Up the Albion!

Producer: Gremlin Graphics
Out of Pocket: £7.99 cass, £12.99 disk
Author: Sentient Software

About 1500 years ago, according to those dubious historians at Gremlin, the British Isles were called Albion and its people divided amongst themselves. Setting out to unite the people and make a single nation was a Welsh hero called Kinnock - no, sorry, King Arthur, no, darnit, actually it's Artura. Now rather than commission some seriously flash TV ads, Artura aims to do this by recovering some stolen treasure.

Ignoring Gallup and MORI, Artura starts his quest by seeking advice from his old friend Merdyn the Mage. Unfortunately Merdyn's vanished and Margaret, I mean Morgause, has kidnapped Merdyn's apprentice. To rescue him and recover the treasure Artura sets out for Morgause's Dun (?). Before he can arrive, however, Morgause contacts Ye Olde Flea Street and hordes of vile creatures rush to defend her. Armed only with a sword Artura must defeat these insects, birds and ugly looking guards while preserving his energy.

If you think politics is boring be warned, this game makes it all seem very thrilling. Graphics are small and dull. Sound has gone on holiday with playability sharing the same hotel room. Another simplistic 'collect-and-kill-all' game.

MARK [36%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: detailed but mostly yellow monochrome
Sound: buzzy title tune but virtually no effects during play

At first sight, Artura looks promising with some well-animated characters. Unfortunately actual gameplay is repetitive, with little variety in rooms or action. Fighting off soldier after soldier soon becomes irritating while energy falls at an alarming rate. Even more perturbing is the way the hero can get stuck in certain parts of the landscape, with escape an impossibility. This annoyance epitomises the general lack of any playability - even mapping fans should leave this well alone.
PHIL [42%]

Gremlin
£7.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Some companies, I have always thought, put out too many games. How can you keep up the quality when all your doing is cranking them out at about 10 a minute? CRL used to do it, when it was tied up with Electronic Arts. Crap game followed crap game, so when a brilliant little number like Sophistry came along, no-one took the blindest bit of notice.

Now it looks as though Gremlin may be falling into the same trap. I've played too many of its games in the past year which haven't seemed quite as good as they could be, and that's a pity because the company's record is second to none. But after Hercules, Alternative World Games and the Gary Lineker titles, here's another one.

The scenario, though, is promising. Yup, were back in the Dark Ages again, with Artura, son of Pendragon. Albion (or Blighty to you and me) is under threat by invaders galore, so it's up to Artura to unite he country's petty kingdoms to fight them off. Anybody else would do this by going around all the petty kings and having a good chinwag with them, but this is of course the Dark Ages (as well as a computer game) so instead he needs to find the Sacred Treasures of Albion, that were "hidden when the eagles came", it says here. Eh? The only person who knows the whereabouts of these trinkets is a geezer called Merdyn, and he's vamoosed. But you do know that Artura's evil half-sister Morgause has kidnapped Nimue, Merdyn's apprentice. (Are you getting all this? It's more complicated than East Enders for gawd's sake.)

Sounds fun, doesn't it? It turns out, though, that all you have to do is rescue Nimue from Morgause's castle, which is a network of horizontal screens in the Joe Blade/Karnov mould. So, you walk around shooting the guards (they each need four 'axes', which you throw) and the bats or birds (hard to make out which they are, at least they only need one axe each).

Occasionally you find a rune, which when connected up to a few other runes gives you greater magical power. The whole network needs mapping, which is why the game is described as an arcade/adventure on the inlay, but there's no puzzle solving here or much to do at all except shooting things. It's been well programmed, certainly, and the action is swift enough. But it's all so unoriginal, and when you think of some of those brilliant old Gremlin games - true arcade/adventures like Future Knight, Jack The Nippers I and II, Things Bounces Back, the Monty games and all the rest - you wonder what's going on. Artura's quite fun for an hour or so, but at eight quid I'm afraid that's just not enough.

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

He might be Artura to Gremlin, but to you, me and the milkman, he'll always be King Arthur. Likewise, you might have difficulty in recognising characters like Merdyn and Morgause, and places like Camelod - try Merlin, Morgana and Camelot and you might be on firmer ground. Yes, this is just another of those fifth-century sword-and-sorcery arcade adventures which have been thick on the ground since Tir Na Nog, plundering Celtic mythology for a bit of historical background. The plot, though, sounds as if it's even older than fifth-century; rescue the captured sorceress Nimue by travelling through the mystic kingdom of Albinn using the Wheel of Cerriddwen, fighting off the servants of Morgause and seeking out the Rune Stones to restore your magical powers... ho hum.

It doesn't look altogether bad; all the characters are costumed in a suitably barbaric way, and the backgrounds include details such as stone columns, piles of severed heads (so untidy, those ancient Britons), bushes, skeletons, causeways, stone walls and pitfalls.

The baddies include top-knotted warriors who stride about quite convincingly, while Artura himself can walk, jump and duck, all the time flinging an endless series of battleaxes at the warriors, ravens, rats and other baddies. He tends to disappear into the background every time he walks in front of anything yellow, which is a pity since most of the walls are yellow.

So, you mosey along, snuffing the baddies and looking out for runes. These are found lying around (as priceless mystic runes always seem to be in this sort of game), and on picking them up, they appear in your inventory box. This is just below the obligatory energy bar which displays your falling vigour.

On reaching a doorway you can move forwards or backwards into it, to flip to another screen. Mapping doesn't seem too complicated, but you have to find all the runes on one level before you can use the Wheel to teleport to the next. Since some of the runes lie behind forests of spikes, or, in one case at least, a pitfall into what seems like an inescapable rat-infested dungeon (a bit like EMAP towers.) However, if you face doom, all is not necessarily lost. The runes you collect on your travels are all in halves, and if you can combine two halves of the same colour, you get - what? Yes, a whole rune. To do this you press R to go into "rune mode", which allows you to shuffle the halves around using a pointer. The different runes have different magical powers, some of which may help you out of a sticky spot. Or not.

The music's OK, the spot effects are OK, and there are some clever graphical touches such as the way you turn into a bird and flap away when you get snuffed. Unfortunately, nothing in Artura hasn't been done better before - notably in Gargoyle's series Dun Darach, Tir Na a Nog, and the sci-fi followup Marsport. Not a compulsory purchase.

Gremlin travel through time.

Travel back to the fifth century in this magical quest to collect a series of mystical rune stones that allow you to liberate Nimue, apprentice to the vanished Merdyn who alone knows where the sacred treasure of Albion are hidden, which you need to...

And so it goes on, disguising the fact that this is really just a Black-Lamp type arcade adventure. You need to explore (and map) a series of rooms and levels searching for the runes, at the same time avoiding the deathtraps and the nasty creatures. Your vitality is reduced by hits, but can be restored if you know where to look for the appropriate symbols.

Artura is not terribly difficult, and the determined player will complete it all too soon.

Reviewer: Bob Wade

RELEASE BOX
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Imminent
Spec, £7.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now
C64/128, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
Ams, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
Amiga, £t.b.a., Pre-Xmas
IBM PC, £t.b.a., 1989

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 60/100
1 hour: 70/100
1 day: 60/100
1 week: 30/100
1 month: 10/100
1 year: 0/100

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.99, Diskette: £12.99
Atari ST £19.99

COME ON THE ALBION

In 5AD, the supposed age of chivalry, the great land of Albion ran with blood drawn by honed iron and was lit by the eerie light of magic. Wars raged between the kingdoms, leaving the country prey to invading forces. Something must be done.

Using his influence as a son of the Pendragon family, Artura intends to unite Albion to fight potential invaders. The petty kingdoms don't listen to simple reason, the only way to gain cooperation is to appeal to a baser instinct; greed.

The fabulously valuable Treasures of Albion were hidden at the time of the Eagles' invasion and, if found, would be more than enough incentive for the chieftains to accept a High King.

Unfortunately, only Merdyn the Mage knows the treasure's location and he's disappeared. Artura's only chance is to find Nimue, Merdyn's apprentice, who he knows to have been kidnapped by the evil Morgause.

Once Nimue has been found, the only way back is to use runes found whilst on your rescue mission.

Artura takes the form of a flick-screen arcade adventure. The main character, Artura, is steered left and right, across platforms and up and down stairs. Doors and archways represent paths at 90 degrees to the current plane and when entered, shift the viewpoint to retain a profile.

The game begins with Artura already at Morgause's fortress, guarded by soldiers and some unusual mutant half-man, half-rate creatures. Giant spiders, rats and owls are semi-natural defenders of the realm. Artura has a limitless supply of axes with which to slaughter.

RUNE FOR IMPROVEMENT

A status panel displays his diminishing lifeforce, replenished by collecting food and Runes. These stone tablets are found in fragments and have to be assembled in Rune mode to generate magical power.

This type of arcade adventure has been around for a very long time so it is surprising that Gremlin have bothered with such a game. The sword and sorcery scenario, complete with damsel to rescue and magic items to find, is as tired as the game design.

Wandering around mildly varying corridors throwing axes at enemies is uninspiring, even discovering a new piece of Runestone promotes little enthusiasm.

Mapping is essential (a compass display would have been useful), though quite how much of the maze you will want to discover remains to be seen. Artura is much too simple and out-dated for today's market.