Producer: Mastertronic
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: John Pickford

Rasterscan, a large damaged spaceship, drifts uncontrollably towards a tugging star. The craft can be repaired and flown away from its prospective death plunge, but the only means of doing this is using a globular maintenance droid called MSB. But the rounded tot has a busted brain, its one remaining sound is how to repair a pop up toaster, and it has no knowledge of how to operate a space ship.

You have control of this limbless droid, and can move it to the left or right, up and down, through a labyrinth of coloured power cables and piping. A display at the bottom left of the screen shows MSB's position within the ship.

Once repaired the droid can plug into, and operate the ship's machinery and instruments. Every piece of equipment has a function, and once repaired it can be connected to the ship's power supply and this purpose defined.

MSB's passage through the ship is not unobstructed. Locked doors block certain sections of the ship. By manoeuvring MSB into the jaws of upturned spanner heads logic puzzles are revealed, differing from lock to lock. Once solved, the door is opened and MSB is free to bounce on its way.

The bridge contains a scanner, showing the ship's position as a flashing point, the star to which it is being drawn and several planets. The scanner is triggered by flicking on, in the right order, a series of three switches contained in a locked room close to the bridge.

MSB pilots the craft from a control room near the scanner. Here four indicators show the speed of each engine, and a central circular display gives the Rasterscan's direction and relative speed.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q up, A down, O left, P right, SYMBOL SHIFT fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: subtle but effective pastel shades
Graphics: unusually hazy backgrounds and smooth animation
Sound: limited
Skill levels: one
Screens: one large playing area

At first I found Rasterscan very frustrating, I didn't have a clue as to what I was meant to be doing, even reading the inlay didn't help. After delving into this for a long time I finally found the secret and consequently enjoyed myself a lot. The ball moves around the screen very smoothly and has a neat trick of bouncing off walls, making the atmosphere realistic. It's a great pity that there's no sound, but you can't expect everything from a budget game. Well worth a look at.
GARETH.

I found Rasterscan very annoying. The graphics are absolutely brilliant (digitised I presume), and they remembered to put a decent splattering of colour in as well. Just the right amount of momentum is given making the gameplay feel right. I'm disappointed that the sound is limited to a single tune on the title screen, as effects during the game would have made is much more atmospheric. The locks on each of the doors are all very easy, until you come to the useful ones which are practically impossible to solve. There's lots there, and it represents good value at £1.99.
PAUL

The first thing that hits you about Rasterscan is the excellent graphics. The ball moves smoothly, and some of the scenery, like the cassette recorder, and the hand which you start upon, is really nice. I enjoyed it, except for the occasional crash. It's not bad, but it's worth a look, even if only because it's one of the better cheapies.
MIKE

Mastertronic
£1.99

"'Elio, 'ello, 'ello, wossall this then? The first reggae computer game? Come on, son, that's got bells on. Would you mind accompanyin' me to the station...?

No, sadly this isn't an amble through the mean streets of Brixton but it's an unusual game nonetheless. Very rum. Mastenronic describes Rasterscan as "an animated adventure game without any text", requiring "no arcade skills whatsoever", but that's not entirely accurate. Judge for yourself. You play MSB, a small spherical robot that flies around the innards of the ship Rasterscan trying to put it back together after an unfortunate military encounter. Quite how you're supposed to do this, you must find out as you go along - the game info is intentionally vague.

So for half an hour you'll fly about the ship, or at least the parts that aren't closed off, wondering how to get going. Loads of massive spanners lie around, inviting you to sit in them. Do so, and press fire, and more often than not you'll die. There's one nearby, though, that will teleport you to another part of the ship, from which you need to find the stock room, where you need to get a pipe... and so on.

Now you've got to move quickly before your battery runs out. The gameplay notes are wrong, by the way, about one important detail - the game does require arcade skill, even if there's nothing to shoot. MSB isn't very easy to manipulate, and you have very little time to complete the first stage of your task at least. Let MSB get out of control and you've effectively ruined your chances of getting anywhere in the game.

Some of the giant spanners turn out to be locks, keeping you out of other (usually important) bits of the ship. To get through you have to solve a logic puzzle, part of which is working out what it's all about in the first place. I won't spoil it for you any further (ha ha!)

Okay, so this sounds a bit too clever for its own sake, but once you've sussed out what's going on (and with this review to guide you, you'll have something of an advantage over me!), Rasterscan is surprisingly engrossing. The graphics are fab, the ideas bizarre, and the whole is often very confusing, but I predict that you'll be gripped (oo-er!) And not a woolly hat in sight...

BUDGET GAMES ARE ACCOUNTING FOR MORE SALES THAN EVER. ZX LOOKS AT THE LATEST RELEASES.

If the computer press is anything to go by, budget software is taking over the world. Nobody is buying full-priced games apparently (unless they're conversions of coin-op titles), and certainly Mastertronic, if they're not taking over the world, are taking over Melbourne House.

There are a number of software houses competing for the budget market but for the most part it's a three way fight these days. Mastertronic were the first in the field, closely followed by Firebird's Silver range, and these two have been slogging it out enthusiastically for a while now. Recently though, Code Masters, the label founded by a couple of ex-Mastertronic programmers, has made quite an impact with games such as BMX Simulator and Terra Incognita.

This month we've received some new releases from all three of these companies, giving us a good chance to compare a Super Robin Hood variety of products and take a look at the state of the (budget) art.

MASTERTRONIC

There were quite a few Mastertronic releases just after Christmas, but they've been a little bit quiet lately (probably busy planning to release Melbourne House's back catalogue as budget titles...)

They recently added the £2.99 label, Bulldog, to their stable and got off to a flying start with Feud (reviewed last month). Colony, the latest Bulldog game isn't quite so good. It's basically a maze game set on a distant planet in which you have to control an android and protect the crops planted by the human settlers.

Colony is very much in the mould of Mastertronic's £1.99 games, and graphically bears quite a resemblance to many of their other maze games, though for the additional pound the presentation and control options have been made a little more sophisticated.

Meanwhile, back on the £1.99 label, Rasterscan is a bit of an oddity. It claims to be an animated adventure requiring no arcade skills at all. This isn't strictly true as the game puts you in control of yet another android (this time known as MSB), one which looks and moves like a beach ball, so you'll need a little bit of arcade skill to control its movements. Your task is to move MSB around a damaged spacecraft and repair its engine and scanner systems. Along the way you'll be presented with a number of logical puzzles, but as well as solving these you'll actually spend a fair bit of time figuring out just what the point of the game is (at least I had to, anyway). It's not the sort of game that will appeal to arcade addict, but it you're into games that require a bit of thought then Rasterscan could prove quietly addictive.