Producer: Americana
Retail Price: £7.99

Llan a knight of the crusades is out to destroy the infidel Saracens in the medieval Holy Land. But his knightly prowess is certain to be sorely tested, for many warriors block the path to the Saracens' evil chief, whom Llan must destroy to move to the next of 40 levels.

And Llan must work his way through a maze of brick and stone passages, magic doors and one-way entrances to find and kill the chief.

Llan's longbow is some help; arrows lie around the play area, and Llan can fire in the direction in which they point.

With these arrows, Llan can detonate packs of obtructing bombs, grenades, blast his way through brickwork and destroy the white crosses which open magic doors. And if there aren't enough arrows pointing in the appropriate direction, the medieval soldier can create some more by shooting an arrow marker.

Other doors require not such heavy-handed tactics, but keys which Llan can collect.

The progress of enemy soldiers - like coloured snowflakes rolling about the maze - can be stopped. If Llan takes careful aim and shoots at a spiral wall-maker, brickwork is instantly produced to immures the oncoming Saracen squaddies.

And to give Llan some brief respite from the tension, he can reach the relative tranquility of a safety zone, where he can't be touched by enemy soldiers or deadly bouncing cannonballs. Fair's fair, though for rather Llan's fairpwllwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwilLlantysiliogogogoch), and Llan can't shoot arrows or pick up objects in the safety zones.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: poor
Options: start on any of 40 levels

Another typical budget game: small, fast, jerky graphics, little gameplay. A few ideas in Saracen, such as picking up directional fire power, are great - but their brilliance is tarnished by the appalling graphics. The built-in antiboredom device is the option of starting on any level, but it doesn't take long to get bored with every screen there is.
BYM [13%]

Saracen didn't really melt my joystick - in fact, it's dead boring, very simple with crummy graphics. There's only one real challenge - getting to the next level - and the gameplay consists of running around shooting weird-looking (hardly Saracen-like!) objects.
DAVE [16%]

Label: Americana
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

Dear Anne Robinson. Why, oh why, oh why do software houses take pride in destroying reputations. Americana, which brought out the excellent re-releases Spiderman and Hulk has now thrown Saracen into the lap of the nation.

To imagine just how gross this terrible game really is, take Boulderdash, and reshape the character into a stickman with a small head. Now give him two poses, one for standing still and one for running. Then change the scrolling so that it keeps up with him and make it scroll two character spaces at a time. Make the background black and the foreground blindingly white. Then sit and try to play it.

Take all this, give it 40 easy-to-do levels and some spinning crosses to use as the enemy and you have Saracen. Leave it alone unless you like buying completely useless trash to fill up space on your shelf. It's the Great Space Race of the budget world.