Audiogenic Software
£10.99/£14.99

Cute little monsters, platforms and bouncing balls: what do you think this is a recipe for? Total and utter mayhem is the answer - great fun too! Helter Skelter is a kind of cross between two classic game types: Pacman and Breakout. You take control of a ball and have to bounce it on the monster with an arrow above his head. If you get the wrong little devil it divides into two smaller ones - double trouble!

On the more helpful side are icons which pop up from time to time. These include warps to take you to the next level, time freeze, monster freeze and extra time. For an extra life you can collect all the letters to make up the word EXTRA.

Does all this sound hard to you? Well, it is. The ball is terrible to control when you first start and it'll take a lot of practice to master the controls. There are enough screens to keep you playing for a long while, some of which are only accessible in a two player game, but if you do get fed up you can always load op the screen editor. This utility allows you to make the game more challenging or much easier by designing your own screen. Monsters, platforms, backgrounds and colours are just some of the aspects you can play with, all selected using a simple menu system.

Helter Skelter is great to play, but some screens are graphically badly planned. The colours and patterns used on backgrounds make the monsters and balls very difficult to see and the time limits are a bit tight for my liking. The only real way to play it is as a two player team: this way you can each take half the monsters and get each screen completed in a fraction of the time. Luckily a password system has been included to save everyone tearing their hair out. And the first one is... Haw! Haw! You're not getting them that easily! You'll have to wait, I might print them in the Playing Tips if you're lucky.

NICK [83%]

Helter Skelter's gameplay was designed three years ago, but it's still one of the most original games around. It's tricky to get to grips with the controls and make the ball go where you want at first, but perseverance is the name of the game. You'll be addicted in no time at all, and trying to complete just one more level could have you glued to the screen for ages! The action's fast and furious and your brain needs to be in top gear to complete some of the devilish screens, though most are easier than they look. Graphics are jolly, there's a lot of imagination gone into designing the monsters, but the occasional backdrop is overworked, too detailed, making it tricky to clearly see what's going on. Apart from that, and the pretty hefty price tag, Helter Skelter is a hell of a lot of fun!
RICHARD [85%]

Audiogenic
£10.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

Helter skelters, eh? How I remember them well! Trogging off down the fairgournd just to climb up to the top and sit on one those horrible barbed wire mats that always threw you off when you spun round the first bend. Ah, those were the days.

And as a matter of fact, Skelter the game has absolutely nothing to do with those towers of fun and friction whatsoever. Instead it's actually about balls. Bubble Bobble sort of balls in fact. You, as Billy (the ball), have to advance through 80 screens (with handy passwords to get straight to each set of 10) by squashing all the monsters that are wandering around the platforms of each one. Only one monster is vulnerable at any one time though (an arrow points to him to let you know which one), and if you hit any others by mistake then they split up into 2 smaller beasties, messing up the squashing order and thus making your task a whole lot harder.

TIGHT FIT!

Each screen has a very tight time limit, although this can be increased if you can grab one of the occasional bonus tokens. (Others help you freeze monsters, make them vulnerable, stop the clock, and bounce onto the next screen.) if you're very lucky you might catch the letters E-X-T-R-A and gain a bonus ball. Although somehow it's doubtful. What you'll probably be doing instead is cursing the programmers for coming up with the most frustratingly enjoyable control system since the trackball hit the arcades.

It's another one of those 'real physics' jobby, you see. Rolling the ball left and right, you bounce around by pressing Fire and by doing so exert a 'downward force'. So if you're on a platform, this pushes down against the floor, which in turn shoots you up into the air. Once you're in the air you can make your next bounce higher by pressing Fire on the way down, or shorter by firing on the way up (don't worry - it's much easier to grasp than it sounds).

All this means you can drop the ball on the target monster with pin-point accuracy (either that or ricochet around the diabolically-placed platforms like Cauldron 2 gone mad!). And it's all absolutely diabolically addictive! Since the vulnerable monsters only reveal themselves one at a time (ie you aren't told the order to squash them in), you can spend ages trying to blip one, only to find yourself with 3 seconds to get off the platform, deftly dodge the remaining beasties, drop through a miniscule gap and then bounce onto... damn! (But there's always next time.)

AND THAT'S JUST THE HALF OF IT!

Because just like Bubble Bobble, the real fun starts when the second player joins in (as Billy's cousin Bobby). Then you get to plan the rolling most effective routes around the screens, divide up the workload, and even double-cross your pal and grab the bonuses for yourself! Hurrah! (And best of all, you've got someone else to blame!)

Sounds like value for money to you? And I haven't even told you about the screen designer yet! Now instead of playing alongside your friends you can completely confound them with fiendishly complicated and/or totally-impossible-to-complete levels! It's a gas!

There are a few niggles. The cutesy graphics and rinky-tinky sound are good, but some of the backgrounds tend to wrench your eyes out and you can't turn them off. And it may just be I'm a tad crap at the game (No. Surely not. Reader's voice) but it seems there's not much of a learning curve - you can be muddling along quite happily, getting the knack, when suddenly the program throws in a real bast of a screen, you lose all your lives and muscular control, and have to have a quiet lie-down to recover.

But it's difficult to really complain about Helter Skelter. It's beyond a doubt the best cutsie plattormer since Pang (not that there've been too many of them inbetween but you know what I mean) so you'd better go and grab a copy pretty darn pronto.

Audiogenic
£3.99
081 861 1166
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

Remember Pang? Wasn't it great, considering all you did was move a little man left and right and fire vertically at things? And what about Bubble Bobble? A veritable classic, even though all you did was jump a little dinosaur around blowing bubbles at baddies. In considering the criteria necessary to define a good puzzle game, it would seem simplicity features pretty near the top of the list - basic gameplay, simple controls and short, one screen levels usually do the trick. A simultaneous two-player mode (which the above games also boasted) would also seem like quite a good idea because, employing a phrase we reviewers like to slip in surreptitiously when rating two-player games mainly because it sounds a bit rude, whatever you do in life, the chances are it'll be more fun with a friend.

So then, let's just recap. A successful puzzle game needs to be instantly playable and ideally incorporate a simultaneous two-player mode. And, a-ha. Helter Skelter is instantly playable and incorporates a simultaneous two-player mode, so we could be on to something good. Or possibly not. But that's the lot of the reviewer, so you needn't worry about it.

GRENVILLE THRIPP*

So what's it all about? You play Billy the Ball who has to advance through 80 single-screen levels by squashing all the monsters who are wandering around the platforms of each one. The snag (and challenge) is that only one monster (highlighted by an arrow) is vulnerable at any one time, and if you hit any others by mistake then they split up into two smaller baddies meaning that you have more baddies to squash to complete the level. And considering how tight the time limit is, this is not a terribly good thing.

Helter Skelter is one of those 'real-physics' jobbies you must have come across in some form by now. Rolling the ball Left and Right, you bounce around by pressing Fire which exerts a 'downwards force'. So if you are stationary on a platform, then pressing Fire pushes you against the floor which in turn shoots you up in the air. A subsequent Fire on the way down bounces you higher, whilst a press on the way up reduces your bounce. The 'real physics' part of this lies in the fact that this is, of course, a perfect working example of Newton's second law. Every Action Must Have An Opposite And Equal Reaction. Mr Jones, my old Physics teacher, would have a field day if he ever got to see this.

Don't worry - the control method is a doddle to grasp and within no time you'll be able to drop the ball on the target monster with pin-point accuracy. That is, until you reach about Level 3 where the platforms are so diabolically placed that you'll find yourself ricochetting all over the screen. Or when you reach one of the later levels and spend ages trying to squash a baddy only to discover that you have three seconds left in which to get off the platform, deftly dodge the remaining beasties, drop through a miniscule gap and... damn. Or ) when you and a friend take the time to plan the most effective routes around the screens and divide the workload, and player two knacks it all up. Never mind, eh?

Anything else? Well, there are bonuses (to freeze monsters, make all monsters vulnerable, stop the clock or warp to the next level), letters (collect E-X-T-R-A for a life), and a password every ten levels. And there's a level editor as well, squirrelled away on the other side of the tape. It's very easy to use, but one thing that narked me was that you couldn't turn off the eye-wrenching backdrops.

Right. Hardcore YS fans may have noticed that, so far, I have said much the same about Helter Skelter as Jonathan did in his previous incarnation when he Megagamed the thing back in May 1991. They may also have noticed that, to save time and effort. I've basically just copied out his review and re-worded it slightly. (But I'm praying they haven't.) Ahem. Anyway. Helter Skelter is actually reasonably good - for some reason its concept is not as satisfying as that of Pang or Bubble Bobble but it's a good barg buy.

* There is a connection, honestly.