Producer: Fantasy
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.50
Language: Machine code
Author: Bob Hamilton

As we reported a month or two back, Fantasy have given their super hero Ziggy a holiday, and in this, their new game, a new hero emerges - Beaky. Beaky lives on the planet Crackit, and the place is of the type that would give David Attenborough shivers of ecological pleasure. This is survival of the fittest. As Beaky your task stretches across three screens of furious activity and the aim is to raise more Beaky's like yourself. Don't worry - this is no sex education game - Beaky's broody habits are restricted to saving eggs, hatching them and feeding the resultant chicks.

In effect there are 12 different screens, consisting of three distinct phases. The object is to rear four generations of Beakys to complete the game. Beaky is an Andromedan Condor and possessed of magical powers, he also spits magic seeds which kill off his aggressors. In the first screen the Eggsnatchers have robbed the nest of its eggs. These can be seen dotted about on the five platforms above the nest. Eggsnatchers keep materialising and then picking up the eggs. After a second or two they dematerialise with the egg. Beaky must fly around rescuing the eggs. Because they are too heavy to pick up, he must wait for an Eggsnatcher to get one, then shoot the beast before it dematerialises. The egg is dropped and falls, Beaky must zoom down and catch it before it drops and smashes, eventually landing on the nest to deposit it. Contact with an Eggsnatcher will cause it to dematerialise with a resultant loss of some of Beaky's magical power. When all power is lost the game is over. On subsequent levels poison green eggs will fall into the nest. These are best shot out of the air as they destroy the already collected eggs one at a time. Leaving the first phase is up to the player and is a strategical decision. Too soon and you won't have enough eggs - too late and there won't be enough magical power to sustain you through the next two phases.

Having collected some eggs they must now be hatched out. For this they need warmth. Fortunately they only take two minutes to hatch. However life is made difficult by the snowflakes which keep dropping on the nest lowering the eggs' temperature. These may be shot at, in which case they turn to water, which has less effect. Another shot when the drop turns blue will vapourise altogether. If the temperature drops to zero an egg will be lost. On top of this is the Froogle (claimed to be a distant relative of Googly Bird from Doomsday Castle), which hops slowly along and flicks squid nitrogen into the nest causing a drop in its temperature. Froogles are dissuaded from this unsavoury habit by shooting the spheres which float around and causing their central nuclei to fall on the Froogle's head. Contact with a Froogle causes severe depletion of magic power.

Successfully hatching out an egg takes you onto phase three - feeding the chick. This is accomplished by catching large quantities of a green flying worm and taking it back to the thick. The worms are not easy to catch, being naturally shy of vicious Andromedan Condors. More Eggsnatchers will appear in this phase (they also like green flying worms) and will drop missiles into the nest, further depleting any food you have already collected. Rearing a chick through this phase returns you to the first at a higher, more difficult level. Completing all four levels will result in a hi-score code appearing for Fantasy's Hall of Fame (as well as Lloyd Mangram's Hall of Slime).

COMMENTS

Control keys: preset - O/P left/right, Q flap, M fire, E quit (to next level), but keys may be user-defined
Joystick: Kempston, ZX 2, AGF, Protek
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: smooth, large, detailed and very good
Sound: good noises, not too much of it
Skill levels: progressive difficulty
Lives: the magic you're given
Screens: 3
Originality: very original

This is one of those games which starts off fairly difficult and boring but gradually grows on you. I thought the graphics were a bit of a come down after Doomsday Castle although the animation is quite good. Beaky has a mind of his own and is hard to control, especially when landing. The game becomes progressively more interesting. Colour and sound are well above average. It gets to be very addictive although I still think DDC was a better game, but certainly worth buying.

Fantasy certainly go in for games with a lot going on, and Beaky is no exception. There's a very long and amusing set of instructions with the game objectives and methods of play very clearly laid out. It's just as well, because Beaky is hard to get used to at first. The controls are simple and good, left, right, flap and fire, but he has an inbuilt instrument landing system which means he operates quite erratically (it seems at first). Once mastered, the game stops being unfortunately hard and becomes plain hard! The Eggsnatchers, particularly, are well designed and animated, and the graphics throughout are very good indeed. There isn't quite as much going on as in DDC but saving eggs is sweaty work. At first I thought the fact that you can exit phase one on your own decision lowered the playability and point of the game, but in fact it's very much a case of too many or too few eggs. You have to be careful in deciding when to go on to the next screen. In the end I think Beaky lacks all the excitement and addictivity that Doomsday Castle had, but it's certainly a good game and very original and very playable.

After really enjoying Fantasy's last two productions I was really looking forward to this one. But I was somewhat disappointed with it. The game has great graphics (perhaps not quite as varied as usual) and it is highly original. It just didn't seem very playable or addictive to me. The bird is difficult to control so that you can get in good shots at your enemies. Perhaps Fantasy are trying to be too adventurous. Still it is above average to the point of being good.

Beaky, a member of the Andromedan Armed Condors, has chosen to lay her eggs on the planet Crackit. Unfortunately, this is the home of the egg-snatchers, so the first thing is help Beaky recover her eggs, then assist in brooding and chick rearing.

Alan G: Originality, in this case, doesn't just apply to the idea, but also to the design and movement of the graphics. They're super smooth, flicker free, and include excellent detail. In fact, it takes 120 frames of animation to move Beaky alone. Although the colours aren't the brightest possible (black background), they're easy on the eyes. HIT

Alex: The graphics are generally very impressive, especially Beaky (when she's in flight) and the egg-snatchers themselves. However, the use of colour could have been better - it's a bit dull to look at; a little more sound might have helped as well. Nevertheless, the originality of the idea, and the fast action, make this an extremely good game to play. The option of defining your own keys helps. HIT

Alan H: The screen display is somehow lacking, offering little to maintain the player's concentration, which is one reason why this game is so difficult to play. Another is the speed, which is sometimes so fast that Beaky flies out of control. Still, the graphics are of a very high quality, and are not adversely affected by the high speed. The actual idea is as good as it is novel. MISS

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Fantasy
PRICE: £5.50

Don't put all your eggs in one basket when playing this game as they're likely to be grabbed by a strange winged egg-snatcher.

Beaky and the Egg Snatchers is the latest release from Fantasy Software, the boys who brought us The Pyramid. You take the part of Beaky, a small white bird, and the game is all about looking after your eggs in a multi screen game.

Screen one has you plucking eggs from out of the mouths of egg snatchers. The eggs rest on a number of small platforms on the screen and the egg snatchers are swooping down and removing them. Your task is to apprehend the nasties in mid-flight with your gun. The egg will then fall from their claws and you must catch it before it hits the ground and ends up as an omelette.

Once you have an egg, you take it to the nest which is at the bottom of the screen where it remains until needed for the other screens.

You can collect up to nine eggs and you can quit this first level at any time as long as you have at least one egg.

Screen two is similar in layout to the first one.

Once you become a master at the first three screens then there are three more skill levels. The total of twelve screens has four egg-catching screens, four spinning disk ones and four with chicks.

Sound effects are in the game, including birdie noises and control is via a joystick or the keyboard.

This is a novel game. The graphics are good and some of the movement effects are quite clever.

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
CONTROL: Keys, Kemp, Pro, Sinc
FROM: Fantasy Software, £5.50

Beaky is an Andromedan Armed Condor engaged in a desperate struggle to preserve his species on the planet Crackit. There are 12 different screens to get through, involving collecting the eggs, incubating them and, finally, rearing the chicks.

The first stage has you recovering stolen eggs front the nasty Egg Snatchers. You must shoot them in flight and catch the falling egg.

When the egg is in your grasp you must swoop down to your nest and drop it in. To make life that bit harder you have a diminishing supply of magic that must last until you complete the third screen.

As with all chicks there must be a time for incubation. Beaky has the task of shooting (yes shooting!) snowflakes before they drop into his nest and lower the temperature.

The rare spotted Froogle will try to drop the temperature of the nest by spitting nitrogen bombs into it. This creature hops around in between cat naps, your only hope of destroying him being to shoot the coloured spinning spheres which move around the screen.

The third stage has you trying to feed your helpless chicks with the green worms that wriggle around the screen.

Rearing its ugly head is yet another Egg Snatcher who will deplete your food supply by dropping missiles into the nest. If the food supply falls to zero then a chick is lost the other chicks get hungry and eat it!

If you manage to sustain a good food supply the chicks mature and you start over, with the second generation (there being four to do overall).

The presentation on Beaky is superb There are user-definable keys and all major joystick interfaces are supported.

Beaky will arouse the maternal instinct and has the right blend of action and strategy to have you constantly coming back for just one more try.

Recent software releases have indicated that shooting in straight lines is now passe. The new alternative is to spit missiles which hit their target on the ricochet. Not the cleanest of habits and certainly not the easiest.

Thai form of defence is employed in Beaky and the Egg Snatchers. The game includes many levels, all different. The gist is that the player is transformed into a large bird trying to rear chicks. Eggs must be collected and batched and chicks must then be fed.

As usual, the difficulties are manifold. You are not just a bird, you are an Andromedan Condor. The instructions suggest that life is made easier if you imagine you really are an Andromedan Condor. That is no mean feat but they are correct; movement is even more difficult than that stretch of the imagination.

It might be thought that trying to incubate eggs would be difficult if you are a male bird but the problem goes unnoticed in the face of the Egg-snatchers which do their best at every stage of the game to prevent any new condor reaching maturity. Not only do they carry away the eggs, they also drop snowflakes on the eggs while they are incubating and fire missiles at the small chicks.

Beaky and the Egg Snatchers is far more inventive and far more challenging than it is possible to imagine without playing it for several hours. Definitely one of the best games of 1984, produced for the 48K Spectrum by Fantasy Software, Fauconberg Lodge, 27a St George's.Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Price, £6.50.