Producer: Addictive Games
Retail Price: £4.25
Author: Kevin Toms

Elections are held every two years in your country, and your success as President is dependent upon opinion polls. Political events affect your standing, too - winning tank battles improves your popularity by two per cent, but allowing your people to be hungry takes it down one per cent.

You rule the main 'oil screen'. This is the battleground for tanks, which you control in combat - and the centre of your country's economy.

You can survey for oil, build rigs, build roads for tanker trucks and sell the crude on the international market; to feed the oil workers you must plant the right amount of crops, and to protect them set up anti-aircraft guns.

The value of your country's currency is based upon gold purchases and reserves, and you must keep your currency strong to purchase oil-production equipment, military hardware and food. Gold is bought in the futures market, affected by future world growth - by anticipating growth rates, you can buy gold when prices are low.

To maintain your country's health, money must go on preventing diseases; epidemics are made worse by food shortages and the disruption caused by explosions, but food overproduction increases your people's resistance to disease.

An Income And Expenditure listing is given for each month and from this a balance-of-payments figure is obtained - another factor in your popularity.

COMMENTS

Control keys: C/A up/down, V/P left/right. ENTER to fire for cursors)
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor
Use of colour: very simple
Graphics: character blocks
Sound: 'at the third stroke...'
Skill levels: one
Screens: one, plus menu screens

The inlay is similar to the cover of Harry Harrison's book Stainless Steel Rat For President, but don't be misted. Harrison's book is brilliant, and President is of really, really low quality. The graphics are tiny, animated awfully, and coloured badly. Is this compiled BASIC? If not, it must be someone's very first attempt at machine code. President is boring, badly written and unplayable.
MIKE

This is just too tedious for words. Every decision is carved out over and over again. I know this is how a government is run - but there could be other elements like campaigning and revolts, which would have livened it up immensely. I didn't find any of the small stages very taxing, I never felt I was in control of the country, and it all seemed far too random for realism. President might be the best game of its type, but the whole concept is very boring.
PAUL

President brings to mind Football Manager, and like that it's interesting for a while. The concept's good - building up and maintaining your country's economy, fighting the odd war and making import/exports - but there's no action, and I soon tired of it. It may appeal to strategists, but not to many battle-hardened blasters.
MARK

Addictive
£7.95

Okay, hands up who wants to be President? No-one! Come on now - all that power, all that money! Hah, I thought you'd change your mind. Well, now's your chance in this new Addictive game.

You have twenty-four months until the next election. In that time you have to feed the populace, stop any epidemics, fight the neighbouring countries and drill for oil (I bet he drinks Carling Black Label). The games mostly text, but there are some graphics sections that show your crops, oil and the current battle situation. It's best to build up your army at the beginning of your term of office, then use the vote catching tactics, such as planting crops for food, at the end. Other things you can do include selling oil to other countries to build up your Swiss Bank accou... oops! I mean, build up your country's wealth. At the end of every month your neighbours send in their assessments of you, and chores an opinion poll among your own people, so that you can see how you're doing in the popularity stakes. That won't be too well if you're anything like me - I was starving the people by destroying their crops, and all so that I could build lots of lovely tanks. Tee hee!

I thought President was a great game. Definitely an ego-trip, as you decide whether to be a kind President with a heart of gold, or a tyrannical sadistic psychopath that eats little children for breakfast. Me, I prefer the latter - much more fun than three Shredded Wheat!

Label: Addictive
Author: Kevin Toms
Price: £8.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Here we have the long awaited (ie much delayed) President from Addictive. The firm still seems to be promoting all its products on the grounds that Kevin Toms did quite a good job on Football Manager and therefore all his subsequent programs will be equally good. Stands to reason, doesn't it?

President is a definite ego trip for the prospective player. It's only in a game of this type that you get to control a whole country and thus make all the important decisions: how food is distributed, where to dig for oil, which countries to attack etc.

The game is split up into lots and lots of different sections, each involving relatively little, except making decisions. There are no aliens to kill or insurgent guerillas to wurp. Yup, President's another strategy game.

Everything happens, logically enough, in a cycle of months. At the end of each month you're informed as to exactly what the rest of the World thinks of your rule, how other parties are doing and how things are generally going. Every twenty four months (bi-annually) there is an election. Obviously, smarter players will make all the tougher, more unpopular decisions just after an election and bolster public support with a few vote-winning choices toward the end of your term of office.

Finding yourself in a fairly stereotypical middle-eastern country, oil plays a big part in the state of the nation. Indeed, most of the action takes place in oil-orientated areas. The entire country is shown on the screen along with tokens denoting tanks, oil production plants, storage tanks, roads, crop areas and suchlike. You can survey areas for oil and, where necessary, plant a production rig.

You can also lay down roads and crossroads, aiding transport of goods and food. Occasionally a nasty neighbouring country will launch an airborne assault on your oil fields which is usually a bit of a setback. It's possible to deplete the magnitude of such attacks by careful positioning of anti-aircraft guns that can blow away any unwanted flying types.

Ground attacks will be initiated by outside forces too, and you will have to guide your tanks into battle to protect your land. Such escapades are in fact a bit weedy as the UDG's jump around rather unconvincingly. One could probably say this section was the token graphics/ action part of the game, but that would be totally unfair wouldn't it?

Just as getting your people and crops blown to pieces by enemy jets and tanks is sure to lose you votes, so is the mass starvation of your people or unquelled outbreaks of Malaria, TB etc.

Importing military goods and oil-drilling gear is possible too.

President is certainly a very complex game. It's no great shakes graphically but you could argue that that is what strategy games are all about. It really all boils down to being yet another derivative of the ancient Kingdom games. Keep the people happy while running a country. If it's your scene, it'll probably be quite exciting. And fans of Kevin Tom's previous efforts will find much to admire and generally go ape.

Label: Addictive
Author: Kevin Toms
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: Keys only
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

How the mighty have fallen. Kevin Toms, master programmer and creator of that all time classic Football Manager, tries his hand at politics. In President you are the manager, no sorry headcoach, sorry, wrong again, President of a country and must try to remain in office for as long as possible. The game's about increasing the financial and social status for both yourself and your country. You can drill for oil (Oooh), buy and sell gold (Cor)) and press fire a lot (Eh)! The rest is status screens from which you are supposed to make intelligent decisions.

I dunno, maybe I'm too highly trained for this game. Maybe not, either way any subtle playability that may be contained in here is lost to me.

MACHINES: Amstrad/Spectrum/CBM 64
SUPPLIER: Addictive
PRICE: £9.95 (Amstrad/CBM cass), £8.95 (Spectrum), £14.95 (CBM disc)

Something tells me the peasants are not too keen on my style of leadership. The latest opinion poll says they hate me. Must be something to do with the war, famine, disease and my - sorry - our country's rather healthy bank balance.

Still the United Nations seems pretty keen on me. They reckon I'm a good leader. That makes a change from the accusations of tyranny they were throwing at me last year.

With just one month to go before I face the electorate with my main opposition party sitting rather comfortably on a 96 per cent lead in the polls, I somehow get the feeling I won't be enjoying a second term of office. Sent into a exile at an early age.

Well power is the name of the game in Kevin "Football Manager" Toms' latest offering, coping with economic survival, defence, health, famine and getting votes. It's been a long time coming as well. It was originally meant to see the light of day around the time of the PCW Show back in September.

President is an update of all those "run your own country games" such as Kingdom and Dictator which were around about five years ago. The President, however, is a lot slicker.

The setting is an unknown country, possibly Middle Eastern judging from the amount of oil, sand and tanks around the place.

You have an initial choice of whether you want your country to be poor, of medium wealth or filthy rich. The term of your presidency before facing the electorate is two years or 24 complete moves of the game.

The monthly duties involve oil exploration and development, planning for and fighting off attacks by hostile countries, food production, looking after the health of the nation, finding and fulfilling contracts from other countries to supply oil, wheeling and dealing on the gold and currency markets. It's really like a complicated juggling act. And at the same time you've got to keep an eye on what your people think. Policies which you may be convinced will benefit your country may tend to be incredibly unpopular.

Strategy is everything in this game. The graphics and sound are really worth mentioning.

Who was it that said "a day is a long time in politics". Welt two years of being President seemed an awful lot longer. In many ways the fun extracted from this game is the same sort of fun people get from Football Manager - and that is a massive selling game. So if you loved managing your own football team it may well be worth your while stepping up in the power stakes. My own tastes are for something a little more exciting.