Stop noise pollution with Martech

Producer: Martech
Earmuffs: £8.99 cass, £14.99 disk
Author: Gavin Wade

Concerned by the number of deafening low-flying jets? Why don't you do something about it? Like writing to your local RAF bascyour MP, or blasting them to a zillion pieces with a 20mm cannon? if you're of the latter mind Hellfire Attacks for you. No hideously noisy afterburning engines here, just two discreet rotors and a rotory 20mm cannon.

As wave after wave of eardrum bursting jets rush by, blasting away with their guns, you've got to dodge the bullets and blast back. If the action gets a little tough, use a smart bomb to clear the air. On each level there's two or three slow, monster jumbo planes with dozens of engines to destroy as well. Splash the required number of noise-polluting enemies and you go on to the next level when you land. If not, you go around again.

As you'd expect there's a multiload, but it's very well-done; load the main program on side one, then flip the tape for the levels. Get killed and you simply rewind to the start of tape two and no messing about with tape counters. Other than that the game's a bit disappointing with enemy bullets very hard to see. Still, graphics are good, there's a great 128K tune and I found it fun for a while.

MARK [70%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: well-drawn aircraft, but the scenery is dull and slow moving
Sound: an amazing sampled title tune and decent in-game effects
Options: demo mode

Lacking the game content of Thunder Blade and the sheer speed of Afterburner this is rather second rate. The inlay describes it as 'gripping' but shooting down enemy aircraft is repetitive, while the sluggishness of the chopper soon induces tedium. Yet the biggest problem, literally, is the large helicopter sprite which obscures your view. OK, so the game has quite a few multiloaded levels, but they all play in much the same way. It's a pity but the best aspect of Hellfire Attack is the great title tune.
PHIL [48%]

Essentially Afterburner with rotors this starts off with an impressive sampled 128K tune. Such technical prowess does not, however, extend to the game itself. The scrolling of ground-based objects is sluggish, and while their graphic outlines tilt left/right, the colour bands for a blue sky and green grass remain completely still. The helicopter itself is well-drawn, but the massive bullets it spits are identical to those fired by the enemy, making combat very confusing. Nevertheless, despite these problems Hellfire Attack is fairly playable, albeit rather repetitive and difficult, with a fast and well thought-out multiload. Worth a look.
STUART [71%]

Martech
£8.95 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: David McCandless

The Super Cobra feather-weight attack helicopter is humming ready for take-off. Its 20mm three barrel rotary cannon is smouldering for action. The laser-guided 'launch-and-say-goodbye-cruel-world' missiles are smoking in their silos. Ahead of you lies mile after mile of hostile graphics.

And they know you're coming.

Hmmmm, a suspiciously similar storyline to Thunder Blade Must be a coincidence.

You fly (in the jerky 3D scrolling sense of the word) your helicopter as the landscape pushes painfully under you. Enemy helicopters and warplanes limp out of the blank horizon, gradually approaching as growing lumps. You steer left and right with the landscape shifting with you, avoiding the clumps (missiles), blobs (bullets) and lolly-pop sticks (planes). The idea is to reach the end of the level and load the next scenario.

The graphics are poor - and I'm being a generous open-minded person to say that. Your propellors don't shift; the rear view of your copter is bleak and uninspiring; the enemy planes and choppers are just blocky pixels; and the landscapes are an indescribable mish-mash of graphics, which the Speccy attribute problem can only emphasise.

Playability-wise the key controls are fairly responsive, but the almost involuntary flip-over-and-fly-upside-down feature is instantly disorientating. Plus the fact that your chopper can easily become lost in the attribute/graphic soup, just didn't enamour me of the game at all!

Hellfire Attack is about as addictive as a corpuscle. The dire graphics, awful screen design, and sheer iccky-ness make it a likely candidate for the Mothball Substitute Of The Year Award.

Label: Martech
Author: In-house
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Whoah! is this supposed to be Afterburner or is this supposed to be Afterburner? Hellfire Attack does an impression of Afterburner which is about as good as Mike Yarwood's impression of Margaret Thatcher, which is to say, it looks right but it's completely unconvincing.

The problem is that while the idea's roughly the same, the playability level is minimal. You never get the impression that you're in control of what's happening - it's just a lot of graphics flying around as if there wasn't anyone playing.

Your Thunderblade style attack helicopter is equipped with a rotary cannon which fires all the time the chopper is airborne. Well, that's what it said in the instructions. In fact, the screen is so cluttered it's hard to tell when you're firing and when you're not. Just by lining up your sights you can knock down any targets close to hand. For some distant enemies you have to resort to using a laser-guided missile. Once your radar has locked onto a target, a square cursor appears on it, the word TARGET appears on your control panel and you can fire and forget.

Another useful trick is turbo power. By pressing the space bar you can increase your thrust two fold, this, allows you to speed past some enemies, and also to fly upside down. For some unknown reason I ended up flying upside-down even when I didn't want to, which is pretty off-putting.

The backgrounds include forests, seascapes and battlegrounds, but the targets are so ill defined that you can't actually work out what you're shooting at or whether you've hit anything. Even more annoying, you can't really tell when you're about to be hit; the graphics are so messy and unclear that it's impossible to tell what's going on until it's too late, and your pilot is parachuting to safety. A charming little bug means that your missiles remain on the screen as you plunge to the ground. Another little jolly is the way the cliffs go blue once they fall below sea level. Clever programming.

About the only entertaining aspect of the game is the 128K sampled music, which includes a howling metal guitar bit and some whizzy drums. Apart from that, don't let the relatively impressive screen shots of Hellfire Attack fool you into thinking that this game is in any way a rival to Afterburner or Thunderblade.

Martech, £8.99cs, £14.99dk
Atari ST version reviewed Issue 16 - ACE rating 554

It's multi-load even in 128K mode. The graphics are nothing special and the way the display suddenly inverts is very off-putting. It's a poor Afterburner variant that won't get you excited.

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

You pilot a SuperCobra light-attack helicopter, acting against an unknown enemy. Your rotary cannon fire automatically as you fly above a 3-D landscape enemy aircraft and missiles approaching. More reliable weapons are laser-guided Hellfire launch-and-leave missiles, a supply of 40 available on each level. Your SuperCobra can enter turbo speed, allowing you to fly momentarily upside down to avoid enemies.

The graphics on the Amiga are identical in definition to the ST original, but use brighter colours, have more enemy approach frames and move faster.

The real surprise is that the C64 version is also very similar to the ST, having equally colourful and nicely shaded ground features that are plotted for passable 3-D effect. Some sprites are abstract until near your craft, but generally graphics are commendable.

The Spectrum is surprisingly slothful, and although amongst the monochrome there is the addition of a large bomber, the display gets confusing and it's difficult to spot deadly objects.

On the Amiga, the title tune warbles similarly to the ST, but has additional instruments and good sound effects. Dramatic C64 music is ruined by a nauseating death jingle. 128K Spectrum owners can enjoy raucous Heavy Metal title music and loud effects.