Producer: Electric Dreams
Retail Price: £9.99
Author: David Shea.

This is the age of the terrorist. Hijacking has become ubiquitous and no-one is safe - now an unknown group has hijacked a vehicle and they're making demands. As Head of the Hijack Division, it's your job to track them down and negotiate, using whatever financial, political or military power you can muster. And all this within a time limit!

The game set within the Pentagon and there are a number of characters who can either help or hinder, depending on how you handle them. Most important of all is the President - he's the only one who can give you the boot. On the other hand, he might negotiate with the hijackers on your behalf (thereby extending the deadline) or even allow you to use his helicopter.

More information can be obtained from the FBI Agent, who can be made to question employees, at the risk of losing their loyalty. Intelligence work is carried out by the CIA Agent who provides reports of varying detail on the hijackers. Military and Political Advisers may be sent to the scene of the hijack to help the Political and Military Assistants, who are the real workers. They have the power to call upon diplomats to negotiate, or summon up troops to frighten the bad guys into surrender. Extra cash which might be necessary can be raised through the Finance Officer. Last but not least is the President's Secretary - she is really only accountable to the President, but you can order her to find an employee for you.

It is important that public support is maintained, and the services of the Publicity Officer are vital: good Press keeps the President happy. Remember, at any time he can send you a friendly little missive which goes something like 'You're getting on my nerves - you're fired!'

You travel up and down the Department building in the lift which links offices, and access options via a menu and icon system. Information, such as news headlines and top secret documents, can also be called up.

The faces of all the characters in the game are displayed along the top of the screen, and light up whenever you are in the same room as one or more of the characters. A clock slowly counts down to that dreaded deadline. Just below, is the lift sign with arrows pointing in both directions which light up to indicates that a lift is available. At the bottom left of screen, various items are displayed which you can pick up, examine or use on your way through an office, and the inventory is displayed to the right. A graphical readout displays your military, political and financial strength, which gradually diminishes as time goes on, unless support is won.

Once you feel confident enough to confront the hijackers, the President has to be found and a code word requested that gives access to the helicopter - certain items in the inventory may prove crucial in your negotiations.

Success depends on how quickly you can co-ordinate people and assimilate information. One thing, however, is certain. If you fail, expect the worst: an indefinite holiday in some remote Himalayan embassy perhaps? Happy mantras!

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface II, Fuller
Keyboard play: very good
Use of colour: lots of variety
Graphics: nice detailed graphics
Sound: realistic spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: large office complex

From my first look at Hijack I was hooked. The game is superb, the graphics are excellent and the controls are extremely well laid out and very easy to use. One thing I can say about Hijack, as opposed to many other 'good' games about, is that I got totally enthralled with the whole idea of the game. The way that you go about the offices and order everybody to do what they are told is superb, although I found you have to be nice to people if you don't want them to betray you. The icon-type control is very easy to use and very well presented. All of the rooms are well detailed - even down to the last little waste paper bin in the corner... Of course you have to check these for discarded paper and codes. Hijack is addictive from the first. I loved it don't miss this very original game.

Hijack is a very entertaining game. Although it took me a long time to get into the swing of things (possibly due to the fact that the instructions, although well written don't explain everything that they should) the game is still good fun. The graphics for the most part aren't particularly amazing, but they serve their purpose and could be a lot worse. The lift system is a bit of a pain and doesn't always go where you want it to, but perseverance usually succeeds. Even with its few downfalls, I can see myself wanting to play Hijack for a long time to come. Hijack is not as good as Spindizzy, but is an admirable attempt at a different sort of game.

This game is very boring to begin with, but once you start having some success with the various features it gets quite addictive. Initially, you can spend a great deal of time just going up and down the lifts not getting anywhere. Then everything seems to click and you find yourself totally intrigued. The graphics are good and the colour clash is minimal. The messages you receive from the various characters can be quite humorous, especially when you ask the President if you can use the helicopter. On the whole, I liked this game a great deal because it's one you can go back to again and again.

...and hi to all our other readers. Electric Dreams' new game puts you in the Department Of Hijacks' hot seat. Gwyn Hughes takes oyu by the hand and leads you through the corridors of power, putting faces to the bureaucrats.

Game: Hijack
Publisher: Electric Dreams
Price: £9.99
Joysticck: Kempston, Interface II, Cursor, Fuller
Keys: Defineable

Topical or tasteless? Hijacking is a fact of modern life, though the activities of the Department of Hijacks have more to do with the silver screen than the real world.

You have to keep the lid on the sizzling situation as the pressure builds. Carry the can and co-ordinate the efforts of the government departments, handling each crisis with tact, discretion... and some military might will also help!

Run around the offices - no-one seems to know what the phones are for - giving orders to operatives and searching for codes to access various databases. You decide how many soldiers to send out, how many diplomats to deploy, and how to keep President Rod happy before you negotiate a peaceful settlement, surrender to demands or go for Reaganite cowboy heroics, hoping your boys shoot first and fast.

Success means another, more difficult hijack - failure means anything from the big E to jail! And you don't even get a coffee break between crises!

It's all very different in appearance from the traditional text management-resource game, though the strategies remain the same, even when they're adorned with animated figures enjoying the frustrations of a 22 room office building. Mind you, this action element creates an added degree of involvement.

At first you may find yourself doing little more than waiting for lifts. Eventually though, you'll build up a picture of what to do first and when to approach staff with certain demands. Remember, just as in real life, hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat who's been asked to do a job he doesn't want to!

The Fourth Protocol was the game that stopped strategy being a dirty word and while this is nowhere near so involved, nor quite so involving in the long run, it is undeniably accessible. As the seconds tick away and the only place you've not looked for the President is his private toilet, your palms will start to sweat as you realise the fate of 18 innocent school kids hangs on how long Rod remains in the loo!

BARGAIN BASEMENT

As those modern philosophers Status Quo once said, "Down down deeper and down, down down deeper and down." MARCUS BERKMAN trips in the stairwell...

Summit
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Now this is an elderly one. Hijack's a little like Impossible Mission with the game taken out - no leaping from level to level, just offices in which you have to find out info. The excuse for it is a hijack, with you as the head honcho of the CIA's Hijack Division, dedicated to stamping out terrorism by peaceful means. That's just about unique in computer games, which usually prefer to stamp out things with lasers and smart bombs, but never mind. There are a number of people in your department, all doing various jobs - you delegate certain activities to them while at the same time making sure that they're not stabbing you in the back. Just like any office really. The game's a little short on action, but it's certainly a knotty teaser, and in the end you have to react just as quickly as in a shoot-'em-up. It barely sold a copy first time round, but if you like Hacker, for example, you'll like Hijack. Much better than Mark Eyles' later game Aliens.

Label: Electric Dreams
Author: David Shea, Mark Eyles
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer:

Here's a surprise. Out of the blue come an absolutely marvellous game from Electric Dreams.

At least judging from the press material we've received, it seems Hijack is the 'other game' being released at about the same time as the same company's appalling, sexist and pathetic-in-every-way Mermaid Madness.

It deserves better, being very original, cleverly structured, witty and (here comes that word again) addictive.

Hijack is a very sophisticated mixture of decision making management game and adventure, played using large animated figures and icons. A school bus has been hijacked by terrorists and you're in the hot seat trying to save them. Mostly you give orders but they aren't always carried out. There are those who, for reasons of political expendiency, will ditch you if things go wrong. Somehow you have to juggle with the FBI, CIA, the military, even the press office to get the hijack victims safely home.

Beyond the bare fact that there has been a hijack, you start the game knowing nothing. Not even, it seems, some of the security codes for doors in your own building ...

The most important element in the game is dealing with the various members of staff at your disposal. Seeking them out and giving them appropriate orders is the key to the game. This being the world of realpolitick though, the amount of help and enthusiasm you get will vary according to who, why and what you want. The key is to play one department off against another and still somehow keep everyone on the same side.

The centre of the screen depicts the various rooms of your headquarters: it's here the events in the game unfold. You and the other staff are represented by the same biggish, well animated sprites. When you enter a new office or somebody enters your office an icon outline of that person lights up, indicating they are available for conversation.

On selecting that person via the icon system you get a menu of options, only some of which are likely to be available at any one point in the game. So, you may tell the FBI agent to question a member of staff. You might request political, financial or military support from the President. Or you could issue some sort of press statement (if you don't keep the press at least moderately well informed they start turning nasty and the President gets upset).

There are a number of rooms in your building, some are connected by lift - which you have to wait for - others require the discovery of various electronic door codes. These can be uncovered in memos, notices and other odd places around the building. Then the problem becomes: what number is for what door? Likewise there are codes to gain access to the various computers scattered around the building - some of them containing vital information about the current state of the hijack.

Gradually through a mixture of hunting around the building, questioning staff, getting up-dates on current events and deploying the right kinds of forces in the right way, you may start to turn events in the hijack your way.

Be quick - time is the one thing you don't have.

C+VG HIT

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K/128K
SUPPLIER: Electric Dreams
PRICE: £9.99

Crisis, drama, shock, terror - a normal day in the C+VG game review complex. But today's different. There's a hijack going on and I've got to crack it.

It's hard enough having the CIA and FBI on my back but now the President's playing up. Things are looking very bleak.

But there's nothing bleak in the future of Electric Dreams' arcade, strategy and simulation game Hijack. It's a gem.

The objective of the game is to end the hijack. There are three ways to do this - buy them off, persuade them to give up or scare them into submission using military might.

As the head of the head of the Hijack Division, some sort of obscure government department, it's your job to decide on the best plan, keep the President and press happy, organise your colleagues, fight off power struggles, raise cash and gather information. All the time the clock ticks down to the terrorists' deadline.

The main part of the screen is taken up with a view of the various rooms and offices of Hijack HQ. You can move from room to room, meet various people, talk to them and examine objects of use. A map of the office complex is useful because it's easy to get lost.

At the top of the screen are a series of ten heads. These are the people in the building. They are The President, military adviser, political adviser, FBI agent, CIA man, military assistant, political assistant, publicity officer, financial officer and secretary.

The heads change colour when that character is in the same room as you. If you're quick enough you can question them, receive information and give instructions.

At the bottom left of the screen is an icon displaying what useful items are about as you walk past.

I played Hijack on a fairly small sized television and found it a little difficult to see the smaller icon displays but those lucky enough to own bigger sets shouldn't find it a problem.

There is an end game where you travel to the scene of the hijack where you'll see if your campaign to defeat the terrorist was successful. It could mean a medal or the sack.

Hijack, for me is a breath of fresh air, in a boring month of reviewing.

FIGHT TERRORISM, CONTROL THE PENTAGON AND PANDER TO THE PRESIDENT IN ELECTRIC DREAMS POWER CRAZED CRISIS MANAGEMENT GAME.

Electric Dreams
£9.99

Hijack is novel new game that Electric Dreams describe as a 'combination of arcade, strategy and simulation.' In the game you play the part of the Head of the Pentagon's new Hijack Division. As the game begins you are faced with the problem of a group of terrorists who have hijacked a vehicle and its passengers, and it's up to you to coordinate the Pentagon Staff and deal with this crisis in whatever way you can.

You control an animated figure whom you can direct to move from room to room within the Pentagon, and as you move around you will encounter members of staff (most of whom will obey your instructions) and attempt to locate information that will help you deal with this crisis.

There are two main parts to the game At first, whilst still based in the Pentagon, you have to amass either enough money, political, or military power to enable you to enter negotiations with the terrorists. Once you have convinced the President himself that you are in a strong enough position he will then send you off to the scene of the crime to tackle the terrorists.

Most of the screen display is given over to a representation of the current location, and of your figure's position in that room. As you walk across the room, any potentially useful items that you come across are highlighted in a small box at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and these can be examined or picked up and held for later use. Held objects are displayed in a second box on the bottom right-hand.

Along the top of the screen display is a row of faces representing the key members of staff that you will have to deal with, and whenever one of them enters the room that you are in a walking figure will be seen in the room and the appropriate face will light up, indicating the identity of that person. These personnel are a number of Political, Military and Financial advisors and their assistants, and there are also agents of the CIA and FBI who can be used to dig up information on the terrorists, and on possible security risks within the Pentagon itself.

For each member of staff you are able to 'pull down' a menu containing the different orders that you might want to give him/her. For instance, you could order the Military Advisor to go straight to the scene of the Hijack, or to stay in the Pentagon and try and find a solution through the intelligence network. You could even fire him if you want, though obviously he won't be any help to you if you do this (then again, if he turns out to be a security risk you're better off without him).

This is where the strategy element comes in. Each command that you can give will have different sets of results and consequences, and you've got to judge how best to balance these results in order to achieve the bargaining power that you'll need. This isn't always easy, since boosting your financial power could affect your military or political strength - for instance, getting your financial advisor to rush off and raise money from some of your political supporters can put a strain on their loyalty and weaken their support.

On top of all this, there's the President who is unduly concerned about his image and won't give you the help you need unless you mastermind his (expensive) PR campaign. The number of characters that you have to deal with, along with the problems of balancing all the military, political, and financial factors make Hijack quite a challenge for those who enjoyed the old management simulations that had their day a couple of years ago, and of which this is a more modern derivative. The animation and window-menu system bring it up to date and increase the playability of the game, making it more visually attractive.

I doubt whether the arcade aspects of the game are strong enough to appeal to fans of death-dealing shoot 'em ups, but for those who enjoy a challenge to their strategic abilities rather than their joystick, Hijack should provide something to sharpen your wits on.