Three legs for the price of two!

Producer: Psygnosis/Melbourne House
Spare Legs: £9.99 cass
Author: Ian Hetherington, Colin Rushby

Colian may well be one of the bleakest places in the universe, but it's blessed with plentiful deposits of Detonite (a powerful explosive), Quaza (a power crystal) and Aluma (the hardest metal known to man). Six mining colonies were built to exploit these treasures, but soon attracted the attention of an Empire Mother Ship. But rather than simply destroying the colonies it enslaved them. In short, they were turned to producing the most deadly land-based weapon ever - the Terrorpod. Machines by which the Empire planned to conquer the galaxy.

Somewhat concerned about this, the Federation sent their best spy to snoop around. Comfortably strapped into your Defence Strategy Vehicle (DSV) you begin your mission, months pass before the inevitable happens and your presence is discovered. Eight Terrorpods are sent to destroy the six colonies, and the secrets they hold.

If you manage to destroy all the Terrorpods at a colony then you can collect a component from the manufacturing plant, then warp to the next colony in search of more secrets. There are six components needed to complete the game. Naturally the Mother Ship isn't pleased by your efforts and periodically despatches missiles to zoom over the horizon at you.

Despite greatly enjoying Psygnosis's last game, Barbarian, I was disappointed with this one. The graphics are simplistic and drab, while control of the DSV is irritatingly tricky. After playing for some time I found little evidence of any gameplay to make these faults bearable - which is a pity because the scenario and packaging is first class.

MARK [35%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: fairly good 3-D parallax effect, but drab, monochromatic Terrorpods
Sound: the usual mixture of sparse spot effects, but no title tune
Options: definable keys

Terrorpods is an ambitious idea, poorly implemented. The game is so difficult as to be impossible to get into - control of your vehicle is extremely awkward, while limited fuel and endless enemy missiles soon kill you off. Technically, Terrorpods isn't too bad, with an effective 3-D landscape. The main drawback is the badly designed gameplay and awkwardness of the controls.
PHIL [26%]

Psygnosis
£9.99
Reviewer: Phil South

You're scanning the horizon, but you can see nothing, no sign of them. But they're there, you know it. Stumping along on their tripods, slowly, deftly avoiding obstructions. They're there all right. They were spotted by the forward station just before it went off air, that is. That funny scream, sharply cut off by a burst of static. What happened to them? Let's hope it was quick... then you catch a glimpse, a red metallic shape moving surely through the rocks to the south. You kick in the treads of your DVS and head towards it at half speed, power up your laser bolter, not daring think about what you're going to find. The Terrorpods are here.

Wow! I must admit that I never expected this game to pop up on the old Speccy. This has been a big hit on the 16 bit machines ever since PCW last year, I think. And very fancy and colourful graphics they were too, scrolling back and forth and side to side across an alien landscape in your Defense Strategy Vehicle in search of the deadly Terrorpods, horrific tripedal creatures with long pointy snouts.

Well the scrolling is here, as are the pointy snouts but where s the colour, guys? Sheesh, I thought this was going to be a blasterama, but no such luck, it seems.

You have limited fireballs to destory the evil strutting Terrorpods, and with the interial roll of the scrolling (you continue to move, even though you've stopped pushing in that direction) it's quite hard to draw a bead on the little devils. I thought the Terrorpods were supposed to suck my brains out through a straw, or something, being towering evil alien beings... but the sprites which met my eyes on the screen were a bit on the widdly side. Yowch! Oh dear. They seemed to have sucked my brain out! Yes, when a Terrorpod gets close to you, all your energy drains out through the hull of your ship, blowing one of your lives.

Another way you can meet your doom (don't you jest lurve the word 'doom'?) is from the many guided missiles which are fired at you by the Terrorpods mother ship, a fiendish red shape which hovers menacingly over the horizon. You can outmanoeuvre them by steering hard right or left and forward, I discovered, so they aren't really a problem. Except for the fact that while you're dodging the missiles, the Terrorpods have not only got past you, but they've also sneaked into your house and eaten your dinner, Okay, so I was only joking about the dinner, but they do get a chance to disrupt your power plants, and that, bucko, is your job! To stop them doing that!

I actually enjoyed playing Terrorpods, but I had misgivings about it as a game, feeling like I'd seen the like before and if it had superb colour graphics and sound it might have been just alright. But as a mono game it lacked a real spark of genuis somehow, and was a bit boring and repetitive. But that said, it's a well made game, and I liked the idea of it. Check it out before you buy.

Label: Melbourne House/Psygnosis
Author: Icon Designs
Price: £9.99
Memory: 48K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

They said it couldn't be done! Terropods, Psygnosis' impressive 16-bit arcade-simulator, converted from the Amiga and Atari ST to the Spectrum. It looks good. It sounds good. Infact, the only problem with Spectrum Terropods are shared with the original versions, it's just too damn hard.

This fast-moving romp takes place on Cohan, an inhospitable asteroid rich in mineral deposits: Detonite, a powerful explosive, Quaza, and energy giving crystal, Zenite, a are with magnetic properties, and Aluma, an ultra-strong metal. Ten mining colonies are linked together by a complex network of shuttles, protected by surveillance and defence vehicles. Predictably, the monkey in the tinderbox is the evil Empire, whose sinister Mothership now hangs in the sky over Colian, knocking out defence installations and dropping the fiercesome Terropods to invade the asteroid.

You view the surface from the cockpit of your Defence Strategy Vehicle (DSV). Your aim is to use your remote-controlled Drover vehicle to trade with the terrified colonists, building up mineral stores to power your shields, weapons, and construction units. If you can collect Terrorpod components from the Empire construction plants, you can escape from the planetoid with the bits and defeat the nasties.

You start off with a very incomplete map of the surface, and you should fill in the blanks as you go. Around your out-of-cockpit view appear readings of your energy level, shield status, X/Y co-ordinates, a local area scanner, identifications of the installations you are approaching and so on. The landscape scrolls in four directions, using a multi-plane which give a real effect of depth. In the sky hangs the alien mothership, which is pretty odd really since you keep moving about and it's supposed to be still. Now and then it launches a homing missile at you in a petulant fit.

The installations gribbit away enthusiastically as you approach them, either to trade or to blow them to bits with your laser. The Terrorpods themselves are nicely designed and animated, looking like some bybrid between HG Wells' Martian tripods and small pieces of kitchen applicances.

The annoying bit of the game is that it's so complicated that you spend half your time looking up control keys. There's so much to remember that it detracts from the enjoyment of the game.

The strategic element consists of moving around the map as quickly as possible, finding the correct installations to supply your needs, rebuilding ones which have been destroyed by the mothership, and accumulating the correct minerals to be able to trade for the Terrorpod parts; all this while fighting off the hoards of nasties. Psygnosis' strong point has always been impressive graphic design, and obviously some of this has been lost in the conversion of the Spectrum. A lot of the trading element seems to have been cut out as well (remember that the original has 512K to play with), so what's left doesn't quite hang together. Still, if you like a real challenge which will take yonks to complete, you won't regret doing battle with the Terrorpods.