Producer: US Gold
Retail Price: £7.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Platinum Productions

After his numerous defeats in the pacific during World War II, the Allies' enemy, 'The Dragon' has set himself up as an evil dictator commanding a squadron of crack troops who worship him as a Demigod. The man is a lunatic and a megalomaniac - something has to be done. Stryker, the Allies' most competent Commander leads an attack upon the crazed power monger's stronghold. To defeat him, a number of defences must be overcome so the evil warlord can be killed.

In the interests of variety, you can take on the role of either the Allies or the Dictator when playing a one-player game, or can battle it out in a two-player contest.

On the first screen, Allied troops have to be airdropped into the warzone from a helicopter. Fire drops a soldier, but if the helicopter's too low to allow the chute to open in time you get people burger all over the terrain.

On landing, the soldiers make a dash for the nearest wall, trying to avoid fire from a machine gun manned by one of the Dragon's stooges. The machine gunner is hampered by the fact that it takes time for him to react and turn the gun to point at the helpless troops. Once all the men are safely hiding behind the walls at the top they have to make their way to the bottom of the screen, avoiding the manic machine gunner's eagle eye.

The edges of the walls flash in a cycle along the length of the line. Pressing fire brings a man out, and he's controlled by the joystick as he runs down to the next section of wall. From the third wall, nearest the gun emplacement, the troops have to be manoeuvered to the bottom of the screen. The control method is the same, except pressing fire when controlling a man allows a grenade to be lobbed in the hope of totalling the pill box. Pressing fire twice when you select a wall sends down a computer controlled soldier - handy if a decoy is needed to draw fire.

On the second screen, hostages must be protected as they run the gauntlet against the Dragon's troops. Running short of ammo the enemy are desperate and throw just about anything at the fleeing captives. The allies have captured a gun that is used against the four different hazards that the escaping prisoner can easily fall foul of: a soldier drops stones from the top of the wall the hostages have to walk beneath; a tank trundles on from the right and will happily squash anyone in its path; an armoured car drives from the left, firing a small calibre machine gun mounted inside and finally, enemy soldiers dump mines, popping out of trap doors to lay them. All these obstacles can be shot up, but accurate shooting is needed. If you shoot a hostage by mistake he doesn't get wounded, but just pauses for a while before moving on.

The penultimate scene is your chance to ferry the hostages to safety in four helicopters that fly over a vertically scrolling landscape. Tanks and lookout posts placed upon the terrain at inconvenient locations hurl shells at the helicopters, making life tricky for the pilot. The difficulty of the terrain is decided by the Dragon before the section starts. Once the four helicopters are through, Commander Stryker finally gets to meet his arch enemy, the Dragon, in mortal combat.

The two opponents stand opposite each other on parallel platforms on either side of a river. The idea is to hit the other man with poonta sticks until he falls into the water. Poontas are small, sharp pointed sticks, made especially for throwing. Each time a combatant it hit three times, he takes a topple and there are five rounds to be battled out before the contest is decided.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2, Cursor
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: some attribute clash, nothing remarkable
Graphics: some good animation
Sound: a tune, and some effects
Skill levels: 3
Screens: four

Wargames aren't really my cup of tea to be honest - I'm not one for mindless violence. Looking at Beach-Head as only a game, it's not that bad - an awful lot of program has been squeezed into a 48K Spectrum for just one toad. The only trouble is that it's a bit easy to complete and once completed the only incentive to play again is too get a high score. The two player game is quite fun, however, and there are lots of ways you can play the game - no shortage of options here. The graphics, though a bit crude, work quite well. The end sequence is ridiculously easy once you've figured that your opponent won't move till you do. If you liked Beach Head then you'll like Beach-Head II.

Another sizzling American game hits the Spectrum, the only trouble is that American games and Spectrums don't seem to mix very well. Quite a lot of the games which have made their way across the Atlantic (usually CBM 64) have fabulous graphics and sound which mask a pretty boring game - Beach Head II is one such game. On the Commodore it was great with its speech, amazing animation and smooth graphics, but these have been lost in the transition from 64 to Spectrum leaving a pretty simple and boring game. If gunning down loads of men really is your cup o' tea then fine, take a look at this. If it's not then try something a little more intellectually stimulating.

At last' US Gold kept us waiting for more than a year for the follow-up to their Mega- Seller Beach Head. It's well worth the wait, though. Four screens, each in its own right a separate arcade game, make this much better than the last. I suppose most people will buy it because of the original, but as it stands it's a great game. The graphics in all stages are good, as is the playability. (My personal favourite of the four is Screen Three.) You really get your money's worth, give the variation in the game, so I suppose Beach Head will be found in Christmas stockings up and down the land.

WAR HEADS

US Gold came with the classic, Beach Head, saw it was a winner and now it's set to conquer the world with Beach Head II. Rick Robson rallies his reinforcements and prepares to fight...

FAX BOX
Game: Beach Head II
Publisher: US Gold
Price: £7.95
Joystick: Kempston/Sinclair/Protek
Keys: Define your own

The evil Dictator from Beach Head is back again - but this time there's not a beach in sight. Even if he can't kick sand in the faces the weak and defenceless it'll take all your Stallone skills to overcome him in his new jungle setting.

This final battle takes place over four screens. First you must parachute your troops behind enemy lines from a helicopter. Just take care to avoid the raking fire of the dictator's pill box. Desperately your men take cover behind the first rampart. Mustering your forces you make a dash for the second wall. Beleaguered by the blitz of lead you must then combine bravery with brains, guts with guile. Some of your men will act as decoys, others will make futile suicide dashes, a brave few will succeed in bombing the machine gun only to die in the rapid rattle of lead.

But once under your command, you can turn the pill box against the dictators jungle fortress. Use it to give covering fire against tanks, land mines, tunnelers and even masonry dropped from the fortifications. In this way you can rescue your long-imprisoned comrades.

And now it's time to pursue the fleeing forces of evil. Back in your whirring attack chopper you hug the contours of the jungle escarpment, evading the natural hazards and missing the missiles. Success in this phase will take you to the end.

And as in all great battles - Vader vs Obi-wan Kenobi, Holmes vs Moriarty, Border vs Botham - the climax is a head to head, an eyeball to eyeball confrontation, just you and the dictator, glaring across a cavernous gulch, your only weapons knives, your wits and your will to win... between you the raging torrent roars, soon to claim its victim, you... or the dictator.

Of course if there's a touch of evil within you, there's no reason why you can't be the dictator. You can even use the game's fine one-to-one facility for a duel to the death.

Technically its hard to find fault with a game forged as formidably as any of US Gold's armoury. I found the final screen a bit wet (in more ways than one) after the furious hardware of the previous screens. But if you've got this far on all three levels of difficulty maybe you need the rest. And perhaps the fairly average graphics don't quite match up to the game play. But now I'm splitting hairs where most people'll just want to get in there and start splitting heads.

Publisher: US Gold
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor

Dateline: July 1947 - The Dictator is still alive. Despite your valiant efforts to destroy this evil genius in Beach Head, he has escaped and established a secret fortress somewhere in the jungle. He is known only as The Dragon - well, Dick Tator is a rather silly name - his defences are strong; he is holding allied troops as hostages. Only you can take on this mission to rescue them, Ramb... oops sorry - Chief Commander Stryker.

Like its predecessor, Beach Head II is a four part arcade game, filled with machine guns, mines, helicopter gunships - in 1947? - and general carnage. But this time the mission is on a smaller scale.

First things first, though. Choose whether you want to play the part of goodie-goodie Stryker or that crazed tyrant and all-round-fun guy, The Dragon. Find a friend and you can even play head to head and attempt to obliterate each other simultaneously. Then there are the three skill levels if you're playing against the computer.

Part One: Attack. The first thing Stryker has to do is drop his troops safe behind the cover of a wall. While the chopper is invulnerable the men aren't, so he drops them as low as possible, though if he flies too low their 'chutes don't open, which serves them right for jumping from a helicopter. Meanwhile The Dragon takes pot shots with a machine gun which has vertical range controls as well as horizontal direction. Though you won't run out of ammo, indiscriminate fire is unwise as it makes targetting slower.

From the cover of the first wall Stryker has to run his troops from one of three gaps across exposed ground. As the gaps flash like Christmas lights, pressing 'fire' chooses the opening which is currently illuminated, and left or right chooses the soldier's course. Once they reach the cover of the second wall they're in need of a rest, so an equal number of enforcements join them.

Now there's just one gap, directly in the line of fire, though you can send a man over the top while some foolhardy - sorry, heroic - comrade runs into the path of the gun, drawing the fire trying to lob a grenade while in position. There are points for each man clear, and a bonus for each emplacement destroyed.

The main problem with this action is one of control. In an attempt to get all the action in one screen the figures are tiny and the response times seem a little slow. But if keeping the Allies up and running is hard enough, The Dragon has a worse time. The line of tracer bullets can be difficult to see.

Part Two: Rescue. Don't worry about the previous criticism; in this next section the Allies have captured the turret so it's their problem. The prisoners march across the screen, left to right, apparently oblivious to the mayhem.

Meanwhile, The Dragon throws all he's got at them. When you learn that this includes rocks dropped off the roof you'll realise that this isn't much. He also has a tank without ammo, but luckily the prisoners are so numbed by their ordeal that they walk straight into its path. An armoured car can gun them down but sneakiest of all is a mobile trap door(!) from which a little figure can emerge to lay mines.

Stryker has to shoot all these obstacles and clear the path for the pole-axed POWs, some targets calling for careful aiming. This time the enemy has the advantage, even though the selection technique calls for some odd joystick shifting.

Part Three: Escape! Back to the helicopter and it's time to fly any survivors out to freedom. Stryker has four possible routes, of varying difficulty, though he can't tell which is which, so it pays not to out all his eggs in one basket. Once he launches a chopper it's a question of steering left and right across a scrolling screen, blasting buildings and avoiding the enemy tank fire.

Part Four: Battle. Neither side has any advantage here unless it's the one player game - in which case it's fairly simple to beat the computer. Stryker has tracked his enemy to some underground caves, but they've obviously had enough of blasting each other with bazookas so they indulge in some ancient native trial of strength.

Sticks and stones will break their bones, as they hurl 'poonta'sticks at each other across a chasm. Baseball skills may help Stryker here, as straight and curved throws are possible as well as ducking and jumping.

That's it then, and while Beach Head II is no classic it is different from the original. Perhaps the parts don't make up a satisfactory whole and the tiny graphics are hardly impressive, but if you were a fan of part one then this is worth a look.

Label: Americana
Author: Access
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tony Dillon

In the sequel, the dictator has kidnapped some of the allies that helped you in that battle and so it's your job to go behind enemy lines and retrieve them. There are many tasks to accomplish in this multi-screen attack. To begin with you land your forces behind enemy lines by dropping and advancing them through and around a series of walls avoiding the constant firepower of a large gun situated at the bottom of the screen. One nice touch here is that if you are playing two-player, one player takes control of the gun. Once you have got your mini A-team past the gun, you then free the prisoners and protect them using the big gun to shoot tanks and enemy soldiers. After that it's a daring vertically scrolling helicopter flight. Finally it's the booma-dagger fight. Two opponents stand on either side of a cave and throw daggers at each other Great stuff!

Graphics are small, but very detailed in places and the animation in the first stage is a delight. A worthy follow-up to an old classic.

US Gold
£7.95

A shoot 'em up war game from US Gold which I enjoyed more than the original. There are plenty of options - one or two players, three difficulty levels, choice of being attacker or defender and keyboard or joystick options.

The game consists of four phases; attack, rescue, escape and battle. Beach Head II bears some vague resemblance to the arcade game Commando, although the graphics are nowhere near as good.

The graphics are excellent, though small, and they are well animated. Scores tend to be of the massive variety and these are kept on a high score table. Sound is to the Spectrum's usual standard. The machine plays machine plays a mean game in the one player mode and should provide a challenge for the most ardent arcadian. I particularly liked the two player mode where you can get rid of your aggression by slaughtering a friend.

There are some who believe that this kind of wanton destruction is morally unhealthy - I suggest they I suggest they avoid this program. Personally I found this to be a good example of the mindless zap everything that moves game, and I must also admit to enjoying a few plays when the strain of coping with the state of the art mindbenders becomes too much.