Producer: Virgin Games, 48K
£5.95
Author: Dirk Olivier

A quiet day on the river fishing sounds like a load of fun, but this game manages to be about as thrilling as a real day on the river fishing. Beneath your boat pass 18 layers of various fish. With each game you're given 100 casts of the line to hook as many as you can. Some fish are fine to catch, some can be quite dangerous, and caught crabs eat away your catch. There are five levels of play which determine how close to your hook a fish must be to get caught. The language is BASIC, so are the graphics and the idea. May be okay for very young children, but there's nothing here for the serious player. Makes you wonder why 48K of memory was required. Virtually nil addictiveness and an overall CRASH rating of 39%.

Producer: Virgin Games, 48K
£5.95
Author: Dirk Olivier

A quiet day on the river fishing sounds like a load of fun, but this game manages to be about as thrilling as a real day on the river fishing. Beneath your boat pass 18 layers of various fish. With each game you're given 100 casts of the line to hook as many as you can. Some fish are fine to catch, some can be quite dangerous, and caught crabs eat away your catch. There are five levels of play which determine how close to your hook a fish must be to get caught. The language is BASIC, so are the graphics and the idea. May be okay for very young children, but there's nothing here for the serious player. Makes you wonder why 48K of memory was required. Virtually nil addictiveness and an overall CRASH rating of 39%.

EXTRA LIVES WOULD MAKE A MORE ExCITING RIDE

Two recent releases from Virgin Games are Rider and Angler, both for the 48K Spectrum. In Rider, you are an MI5 agent charged with a two-part mission. Stage one consists of parachuting into enemy territory and attempting to land on a moving motor-cycle. Thus mounted, you then move to stage two, which entails riding through a minefield to check the terrain prior to invasion.

You choose any level of difficulty from 001 to 007 and must avoid not only randomly-placed mines but obstacles which may cause you to crash. If you manage to stay the course you will be promoted.

The graphics in both stages of the game are lively and the second stage promises a fast and challenging ride. A major fault, however, is that if you crash during stage two, you have to go back to your original parachuting exercise. Extra lives for the motor-cyclist would have made the game more satisfying, as the second part is the more exciting and difficult to master.

Angler could help confirm the low status of fishing as a spectator sport. In it you are at sea with your trawler, attempting to catch a variety of fish, all gaining different scores according to their type.

The trawler moves left and right and pressing any key casts the fishing line. According to the instructions, the length of time you keep the keys depressed determines the length of the line but, in the reviewer's experience, the line showed an infuriating tendency to stop short of any fish at which it was aimed.

The game features a scoreboard so that you can compete against your friends and a high score earns a certificate of merit. Fairly rudimentary graphics and slow responses, even if you choose an advanced level of difficulty, do not make it wildly exciting.

Rider and Angler are produced by Virgin Games, 61- 63 Portobello Road, London W11 and cost £5.50 each.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
JOYSTICK: No
CATEGORY: Arcade
SUPPLIER: Virgin Games
PRICE: £5.95

Virgin has had a somewhat unenthusiastic reception for its offerings so far, and Angler is unlikely to improve on this. The fisherman of the title sits in a small boat at the top of the screen and casts his line into a sea swarming with fish of various sizes.

The object of the game is simply to catch as many fish as possible while trying to avoid crabs, which will eat the catch given half a chance. Controls are simple - keys 5 and 8 move the boat from side to side, and any other key will cast the line.

Fish are caught by manoeuvring the line so that the hook appears just in front of the target, but catching anything often seems to be more luck than judgment (which is fairly true to life, I guess).

The line will reach the bottom only if there are no fish underneath it at the moment of casting.

If a crab is caught, it will immediately begin eating any fish in the boat. This may be rectified only by catching one of the much larger, tube-shaped bottom-dwelling fish - but care must be taken to avoid landing one of the largest creatures. Do this and the game ends in disaster.

All in all, it's a bit like the nursery rhyme about the old woman who swallowed a fly catch the wrong thing and you have to continue fishing until you catch a fish that can deal with the problem.

You have 100 casts in which to catch as many fish - and hence score as many points - as possible. Presentation of the game, in keeping with Virgin's packaging policy, is good, with a Hall of Fame that may be printed out on the ZX printer, but the graphics and sound can only be described as adequate.

There are various levels of difficulty to determine how close a fish must be to the hook before it is caught, but even at the highest level I can't imagine that this game will hold the attention for too long.