Producer: Activision
Retail Price: £7.99
Author: Lucasfilm Games

Air Pilots are suddenly in demand and they're badly needed on Fractalus, a remote planet in the Kalamar system. Apparently the Jaggies, Kalamar's space adversaries, are using Fractalus as a stronghold. The System's highly trained Space Pilots just can't cope with it. What's worse some of them are stranded on this highly inhospitable planet. It's your job to rescue them!

This is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the horrid jaggies have built a fairly sophisticated and potentially lethal defence system which may seriously zap you - so watch out! The planet also has a very fast rotation rate - one day lasts nine minutes and an atmosphere thick with cyanitric acid! Fortunately, Valkyrie fighter ships are at your disposal with their computerized instrument panel. With these you have a chance of saving the stranded Pilots.

Descending from the flashing multi-coloured tunnel of the Mother Ship you enter the yellow fog of Fractalus. From your window a panorama of craggy mountains stretch before you. Having fought a way through the jaggie defence system, the next task is to locate the Space Pilots scattered on the planet's surface. Using the instrument panel it is possible to find each one as they wait patiently in their wrecked spaceships for your arrival. On landing, you must turn your engine systems off and let the pilot in by opening the airlock... then it's on to the next one! How you land and take off is also very important as it is quite easy to destroy one of the pilots by accident. Occasionally, aliens guised as pilots attempt to board your ship so beware. Once all the pilots have been picked up, you must return them, safe and sound to the Mother Ship.

The more notice taken of the instrument panel, the more successful your mission will be. Amongst other things, this displays thrust level, altitude, energy level, radar facilities, shield strength, and the number of enemies destroyed and pilots rescued. The long range scanner is vital as this registers a stranded pilot's emergency signal by an intermittent beep. A V shape at the base of the scanner indicates the view from your window - when you get near to a pilot the scanner begins to beep. Quite frequently, the Mother Ship avails herself should your need an energy boost. Flashing text in the top left-hand corner of the screen indicates when Mommy is in the vicinity. A row of lights in the bottom centre of the instrument panel go out when an enemy gun emplacement locks onto your ship. Immediately after, one by one, they come on again. When all six are lit up the enemy gun emplacements will fire and only evasive manouevering of the ship can break their hold.

Points are awarded for various things. Every second of flight, for example, earns you one point, whilst every pilot returned to the Mother Ship earns five hundred. Destroying gun emplacements, alien saucers and just picking up a pilot all earn extra points, and extra points are given for each level completed.

The lives of the Pilots rest in your hands. Only by taking confident control of the Valkyrie and steering it in the right direction will this be possible. The Jaggies are getting stronger everyday and Fighter Pilots are precious. Can you ensure the future survival of the Kalamar System.

COMMENTS

Control keys: cursors keys, with 0 or space to fire
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Keyboard play: a bit difficult to get used to
Use of colour: lots used, bordering on the garish at times
Graphics: very jerky, but good fractal technique
Sound: nice title tune, with spot effects in the game
Skill levels: 16
Screens: scrolling cockpit view over a large landscape

It seems that Lucasfilm have made Rescue on Fractalus as good as possible on the Spectrum, but I don't think the game is really suited to the machine. The graphics are quite reasonable, but the mist effect isn't all that good because mountains start appearing from nowhere, and that messes up a lot of the effect. Overall, the game is averagely playable and addictive, but the graphics, which I think were one of the distinguishing features of the original, are a let down - but that's not the fault of the programmers. I can't say Rescue on Fractalus is one of the games I'd buy, but other people might like ft.

The Spectrum version of this game is as good as can be expected and very easy toget into. The graphics are all animated relatively quickly considering the amount of screen that is moving about and the sound exists but doesn't excel. I found the game good fun to play at first but very hard to do anything spectacular apart from shooting everything that appeared, but persistence opened up what is a very deep and involving game. Rescue on Fractalus has all the appeal of Zzoom in the way that you can go around shooting allyour mateys; but if you want to play seriously, a lot can be had out ofthe game.

Rescue on Fractalus at first sight looks extremely ugly as there is a great deal of unsightly garish colour floating around the screen, so you could be forgiven for turning a blind eye to this one. After getting over my initial shock I really began to get into Rescue, in fact I am a little reluctant to give up playing... although the surface of Fractalus scrolls badly and the characters are blocky. The sound is very poor, with only a couple of spot effects during the whole game. Generally this isn't a bad game once you get over the colour problems.

Mastertronic Plus
£2.99 (rerelease)

The Jaggies are evil and have taken over the planet of Fractalus to use as a stronghold. A fleet of highly trained Space Pilots were sent out to try and stop the Jaggie evil but failed, and now some of them are stuck on the planet. What can they do to get out of this terrible predicament? Your rescue mission is their only hope.

You're severely hampered by the sophisticated and highly dangerous Jaggie defence system out to zap the ship you are flying in: some real hassle!

You sit, looking through the cockpit of the ship, and have to steer over the planet to find the captured pilots in a very Captain Blood type style. The only difference between this and Captain Blood is that Blood has decent graphics, and this hasn't.

An excuse for the bad graphics could be that the game was originally released in 1986, and they were 'very jerky, but with a good fractal technique' back in Issue 33. By today's standards the layout of the game is very basic, and this may put off many of you. Sound effects are sparse, only tiny beeps for shooting effects.

Unless you want to take a trip back in time to play a game considered not suited to the Spectrum, steer well clear of this.

Activision
£7.99

How do you feel about fractals? Lucasfilm Games really likes the little devils - so much so that it's based a series of programs around them!

What a fractal does, according to my mathematical mate, Phil (Phractal) South, is create a 2.5 dimensional real surface via random numbers and... no, I didn't understand it either, but it's obviously awfully clever.

What matters more to you, the end user, is what Lucasfilm Games has done with its fractals. It's built a planet out of these formulae, and called it Fractalus - and you can steer your Valkyrie fighter around a real world and rescue stranded victims of the Earthling vs Jaggi War, big match of the 21st century.

This all appeared on the obnoxious Commodore originally, of course, and looked mighty convincing too. However, while the Spectrum can do many things far better than the American OAP, it must be admitted that its graphics leave something to be desired... and rather a lot of something at times like these. All that lovely landscape looks more like a fly-specked graph than an alien planet.

If you can get used to the fact that for all the flashy mathematics, the surface still looks very flat, there's a half decent game in here. After your automatic launch from the mothership you scout around the surface searching for your comrades, who wait patiently by their wrecked craft.

Find one on the long range radar, then close in, touchdown and wait while he runs up and you hear his knock at the door before you open the airlock. Pausing only to wipe his feet, he'll then step inside and it's on with the shields once more and off in search of another survivor, until you've reached your mission quota.

At any time after that you can return to mother and set off on another mission, this time with a higher quota and worse risks. For starters there are mountain-top gun turrets that fire at you, then on later levels flying saucers swoop down. There's even night flying and the odd nasty surprise when the approaching astronaut isn't all that he seems.

Flying a Valkyrie is a skilled job, and there's the standard collection of indicators and radar panels to keep your eyes darting all over the screen. At least those kindly Lucasfilm people have thoughtfully included a training mode in which you don't get used for Jaggi target practice.

A different angle on shoot 'em ups then, but bugged by the Spectral graphics, which make it look like you're flying through a page of Teletext.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

He's strong, firm but fair, extraordinarily good-looking and what's more he's been put in charge of the Bargs again. Jonathan Davies, my man...

Mastertronic Plus
£2.99
Reviewer: Jonathan Davies

Just coming up to its third birthday, this one provoked mixed feelings when it was first released. The name derives from the fractal method used to generate the scenery, which is the game's main selling point.

Apart from gawping at the landscape, your job as pilot of a Valkyrie fighter is to patrol the surface of Fractalus looking for shot-down pilots to pick up (oo-er). Aliens need to be watched out for on later levels, and the ship is armed to deal with them when necessary.

Although the backdrops look impressive when stationary, they move disgustingly jerkily, and there's far too much unsightly colour splashed around the place. The whole appearance of the thing is distinctly naff and I can't say I enjoyed one minute of the time I spent playing it. However, for the more persistent there's probably quite a challenging game lurking under the grotty exterior.

Label: Activision
Author: Dalali
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Rescue on Fractalus is the first of the Fractal-based titles. In many respects it's disappointing. Perhaps because it's the first it's the weakest on plot.

Fractals are all about craggy landscapes, consequently it's no surprise to discover that the game is set on 'Fractalus, the most inhospitable planet this side of the Kalamar system' - an excuse for lots of jagged edges if ever I heard one. The idea is that you pilot your Valkyrie fighter over Fractalus seeking out pilots shot down over the planet. You must then land and wait for the pilot to run on board. Rescuing pilots replenishes your energy - why I don't know - and after a certain point allows you to move on to the next level.

So the game splits into two sections, tracking down pilots (which becomes comparitively simply once you get used to the controls) and knocking out enemy gun emplacements before they blast you from the sky. In later levels there are space ships to deal with as well.

The problem is game play - there isn't enough of it.

Later levels make the pilots more difficult to find and have increasing numbers of alien machinery blasting away at you, but there isn't a lot of skill involved in many aspects of the game. In particular, it is surprisingly difficult to crash your fighter.

Mastertronic
Spectrum/Amstrad/C64 £1.99

A bit of software history, no less. Not only Lucasfilm's first game, but also the first game with "realistic" fractal graphics, which are used here to display the hostile mountain ranges of the planet Fractalus. You have to dodge enemy fire and flying saucers to hunt down and rescue downed pilots then take them back to the mother ship. It's beautifully done, but really there's not a whole lot of variation in the gameplay, and the fractal mountains are a little too jerky to be really convincing. Day and night flying, alien pilots bashing on your windshield and other neat little touches keep you playing long enough to your money's worth, though.