Mastertronic Plus
£2.99 cass

Fast and furious action abound in Speedboat Assassin. You are the marine commando with the job of launching attacks on four of the most famous harbours in the world. They have all been seized by the enemy and are surrounded by deadly mines.

Level one involves a helicopter dropping you and your boat into the mine field itself (aarrrgh!). Careful control is essential to make it through. After picking up some weaponry from the chopper as it passes overhead your next task is to shoot all the oncoming speedboats and destroy the communication towers dotted around the hostile sea. Every 30 seconds another chopper comes into view and docking with it will increase your weaponry, give you more speed - or cause you to crash because you] can't see where you're goring! When all the towers are toppled the real challenge comes into view. A large destroyer is anchored by the harbour wall and will take 20 or 30 hits before it is sunk and you can pass. After all this excitement you can look forward to the next harbour to do it all again.

All the graphics in the game are neat, but there is no colour in the action itself, only in the scrolling skyline. On the audio side of things there's just a gun sound and a small explosion - brilliant, eh?

Having to negotiate the mine field at the beginning really gets annoying after the first few goes, and just when you think you can do it blindfolded the pattern goes and changes and BANG, you're dead! Speedboat Assassin may be good fun for the first couple of plays, but you soon lose interest.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

A bumper New Year collection of cheapie rubbish (whoops!) from that king of the skin-flints, Marcus Berkmann, and his preppy pauper (ha ha) Jonathan Davies.

Mastertronic Plus
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

It's novelty time, as Mastertronic drops you in a speedboat and asks you to manoeuvre it around a bay, avoiding mines and shooting down four vital communication towers. Done that before? Me neither, and it's quite a giggle. First, you just have to keep clear of a few mines - easy enough. Then you're whizzing around the bay proper, trying to avoid boats and those towers, all of which are shooting at you. Trouble is, you haven't got a weapon, so you have no choice but to get the %$Ł@ out of the way. Fortunately, after 30 seconds or so, a friendly helicopter hovers down and drops off a weapon system, enabling you to start zapping. Some things need one zap, others more. If you survive there are more and better weapon systems every 30 seconds thereafter. That's it, really, but I enjoyed it, and anyone who's looking for a new twist on the creaky old racing game format may enjoy it too. Perfect budget fare.

Label: Mastertronic
Author: Binary Design
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Speedboat Assassins? Well, well well. As if you hadn't seen enough of three dimensional "spectaculars" over the past few months, Speedboat Assassins stumbles onto the bandwagon.

You're a member of an elite corps of men on a deadly mission to destroy, destroy DESTROY! You're winched in on helicopter and dropped into various waterways around the world. All teeming with enemy activity. Even the Thames (with authentic Big Ben backdrop) has been overrun with baddies.

The chopper makes another swoop to drop off some ammunition, which can later be replenished and powered-up by running over tokens floating in the water.

The action starts with a relatively easy cruise down an avenue of enemy mines. There's enough room to move around easily and you really only need to divert from a full steam ahead course a couple of times.

Shortly, though, life becomes more tricky when enemy speedboats (with increasingly tough hulls) face off against you. This is when your boating prowess is vital. You'll have to sort out a strategy which will solve the problems of both dodging the enemy missiles, not crashing into the mines and still staying sufficiently on course so as to not miss your targets.

Your targets on each level are communications towers, beaming their messages of doom all over the place. Each tower requires a good plugging before it will collapse.

The further you get into the game, the more heavily protected the towers become, and eventually, you simply can't deal with all the bobbing mines, swerving boats and drifting missiles. It's not as if the enemy have got smarter or better, you get the feeling that you're just being overrun.

The 3-D effect is competently produced using gradual magnification on the sprites; they start off as little blocks on the horizon and end up as large, and not too chunky, shapes in the foreground. The effect of driving a speedboat is less convincing. The waterbound drift that should be evident is more like a muddy skid in a car.

Your bullets are actually a bit pathetic. They look more like little crosses flying through the air than steel cased hollow-point death messages. Not only does this make you feel far from fearless. It's hard to see where your shots are heading. When you're trying to dodge oncoming craft, it really is necessary to be able to tell if they're about to strike their targets, or you need to take another shot.

It should be possible to glide around on the water, but it just doesn't happen. It's that elusive Asteroids feel. £3 is a perfectly reasonable outlay for Speedboat Assasins, but frankly, if you dig out one of your old games, and squint, you could save yourself some cash.