Producer: Hewson
Retail Price: £8.95
Author: John Phillips

Ball games were very popular during 1986. Hewson kickoff the New Year with a game of this type, written by a newcomer to the Spectrum programming scene. This latest spherical scenario Impossaball, features a ball travelling through a 3D scrolling environment.

This particular bouncing ball has to be negotiated down eight corridors, which become progressively more cluttered with obstacles. Cylinders protrude from the floor and ceiling and must be knocked level with the surface by bouncing onto them. The game is played against the clock, and the status area keeps track of the number of cylinders remaining, the amount of time left to complete the current level and the score so far.

Left to its own devices, the ball bounces up and down on the spot - pressing fire increases the height of the bounce up through the four levels available, while releasing fire allows the bouncing to subside. A shadow under the ball helps you judge its position in the corridor and the height of the bounce when manoeuvring. Bouncing the ball into stationary objects causes it to rebound - unless you choose a deadly artefact, in which case one of the four lives available is lost and the ball returns to the start of the current corridor. After an untimely death, cylinders that have been dealt with don't have to be tackled again - play resumes with the objects in the corridor remaining as they were when your ball burst.

Life as a cylinder-bashing ball is complicated by deadly spikes and murderous plasma fields. Spikes tend to live on the top of poles - bouncing into a pole has no harmful side-effects, but the spiky orbs themselves are definitely dangerous. Plasma fields can be stationary or may move around, following preset patrol patterns. Fire bolts appear after the first level, leaping into the air at regular intervals from either the celling or the floor.

On the plus side, magic rings appear on the floor and ceiling. Bouncing into one while it is flashing earns some extra time on the current corridor, but once the magic power has been extracted the ring joins the spikes and plasma, becoming deadly to the touch.

Points are scored for cylinders that have been destroyed and for travelling down the length of a corridor: an extra life is awarded for every 5,000 points collected. When all the cylinders on a level have been destroyed it is possible to cross the finish line - you then automatically flip up to the next level where the going gets even tougher. It looks like 1987 is going to be a busy year for spherical heroes...

COMMENTS

Control keys: Left/Right-handed options - Q/O left, W/P right, P/Q 'into' screen, L/S 'out of' screen, X/M fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: effective
Graphics: smooth scrolling and animation; neat inertia effect after collisions
Sound: good title tune and tidy effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: eight scrolling levels

'Oh no!' I hear you cry 'Not another bouncy ball game'. Don't fret - this is different, it really does appeal to me - there isn't a scenario, but who cares? This is compelling enough without any plot. Graphically, Impossaball is very original. The playing area is superbly drawn, the scrolling is excellent and there is no colour clash. The sound is also very good, with a multitude of effects - and the tune on the title screen is worth listening to (which is more than can be said for most title tunes). Another ace from Hewson.
BEN

Hewson have always come up with original and good games (with the exception of City Slicker) - Impossaball is the icing on the cake. Graphically, I would say that this is one of their most inviting products. The colour is cleverly used and avoids attribute problems. Unfortunately the sound is limited, but it serves its purpose. Impossaball is very easy to get into, and extremely playable. As with most Hewson games, it is very addictive and good fun to play. Hewson have done it again. You'll be playing this one for months.
PAUL

I must confess that this one didn't really grab me, but the smooth, interesting graphics convinced me that it was worth playing a little bit. Indeed it was! Despite the slight boredom of the first few games, Impossaball really kept me at it for a long while. There is more to this than simple arcade reactions (though these are a major part of the gameplay), a bit of brain-power is also called for. The combination of these two elements makes the game highly addictive and well worth getting. Recommended.
MIKE

Hewson
£8.95

Bouncy, bouncy! There's an awful lot of globoids boinging about at the moment, but none quite like this elastic little spherule from Hewson. Springing your ball through a course of classical terraces, you manoeuvre it around hazards both mobile and stationary to jump on small cylinders and batter them into the ground. Honest. You even get points for it all. But don't recoil, 'cos it's totally addictive.

There are eight levels in the course, which may not sound a lot, but each has its own special hazards to drive you barmy with frustration. The screen scrolls from left to right (and v. smoothly too. I may say), and you score points for each cylinder you bop on the bonce, as well as the amount of the course you cover. Cylinders tend to lie within puzzles of thought-provoking complexity, the sort of teasers you always get wrong the first time you try them.

The nasties don't vary a lot and they have much the same effect. The spikes are stationary but you'll have to be on the ball to avoid the patrolling plasma fields and two bolts. Magic rings complicate matters a little - the first time you hit them you'll gain extra time, but try it again and kerboom! Naturally, these feckless flashers crop up in all the most awkward places.

It all sounds very simple, and, like most of the best games, it is. Behind it all, of course, is some very slick and sophisticated programming, especially in the convincing 3D display. Impossaball will stretch the bounds of your imagination. You'd have to be a complete bounder not to enjoy it.

RICH PELLEY and JON PILLAR - as nice of couple of young chaps as you could ever hope to meet. So we locked them up in the...

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Players
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

Boasting such delights on the cassette inlay as "Inertial Control", "True perspective", "Auto Joystick Detection". "Screenshots may be from another version" and "£2.99", it'll come as little surprise when I tell you that this one is a bit of a corker.

Balls - that what it's all about. You have to bounce along The Corridor of Doom squashing cylinders, in fact. The Corridor of Doom consists of a 3D ceiling and a floor (see screenshot) which (by pressing Fire) you can bounce left and right along, as well as 'into' and 'out of'. By using the squares on the floor and ceilign (see screenshot again) to help, you can hopefully land on one of those cylinder things hence squashing it (squash them all to beat the game), without impaling youself on one of the those nasty-looking spiky things (see screenshot again) into the bargain. And that's it. Sounds crap, but it isn't. It's brilliant - the graphics look fab, it's easy to get into, it ain't too hard, it's compulsively addictive and pretty hard to fault. In fact, it's impossible (ho).

Label: Hewson
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: John Gilbert

Impossaball, aside from being a terrible name for anything, is the unfortunate title bestowed upon the latest game from Hewson.

Apparently, the program's author wished the game to be called Atomsphere (an infinitely superior name) but it was not to be. Like so many astonishingly enjoyable things in life, Impossaball is really simple. The aim of the game is to guide the ball you control through eight levels of absurdly difficult obstacles before, before what? Well, I haven't a clue. The first level is tough enough to keep anyone busy for a good few hours, and as for the eighth - I shudder to think!

Each level, aside from the different layout of obstacles, has the same aim. You must race from one end of the course to the other before the time runs out. Obviously, things would be just too simple left at that. Dotted along the floor and ceiling of the corridor down which you are travelling are cylinders. Each cylinder must be depressed - by landing on it - before you can move to the next level.

The graphics are simple but extremely effective. The screen is presented side-on in real 3D. A chessboard pattern covers the ceiling and floor, adding to this illusion but the best effect is you can move into the screen by pushing the stick forward, and out by doing the opposite - and the ball swells and shrinks accordingly.

Once you have moved past the start (which looks like two ladders in fact) the time will begin to tick away, and you'd better get your butt in gear (man).

Accelerating by pushing the stick to the right, the ball skitters along the ground at satisfying speed. Obstacles can be jumped by hitting the Fire button. The longer you depress the button, the higher you will jump. It's all great fun - and very frustrating at times.

Some of the more unpleasant items you will encounter are the spikes. Invariably surrounding a couple of cylinders, these critters simply sit there, waiting for you to hurt yourself on to them. Sounds like a very unlikely thing to happen? Wait till you play the game. Also joining the ranks of the undesirables are plasma fields. These little blighters wibble about all over the place, getting into all sorts of unhelpful positions and being a general nuisance.

Magic rings are very temperamental beasts too. One minute they are happily giving you extra time whenever you land upon them. The next and - whammee! They kill you without so much as a by your leave.

You can alter the direction of your ball in mid-air, but you will need to have a fair degree of deftness with your stick in order to make use of this feature.

Gameplay is fast and furious. The graphics are simple but you really get the impression of movement as the squares on the floor zoom past. The bouncing of the ball, too. is very convincing.

Impossaball is a very good game. It's so frustrating, but equally addictive. Something similar has been attempted before in other guises, but Hewson has made the best attempt yet.

Label: Players
Price: £2.99 48/128K
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Yes yes yes! This is a STONKER! If you didn't get Impossaball when it first appeared at full price on the Hewson label, get it now or you're a nebbish.

Set in a strange 3-D world, Impossaball requires you to steer a spheroid through eight dangerous landscapes full of floating energy fields, fire bolts, deadly spikes and telescoping cylinders. The cylinders are your target; jump on each one on each level to complete the game. Of course, there's a time limit for each level so don't put your balls down for too long. (Oo-er)

The control method involves steering the ball in and out of the screen and to the right, and pressing Fire to build up "bounce". If you miss a cylinder the landscape scrolls around to let you have another go at it. Hitting a magic ring gains you a life, but hitting another one loses you a life, so watch it.

Excellent realistic dynamics, unusual gameplay and smooth variable-speed scrolling make Impossaball an unmissable budget goodie. Bounce down to the shops at once.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Hewson
PRICE: £7.95

Bouncing ball games seem to be all the rage right now. Quite how they've crept up on us all I don't know - but not to be left out Hewson have come up with Impossaball to join the ranks of Trailblazer, Marble Madness and the like.

It's from a programmer new to the growing Hewson stable, John Phillips. It's original, it's fast, and its a whole lot of fun.

The basic idea -like all good ideas - is pretty simple. You control a bouncing ball in a chequered corridor.

You have to knock out cylinders projecting from the floor and the roof of the corridor within a given time limit.

The cylinders are protected by nasty spikey things which are deadly to your ball plus other equally deadly moving thingies which hinder your ball on its mission to boldly bounce where no ball has bounced before.

You can flatten a cylinder - which often come in groups hidden behind each other - by jumping your ball on it.

These nasties come in several shapes and forms. Some static some moving.

Spikes: These are stationary and consist of a spike on top of a column. The column is safe to touch, but touching the spikes causes instant death.

Plasma Fields: These can be either stationary or moving and will destroy the ball if touched.

Fire Bolts: These appear first on the second corridor and will leap into the air at predictable intervals and again are deadly.

Magic Rings: These appear either on the floor or ceiling. When they are flashing they will give you some extra time if touched. However, they will then stop flashing and become deadly.

At the beginning of each corridor is a start line. The game will not start until you cross this line so you have an opportunity to practice controlling the ball.

Once a level has been finished you then progress to the next level. If the ball is destroyed by contact with a deadly object then you will return to the start of the current level, but any cylinders which were flattened will remain flattened. The game will end if you don't complete a level within the time allowed.

The corridor is depicted as a side-on view in true-pespective 3D. The ball can be moved left or right and in or out of the screen and as it has built in inertia, it will slow down before stopping or changing direction,.

If the ball hits a stationary object it will bounce back. However, the front and back walls of the corridor will absorb the force of the ball.

You start the game with four lives, an extra life is awarded for every 5000 points scored.

All that and the little bouncing chap is followed around by a neat shadow that changes perspective as you move.

John has even built in a special keyboard option for left handed players - how thoughtful. Now Paul will actually be able to beat me at something...

Impossaball is totally addictive and very playable. A great debut game from Mr Phillips.

IT'S Impossaball! A NEW DIMENSION ADDED TO THE BOUNCING BALL PUZZLE GAME BY HEWSON.

Hewson
£8.95

Like all the best games Hewson's Impossaball is simple to play but hard to master. It's one of those games that sort of sneaks up on you after a couple of attempts - you may not get very far at first, but as you come up against each new obstacle you can almost see how to get through, so you go back to the start for one more try and before you know it you're hooked.

The basic idea behind the game is very simple but it's been excellently implemented by programmer John Phillips. You control the movements of a bouncing ball over a scrolling three dimensional obstacle in an attempt to complete the course within a time limit, and at the same time as avoiding the deadly obstacles you also have to 'squash' a series of cylinders that are scattered over the course and which are, of course, surrounded by some of the more deadly traps and barriers.

There are eight courses in the game, each harder than the last, though even the first of these isn't exactly a push-over. At the start of each game the ball is just behind the starting line for each course and, since the timer doesn't start until you've crossed the line this means that you're given an opportunity to bounce the ball around a bit and get the hang of controlling its movements before you start the game properly - a nice idea, and one which allows you to get started quickly (unlike a lot of games recently, Impossaball doesn't force you to read a 50 page manual before you can get started).

As you cross the starting line you move from right to left across the screen and the chequered landscape of the course scrolls smoothly along to reveal each new set of obstacles.

POLES APART

On the first course this consists of spike-topped poles which jut up from the ground or hang from the celling, and plasma bolts (which look like animated Ringos). The cylinders that have to be 'squashed' are column-like structures projecting from the floor and ceiling, and "squashing' them simply involves bouncing onto them from above or below, forcing them to retract into the surface. On later courses though, there are all sorts of deadly traps (most of which are moving and require expert judgment and planning to get through).

Surprisingly for a game where you're controlling a moving object and racing against the clock, Impossaball doesn't require dazzling arcade-trained reflexes. Despite the time limit there are places where you're better off taking things slowly and thinking your way through an obstacle rather than just barging through as fast as you can. But when the clock's ticking away and you need to hurtle down the home straight to the finishing line, control of the ball is very simple, and the way in which the pace of the game can vary makes it that much more addictive.

One of the really nice features of the game is that it presents you with each course and then just lets you get on with it. There isn't a single, fixed method of solving each obstacle and there's enough flexibility in the game to allow each player to develop his or her own style of playing. The only suggestion I can make that might improve the playability of the game is that after you've completed a course it might have been a good idea to give you a password that allows you to enter the next level whenever you want. As it is, you've got to go through all the course in a fixed order and even when you've got the first level sorted out you've still got to go through it each time in order to get onto the later ones.

FLICKER FREE

The graphics and animation are about as good as I've seen on the Spectrum. All the objects are large and finely drawn, yet the animation is perfectly smooth. There's not the slightest flicker despite the fact that the whole screen display has to swing backwards and forwards very quickly in order to create the impression of bouncing movement. The chequered pattern on the landscape helps with the 3D perspective and also helps when it comes to judging distances and heights of jumps past obstacles, and, as the ball bounces along its shadow follows along, shrinking or growing as the height of the jumps varies.

There have been similar games released recently (Revolution and Action Reflex), but Impossaball beats them all in terms of graphics and playability, and it makes a nice change from shoot 'em ups too.