Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £1.99
Language: Machine code
Author: Amad

The platform game is far from dead. Spike is the latest offering from Firebird in their budget Silver range, and the game is filled with ledges and platforms to leap between as you help star of the game, Spike, to make his way through the caverns of the Golden Dream World.

Spike is on a quest to find the Dream Sphere and then lead it to the Hall of Dreams where he can swap it for a reward of his choice and thus finish the game. As is always the case in such affairs, each cavern contains at least one Guardian of The Sphere, or mobile nasty whose only purpose is to remove a life from the intruder. Other static hazards, including fires and sharp pointy bits are scattered around the caverns and have to be circumvented.

Each screen has only one entrance and one exit, so you have to move through the game sequentially. The caverns are linked by corridors, and the screens are drawn Manic Miner fashion.

Spike himself is a tiny little guy with a pointed nose and-rounded stomach who scampers around the caves very quickly indeed, with his little legs spinning round in a blur. Apart from tucking his tootsies up into his body when he leaps. Spike performs no other animated trick and is without arms. This presents no problem however, as the Golden Sphere will follow his once found and need not be carried. Once he's found the sphere, it can still escape so the return journey needs to be conducted in a sober manner, without too many jolts to sever the link between the Sphere and Spike.

The caverns contain a variety of hidden switches, some of which reveal hidden platforms essential for Spike's safe progress through the chamber. Others contain keys which open doors for the little chap, hastening him on his way. At the bottom of the screen is a row of reserve Spikes when the active Spike loses a life a replacement marches promptly onto the screen and begins at the start of the cavern where the accident took place. There are only five little Spikes in a team, however, and once they're played out it's time for a new game.

COMMENTS

Control keys: V left, B right, Space jump
Joystick: keyboard only
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: limited
Graphics: detailed, but small
Sound: one very good effect, otherwise mildly annoying
Skill levels: one
Screens:

Spike is another in the never ending stream of arcade adventures. My main criticism with Spike is that he is too small - you would have thought that software companies would have learned by now that the public like big colourful characters. Never mind the colour clashes - that's why Wally was so successful. Spike is a very highly polished game, even right down to the excellent scream when the guy gets hit by a guardian. The constant clicking when Spike walks does become annoying after a while. If you're not a fan of Manic Miner type games or arcade adventures, then this one is unlikely to change your mind. But for £1.99, you can't complain.

There are some very sloppy parts to this otherwise very well programmed game. You can sometimes see where a platform is going to appear by walking behind it. It will cut off part of Spike until you move out of the way. Also, the very fast movement prevents fine manoeuvres unless a great deal of practice is put in. Some of the leaps needed have to be almost pixel perfect. The rest of the game I thought was very unimpressive. Far too much like Manic Miner and not enough new features. At £1.99, some will think this is good buy, but I find it a poor excuse for an outdated idea.

The game provides some fun - especially if it's a while since you played this kind of thing. It's old hat but harmless, unpretentious fun. I don't see why all the awful plots have to be put behind this kind of game. They add nothing and are often embarrassingly incongruous. I didn't mind playing this game and just for something different, I wouldn't mind buying it - but no more inane plots, please!

Firebird
£1.99

He's got the key of the door, Spike's never played a Firebird game before. But if you have, you'll know what to expect - competent if not zowie gameplay and presentable graphics that can make a game look slightly better than it really is.

This particular example is non-violent, non-sexist and good clean family fun. Sounds yuk, eh? it should actually keep you occupied for ages and you'll need plenty of the old grey matter and razor sharp reflexes to plot Spike's progress toward the Hall of Dreams. Ah, wouldn't we all love to get there?

Spike has the belly of a qualified Abbot drinker but it doesn't stop him being a speedy mover and nifty little jumper (my mum gave me one of those once). Having mastered his leaping motions you have to make him jump at the correct door to gain entrance to the Golden Dream world. He has six lives and with no time limit there's plenty of chance to practice and believe me, you're gonna need it.

Once into the Golden Caverns Spike'll have to gen up on his gymnastics as he has to avoid various Guardians of the sphere (as we Evertonians like to call our illustrious back four) whilst he attempts to gather keys. Once you've located and retrieved the Dream Sphere the fun really starts! Not only do you have to retrace your bounds through the cavern maze but you must make sure you keep contact with the sphere. It's a bit like the magician's trick with the wand and ball, where neither seem connected yet both are inextricably linked - much like our T'zer's brain and mouth.* Don't be too unsubtle else contact will be lost and all your travails will have been to no avail. Solid if unsensational stuff from the Silver range.

*Ed's note: this was unfortunately Rick's last review before his early demise.

WHAT CAN I GET FOR £1.99

Rock bottom - £1.99. It seems there is a simple rule governing software pricing policy - if it doesn't cost £9.99 then it must cost £1.99. Now this is jolly simple for software distributors and retailers who find the fact that most software is one of two possible prices easy on their accountant's brains but it means this: software which costs £9.99 is either really fab or involves a licencing deal so expensive that the software firm needs the margins.

Software which costs £1.99 is... well... rapidly becoming almost everything else. From the titles reviewed here it's clear that £1.99 will buy you some of the most awful and some of the most awesome programs ever devised...

SPIKE
Label: Firebird
Author: Anad
Price: £1.99
Joystick: None
Memory: 48K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

Interesting to compare this game with The Master since both use superficially similar materials to produce utterly different games.

Spike is not half-bad and perfectly exemplifies all you can reasonably hope for from a £1.99 game. It isn't original in any fundamental way, most of the individual elements come from Miner - platforms, switches which make invisible platforms appear, small but nicely animated sprites, keys to collect, exits to reach on each screen.

Yawn-making perhaps, but the whole game has been very well designed in the sense that solving puzzles on how to reach certain objects requires thought as well as reflexes.

The idea that actual thought and route planning strategies, rather than just jumping the objects at the right time, was important to Manic Miner seems to be missed by many people who in other respects rip off its ideas - one of the reasons so many Miner clones, even technically clever ones, fail to have anything like the same appeal. More specifically, to get anywhere in Spike you'd better master the art of balancing on one edge of a platform by just a heel.

The whacky sprites are marginally more whacky than those in The Master or, at least they seem more authentically off the wall than merely just tired and forced. Though there is nothing technically amazing here, what there is looks professional and slick.

The plot is barely worth mentioning. You play what looks like a very depressed anteater - Spike - and must pass through a large number of screens, getting keys to open doors, pressing switches to reveal hidden platforms, and generally jumping your way to the Dream Sphere hidden deep in the caverns. You must then bring the sphere back through the caverns and deposit it in the Hall of Dreams. The usual stuff.

Spike is fun, definitely a good few days' entertainment, perhaps even a few weeks. In terms of budget software, a first division product.

Firebird Silver 199 Range
£1.99

To begin with, I can see no relationship between the cover picture, a Vampire or Zombie type being in front of an old gothic building, and the game.

You control Spike, a small averagely animated graphic creature, as he moves left or right or jumps. From the first screen he moves and jumps across a series of platforms in the caverns of the Golden Dream World.

As you wander you collect keys to open further doors and jump to press buttons to enable you to progress or to reach different platforms. Eventually, provided terminal boredom doesn't strike, you will come upon the Dream Sphere which will follow you back to the Hall of Dreams. This sometimes breaks away and leaves you forever - end of game, very irritating.

The usual variety of sprites try to cause your demise and you have live lives to succeed with.

There are many spin-off games from the original 'Manic Miner', some are even better, most are indifferent. This one is poor.

Admittedly there is the challenge of working out how to cross the screen and timing the jumps is often critical, but somehow it is all rather tired and flat band uninspired.

Sound is very basic, colours clash and detection of collisions appears to be at attribute rather than pixel level.

There is nothing actually wrong with the game as such but compare it with say "Spiky Harold" a similar style game from Firebird at the same price, and it suffers considerably.

As a supporter of Firebird and all responsibly priced games it pains me to have to say that it is not worth the money unless you are an avid platform games junkie desperate for a fix.