Over the past few months, CRASH has tended to neglect the cheaper end of the software market - the ninety-niners - in favour of critical comment on all the full-price games. So in an effort to cover every single piece of software available for your Spectrum, CRASH has decided to introduce a new section, devoted entirely to budget software (games up to £5.00 in price); Budget Bureau. Each month, we'll pick out and feature our favourite cheapies, anything with 80%+ will receive a CRASH House Hit award! Each game still has its own overall rating (in brackets), so there shouldn't be a problem choosing the best games to buy. Only Blackbeard gets a House Hit this month. Read on, read on...

By contrast Lightning Simulator (21%) plays like the opposite of its title, with wireframe graphics moving more like treacle than lightning. Options allow flying skills to be practised before attempting a mission, and you can even take photos. The cassette inlay provides the minimum of instructions making for a confusing and disappointing game.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Ben 'n' Skippy take a seat in the stalls to play their way through this month's cut-price offerings! With a bit of help from the usherette of course!

Silverbird
£1.99
Reviewer: Ben Stone, Mike Dunn

In this little number, you take control of the Electric Lightning aircraft and fly it through a number of varying missions. And if that's not good enough for you, you can always make it even more lifelike by bringing in a reality factor like cross winds, system failures, G limit and queuing for three hours at customs!

Compared to games like Empire Strikes Back and Starglider the graphics in this just don't stand up - even if it is a budget title. Technically it could be excellent (we've never flown an Electric Lightning so we can't say), but as a game it's terribly boring. Fly over this one.

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO FLIGHT SIMS

Oh cripes. Whose idea was this? Couldn't we do it on something else? Nah, we promised. How about putting if off for another month? Or we could make JONATHAN DAVIS do it? Heh heh. Right, where's he got to? Ah ha!

Neeeeeow! Dakka dakka dakka! Kaboom! "Crikey, Ginger, pull up! Over."

"I can't! I think my flaps have gone a bit funny. Over." Neeeow! Boom!

"Bail out! Bail out! Over." Dakka dakka dakka. (Ricochet noises.)

"Er, okay then. Over and out."

Sorry about that, just trying to inject a bit of excitement into this thing because, let's face it, flight sims aren't exactly the most exciting bits of software around.

Or are they?

No, They're not. But there are loads of them about, and people keep buying them. Why is this? Perhaps we'd better investigate.

For thousands of years man has dreamt of flight... (Cut the crap, Ed) Erm, well, perhaps it's because they demand a bit more thought than your average arcade game. Fast reactions are all very well, but what about using your noddle occasionally? Keeping a plane in flight isn't just a matter of wobbling your joystick about a bit, which is the impression that lesser games give. You've got angles of attack to worry about, altitude, navigation, weapons systems, undercarriage... the list is endless. As are the manuals usually. And that's another thing. If you've never played one before you'll need to spend hours wading through one of these breeze-block tomes before you can even get off the ground.

Once you've got the thing up in the air though you're well away. With any luck there'll be lots of scenery to look at and plenty of enemy thingies to 'take out'. You might even like to indulge in a bit of aerobatics to pass the time. The one thing you should always keep an eye on though is the ground. Stay away from this at all costs. Unless you're landing, of course, which is another story altogether.

SO WHAT'S A FLIGHT SIM THEN, EH?

In compiling this guide I was faced with the usual problem - what exactly is a flight simulation? What are the criteria? Where do you draw the line? I decided to seek the advice of one of Europe's leading experts in the field of computer games.

"Er, Matt? (Cough.) Matt?' I ventured.

"Mmm?"

"Would you have said that, say, Fighter Pilot was a flight sim? Huh? Matt?" I enquired cheerily.

"Er, probably," he replied.

"How about Harrier Attack?"

"I expect it is, yes."

"Or Night Raider?"

"Um, look, I've got to go out. To the, er, shops. I'll see you later. Maybe."

Unperturbed. I decided to try Andy, but he didn't appear to hear me. I also tried ringing up a few friends. They all seemed to be out.

So it's all down to me then. Well, I reckon that really, in a flight sim, you ought to be in control of a plane of some sort. Ideally you'd get a 3D view out of the cockpit, but I'll be flexible and allow ones where you see the plane on the screen from the back (like ATF) and even ones where you see the view in 2D (from the top or something).

Another important guideline is the number of keys. Preferably there should be at least 2,452 of them, each with about three different functions. But, again, I'll allow a generous margin of error and set the bottom line at six.

And finally there's the manual. Obviously this should be as large and impenetrable as possible, with lots of incomprehensible acronyms that you have to keep looking up in the glossary at the back. A rough guide to length? Let's say 500-600 pages for a decent one or, if the game comes in an ordinary cassette box, an inlay card that folds out into a thin strip long enough to wrap round Matt's tummy at least two and a half times.

So now we know just what makes up a flight sim, let's take a look at a few…

RATINGS

Once again, the normally-so-versatile YS rating system doesn't really seem too appropriate here (Instant appeal? Addictiveness?). So what we've done is to come up with a revised system, specially tailored to meet the needs of today's flight sim. Let's have a nosey...

The View: Can you see anything nice out of the window? Or is it all just green and blue wiggly lines? And does the scenery glide around smoothly or jerk around like an Allegro with a dodgy clutch?

Realism: This can often be determined by the number of keys the game uses. So that's just what we've done. Counted 'em. As there are 40 keys on your basic Speccy, and each one can be doubled or even tripled up, the maximum comes out to exactly 100. Handy, eh?

Dakka Factor: Is there much to shoot? Or is it all a matter of map-reading, gauge-watching and other such nonsense? And once you've shot whatever it is, does it explode dramatically and plummet to the ground leaving a trail of smoke behind it? Or not?

Net Weight: A crucial part of any flight sim is all the junk that comes with it. So, adding together all the disks, maps, manuals, stickers and the box, what do the YS scales make of it? (All weights are, of course, approximate.) (In degrees.)

THE CHEAPO SIDE OF THINGS

You've got to give them credit - the budget people'll have a crack at anything. And flight sims are no exception. A full-pricey can take anything up to 18 months and a massive team of highly-trained programmers to develop, so what does your average beer-swilling cheapo programmer manage to come up with in the two weeks (evenings only) he's allotted? Let's brace ourselves and take a look.

Lightning Simulator
CodeMasters

At last! A real, genuine, bona fide budget flight sim! As you might have guessed, it 'simulates' a Lightning which is a fast but extremely old RAF plane. Lightning Sim has the inimitable budget feel to it, but it's still and actual flight sim - and a looking-out-of-the-window one at that. It brings a lump to my throat, it really does. There are plenty of dials to keep an eye on, and all the usual flight sim features. As games go it's awful. But I don't care. It's a flight sim - and that's what counts.

Label: Silverbird
Author: Michael Bauer
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: Kempston
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Though not immediately apparent from its title, Lightning Simulator is in fact a flight simulator, or at least that is what it describes itself as. What it actually is is a rehash of the old PSION Flight Simulator with a new dogfighting catch and a built-in movie recording facility. All this for £1.99. Sounds like great value, but is it?

For a start, as a flight simulator, it falls short on realism by quite a long way. As there are no ground features other than runways and control towers (situated next to the runways) there is no feeling of movement. In fact, for a lot of the time, all you will see is a plain screen with a black rectangle at the bottom and a white or blue rectangle at the top. Or maybe not a rectangle. If I said this game was hard, I'd be selling myself short. Controlling this plane is bloody difficult. Not only is it amazingly difficult to manoeuvre, it's also frustratingly impossible to fly in a straight line. It just won't respond when you want it to, and you end up overcompensating a lot of the time.

Combat works quite well, I will say that. The vector graphics are quite fast and recognisable as what they are meant to represent. I.e. aircraft, tanks, etc. Unfortunately, there is very little in the way of reaction needed as far as the destruction of the enemy is concerned. The guns/missiles are automatically fired the moment the gunsight locks on. In the same instant, the cameras start rolling, and keep roiling as long as the bullets/ missiles are flying.

I can see absolutely no point to the cameras whatsoever apart from giving you the option of seeing that ugly S.O.B. blow up in a cloud of triangles in glorious slowmoving-o-vision.

Just in case you're worried about the lack of variety in most flight simulators, then worry no more.

Lightning Simulator contains 6 basic missions, with lots of room to alter all the usual things like wind direction and strength as well as being able to add a cloud layer and varying amounts of tanks, just to add a little spice.

Lightning Simulator doesn't really make any impression in the Spectrum games market. It's not a bad simulator, but unplayability and lack of realism don't make it anything remarkable.