Producer: The Edge
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Paul Curtis

The Edge is a new name in Spectrum software, but not newcomers because these are the programmers, under a different name, that produced material for Softek. With the demise of Imagine, The Edge are claiming to be the producers of the first true megagames. Starbike is being pushed as the first game ever to be "voted" into Computer & Video Games' Hall of Fame before its release.

The object is to collect lost aliens from several planets while avoiding the multitudes of space debris floating around. It begins with your lunar lender arriving on the planet surface. Hundreds of aliens (space debris) floats, bounces and spins around. The landscape also contains a large radar dish or scanner, as well as various devices that shoot at Starbiker or hinder his progress. He emerges from the rescue craft already on his jet bike which is armed with continuous automatic laser fire. Near to the lander is an alien depository. Flying to the large scanner and stopping on top of it will result in a small arrow appearing in the base score line which indicates the direction of the next alien to be rescued. The aliens are small yellow balls with stalks that bounce up and down in a somewhat carefree manner considering that thay are lost! They are collected by running over them and then they hang beneath the bike until you can dump them into the depository. The process is then repeated until all the lost aliens have been found. As it isn't stated on each screen how many there are on a planet it requires careful attention to the scanner. Returning with an alien to the lender will result in its taking off for another planet, possibly leaving some unrescued aliens behind, and for this crime, points are docked from your score. Starbiker is provided with a shield value of five, and hitting any debris will knock the shields down by one. There is only one life in what is designed as a high scorers' game.

COMMENTS

Control keys: Q-T thrust, bottom row alternate keys = left/right
Joystick: Kempston, Protek, AGF, Fuller, Sinclair
Keyboard play: very responsive, simple keys
Use of colour: quite good
Graphics: fast, large, well detailed and smooth, a few details lacking here and there
Sound: good
Skill levels: progressive difficulty
Lives: only 1 with 5 shields
Screens: scrolling
Special features: 1 or 2 player games, uses Currah microspeech, also offers of raffle, with every copy having possible winning numbers for a free subscription to C&VG or one of several BMX bikes.

Starbike is very similar to a well known game by the name of Lunar Jetman! The game style is very similar indeed. Personally I thought Lunar Jetman had the better graphics though this is a little more playable (but perhaps not as addictive). A price tag of £6.95 makes this much worse value for money than LJM. After reading all the PR blurb I decided that they are overrating it. Yes, it is excellent but not "the most impressive of its kind yet launched." Starbike does tend to build up as you go along and progress.

What set Lunar Jetman apart from so many other shoot em ups was the attention to detail with every graphic character being well designed in all respects. It would be hard to get away from comparing Starbike to Lunar Jetman but here there are a few let downs on the graphics side. The landing rescue craft is very disappointing and for a horizontal scrolling game, the very strong base line which acts as ground does not scroll, and at first this gives a strange impression that you're not getting anywhere with the left and right keys until a scanner goes sailing by underneath. The alien and debris graphics are very neatly done and animated although there wasn't much alteration between early levels (haven't got any further yet). Starbike is a good shoot em up hi-scoring game that should keep people amused for some time, and it is quite challenging to play with only one life and very few shields for all that debris.

Starbike is a scrolling fast shoot em up, rescue game with very good graphics and sound and which uses Currah Microspeech for voice sounds. The option menu is excellent with various selections to be made and graphic devices above to show you what has been selected. Also, the hall of fame entry mode is marvellous with two arrows between which scrolls the alphabet. I think this is the quickest and best I've ever seen on any game. With continuous fire leaving only three keys to control the game it is far more playable than Lunar Jetman, which it resembles, but I don't think it's as addictive to play because the overall content is a bit lower. No doubt it will prove very popular with hi-scorers.

BIKERS OUT OF CONTROL

Memory: 48K
Price: £6.95
Joystick: Kempstonm, Fuller, Protek, Sinclair

Once they have fathomed how to choose the game control options budding BMX star-warriors should have a pretty good time with Starbike, a fast arcade production from The Edge.

You must steer your starbike across the planet's surface to rescue friendly droids and return them to the safety of your lander module via a teleport located in your sector.

Large numbers of hostile alien objects swarm over the screen and will eventually wear out your shields and send you to wherever it is deceased BMX star-warriors are supposed to spend eternity.

There are a number of control options and you can choose from several joysticks, the Fuller Master Unit, Interface 2 and Currah microspeech. Working out how to select those requires a couple of A Levels.

It may take you some time to get used to the thrust controls but, all told, the game is exciting and quite addictive.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48k
SUPPLIER: The Edge
PRICE: £6.95

An Orola, in case you didn't know, is a bouncing yellow blob which knows what it's doing and where it's going.

It's also pretty fed up, as some mean race called the Mordra has just blown its planet to smithereens.

Luckily, though, they just happened to have these escape pods a hand and some Orola managed to get away.

An escape pod seats five and, for reasons known only to the Orola, they sent one escape pod to each of a galaxy of planets.

Your task is to tour those planets, returning the Orola to their teleporters which they have set up.

Each time you do this, you are moved on to the next sector to look for another Orola. Problem is that if, after getting the last one, you are at the wrong side the planet, you have to fight your way back again across the galaxy before you can take off.

That's the general idea of the game which took some time to puzzle out. The instructions are written in the form of a memo from the Commander and there's a lot to remember.

Once the game has loaded, you can select the controls. You can use a Kempston, Fuller or Protek interface or the keyboard.

The first thing I noticed was the similarity to Jet Pac. Sound effects are similar and so is the man on his starbike, even the aliens move in the same way. The difference is that the screen scrolls sideways as opposed to being set on a single screen.

It's colourful and fast, but if you've already bought Jet Pac, you may be disappointed.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys, Kemp, Curs, Sinc
FROM: The Edge, £6.95

Saving little alien creatures is the object of this new game and very cute they are too, these Orola. The blurb describes them as 'bouncing, yellow blobs of sentience', which is pretty accurate except for the bit about sentience.

They also have extraordinarily long antennae which wave from side to side as they do their bouncing. You arrive on a planet in your lander craft, and pop out riding the starbike. Your mission: to investigate the five sectors and rescue any Orola that might be stranded there.

To help you there are scanners with whirling dishes. You fly through them and an arrow appears pointing the way to the stranded Orola. So, off you go on your bike. You get the Orola and take it back to the teleporter which dumps it in your ship and dumps you in another sector. When you've collected the last one you have to get back to your ship in the time limit and escape to another planet.

It's not easy though. The planets are full of hostile alien life forms, and the starbike's shields can only take five hits before total vaporisation.

For protection, the bike automatically emits a constant stream of laser fire. Your joystick fire button is used, not for firing, but for controlling thrust, which gives the game a strange feel on first playing.

It all sounds a bit like Lunar Jetman, and it looks even more like it. The graphics are excellent, but very Ultimate.

The trouble with the game is that it gets pretty boring. Shoot, pick up, go back to ship, go to another planet and do the same thing.

The aliens are varied and some planets are more difficult than others, but it all boils down to the same thing. A bit more variety in what you have to do and the game could have been a great deal more fun.

I was a little disappointed in this game because after so much hyping before hand it presented nothing very original.

The graphics ore brilliant, though - somewhat reminiscent of Lunar Jetman, and the action is fast and furious. The only problem is that the task of collecting Orolas doesn't make this a game to think about, just one of reflex shoot-'em-up.

On the whole I liked the game but software has moved on from pretty graphics and laser blasting, Top class games need more than just a high score table to keep you interested. No harm in a good zap though.

BOB WADE

A familiar scenario pops up on the screen here. Planet, spaceship and a Jetman on his Starbike. The alien s are pretty unimaginative (although rather deadly) and the little things that need rescuing look rather like frogs with antennae.

The aim of the game seems to have been rather lost in programming since rescuing frogs with antennae and shooting aliens becomes rather monotonous after a while.

Apart from this, it's well presented, and if you enjoy endless killing, endless rescuing and frequent death, this could be for you!

SAMANTHA HEMENS