Producer: Atlantis
Fistful of Dollars: £1.99
Author: The Shaw Brothers

Hot of off the presses comes the latest game from two thirds of the programming team who bought you Cerius (Issue 53, 70%).

Haven't you ever watched a cowboy movie and wished that you could be like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood: riding around, shooting all the bad guys with your Colt Peacemaker. Well, clean-cut, square-jawed hero that you are, that's exactly the sort of role you play in Gunfighter. Various nasty outlaw types have ridden into your town, whooping and hollering and generally being very offensive. More seriously they've also stolen the deeds to the townsfolk's properties and kicked them out. So naturally you pin on your badge, buckle on your guns and go out to recover the deeds and kick some bandit butt.

You start the game with three lives and six bullets, but more ammunition can be found in your office and extra lives can be bought for five hundred dollars from the 'Doc'. As each baddie arrives in town a wanted poster appears in the top left corner of the screen, with the reward for their capture or killing (a reward is also given for any deeds that are found). When either the sheriff or a baddie dies, a tombstone rises from the ground (shades of the ancient Ultimate game Atic Atac, perhaps?).

Unfortunately the sheriff's tombstone crops up far too much for my liking. Still, the game looks bright and cheerful enough, thanks mainly to the multi-coloured buildings with surprisingly little colour clash. The character sprites are all monochromatic, fat little chaps who almost look too cute to kill.

To take a rest from the killing you can enter some of the buildings. These include the jail, the hotel, the store, and the casino in which you are able to gamble some of your hard-earned loot (although I rarely win anything). But watch out for the Indians, who aren't too friendly, and at all costs avoid the pot holes as some of them are very deep.

Gunfighter is a pleasant little game that won't overly tax your intellect, but will provide a fair challenge for the meagre price tag.

MARK [74%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Sound: some clever effects

It makes a refreshing change to play a simple arcade adventure with attractive graphics and sound effects where the programmers haven't gone OTT! The wild west town has colourful houses and shops which you can enter, as well as other places such as the KO Coral and the Gold Mine. Killing villains with such comical names as Hugo Yorway and Silty The Goat is quite difficult at first, but once you've got the hang of it you can have great fun. Gunfighter is a good fun game, worth £1.99 of anyone's money.
NICK [76%]

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Cheaper than a speeding bullet. Leaps small molehills at a single bound! Is it a bird? Is it a Wankel rotary engine? No, it's 'budget king' Marcus Berkmann with the latest in budget software.

Atlantis
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Have you ever played a game for a while and thought. 'Well, this is all very well, but there must be more to it than this?' And you've played the game a bit more and there wasn't? Yes, that's Gunfighter alright. You are the sheriff of a small western town which otherwise appears to be completely deserted (that's probably why they chose you). Every minute or two you hear that such-and-such a great gunfighter is in town, and you have to search him out and shoot him before he does the same to you. And that's it.

Dull isn't really the word for it. Earthshattaringly brainblendingly tedious is more like it. Neither exciting enough to work as a simple shoot 'em up, nor complex enough to interest arcade adventurers. Gunfighter reminds me a little of those old early Gremlin games like Sam Stoat and Grumpy Gumphrey - lovely graphics, but where's the game? Not here, I'm afraid.

Label: Atlantis
Author: In-house
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: Kempston/Sinclair
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

They didn't call the Wild West "Wild" for nothing, you know. No. They called it that because it was downright dangerous, but the Downright Dangerous West didn't alliterate. Anyway, the best paid job in the area - apart from being a criminal - was that of a Sheriff. And that's you. Sheriff of Hicksville USA.

The town is being terrorised by a ruthless gang of criminals with excruciating names like T. P. Wigwam and Hug Yorway, rootin' tootin' pistol shootin' dudes, every one.

Moving around the semi 3-D screen in your huge Stetson, plodding about and waiting for a message to pop up informing you that one of the brigands is after you. They'll flash up at the bottom of the screen saying that they're in The Street or The Saloon or something and looking for trouble. Now you've got to work your way to the place (easy if you've made a map, damned impossible otherwise) and shoot it out.

The graphics are pretty good, although they move a bit too slowly for my liking, and the gunfights are nicely orchestrated - if you shoot a bad guy in the back you are branded a coward. Not bad for a couple of quid then, especially with inventive touches like the outrageously unfair roulette wheel in the casino and the Doc's house where you can get yourself an extra life.