Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £7.95

As you attempt to circum-navigate a planet, your space ship comes under the influence of a strange set of changeable physical laws. Your craft moves left, right, up and down, but control is imprecise and variable. With this limitation, you fly through a corridor of flora, surface outcrops and planetary inhabitants.

The characters P, A and X lie on the planet's surface and are collected when flown over. A Latin word is then formed, completing your mission when presented to the hand of the Kinemator in the final screen. Should the word be spelled incorrectly the game continues, if the letters are not collected your mission is doomed. Thirty-three points are awarded for every one of the 44 screens moved to on the right, and 33 lost for every screen entered to the left.

Power is limited and continually diminishing, with energy drain increasing when walls or planetary inhabitants are touched. One of three ships is lost when power falls to zero, but another is gained on reaching 1,000 points. Flying through water replenishes power, whilst full power and 500 points are generated by picking up a bonus symbol.

Navigational and defence systems are available as follows - Safety Shields protect the ship from lethal objects and energy-sapping inhabitants; a Powder Sprayer frightens the aliens and destroys walls, an Anti-Gravity mechanism counteracts gravity; whilst the Anti-Physics device nullifies gravity, bounce, friction, gravitational and repulsive objects and saves some energy; a once off teleporter moves between screens - but not all screens can be teleported to.

Instruments are acquired and stored in an activated instrument box, with a maximum of three instruments carried simultaneously. Collecting an instrument in an already utilised box loses the previously acquired device. The Safety Shield offers no protection from an occasionally appearing cube, any contact with this causes the loss of one collected device.

COMMENTS

Control keys: A up, Z down, 9 left, 0 right, Q-P select instrument box, X - SYMBOL SHIFT action,
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: extraordinarily bright, and many used
Graphics: smallish, but detailed, though nasties lack in variety
Sound: above average
Skill levels: one

The standard of production at FIREBIRD has increased considerably over the first few months of this year. It takes quite a while to get used to the weird control and the massive amount of magnetism on some screens - but it's certainly worth the persistence. There are some great little baddies - every one of them quickly and smoothly animated, although they did seem to reappear quite of ten. The full price was a bit of a shock, but then again so was the game!
PAUL

Kinetik seemed boring and unexciting at first, but after a while it began to grow on me. The gravitational effect is absolutely brilliant, just crossing a screen is a fight between player and computer! The graphics are very smooth and well animated, with the only problem being that the same nasties appear on most of the screens. FIREBIRD have really made a good job of this game, but maybe it is a little overpriced?
GARETH.

I wasn't very pleased with Kinetik. It didn't really appeal to me at first, and I didn't find much fun in it later either. The graphics are colourful, but too small and undetailed for my liking. Rather than finding that the movement effect added to the playability, I found them annoying on some of the screens. Having said that, I think that a lot of people will find it worthwhile, especially as it's one of FIREBIRD's cheaper games.
MIKE

Firebird
£7.95

There have been a lot of bouncy ball games recently, and I reckon this ranks with the best of 'em! You play a spaceship that's shaped very much like a demented ping pong ball with a window plonked on it. You're supposed to control this by bouncing it around the scenery, but it seemed to have a mind of its own to me.

The object of this weird and wonderful game is to find three setters, A, X and P, that have to be picked up in the right order to make a Latin word (though I doubt the word's AXP). Then you have to take this to the Kinemator! (Eek! Scary muzak) if the letters aren't in the right order the mission, the game and your life are over.

You have three lives to play with, and each one consists of energy bars (kinetic energy, geddit?) that reduce every time you hit a nasty. However, you're not stuck out there defenceless. No chance John. Your help comes in the form of a powder sprayer that shoots nasties and walls, a safety shield that stops you getting zapped, little gadgetmewotzits that turn gravity or anything else to do with physics (such as friction and bounce) off, and a teleporter that can send you to any screen, as long as you have the right code to get there. All is not pLain sailing though, 'cos' there are loads of nasties just waiting to get you. Most, though looking fairly terrifying, do nothing other than deflect or bar you from any object. They also drain your energy slightly, though you can always fill up again at the local lake. Some, however strip you of an item when they touch you, which becomes a bit of a pain after a while.

The buildings and the shrubbery are okay to touch, but if they go red, stay away, or it's instant death. Red cave walls are the exception - they're all right. There are also white circles fixed in the middle of the screen. Don't be fooled, these are really magnetic and will drag you back towards them.

All in all it's a great game. The animation's smooth and there's little or no colour clash. Firebird is definitely onto a winner here. I've only got one thing to say to anyone who disagrees - spherical objects!

Label: Firebird
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

OK, so you can guess from the title that this is a bouncy sort of game.

Maybe you feel you've bounced your way through one too many games recently.

I'd sympathise but Kinetic is better than you'd think.

Roughly, it's a combination of collecting and dodging in the traditional way except that 'you' are a ball type thing that spins around and generally bounces in an uncontrolled sort of way. Quite apart from the many squelching, wobbling and spinning amorphous blobs that comprise the bad guys in this game there is a problem - just that of getting your ball to go in the direction you want it to.

Not only does it bounce oddly but the game features various areas where gravity is reversed or otherwise twisted. Early on for example you come to a screen which looks faintly like a pinball table and you find the gravitational field which centres around two points in the middle of the screen is so strong you go around and around, just desperately trying to get off the damn screen...

The object of Kinetic is to pilot your spaceship (bounce your ball with sticky-out bits) across the myriad screens collecting three giant letters P,X and A which have to be formed into a latin word and presented to the Kinemator. (This is what we in the trade know as a 'make it up as you go along' plot). Really, what it's all about is collecting objects like shields and weapons.

The backgrounds look good but then don't scroll. It just flips between screens (although very neatly). They ought to scroll. In any event you'd be pretty hard pressed to find any colour clash whatsoever.

Where objects are animated it's done well - 1 particularly like the amoeba which looks like a man trapped in a pillow case. Inevitably there are transporters which will whizz you to later screens (more than forty in all) provided you know the code number... or can work it out.

Kinetic is, to be cynical, a repackaging of several ideas, bouncing games, maze games and collecting games.

But despite that I kept playing. The gameplay is right and the degree of difficulty has been well judged so that you can achieve just enough, early enough, to make you want to continue.