REVIEWS COURTESY OF ZXSR

Ground Force Zero
Titan Programs Ltd
1982
Crash Issue 1, Feb 1984   page(s) 56

Producer: Titan, 16K
£5.00

At first glance it looks like a simple game, but in fact it is quite hard. Very similar to Romik's 'Spectra Smash', which has more options than this version. Your plane keeps crossing the towering skyscrapers of New York, looking for a place to land. There isn't anywhere, so with a genocidal brainwave you decide to bomb the city flat to makes landing strip. With each pass over the city your plane gets lower, so it's essential to knock out the biggest towers before they knock you out. Several skill levels with taller buildings. Simple to play with only a bomb control. Despite its simplicity, reasonably addictive.


Transcript by Chris Bourne

Crash Issue 2, Mar 1984   page(s) 58,59

Producer: Titan, 16K
£5.00

At first glance it looks like a simple game, but in fact it is quite hard. Very similar to Romik's 'Spectra Smash', which has more options than this version. Your plane keeps crossing the towering skyscrapers of New York, looking for a place to land. There isn't anywhere, so with a genocidal brainwave you decide to bomb the city flat to makes landing strip. With each pass over the city your plane gets lower, so it's essential to knock out the biggest towers before they knock you out. Several skill levels with taller buildings. Simple to play with only a bomb control. Despite its simplicity, reasonably addictive.


Transcript by Chris Bourne

Crash Issue 3, Apr 1984   page(s) 76

Producer: Titan, 16K
£5.00

At first glance it looks like a simple game, but in fact it is quite hard. Very similar to Romik's 'Spectra Smash', which has more options than this version. Your plane keeps crossing the towering skyscrapers of New York, looking for a place to land. There isn't anywhere, so with a genocidal brainwave you decide to bomb the city flat to makes landing strip. With each pass over the city your plane gets lower, so it's essential to knock out the biggest towers before they knock you out. Several skill levels with taller buildings. Simple to play with only a bomb control. Despite its simplicity, reasonably addictive.


Transcript by Chris Bourne

ZX Computing Issue 12, Apr 1984   page(s) 48

The lengths to which some companies go to in advertising their product, in terms of magazine space, makes you think they have something special to offer. A full page colour advertisement of this type prompted me to buy Ground Force Zero from Titan Programs. However, the game simply reaffirms my belief in the old adage 'you can't judge a book by its cover' or in this case 'don't be influenced in purchasing programs by the advertising campaign behind it'.

Ground Force Zero is written totally in BASIC, and suffers all the accompanying problems of programming in this language. On loading you are greeted with the 'Dambusters' theme music and a second world war bi-plane chugging across the screen with a prompt asking you to select 1 of 10 levels of difficulty. Then, at the bottom of the screen, skyscrapers of varying height are being constructed and when the bottom of the screen is fully occupied by buildings, your plane begins chugging along the top of the screen once again. As it goes off one side of the screen it reappears at the other but this time it is one line lower. Using simply the 'B' key you must drop bombs on the buildings knocking them down to the ground before your decreasing height causes you to collide with one.

Being written is BASIC, the graphics are crude and jerky and the monotony of having only a single key to press brings boredom almost immediately. In my opinion it is the sort of game that you feel you could have whipped up yourself and then put it on some tape and stored away never to be used again. It would appeal to the very young in testing their judgment for the right moment at which to drop their bomb but in todays market, where to stay afloat in the software industry demands high standards, I am surprised that Titan Programs have not been renamed Titanic. At £6 a throw the program is ludicrously priced but it did teach me a lesson. From now on, I'll find out what I'm getting before I part with any money!


REVIEW BY: Guy Haines

Transcript by Chris Bourne

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