get the old one fixed. Oh, and some petrol (sorry - liquid nitrogen) to go in it. And what about a machine gun? Or an escape pod for the hairier moments? Needless to say, the more dosh in yer posh, the flashier the car you'll end up with.

You probably won't know it, though, as judging by the weedy little sprites everyone's driving round in a Skoda or something. I might even go so far as to say that some of them bear a startling resemblance to the Reliant Robin! (A joke: What do you call a Reliant Robin with twin exhausts? A wheelbarrow!)

Luckily, graphics are of little importance in this case. What matters is how it plays. And eeerm, it's not too bad, actually. The opposing cars move a bit randomly, and it can be frustratingly tricky to get through the first few levels, but after getting over the hurdle of the first three races or so, the game really opens out and becomes quite enjoyable.

As in the best games, practice makes perfect, and you'll need more than just a fast joystick-wibbling hand to make progress. A good dollop of patience would also help, as my Speccy came perilously close to being hurled through the window on a number of occasions. If you think you're up to it (fnar), The Fury is well worth the outlay.

Oh yeah, and if anybody EVER calls me 'Jon-Boy' again...

Label: Martech
Author: Creative Reality
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Rodney Matthews has always been one of my favourite artists. There, that's got the packaging out of the way, now we can discuss the game The Fury without getting misled by the tasty artwork.

Set in the year 2050, this is a simulation of a type of motor racing which makes Formula One look like Scalextric. You race not for glory, but for MUNNEY, and the hostile alien races competing aren't averse to ramming you off the track or blowing you to bits with a variety of weapons.

The race takes place on a giant space wheel, which is displayed from side-on. Before you start you can define the joystick or keyboard controls, and get some techy details about your car, the make (Avenger, Hunter, Waster and so on) and the weaponry. Missiles, bombs, mines, forcefields and other death-dealing goodies are added to your car as you invest in bigger and better models.

You start off in something that looks like a 1959 Ford Anglia, but can upgrade to a real monster-machine, bristling with gear.

Fuel and repairs can also be paid for with your winnings. You navigate through the pre-race information screens using a crosshair system which is a pretty tasty bit of programming, but which doesn't necessarily add much to the game.

There are several different types of races; speed trials, survival races and so on. You score according to your lap time and the number of opponents you mangle horrifically.

The race screen lurches into activity, your fuel meter, lap counter and damage alert screens flash into life, the timer counts down, and they're off! The cars race from right to left along the banked track, and as you manoeuvre around the track your view of the cars changes realistically. The impression of speed is pretty good, but the dynamics aren't too convincing; if you bounce off another car, you're quite likely to come to a near halt rather than flying off at a tangent.

The scanner at the top left helps you to avoid the other cars, but only a quick flick of the joystick can get you out from under the gunsights which occasionally materialise on the screen. Fail to move fast enough, and you explode in a puff of flame.

Once you've finished a couple of races in a respectable position, you will have earned enough credits to select a faster car with weapon mountings The game really gets into gear here (huff huff) as you zoom along launching missiles at cars in front of you. and smashing them off the track with less likelihood of exploding into a trillion pieces yourself.

The sound effects in 48K or 128K are only reasonable, and I can't really see The Fury grabbing your attention long enough to make you want to play through all 15 races. The trouble is that it sounds like a simulation, but in fact plays like an arcade game, and there's insufficient variation and excitement in the arcade bits to keep you hooked Still, although the little cars don't look too hot on the screenshots here, once they get moving. The Fury gives you a fair run for your money.

Martech blow a gasket.

The spate of car driving shoot-em-ups continues. In this one your car's viewed from above and you're driving around a track that's hanging in space. The idea is to complete a race and destroy a set number of other competitors, all within a time limit. Succeed and you'll be able to buy yourself some add-ons that may make your life a little easier.

Every third race is a game of tag, where you have to avoid being bumped by the car that's "it". Keep completing the races and you'll start to earn the kind of money that allows you to buy the fastest cars and better weapons - which you'll need if you're going to destroy the ever increasing target number of competitors each race.

Sadly, The Fury's got very little going for it. The concepts old hat, the graphics are poor and it doesn't take long to get bored with the game.

Reviewer: Andy Smith

RELEASE BOX
Spec, £8.99cs, £14.99dk, Out Now
Amstrad, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Out Now
C64/128, £9.99cs, £12.99dk, Imminent

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 60/100
1 hour: 65/100
1 day: 30/100
1 week: 10/100
1 month: 0/100
1 year: 0/100

MACHINES: Spectrum/Commodore/Amstrad
SUPPLIER: Martech
PRICE: Spec £8.99/C64, Ams £9.99
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum

"Fasten your Saver Being Harness for the Space Age Demolition Derby," says the blurb for Martech's latest release, The Fury.

In an attempt to thwart your right-to-left progress over the track, enemy cars appear and try to bump you off the road or continually drive directly in front of you to stop you from getting up to a halfway decent speed.

There are three types of race in all: Speed Trial (go as fast as you con), Killing Race (go as fast as you can and shoot a few cars while you're at it) and Tag Race, where one car is randomly selected as 'IT', and has to touch another car in order to rid itself of the tag.

The killing race is by for the most dangerous of the three, as although you can buy rockets and flame throwers to destroy the other cars with, your opponents are constantly trying to blow YOU away. To make matters worse, from time to time the screen will turn red and a forgetting cross-hair will appear on the screen, and if you're not quick enough to avoid it, it'll lock onto you and BOOM! It's all over for you, matey.

The weapons available to you come in all shapes and sizes, and generally the deadlier they are, the more cash you have to fork out for them. The flame throwers come in two sizes, one with a range of 8 metres and another with a range of 20, and although they're ideal for torching the other cars out of the race, they eat up your cars petrol like there's no tomorrow. Railguns are the standard form of weaponry and come already fitted to your car, but ammunition needs to be bought in order for them to function.

Although this all may sound jolly exciting in theory, it is in fact very dull in practice. I was very unimpressed with the graphics of the cars. They are small and poorly defined, and the amateurish scrolling fails to give any real impression of speed.

Last, but certainly not least are the Semi-guided missiles, which although they cost positively loadsamoney, are pretty devastating if used correctly, and can wipe out a whole group of opponent's cars with one shot.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: 38.99, Diskette: £14.99
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99

OVERHEAD KILL

After the Page 3 glamour of Vixen Martech's latest game reverts to the more conventional appeal of full-blooded violence. Programming is by Creative Reality, who also produced the 2000 AD licences Slaine and Nemesis The Warlock for Martech.

In the late 1990s an extraordinary relaxation in American laws allowed the first Rim Race track in the Arizona desert. 20km in diameter, the track claimed 438 lives during the two weeks of races. By 2010 the races' phenomenal popularity led to an even bigger track being built in orbit around Raal's moon. Media attention was subsequently heightened by the death of a driver in a mysterious incident known as The Fury. The disaster has been attributed to passing through into another dimension.

The Fury is essentially an overhead-view, sideways scrolling, shoot-'em-up, race game. Moving the joystick left accelerates the car, while moving right decelerates it and up and down move the car in the appropriate directions, Pressing FIRE releases the selected weapon on Killing Races - where winning depends on exceeding your race kill quota. The other two types of races are Time Runs - to continue, you must beat a qualification time - and Tag Races, where the car is selected as it and has to suffer constant damage. Touching another transfers the tag. In both these races weapons aren't allowed, so only by ramming can a kill bonus (in Galactic Groats) be earned. Money isn't the only incentive to violence, however, since any driver judged to be boring has lethal cross-hairs aimed on him or her.

ESCAPE PODS

After each race the player is awarded Groats according to performance and these can be used to buy various items. The most expensive are the ten cars which can replace the standard one players start with. In the mid-price range, for example, shield power is increased but only at the cost of higher fuel consumption. While it is suggestive of a horizontally-scrolling Alleykat, poor graphics and restricted gameplay make The Fury distinctly second-rate. Blasting enemies off the road provides some fun, but the non-violent races lack excitement and it's irritating that with so much empty screen the vital damage indicator is both small and hard to read.