Producer: Reaktor
Retail Price: £4.99

Mounted Michael is stuck one the same train as a band of desperate gun-toting train robbers, who plan to make off with the railways gold shipments. To thwart their villainous plans, he must progress along the top of the train.

Mick can jump between carriages - and fall between them, which is fatal. He must also avoid the robbers' gunfire, or lose one of his three lives. And the train robbers have grenades too.

But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, so Mick packs his trusty pistol. He can bop off the baddies by leaping upon them, or giving them a taste of their own grenades.

The train includes flat cars carrying unstable loads, and leaking gas tanks which can snuff out Mick if he's not quick enough to find a gas mask. Tunnels provide additional hazards for this intrepid Canadian, but with his torch and limited battery power he can battle through their dangerous darkness.

There are nine trains for Mick to traverse, each carrying a team of robbers (These were lawless days, after all.) When Mick reaches the front of a train, he must board the small handcart on the rails, pump its handle and travel to the next train.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joysticks: Kempston, Interface 2
Use of colour: patchy
Graphics: ugly but clear
Sound: spot FX and an unmemorable title tune
Skill levels: one
Screens: nine trains in one continuous scroll

Stop The Express without the fun? Surely no-one would have the guts to reproduce Sinclair's three-year-old classic (CRASH issue 6, July 1984) as this load of rubbish? Mountie Mickie's Deathride is boring (and it's a pathetic name). The graphics are badly drawn, and there's no colour to speak of. Playability is the pits. Steer your train well clear.
MIKE

"Yeeha, ride 'im cowboy", or something along those tracks. There've been a lot of games with old American locomotives in them lately - perhaps a new trend in software? And I couldn't help noticing the similarities this has to Stop The Express. It seems all you have to do here is shoot the baddies before they shoot you - but it's still an amazingly addictive game with good graphics.
NICK

The game is in total contrast to the title - it's simple and easily mastered, and has little lasting appeal. Still, the background graphics are very realistic and give a good feeling of depth. But this is spoiled by tacky and uninspired train and character graphics. And gameplay is impaired by atrocious collision-detection, which destroys the atmosphere.
PAUL

Reaktor
£4.99

Home, home on the range... Oh, wrong country! It's a tough life being a mountie. You have to do good deeds, and wander round the country on your horse. Yup, times are hard, and they're getting harder. Y'see, the McCluskey gang has robbed the Trans-Canadian Express of all its gold. I disturbed them, and now they're on the run from me. They can't escape, the law will prevail in the end... I hope...

You play the part of the intrepid mountie in Reaktor's newie, and you've got to run around on a moving train chasing the baddies. Unfortunately, though, Mountie Mick isn't as big and tough as he could be. All the figures look like they've been squished to two-thirds their original size, and they all run from right to left. Reminded me of nothing more than Butch Hard Guy and the rotten graphics therein.

You can run along the top or the bottom of the carriages, though you're more prone to the baddies bombs on the bottom. However, all is not lost, 'cos someone helpfully left some bombs around for you, as well as a standard issue Smith and Wesson shooter.

Also, you suffer from a weight problem - your portly little sprite can dish out death simply by jumping on top of any stray baddies. And you've been provided with a gas mask, so when some gas turns up, as it does from time to time, you've got to be pretty nifty to fight it and the McCluskeys. When the train goes through the tunnels, you'd better be handy with your torch, too, 'cos if you don't, you're dog meat. One last tip - if you press either the + or -, you get light weight body armour. This stops you being shot.

The graphics are pretty sub standard, even for a £4.99 game. The scrolling's jerky and the baddies just appear out of nowhere. Also, you can drop off the carriages in the middle, but not at the end. Once you've vanquished one train, you jump onto a handy hand cart and pump your way along to the next train, and the next, and the next...

All in all, Mountie Mick is a pretty 'yup' game, and I must admit, I had this strong urge to turn it off after a while. Not the greatest game in the world.

Label: Reaktor
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various

Wow! This is what I've always dreamed of doing. Racing along the top of the train, firing small blobs at large bouncing blobs. Yeah! Woa' Hold yer horses. This is an Iron Horse, trailing across the Canadian Rockies, an' guess what. It's being robbed by none other than the McCluskey gang and you have to go after them. It won't be easy. All kinds of things may happen. You'll go through tunnels. You'll travel between the trains on a pushcart. Your legs will continually change colour. You will probably die, if not from the bullets then from the boredom.

Well, we've had the Nemesis conversion and the Nemesis clones. We've had the Gauntlet conversion and the Gauntlet clones. Now comes the turn of Express Raider. Not good.