Quicksilva, 48K
£6.95

Excellent moving star backgrounds, in 3D give a real space feeling to this 5-skill level game. Long range scan shows you where the enemy are and you jump through space to the correct sector. Movement control is instant and keeping the enemy in your sights is a tough task helped by a joystick (Kempston). If you're successful at clearing the entire galaxy you can land on the aliens' planet to refuel before jumping the timegate to another infested galaxy. Full damage status readouts. Highly recommended.

Quicksilva, 48K
£6.95

Excellent moving star backgrounds, in 3D give a real space feeling to this 5-skill level game. Long range scan shows you where the enemy are and you jump through space to the correct sector. Movement control is instant and keeping the enemy in your sights is a tough task helped by a joystick (Kempston). If you're successful at clearing the entire galaxy you can land on the aliens' planet to refuel before jumping the timegate to another infested galaxy. Full damage status readouts. Highly recommended.

Quicksilva, 48K
£6.95

Excellent moving star backgrounds, in 3D give a real space feeling to this 5-skill level game. Long range scan shows you where the enemy are and you jump through space to the correct sector. Movement control is instant and keeping the enemy in your sights is a tough task helped by a joystick (Kempston). If you're successful at clearing the entire galaxy you can land on the aliens' planet to refuel before jumping the timegate to another infested galaxy. Full damage status readouts. Highly recommended.

TRAVELLING IN TIME IS PROVING DIFFICULT

Computer games are becoming more complicated every month but Quicksilva, the manufacturer of a new game for the 48K Spectrum called Time Gate, claims that the game is the ultimate sci-fi arcade adventure.

The game is loaded in two parts. First, the lengthy instruction manual is loaded. That indicates to the player that the object of the game is to destroy a race of aliens called the Squarm who have invaded and taken over the Earth. The player must locate and travel through a series of time gates to various periods of history to find and destroy the headquarters of the Squarm.

The player must destroy as many aliens as possible in the search for the base, as the score is based on the time the mission takes and the number of craft destroyed before finishing or aborting the game.

If damage is sustained in space battles the player can land on a planet to do repairs and re-fuel. There are three types of planet and four types of alien craft with which to contend.

The most amazing thing about the game is the graphics. The player looks through the window of a space-craft at a three-dimensional view of space. The alien craft and the planet surfaces are also three-dimensional.

The sound effects have an arcade-style quality. The game has a high-score facility but high scores are difficult to obtain and we managed only 330.

Time Gate is available from Quicksilva, Hampshire, and costs £6.95.

THE PLOT THICKENS

The frantic zap of arcade software has given way to calmer play and strategic thinking. John Gilbert investigates.

TIME GATE
Memory: 48K
Price: £6.95

CODENAME MAT
Memory: 48K
Price: £6.95

STONKERS
Memory: 48K
Price: £3.95

HALLS OF THE THINGS
Memory: 48K
Price: £7.50

MAZIACS
Memory: 48K
Price: £6.95

The 'Zap-Em' type of arcade game, although still around, has undergone a transformation which started in earnest in the middle of last year. Games manufacturers with an eagle eye on the industry saw that the time would arrive when arcade games, such as Space Invaders and Centipede, would fade in popularity and that something had to be added to make them more appealing.

The one aspect which games such as those already had was strategy. In games such as Space Invaders, strategy is needed to evade the aliens and at the same time fire at them. A good game will infer a strategy to the player and a good player is one who can assimilate that method of play quickly.

Software houses decided that the most obvious way to increase interest in the arcade style of game was to emphasise the strategy aspect. That is done either by putting strategy games in an arcade format or by slowing the action to accommodate structured thought instead of quick-fire intuition. The move worked well and games like Time Gate, Stonkers and Codename Mat prove it.

Time Gate reached the market shortly after the Spectrum arrived in great quantities and it is one of the first games for the machine produced by Quicksilva. The game centres on a conflict between the peoples of the free universe and the incredibly evil and ancient race of Squarm.

At the launch Quicksilva promoted it as the ultimate sci-fi space adventure and, with its 3D representation of space through the window of a fighter and the depth of story deadline, it was at that time.

The strategy of the game is centred on finding the aliens using the instrument panel of your spaceship and then destroying them. It was given added depth by spreading the Squarm through space and time so that the player has to lock-on to a particular sector in space and spacewarp there.

In some ways Quicksilva produced a game which crosses Space Invaders with the mainframe computer game Star Trek. It was that aspect initially which drew customers who wanted something different and who were ever-willing to part with their money.

Unfortunately, Time Gate is an example of how the software scene can change overnight. A few months after its release the game attracted much criticism and the Squarm have made many players squirm.

At the release, about a year ago, Time Gate was described as incredible but since then players and critics alike found that it had limitations, not least of which was the plot. The storyline is too much like a revamped version of Star Trek. Time Gate is still available from Quicksilva and costs £6.95.

Codename Mat, for the 48K Spectrum, is a new release from Micromega which could be described as an advanced version of Time Gate or an extremely good interpretation of the Atari Star Raiders. The strategy element in the arcade game is obvious, as you have to plot your way through the solar system, passing through star gates to spacewarp into another system.

The solar system is broken into sectors which have a planet or satellite as bases. The planets are taken from our solar system and include Mars, Jupiter and Earth. Each of those planets is under attack from the Myons and it is your job, as a teenager with the knowledge of the universe, to stop them.

There are two levels of play depending whether you want to use a lone ship or whether you want to be the commander of a task force. The latter is the most difficult as you can engage in several conflicts at the same time by using subspace radio, which seems to have an immediate effect on the sector you have selected.

If all your ships in one sector are destroyed, the planet could be destroyed and you have lost part of the game. If you see the situation where you could lose ships in another sector you will need to use your cunning and skill to build a battle strategy.

The arcade part of the game occupies about 50 percent of playing time and involves shooting through space and chasing the enemy fighters and motherships. It can only be described as classic arcade action combined with moments of strategic thinking to scan computer banks for information about the movement of hostile craft and about which planetary system are in danger.

Codename Mat could almost be described as state-of-the-art in software and it is close to a simulation in space-game terms. One of the most notable aspects is that the routine to generate the 3D graphics is only 200 bytes long. The compactness of the graphics routines means that the author has been able to concentrate on developing the depth and storyline of the game and that is obvious from the start.

Unfortunately, although the game is more advanced than Time Gate, the storyline is weak, as it seems to be a collection of unoriginal ideas. Luckily those ideas fuse together well and the plot stands on its own. Codename Mat can be obtained from Micromega and costs £6.95.

Manufacturers and authors have not limited arcade strategy games to the depths of space. They have also done the opposite of giving arcade games touch of strategy and given strategy games on arcade feel.

Stonkers, for the 48K Spectrum from Imagine, is a prime example of that type of game. The player is given command of land-based forces, including tanks and infantry, which are grouped in the top right-hand corner of the screen. The enemy is based across the river on the other side of the screen and to reach a suitable combat position one or other side has to cross the bridge.

When you start to play, a map of the whole theater of war is displayed. You can issue commands to active units on the map by positioning a cursor over the map position you require.

One of two actions will occur. If you are on the big map you will zoom in to a detailed display of the location specified. If you are already zoomed in you can position the cursor over a fighting unit and by moving the cursor to the position you want it to take up, it will start to move towards that locality.

The use of a cursor to plot strategy is inventive and imagine has put much effort into the game. It should take weeks for a player to work out a plan of strategy to defeat the foe, mainly because of the immense landscape on which play takes place.

The game is a cross between the usual type of battle strategy game such as Apocalypse from Red Shift and the arcade game Battlezone. Imagine has succeeded in producing a game which combines arcade quality graphics and strategic action. Stonkers can be obtained from imagine for £3.95.

Maze games, such as Pac-man, have not escaped the eye of software houses keen to think of new plots. The munch-munch of the Pac-Man has been replaced by ponderings, such as 'Where is the treasure?' of the hero or heroine. That type of game is well-illustrated with such programs as Ant Attack, from Quicksilva, Maziacs from dk'Tronics and the irrepressible Halls of the Things from Crystal Computing, which still seems to be out-selling everything on the market.

Halls of the Things, in which the player has to collect a certain number of rings of power in a maze before being destroyed by the monsters, started a craze for the so called all-graphics adventures in which cartoon-style arcade graphics were combined with adventure plots. Most of those games take place in dungeons and feature magic and sword play. Several companies have followed the excellent crystal game, although unlike the state of play with arcade games nobody has copied original Crystal ideas as the area is so rich in concept material. Halls of the Things can be obtained from Crystal Computing and costs £7.50.

Maziacs, for the 48K Spectrum, is from dk'Tronics and is another example of the genre. It has a different graphics style from Halls of the Things which some would say is bolder and better and is more in line with the graphics which Ultimate Play the Game produces.

The plot involves finding a treasure chest in a maze which you must drag back home without being killed by the Maziacs, which can get into terrible sword fights with your player-character. To find the way to the treasure you have to make contact with the prisoners who are strung along the corridors of the maze. The fight sequences are incredibly detailed. You will again need to develop a strategy over a period of time to win. Maziacs can be obtained from dk'Tronics and costs £6.95.

To succeed, arcade-strategy games must produce an effect for the player like that produced by an ordinary zap'em game. It is the way the addiction is created which makes the difference. In an ordinary arcade game the effect is created through a need to destroy aliens and make a high score. Arcade-strategy games are different, as they rely on the user's mind. It is the strategy as well as the graphics which keeps the player returning for more.

The combination of arcade techniques and strategic thinking has made the arcade-strategy game very popular. The insurgence of that type of program means that the customer has two types of game in one and the reality of the plot, through the realism of the arcade graphics, takes the games industry one step forward. The main criticism for a long time is liable to be that the plots on which the games hang are not original enough. We are, however, just beginning to see a change in arcade style, where bang and zap are replaced by plot and thought.

Memory Required: 48K
Price: £6.95

Quicksilva gave Time Gate considerable advance publicity claiming it would make as great an impact on the computer games' world as had Atari's Star Raiders. As it turns out the game closely resembles Star Raiders. Given that the Atari is a rather more sophisticated computer it is not surprising that the Spectrum version of the game does not match the original.

Time Gate presents a view from the cockpit of a spaceship. An instrument panel below contains a long-range scanner and a variety of other indicators giving information on the ship's position and damage incurred. Your mission is to clear 18 galactic sectors of enemy craft.

The business of locating and firing on enemy ships is not as interesting as attending to all the other procedures. The controls are not as responsive as on the Atari. Nonetheless this is an elaborate game with excellent graphics - certainly one of the best so far for the Spectrum.

INTO THE FOURTH DIMENSION

A review of the new 4-D adventure from Quicksilva, with Phil Garratt at the helm.

Three dimensions were not enough for the latest addition to Quicksilva's long line of machine code arcade games. Time-Gate involves travelling backwards through the fourth dimension, time itself. We are told that the two thousand year old interstellar Empire founded by Earth was happily going the way of all empires, that is into decline, when the Squarm turned up. They are a race of insectoid reptiles, and before long they had taken over the entire Empire, except for a few planets centered on the Earth.

The Temporal Brotherhod decide to overthrow the Squarm, but instead of doing the decent thing and fighting it out man to man (or rather man to reptile), they hit on a sneaky trick. They dig out the two thousand year old Void-Runner 1, a trans-dimensional space ship, and give you the mission of travelling back through time via the Time-Gate until you can destroy the Squarm's home planet before they ever left it.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

The galaxy is made up of 18 sectors, one of which contains the Time-Gate which your ship will automatically pass through provided there are no enemy ships in the sector. Knocking out the enemy ships is the central part of the game which all the rest has been tacked onto. The top two thirds of the TV display are used for the three-dimensional view of space, and as you steer your craft, the stars swirl round according to your movement.

When ships appear they weave in every direction, diving nearer and further away, all the time firing pot shots at you. You have to manoeuvre your craft until the enemy is in line with your two lasers, which fire from either side converging into the centre. I found it best to try to line up the alien along one or other of the beams rather than try to hit it at the narrow point where the beams meet. Unless you get a lucky shot, it will usually take four hits to knock out the opposition, and you can tell when a hit has registered because the enemy ship changes colour.

An unusual arrangement of keys are used for movement - 6 and 7 for left and right, 8 and 9 for up and down. Zero fires the lasers. The program comes with a little keyboard overlay to help you remember them, but before long the keys are memorised and then the overlay tends to get in the way rather than help.

The bottom third of the TV display is your instrument panel. To the left is the long range scanner which shows all 18 sectors. Alien ships are marked as a short line, and a planet, where you can have repairs done, is shown as a cross. The display is very small indeed, and some people with ropey TVs (or eyesight!) may have some difficulty. In the centre of the console display is the message system, which flashes up details about damage sustained and other information as the game progresses. To the right is the target computer display, which consists of four horizontal lines each with a marker on it and is only active when there are enemy ships in the area. The first two lines are the vertical and horizontal tracking indicators and when you have steered Void-Runner 1 so that the markers are in the middle, you are right behind the 'baddie'. The third indicator gives the closing speed and the fourth, the distance between you and the target. The enemy are scattered randomly within the sector, and you can have quite a long wait before they appear on the upper display.

SET THE CONTROLS...

The last console instruments are the status indicators for shields, weapons, engines, etc. They start off green and go steadily darker as the systems are damaged, until they turn blue which means that that function is knocked out. When you take a hit, the damage seems to be allocated randomly to one of the various systems, so if you're unlucky all the damage may be done to just one system, and if it takes another hit after the indicator has turned blue, your ship is destroyed.

The rest of the control keys are as follows - 1 to 5 control your warp speed, and you can tell when you go faster because the stars rush by, and the engines, which make a constant hissing sound, go to a higher pitch. To jump to a different sector, you press 'L' until the flashing indicator on the long range scanner is over the sector you require, and then press 'J'. You then make your jump, accompanied by some impressive sound and visual effects. To carry out repairs, you have to jump to a sector with a planet and knock out any aliens. Then pressing 'P' causes a landing, also accompanied by very ingenious graphics. All your systems are then restored to 'green' status; however, this does result in the unfortunate planet's destruction. Perhaps they would have been better off under the Squarm! 'H' suspends the game and 'S' restarts it, and 'Shift Space' aborts the current run.

The game progresses by knocking out as many aliens as possible, finding the Time-Gates, stepping back through time to year zero, then finding the Squarm home planet and firing your Meson Ram to destroy it. The game can be played on 5 levels, and at the higher levels the time steps get smaller, and as each earlier galaxy has more and more aliens, the game gets progressively harder.

IS THAT ALL!!

The biggest fault with Time-Gate is undoubtedly the scoring system. Several times I battled my way through hordes of aliens, eventually to destroy the Squarm home base, to find I had scored between 10 and 40 points! I queried this with Quicksilva, and they said that the score is based more on your skill factor, ie how quickly and efficiently you knock out the aliens, rather than how many. I was told that the best tactics were to stay at warp 1 (the slowest) while in a sector chasing and fighting aliens, only using warp 5 for the jump to the next sector, and putting off repairs for as long as possible.

The program comes in two 34K parts. The first gives you the scenario and rules, and goes through the cockpit display and function keys. The program has provision for the use of a Kempston joystick, and has information about how to link in other makes. The second lot of 34K is the program proper. The documentation is rather lacking - you have to note down the control keys yourself, no information is given about scoring, and nowhere is it mentioned that you can LOAD the second part (the game proper) without going through the instructions. Still, graphics are what arcade games are all about, and Time-Gate certainly has great graphics. At £6.95 (48K Spectrum only), another winner for Quicksilva.

Time-gave is available from Quicksilva, 92 Northam Road, Southampton, Hants SO2 0PB.

The first 3D arcade game for the Spectrum was brought out in 1982 and produced mixed reaction from reviewers. It has, however, continued to be popular with gamers which is surprising in a market which is so flexible and prone to changes in taste and moods.

The plot involves an attempt by the player to locate the base of the evil aliens who are intent on taking over the galaxy. That involves flights up and down the time lanes through time gates which can be accessed after all the aliens in a sector have been destroyed.

Position 50/50

ARCADES BROUGHT INTO THE HOME

John Gilbert reviews more complex games.

Almost every major type of arcade game has been simulated on Sinclair computers. There are also new games which have an arcade format but have evolved on a microcomputer. The Spectrum is an ideal machine on which to play arcade games. The quality of them has improved substantially since the launch of the machine. Some of the first arcade games to be produced for the Spectrum were versions of Space Invaders, the game which started the arcade craze.

Spectral Invaders was the first to be announced by Bug-Byte, which was already renowned for its arcade and adventure games on the ZX-81. So far it is the game which most closely resembles the original arcade version. Although it is slow it is difficult to score points, as you can fire only one laser blast at a time.

Another invaders game, Space Intruders, was launched at about the same time as Spectral Invaders. The game is much faster and is recommended for those who like to keep their fingers on the fire button and amass a big score. The only criticism is that the aliens and mothercraft are very small and the mothership is blue on a black background and so is very difficult to hit. Apart from that Space Intruders from Quicksilva is good value at £5.95.

Namtir Raiders, for the ZX-81, is a space invaders game with a difference from Artic Computing. The player still has to face the hordes of aliens which come down the screen but the laser base can be moved up and down as well as left and right.

The player has five laser bases during the game and they can take only five hits from alien bombs. There are three levels of difficulty-easy to impossible. The game, costing £3.95, is addictive and the graphics are neither awkward in design nor jerky in movement.

The game which is gaining popularity with 48K Spectrum owners is Time Gate, from Quicksilva. The authors claim that it is the ultimate in 3D arcade space action. The game is loaded in two parts, the first being a lengthy instruction manual. After the manual has finished you can load the game. The object is to destroy a race of aliens called the Squarm who are trying to colonise Earth. The enemy fighters are also seen in 3D and so are the planets on which the player can land to refuel and repair the ship. It is by far the best arcade action game so far for the Spectrum and costs only £6.95.

Asteroids is also becoming popular on Sinclair machines. One of the first companies to launch a version for the ZX-81 was Quicksilva. It was a good version on such a small machine and is still proving popular.

Quicksilva has also introduced a Spectrum version called Meteor Storm. It has the added attraction of speech before play. It is difficult to hear the words but we are informed by the authors that it says "Meteor Alert... Meteor Alert...". Meteor Storm is a novel version of Asteroids and costs £5.95.

Sinclair Research has a good game of asteroids, called Planetoids, in its new Spectrum Software library. The asteroids are in 3D and much careful design work on both the asteroids and the player's ship seems to have gone into the game. Planetoids costs £5.95.

Artic Computing seems to be the only company to have produced a version of Galaxians for the ZX-81. ZX-Galaxians looks like Space Invaders but the invaders are 'V'-shaped and are supposed to be inter-galactic birds. The birds swoop from formation and bomb the player's laser base. ZX-Galaxian is slow in action but can still be a very addictive game. It costs £4.95.

Defender is still a much-sought-after game in the arcades and Artic Computing took advantage of that early by producing a version for the ZX-81. The graphics are not particularly interesting and the spaceship which the player flies across the landscape is made up of a series of blocks which look only slightly like a ship.

Despite those criticisms, the original idea behind the game is still there and the Artic version can be exciting, as you see the enemy ships rushing at you from the other side of the screen.

With the arrival of the Spectrum, many manufacturers found an interest in the arcade game Scramble. The best and fastest version so far is from Mikro-Gen. In the game you have to go through caves which become smaller and smaller as it progresses.

The game becomes progressively more difficult and can be run in slow, normal and fast modes. It costs £3.95.

Silversoft has a Scramble-type game called Ground Attack. It works on the same principles as the Mikro-Gen game but is much slower. There is a good deal of blank screen between game rounds and the average waiting time between rounds is 15 seconds. Ground Attack costs £5.95.

The range of arcade-type games on Sinclair machines is always increasing. Manufacturers seem to feel safe in producing standard arcade games such as Space Invaders and Scramble. Those games, especially for the Spectrum, are becoming more imaginative and the graphics and sound more impressive.

Manufacturers have to be careful about copying ideas from other games but with the imagination of some of the firms in the Sinclair market, children and many adults will be kept happy with arcade-type games on the ZX-81 and Spectrum for a long time.

Space Invaders games have now been overtaken by Pacman in popularity.

Bug-Byte, 98-100 The Albany, Old Hall Street, Liverpool L3 9EP.

Quicksilva, 92 Northam Road, Southampton SO2 0PB.

Artic Computing, 396 James Reckitt Avenue, Hull, North Humberside.

Sinclair Research, Stanhope Road, Camberley, Surrey GU15 3PS.

Mikro-Gen, 24 Agar Crescent, Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 2BK.

Silversoft, 20 Orange Street, London WC2H 7ED.