Producer: Firebird (Silver)
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Lee Dowthwaite

It is the year 2012. Earth has been living on credit for some time now, and the few people who still use 'real money' put it into massive bank organisations, the biggest of which is the L.D. International United Bank in Switzerland.

The bank is so big that even its employees know only a tiny fraction of the vast complex. Day and night it is patrolled by troops of cyber guards that will destroy anyone they find lingering suspiciously around the bank.

You play a poor computer-systems engineer who has a craze about money and will do anything to get it - even hack your way into the central bank computer and transfer all the money from other accounts into your own.

On each level of Heist 2012 you must find a key. This opens a safe, from which you collect letters that build up a password. When you have all the letters, find your way to the computer room and press HACK. You must then type the password and press ENTER. If the password is accepted, you'll gain access to the next level.

Type 'exit' and press ENTER, and walk over to the elevator to leave the computer room. Elevators, represented by shafts of tight, are dotted around the playing area to make your life easier: to start an elevator just walk into it and to get out on the next level just walk out left or right.

But watch out - if you touch a cyber guard, you lose strength and risk death.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: small, uninteresting sprites on a plain background
Sound: does for the ears what the graphics do for the eyes - with an awful tune
Options: definable keys

Heist 2012 is the worst game I've yet reviewed at CRASH - it's just a bad imitation of Jet Set Willy. The opening music is flapdoodle (Nick Roberts Daft Dictionary), and there are the usual unimaginative monsters like blinking eyes, moving splodges and big lumps of something. The gameplay isn't very exciting, either...
NICK [10%]

The graphics take us back to the innovative and original days of Jet Set Willy and Technician Ted, but sadly that's where the similarities finish. Heist 2012 is boring and devoid of character, like the graphical person you control. I just hope people don't take this as a typical Firebird budget release.
PAUL [11%]

Aeons after most people are sick of platform games, out comes this rubbish - I was terminally bored after only a few games. A horribly deformed sprite totters around a crudely-drawn screen, and there's a weak and grating 'tune'. Firebird has made a big blunder releasing this.
MARK [19%]

Firebird
£1.99

When I first saw this, I thought 'Oh no, another Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy clone'. In a way it is, but in a way it's not (Hey! Profound! Ed) Granted, it's a platformer but it's a smooth, hard one (oo-er), which a lot of the time relies on pixel-perfect accuracy! It isnae bad!

The year is 2012. (Go on! Ed) Most of the world lives on credit (like the YS staff), though some still use hard cash. For these poor saps, massive banks have been set up, and the one you've decided to rob is, weirdly, full of platforms and ladders. Coo! The controls are left, right and jump sound familiar?) and your strength is indicated on a dinky little icon showing a muscled arm holding a dumbbell. Lose energy and the dumbbell gets lower, until you lose one of your six lives.

One of the main problems I had with JSW was that, when falling sever screens, the final screen (where you hit the ground) would repeat and repeat until I was well and truly mangled. This doesn't happen in Heist 2012, I'm happy to say. If you fall, and believe me, you will, you can continue the game happily, minus one life.

Otherwise, though Heist is virtually the dead spit for Willy - only smoother, slicker and more playable. Original it isn't, but if games were banned for unoriginality, nothing would ever be released!

Label: Firebird
Author: Lee Dowthwaite
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Have you ever noticed how in all the gangster movies the baddies always have a Swiss bank account. Well, in the year 2012 everyone has a Swiss bank account. So, bigger banks are made. The largest being LD international United Bank (I wonder what LD stands for, eh Lee?)

This bank is so big that even its employees don't know their way around. You play a poor computer engineer who gets the idea into his (or her) head that he (or she) is going to break into the bank, hack into the computer and make lotsa dough.

OK, so it's a platform game... but quite a good one.

There are lots of mean cypher guards around and touching these depletes your energy. If you run out of energy, or fall too far then you loose one of your seven lives.

Sounds easy but it isn't. Before you can get the password to enter the bank computer, you have to find a key to open the safes which each contain a letter of the password. When you have all the letters you must then find the computer room, enter the password and take the elevator to the next level.

Heist 2012 is an old idea rewritten in a superb way. The animation of the main character is a delight to watch and the screens are taxing but not too difficult to solve.