Producer: Infogrames
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Richard Bottet

Lee Enfield, master of time travel and troubleshooter extraordinaire, has been called to the 22nd Century to rescue his old friend Bill. With no support other than his sophisticated laser rifle he attempts to blast the forces sent by the formidable Yellow Shadow.

The battle takes place among the complex structures of the planet's stark, grey surface, as displayed from Lee's viewpoint. Camouflaged against futuristic walkways, panels and girders the enemy, comprising robot soldiers, galactic monsters, individually train their weapons upon the heroic troubleshooter.

Lee's sophisticated laser rifle is sensitive to the enemy's location and indicates, by an arrow at the bottom of the screen, the direction in which he needs to train his sights. It gives off a ringing signal which becomes extremely high pitched when an opponent is ready to shoot. Should Lee fail to locate and kill the sniper before he fires, one of his six lives is lost. However, a short-lived magnetic shield can be employed for extra protection.

To complete each round, Lee must destroy the magnetic meteor globe, a bouncing sphere which throws his laser rifle's sights askew. Once this mesmerising enemy has been defeated, a lift arrives to transport him up to the next level.

Three grades of difficulty permit Lee to progress from novice to space ace at his own pace. His score, which can win him extra lives, is displayed at the base of the screen.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: very hard to distinguish the baddies from the backgrounds
Sound: simplistic spot effects
Options: three levels of difficulty

Lee Enfield, celebrated space ace turns out to be a fairly ordinary warrior with a souped-up machine gun. Grpahically, the 22nd century is out of focus: a shapeless blurr of monochrome pixels, in which the sprites are splodgy and difficult to distinguish. Gameplay lacks depth and compulsion, and none of the action bears any relation to the real object of mission - the rescue of Bill. Those snipers which are distinguishable as humans die so slowly you can't be sure. Considering the quality of some budget games, it's ridiculous to demand such an exorbitantly high price for a game as bland and dull as this.
KATI

What a weird title! Lee Enfield is 'Space Ace' is identical in gameplay to the now-aging Prohibition, also by Infogrames (quelle surprise!). The background that you play on is very detailed as are the aliens that you have to shoot. When you mix the two together, though, the result is rather messy. Soundwise, there's just the basic beep of the counter and a realistic machine gun noise when you shoot. Infogrames seem to be very good at producing games with good graphics but absolutely appalling gameplay. Shooting the odd alien before it shoots you isn't exactly great fun and soon grows boring. Lee Enfield is 'Space Ace' would be more suited to a budget label: £7.95 definitely isn't value for money.
NICK

What's this then? Prohibition with corrupted graphics? Sure looks like it, nothing else has changed - or improved. How anyone can ask people to pay £7.95 for such a blatant copy of the original is beyond me - and an inferior follow-up at that. There are hundreds of words that come near describing Lee Enfield is 'Space Ace' - insipid, monotonous, tedious - but few can actually capture the boredom created by this uneventful game. All there is to it is a few monochrome graphics, and due to their design even these turn into a background looking more like washing-up powder than a computer game. Infogrames succeeded with their previous release Sidewalk, but this comes nowhere near the mark.
PAUL

Infogrames
£7.95
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

Enfield? 'Ere., isn't he one off that Friday Night Live programme? Well no, actually. He's a hero of the "New Age", whatever that may be, and also has the starring role in the latest game from across La Manche Space Ace.

What we're not told is how big his muscles are, or whether he wears a headband, so well have to assume that Lee's as beefy as these types usually are. Anyway, he'd have to be, 'cos he set out on a mission to rescue his old friend Bill from the clutches of some 22nd century nutter.

If I said "Prohibition" to you, you'd either look at me very strangely or you'd know exactly what was coming next. Yup, never one to waste a good(?) idea, Infogrames has resurrected that old number from its backcatalogue, moved it forward a couple of centuries and replaced the scenery with something a little more appropriate.

The hoodlums have now been exchanged for a range of astronautical types, some curious obese reptilian creatures (no offence, Phil), and some decidedly odd parrot-like things. All of these have to be ripped apart by your 22nd century machine gun, within a certain time limit. Screw up and you'll lose one of your six shields.

Unfortunately, this is all very reminiscent of one of those dreadful listings that used to appear in ZX81 mags. Whether you actually hit anything or not, is largely dependent on whether the scrolling area over which your sights roam, can scroll fast enough to find the target before your time runs out.

On easy levels this is no problem, and on my first go I got through all three stages, shooting the "magnetic meteor globe" between each one, without losing a life. At least, I think there are only three - after that everything stopped and the game certainly seemed to be over.

As usual, its the old story - nicely drawn graphics can never hide a complete lack of depth in a game, and after a couple of goes Space Ace will probably join the dirty underpants and scrunched up back issues of YS in the void under your bed.

If I were you I wouldn't touch it with a baguette.

Label: Infogrames
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

If I were Ben Elton, I could do an extremely involved review, building up to the climax, being thoroughly witty and closely observed, generally leaving the reader in a state of admiration, and rounding off with a terse little comment which would leave the reader thinking, "she's absolutely right."

But I'm not Ben Elton, so I'm just going to have to give you the low-down, brass tacks on Lee Enfield, Space Ace, from Infogrames.

Lee Enfield (don't ask me who his is, I've no idea), is presumably the guy behind the gun sight which features on the screen. His task (again, I presume) is to demolish anything of a slightly alien bent which happens to come across his path. He does this thing in smart, highly-detailed monochrome, and looks tremendously impressive whilst he's doing it. Well you can see that, just out the graphics on this page.

So if the world were a fair place (which, as Ben is constantly reminding us, it is not), Lee Enfield, which looks absolutely fabby, should the most entertaining game in the world. Sad to say it's not. That's not to say it's a bad game, it's fairly entertaining in a 'target practice' sort of way. What happens is this.

Lee Enfield, the man, is presumably behind the gun sight which appears and roves around the screen. The small arrow which you can see at the bottom of the screen will change direction from time to time, to tell you where the next enemy is about to spring from. Keep a close eye on the arrow and you can't go far wrong. Only problem is, the gun sight seems to keep wandering off, and I was never quite sure if the game was just playing itself for a bit of a larf.

Aliens pop up thick and fast, and can range from little ships which just hang around, to what seems to be a yak-like sort of creature which dies in a truly spectacular flop.

If you just want to bone up a little on your aim, then Lee Enfield, Space Ace is probably a good bet. It's certainly fast and slick, and offers you a bewildering variety of aliens to splurge. However, if you require a tad more variety in your games, then you're going to be disappointed, because you won't find it here. Either way you'll love the graphics, which really are some of the nicest that I've ever seen on a Spectrum. If only Infogrames could just pep up the gameplay content and variety slightly more, then they'd really become a force to reckon with within the software world.

MACHINES: Spectrum/C64-128
SUPPLIER: Infogrames
PRICE: £7.95
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum

Well, when you've had a hit game, why not try the same old formula again and see if anyone notices. After all, you won't be the first - and probably won't be the last - to try this tactic to put one over on the punters.

Cynical, moi? You bet buster! But you can't tell me that Lee Enfield, Space Ace doesn't have more than a passing similarity to that other Infogrames shoot 'em up, Prohibition, which itself was a copy of the coin op called Empire City.

OK, so this "new" release has a different scenario, some tricky extra frills and additional levels, but it's basically the same when it comes to sitting down and playing the thing.

That's not to say Lee Enfield isn't fun. I found myself getting quite addicted, despite my initial irritation at the lack of originality.

The Prohibition, you need to be quick on the trigger and fast on your feet to defeat the various nasties that come at you.

Lee Enfield is a time-travelling trouble-shooter, or as the blurb would have it, a troubles-hooter!?

Is this some sort of French special agent we ask ourselves? Lee zips around the time-zones dealing death and destruction to baddies where ever they may be hiding. Doesn't that make you feel safe?

Here he finds himself in the 22nd Century, battling the forces of the mysterious Yellow Shadow in an attempt to rescue his old mate, Bill.

Meanwhile, back at the review, Lee finds himself blasting away at robot-soldiers, alien monsters, sneaky snipers and even abstract apparitions. I know how he feels, I get abstract apparitions after 10 points of Theakstons Old Peculiar too...

Load up the game, and instead of a backdrop which conjures up images of Al Capone's Chicago in the roaring twenties, you see a futuristic Mad Max-style landscape complete with damaged buildings, designer pipework and those nasty minions of the Yellow Shadow ready to gun you down. Quickly moving your gunsight, you zero in on the target and hit the fire-button. Budda-budda-budda! Yeah, got one! At the bottom of the screen a little arrow lights up to point the way to your next target, and so it goes. You get an audible "count-down" between targets - bleeps which get faster as you frantically search the screen for the hidden sniper. Can't find the target? Shame on you. Laser-fire rips into your shields and you lost a "life" before the gun-sight goes "automatic" and proceeds to show you where the enemy who "killed" you was hiding. You'll remember next time, won't you? Yes, after a few sessions you get to know where the next target will be, although the game does appear to throw them at you more randomly than Prohibition did, Oh yes, the quicker you zap the target the more you score.

To move from level to level you must defeat the Awesome Wobbly Balloon, more commonly known in instruction-speak as the magnetic meteor globe. This takes several hits to destroy - and it's hard to get a direct shot at the thing. But if you succeed you see our hero in an Impossible Mission type lift, moving up to another futuristic cityscape where more enemies lurk. The action gets faster the further you get into the game, and the targets get harder to spot.

Graphics on the Spectrum version I looked at were pretty good. Some of the nasties you shoot at are pretty big. The nice Godzilla type monsters were my favourites. Animation is a bit creaky and the sounds are basic Spectrum bleeps and burps.

Lee Enfield isn't a bad game, but it's still just a copy of Prohibition with frills and as that should be a budget-price release. Then it would be a real bargain.