Producer: Entertainment USA
Retail Price: £1.99

It's 1999. You're leading a mean squad of three dudes trained to perfection as killing machines, members of the police SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) division. The mission this time is to rout out a nest of terrorists in a district of Los Angeles and release their hostages.

This should have been an operation as sharp as a Bic disposable razor - well, probably a little sharper than that. But to complicate matters, a few civilians remain in an evacuated area and neither they nor the hostages must be harmed by you and your men.

Your squad is on toot patrolling through the vertically scrolling streets of LA. You control the leader of your team, who is at the front of the patrol. When the terrorists home in on him, lobbing grenades, he must move fast -and risk the hidden snipers.

If the leader falls in action, his place is immediately taken by another squad member; when he in turn needs a body bag, the final man is on his own.

Each member of the team is equipped with a gun, but only the leader's can be controlled. He can fire in the direction that he moves, and diagonally - always taking care not to hit innocent civilians, which knocks the points off him.

Reach the junction where the terrorist leader hangs out, and you'll find those hostages. Now things can really get tough.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: poorly-defined characters, bad use of colour
Sound: very basic

My, Los Angeles SWAT, what slow graphics you've got! My, Los Angeles SWAT, what limited sound you've got! My, Los Angeles SWAT, what ludicrous colours you use! My, Los Angeles SWAT, what awkward controls you've got!

'All the better for selling me off cheaply with.'
BYM [36%]

The graphics and colour in Los Angeles SWAT are awful - curious checkerboard blocks are meant to represent buildings, indistinct 2-D line drawings pass for upturned cars, poorly-animated characters litter the gaudy background. If the action was more exciting this might be forgivable (as might the colour clash), but the controls are awkward, the gameplay is repetitive and even the sound is a letdown.
NICK [22%]

Entertainment USA
£1.99
Reviewer: Nat Pryce

Terrorists are on the streets, punks have taken control and LA is riddled with Commies. As usual there's only one thing to do, and this time it's a SWAT team that has to save the world, snore, drivel, bilge. The tactics are as complex as you'd expect - run up roads, shoot everyone you see and avoid the grenades that are bunged at you by the punks.

Eh wot? Isn't this just a bit like Commando? And indeed, SWAT is as near a copy as is possible without anyone calling their lawyers. And it's not nearly as good.

I mean, look at the scrolling - or rather don't, 'cos it's slower than Seb Coe and almost as flickery. Attribute problems are everywhere, and the graphics make Platoon look like an Amiga. What's more, don't bother playing on the keyboard, as you'll only be able to use the cursor keys. And when you're shooting, you cannot move. This can be awkward sometimes - such as when you want to move, but can't, because if you stop shooting you'll die, or vice versa. If there is a way out, you're bound to be zapped when you press the wrong key!

Los Angeles SWAT must be just about the worst game I've ever played. Beside it, even Kai Temple pales into insignificance. Lemme out of here!

Label: Mastertronic
Author: Beech Nut Software
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

A SWAT team is a very exciting all action thing. So it naturally follows it would make an exciting and generally profit making game, right? Wrong. LA Special Weapons and Tactics is one of the worst games I have ever played (again) Basically, a vertically scrolling Commando sort of jobbie, you patrol through a seemingly endless city street shooting your little pop gun at marauding cavemen and deformed shoppers alike, whilst avoiding black undefinable things in the road.

The scrolling is astoundingly slow, tedious pixel by tedious pixel and the controls respond very sluggishly. Bad news in an action game. One nice touch is the way they have avoided the game slowing when there is a lot on screen by making the game to impossibly slow that if it slowed down any more, it wouldn't be moving. Har har. Awful.