Producer: Konami
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Andrew Glaister and S Ruecroft

There's been a jail break. The warden is tied to a stake in his own prison yard, and the inmates have taken over the town and are holding the citizens hostage. It almost makes you wish that you'd never joined the police force. Orders come down from above - free the warden at any cost. This gives you carte blanche to shoot just about everything - the kind of mission you really enjoy.

The prisoners are armed with guns and are lobbing tear gas grenades at anything official looking - like yourself.

Combatting the revolting prisoners isn't going to be easy, all you have, is a fast-repeating pistol - hardly a match for the horde of jail breakers. But releasing hostages (simply done by moving over them), adds new weapons, either a bazooka or a tear gas grenade launcher. They're shown on screen and can be swapped over by pressing SPACE. Additional weapons are lost each time a hostage is accidently shot, so it's back to the pistol again.

The screen scrolls from right to left, the policeman moving and firing in four directions. Most of the convicts come from the right hand side of the screen, although occasionally one may try and sneak up from behind.

The hostages are to be found strolling around town, blissfully unaware of the mayhem and carnage around them. But some sit in the road or in windows of houses, pathetically waving their hands, waiting to rescued.

Stage one is the town where the villains are on foot. Stage two moves to the city park where the escapees have hijacked trash vans and are intent on driving the heroic policeman into the dust. The final section takes place in the prison itself, where the warden awaits rescue - prisoners are particularly thick on the ground here.

The pistol is favourite for disposing of running convicts, and the bazooka comes into its own when clearing obstacles and prisoners who hide under manhole covers. Finally the tear gas launcher is handy for flushing out well dug-in convicts.

If additional weapons are lost through indiscriminate shooting, it may be necessary to wait for a hostage to come along for rescue before continuing the carnage.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q left, W right, I up, J down, O fire. SPACE select weapons
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: minimal
Graphics: dubious sprite collision and poor scrolling routines spoil otherwise pleasant graphics
Sound: sparse spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: scrolling play area

At last, the long-awaited first release under KONAMI'S own label has arrived. We eagerly loaded it up, and then [what a disappointment! Over the last hour I've squeezed-out every last ounce of playability that is to be had from Jail Break. Now I'd be extremely happy if I never had to see it again. The game is fairly well presented, and the sound is quite bearable (although effects are used minimally). But the game... I'm sorry KONAMI but I won't be awaiting your next release with quite as much enthusiasm.
BEN

Jail Break is an extremely hard game. It takes quite a while to get used to the collision system - the bullets seem to be able to go through your legs, but if they hit your hat you've had it. The scrolling is atrocious. The background moves jerkily and slowly, although the graphics are nice and detailed. The characters don't move about very smoothly and often get lost behind each other when two appear at once. Jail Break is quite good fun to play, and fairly addictive. However, it doesn't excel in any areas, and is not one of the best games with which to launch a new label.
PAUL

Wow, what a totally trashable box. Wow, what incredibly poor graphics. Wow, what a generally rubbish game this is. At least KONAMI have got the courage to actually take the blame for it; probably because no-one else would! The scenario is hardly original, and the game itself lacks any amount of playability, addictivity, and most of the other things that would usually convince someone that a game is worth buying. Boring, not very playable, and poor value for money. KONAMI have already started to lose their reputation.
MIKE

Konami
£7.95

Pee-oww! Pee-oww! Akka-akka-akka! Emergency! Jail break! The warden has been taken hostage! Along with half the town. Quick - give that PC a pistol. This no time for community policing!

If the arcade king was ever crowned, Konami would be a sure front-runner. It's no stranger to our Spectrum's, either, with conversions courtesy of Ocean and the rest, But now the company's got it together and started its own software label.

Jail Break's a test of frantic firepower as your sole cop strolls along the mean streets, picking off escapees and picking up hostages, for which he gets extra weapons.

But one shot wrong and your arsenal's slimmed back down to your shooter. The public doesn't take kindly to the accidental annihilation of cute little old ladies, the lily-livered crew. You'd think they'd never seen a Dirty Harry movie!

The extra armoury consists of a rocket gun, which is a pocket weapon - if you've got very large pockets! - and tear gas bombs. What with the criminals building barricades and taking hostages in buildings as well as on the streets, you'll need both of these to reach the warden.

This could provide a few hours of innocent, bloody amusement, but for the fact that the conversion isn't quite good enough - it lacks polish. For instance there's a character who sometimes appears from behind you at the start, who's almost impossible to avoid - and there are few things more annoying than the ISDS (Initial Sudden Death Syndrome).

There also appears to be some confusion in the collision detection. You may think you're going to slide by that savage brute, but the computer says not. If only your cop moved a little faster, you could get out of the way, but he doesn't appear to be in a hurry.

Konami has lots of great games to draw on, and is sure to get it right in the future, but this gets shot-down by the opposition.

Label: Konami
Author: In-house
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Jail Break is the first conversion of an arcade game attempted by coin-op kings Konami all by itself. Past form has always been to do the games via licences with the likes of Imagine.

With a few ifs and buts I'd say its first solo outing is a big success. Better, mostly, than the usual standard of the Imagine licenced deals.

You're a lone American cop with strange legs and a nifty peaked cap. And what with the hoards of criminals making a break for it from The State Pen you're kept pretty busy. Them and their hostages assorted men, women, children and wardens who it's best not to kill. (Occasionally, well pretty often actually, they are called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for an orderly society and you'll just have to kill them).

If instead of killing a hostage you manage to actually rescue one you are rewarded not only with a warm glow and plenty of bonus points but a handy too like a bazooka or a tear gas gun. The three types of weapons - standard pistol, bazookas and tear gas gun - are all necessary at different times to achieve different tasks.

The pistol will kill convicts and fires repeatedly quickly.

The bazooka will knock out almost everyhting including the barrels the convicst have placed to block your way.

And the tear gas gun deals with people for one reason or another immune to bullets like the skeleton in the first section.

Convicts come in two main types, those with guns and those with what may be either bricks or bottles (I'm not sure which). Guns must just be avoided carefully - these convicts run in approximately straight lines (thought the bullets seem to curve mysteriously). Brick-wielding baddies are much more tricky - they run straight for you in an act of mindless aggression. Don't try to reason with them.

I'd say the game was pitched at just about the right level of difficulty. The first couple of times you die immediately and yell 'fix!' Then you survive a minute and finally you start surviving for several minutes at a time.

Graphically the game looks good. Fair sized sprites for cop and convicts, goodish background detail, smooth movement (mostly).

Bad points? Well the screen scroll is very jerky and sometimes you bite the dust for reasons that do not seem entirely fair - just passing within feet of a convict sometimes kills you and generally there is something peculiar about the perspectives.

Jail Break is a good start for Konami. A better than average conversion that tops the mindless violence league for the year so far.

MACHINES: Spectrum/CBM 64
SUPPLIER: Konami
PRICE: £7.95 (Spectrum)/£8.95 (CBM)
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum/CBM 64

It's a breakout. Everybody is trying to bust out of the computer room - trying to get away from Jailbreak.

Konami's conversion of Nemisis - one of C+VG's Games of the Month in March - was wonderfu. Jailbreak, on the other hand, is a complete and utter no, no.

The story is simple. The bad guys have broken out of jail, taking the warden prisoner. Guiding your little copper, armed with a pistol, you must shoot the convicts, rescue the warden and free other hostages. Just for the record, you can also pick up extra weapons, namely a rocket gun and tear gas bombs.

With the rocket gun, you can blast barriers and cars and the tear gas comes in handy for escaped prisoners hiding in buildings. With Jailbreak I didn't need tear gas to bring tears to my eyes.

A rising scale of points are awarded for freeing the hostages, 500 for a man, 1,000 for a woman - that smacks of inequality, surely - 2,000 for a child, right up to 50,000 for the warden.

But the graphics are awful and the gameplay is boring. Even the game's packaging has been designed to annoy - a naff cardboard box which quickly falls to bits. Yuk!

Konami may well be the King of the Coin-Ops but they'll have to do better than Jailbreak to establish any sort credibility on computer.

When you think of the wealth of games Konami has. It's really surprising that they came up with this for a first outing on their own for the micro. If the lure of the name Konami is too much, then buy Nemesis.