Strange aliens with nose-tubes suck

Producer: Addictive Games
Out of Pocket: £8.99 cass, £14.99 disk
Author: David Jones (and team)

Hot Shot is certainly original but very strange. Get this: the game is said to be based on the sport of squash but set years into the future. In fact it plays like a cross between pinball and Breakout rather than squash. Players no longer use primitive racquets but graviton guns which work like vacuum cleaners to suck up the ball. Weird huh? Get's worse:

You control a character chosen randomly from a number of alien beings, some of which have strange nose-like tubes growing from their heads which act in the same way as the guns.

Level 1 is set in an arena containing coloured blocks destroyed Breakout-style by hitting them with the ball.

Combatants stand on opposite sides of the play area. Use your graviton gun to control the ball's movement and bounce it around the screen. Pressing fire activates the gun causing it to attract the ball; pressing fire again releases it. If the ball hits a character instead of a gun, he's blown to bits. The ball returns to the opponent's side of the screen.

When pressing fire, the gun can be pointed in any direction by moving the joystick. Without fire pressed, the player can run left and right as well as duck to avoid the ball.

If your score at the end of the given time limit is high enough, you progress to a bonus level containing pinball-style bumpers. Do well and you're granted access to the next level which is split into two giant pinball tables. Points are awarded for hitting bumpers. There's no time limit; instead each player has three lives.

Following another bonus level, you progress to the next stage and try drowning your opponent by hitting blue bricks to increase the water level in his area. In the final try and annihilate The Beast as an expanding and fatal black hole comes nearer and nearer.

David Jones of Spellbound and Stormbringer fame has changed tack with this one. How does it play? A bit tough really; the ball is hard to catch, although once the controls are mastered, the first level is easy. Following ones (supposedly different but really very similar) are extremely hard, and this high level of difficulty reduces the playability of an otherwise enjoyable game. If you're looking for something a bit different, though, Hot Shot could be worth a look.

PHIL [74%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: detailed aliens with elaborate nostrils snorting against colourful backdrops
Sound: spot effects on 48K. Racy tune on 128K
Options: one or two players

I found Hot Shot be fun at first, to though the novelty wore off after a while. Graphically, it's effective: opponents move move around the play area frantically trying to catch the ball springing wildly around the screen. I don't know whether the ball movement is supposed to be realistic, but considering the way it flits around the screen, I have serious doubts. The control method is awkward at the outset, with your man constantly being disintegrated by the annoyingly anarchic ball, but after a while, some semblance of control is established. Overall an enjoyable Breakout-ish game. Take a look.
MARK [75%]

Keep on your guard at all times, for not only does the ball come hurtling toward the unsuspecting player and kill him, the opposition can also fire the ball you! The graphics are bold and colourful with cute players called a variety of names from Killer to Triffid. There's a tune on the title screen and spot effects echo all through the game. The levels get more detailed and harder to play as you progress, which means that Hot Shot will keep you glued to your monitor for weeks to come. A thoroughly addictive game from Addictive Games.
NICK [82%]

Addictive
£8.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: Ben Stone, Mike Dunn

An original sports simulation? On the Spectrum?? Surely not! Well that's what we thought, but we were proved wrong because Additive's Hotshot has worked a lot better than some recent sports sims we could mention.

Hotshot resembles a wacky kind of pinball crossed with a few elements from Breakout and a large splodge of Beyond's Bounces. The game is played by two players, and, as always, the computer player is a bit of a pain to compete against (computers always seem to be so good at this sort of thing!). But there is a much needed, and heartily recommended, two player option to riven things up.

Each Hotshotter occupies one half of the screen which is viewed in a similar way to the various Breakout games. A ball is shot into the playing area, and the competitors then have to battle it out by puffing the ball away from the other player's side using Graviton guns to gain posession.

Points are scored by shooting the ball off the end of your gun, bouncing it against as many bricks or pins as possible and hopefully catching the ball again to have another go. If the ball isn't successfully trapped the chances are it'll bounce all over you, killing you, or it'll be picked up by the other player giving him a chance to do some point scoring of his own (that is, of course, assuming that there aren't two balls on screen as there are on higher levels - complicated stuff huh?)

The object on the first three levels is to score enough points to qualify for the next. The fourth and fifth levels are similar but they also involve a fight to the death between the two opponents.

There is a great deal of skill involved in playing Hotshot well, and there's definitely a knack to getting the ball to land on the end of your thingy (fnar!) without it hitting your other bits (whaaaaaey!). The best part (we reckon) is the animation - the ball slides smoothly all over the screen in arcs and lines, and the players, there are five different sorts, flow liquidly around!

Playability is great; once you suss out the way in which the ball reacts to your efforts, then it gets really fun. Addictiveness is in less abundance, as frustration really sets in after a tong session. The two player option works well, the graphics are detailed but minimal, and the different levels should guarantee many hours of boingy, bouncy fun.

Label: Alternative
Author: In-house
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Boinggg! Kerdunkkk! Blaaam! Errrk! It's either an editorial lunch at SU Towers, or a game of Hotshot, the zappiest, zaniest piece of something else beginning with a Z that it's been my pleasure to play for some aeons.

If you got last month's MegaTape (and if you didn't, you might as well stick your head in a bucket) you'll have seen a demo of level one of this brain-boggling arcade challenge. Well, there's lots more on the finished game, so prepare to be boggled. It's a bit like Breakout, it's a bit like pinball, and it's a bit like a shooting gallery. The twist is that it's a one-or two-player simultaneous game, taking place in a futuristic gaming arena.

In pursuit of the usual things (money, fame, appearances on Wogan), you must take on a series of alien adversaries in the Hotshot bowl. The play area is divided into two identical sides. Each features a chute at the side; a wall of coloured bricks at the top; a hydraulic wall above the bricks; flippers on either side of the pit; and a central chute and rammer. The aim is to knock out all the bricks above your pit before the sixty-second timer runs out. Easy, yes? Easy, no! The playing ball is made of some deadly radioactive magnetic mineral, and you can only handle it safely using a special gravitational hoover. Your little mannekin scampers left and right in the pit under joystick or keyboard control, and when you press fire you activate your hoover, and can swing it through 360 degrees. If you aim right, you can catch the ball as it flies from the chute; if not, the ball will give you a fair old whack on the body and you'll disintegrate in a pretty manner.

Once you've caught the ball, you can release the fire button to launch it at the wall of bricks. This bit is just like Breakout, but the ball is controlled by realistic gravity effects, and can also be influenced by the space hoover of your opponent. The skill is in shooting the ball up the side-chute, then guiding it along the top rows, bouncing off the hydraulic walls and knocking out brick after brick.

To make things harder you can only hang on to the ball for three seconds, and you can't move while you're holding it, so to knock out the final bricks you sometimes have to catch the ball, bounce it off a flipper, move, and catch it in the right position for your next shot. Dead jammy, especially when you can shoot the ball between pits in an attempt to catch your opponent off guard.

If you knock out all the bricks within the time limit, you get to a bonus screen, where pinballlike obstacles try to prevent you getting the ball into a black hole, again before a timer runs out.

The subsequent levels are even more challenging; in the Water Court the liquid level rises, threatening you to a soggy doom if you don't move fast enough; and in the Black Hole, the approaching gravity well tries to suck you to your death.

Just as entertaining are your alien opponents; Tojoi, Maxx, Killer, Trifid and others, which take the form of scuttling insectiods, strange robots, bouncing blobs and armoured warriors.

What do I have to say to make you buy Hotshot? it's fab fun, and like most good ideas it's brilliantly simple and endlessly absorbing. Bounce down to the games shop and jump up and down on the counter until they give you a copy.

ADDICTIVE'S DOUBLE BARREL

This is a strange mixture of game styles, incorporating elements of Breakout and pinball. It's a two-player game either against the computer or another player. There are a number of different characters you can control, each with slightly different characteristics.

The screens consist of Breakout and pinball layouts with you at the bottom. A ball is fired on screen and using sucker-guns you can attract it and then fire it up the screen. To progress you have to score a set number of points before the time runs out or you get hit by the ball. It's addictive stuff but lacks depth and variety because there aren't many screens and they get tough too soon.

RELEASE BOX
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Out Now
Spectrum, £8.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now
Amiga, £19.99dk, Imminent
Ams, £9.99cs, £12.99dk, Imminent
C64/128, £9.99cs, £12.99dk, Imminent
IBM PC, £19.99dk, Imminent

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 50/100
1 hour: 50/100
1 day: 40/100
1 week: 30/100
1 month: 10/100
1 year: 10/100