Producer: Virgin Games
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: BASIC
Author: Chris Sievey

Chris Sievey, author of The Biz is probably best known for his 'hit' single I'm in love with the girl on the Virgin Manchester megastore Checkout desk - or perhaps he's not, depending on your knowledge of pop music. If you haven't heard the song, maybe this is your chance, as it is included on the tape along with seven other 'real life hit singles' by Chris Sievey and the Freshies.

The Biz is a strategy simulation which allows the player to make his way in the world as a pop superstar, and it is so true to life, claim Virgin (who should know), that record companies are even now signing up people who have succeeded in The Biz even if they have never played or sung a note. Taking this with a sizeable pinch of salt, The Biz however, provides a sufficiently wide range of menu driven options, random horrors and musical mismanagement to provide an insight into the business and an entertaining strategy game. It follows a fairly standard routine of balance sheet and option menus. The main balance sheet provides a percentage status on subjects such as Band Tightness, Stage Presence, Visual Impact, Song Quality, Fan Following and Drive/Ambition. It also tells you where you are operating from, your record label (if any), current single, musical direction, records in stock, weekly and total sales, chart position, takings (on gigs) and money in the bank. The percentage ratings are affected by elements like the mood of the band, rehearsal time and general togetherness of the band.

The active menu offers Promotion, Musical direction (style of music), Recording a song, Pressing a record, making a video, or options to phone your manager (for advice), phone a record company or a solicitor, or start the week off by phoning your agent, who will then offer you various gigs to do. If you go to a recording studio you will be asked your label and the song's title, but insufficient funds may prohibit you pressing it or promoting it.

It is possible to record a single, press and release it on your own label, even with the record companies rejecting you (major labels are noted for their unadventurousness with new bands), and the excitement really begins when it starts appearing in the charts (around the 190-150 position!) and you are shown the local radio stations that are giving it airplay. If you can survive long enough between cheap gigs to earn money and pressing enough copies of a song to get it charted, you may even make it into a good contract by dint of hard work.

The interaction of promotion, a good song, good stage Presence and plenty of rehearsal, makes The Biz a rarely complicated simulation in which, mercifully, upsetting random elements are not as silly as is often the case with this sort of game, and sometimes the random elements are nice as well as bad.

COMMENTS

Control keys: largely Yes, No and ENTER with some general input
Joystick: N/A
Keyboard play: input routine is very fast and well error-trapped
Use of colour: screen display is clearly designed by using coloured letters and blocks
Graphics: text only
Sound: game only has some telephone beeps, cassette contains 8 singles

The cassette contains the program, an interview with Chris Sievey and 8 singles to help you in search of fame, fortune and a number 1 single. Before playing, I suggest you listen to the interview on the tape, which will teach you a little about the idea of the game and how to achieve the best results. You may also collapse laughing at interviewer Frank, who would make a great promoter for Mikrogen's Wally! On to the game: I decided to be a working class pop group from Manchester of all places. You can get a manager, but think before signing - if he's a con man then a solicitor will help, but he will charge by the second. Keep on at record companies, it will pay off in the end. Each week you contact your agent and see what's on offer. Don't expect a lot at first, you will probably begin playing at the local church hall for £16 after expenses. But as you improve, so do the gigs and the payment. If you have a manager he will be taking a cut of this, but if he's worth his salt he will be trying to get you radio interviews etc. To help your cause you can use several promotional aids starting off with leaflets distributed locally, but eventually you may be able to afford national radio ads. During the game there are additional problems which you will encounter, like someone 'nicking' your equipment. Overall I found the game very addictive and extremely hard to do well in. At present I've got a record to No 56 in the charts, made a couple of singles for Mike Reid and done gigs all over the UK, yet only gone into the red once. The Biz does not have fab graphics, it's in BASIC in fact, but after breaking the ice and getting into it, you soon find you don't want to get out. To all aspiring stars, the lure of a chance to make a recording for the first person to get to number 1 will obviously be tempting.

I think l can safely say that The Biz is the most enjoyable strategy/simulation I have played so far. It has a charm and fascination that goes way beyond any of the others and actually manages to arouse excitement as singles make the charts and climb, only to be dumped through lack of money to press enough records! l thought that the background atmosphere is helped tremendously by its realism - the other songs in the charts are real ones by real, well known people, and the sums of money involved all seem realistic. Part of the game's success lies in the involving options open to you as a rising star, as well as the pitfalls. Often, it is the limited number of options in these games that stifle the interest after a while, whereas I think The Biz will continue to fascinate for some time to come.

Roger: Well, like, er, man, this is one tremendously bankable game even if it lacks stage presence in visual terms. Virgin has turned back to what it, like any record industry outfit made big, does best - explaining how the completely talentless can become international megastars.

The Biz is a perfect teaching aid for bongo thumpers on the make. It leads aspirants through the rock rat race, underlining how it's much more important to know the wheeling and dealing techniques than learning a few wretched riffs to strum. Just like in real life, you can forget E sharp and F flats because the only important notes have pictures of the queen on 'em.

The cassette, besides carrying the necessary Spectrum-dedicated program, also has eight audio recordings including that well-known smash hit 'I'm in love with the girl on the Virgin Manchester Megastore checkout desk'... No, well I've never heard of it either, but there again I've never heard of you... If you get really good at the game, though, and become the first person to score a No. 1 hit, I might just start throwing knickers at you from the audience, along with millions of other screaming fans, because you'll actually be invited to record with Chris Sievey and The Freshes and appear live on stage. A Doo Wop, a loo bop a wham bam boom? 3/5 HIT

Dave: I'm about as musical as a prune so I thought that I'd be quite good at this. Four singles and a year later I'd managed to get to number 120! Mind you, I did make a lot of money from live performances - perhaps the punters thought I was a comedy act! Horribly addictive and great fun - see you on The Tube. 4/5 HIT

Ross: If music be the way to earn a fortune, you can count me in. This really is the biz. 4/5 HIT

Publisher: Virgin
Price: £6.95
Memory: 48K

I blame this geezer Chris Sievey. He's the one who got us into The Biz. Who's he, anyway? just some cat who cut a single back in '83 with some naff ZX-81 programs on the flip side. Now he's written a Basic simulation of the pop industry for Virgin.

The first person to get a number one hit single in The Biz gets to appear live on stage with Sievey. Despite that, me and the lads thought we'd give it a go and formed this band called the Y Fronts.

At first we played local scout groups and the Labour Clubs. We had a dodgy manager and an agent who fixed us gigs in places we'd never heard of. Our gear got lifted regularly and eventually our drummer joined a bunch of heavy metal headbangers.

We cut our own disc and pressed 10,000 copies. Our manager fixed an interview on Radio Forth, we ligged it around the campuses and the single shot to 142 in the charts. Then the record stiffed - we hadn't pressed enough copies - and our drummer left to play with some outfit which Sounds were hailing as the new Beatles.

We did some local promo, got a new manager went to a hair salon and hit the London nightclubs. The band was really tight by now and the songs weren't so lousy. Stage presence was zilch, but then who's seen a C&W band with dry ice? Then we got the break - the Factory gave us an advance and we made a new single. Capital put us on the C list and we were on standby for Top of the Pops. We made it to number; 42.

Then our drummer split, the gigs got cancelled, the record stiffed and the Factory tolds us where to go. We were back at square one, playing the Leeds Amnesia for peanuts. A groupie offered us some drugs, and we're not looking back now. We're not looking forward either. Tell you the truth, the colours make it difficult to look at anything at all...

CHRIS BOURNE TAKES A NOSTALGIC TRIP THROUGH THE BATTLE-STREWN FIELDS OF LAST YEAR'S STRATEGY GAMES

Before programmers discovered sprites, 3D graphics and continuous fire buttons, strategy games were regarded as a sort of ideal computer entertainment. That was partly based on the idea that computers were essentially souped-up calculators and partly because mainframe computers were very good at games like chess.

If you were into computers when the Spectrum was launched, you'll remember titles like Football Manager, and Flight Simulation being held up as examples of the finest programs around. These days it's more likely to be Alien 8, Shadowfire or Dun Darach, and their reputation depends in great part on graphics programming.

One of the reasons for that is financial. In their wisdom, retailers and distributors tend to see strategy games as having a narrow appeal. They are the classic sleepers which sell steadily but slowly. The trade wants the money now and lots of it. That means quick-selling arcade games, preferably with some spin-off celebrity theme attached, which hits number one in the charts in a couple of weeks and stiffs out a month later.

Many of the fine strategy/simulation games, produced in 1985, saw little exposure in the shops - certainly not in the big high street chains. That does not mean they were no good. In fact, there has been something of an upsurge in the quality of strategy games recently, and most spectacularly in the field of wargames.

Wargames have as long a tradition as any sort of computer entertainment. If you've ever read the hefty instruction books for classic wargames of the past - Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps you'll understand why. Those rules tended to read like a computer program with complicated look-up tables for cross-referencing dice throws, gridded maps and strict sequences of actions within a given turn of play. They also took hours to play.

The computer is supposed to take all the argument of table-top gaming out of wargames. It quickly does all the adding up, it doesn't cheat, and it can handle secret moves easily.

Unfortunately, most wargames never turn out like that. Graphics tend to be based on unrealistic grids, the rules appear over-simple, and the computer generally takes a vast amount of time to think about the moves.

One such game, which in other respects might have deserved success, was ATRAM. The name stands for Advanced Tactical Reconnaissance and Attack Mission, which turns out to be a NATO exercise in which the RAF and USAF battle it out using Harrier jump jets. The idea neatly sidesteps the obvious problems involved in trying to flog a game based on bombing the daylights out of Port Stanley.

The game is a computer-moderated boardgame with a glossy magnetic board and stylized pieces that you slide about as if you were a real NATO general. Unfortunately, the computer part is less fun. The only excuse for the program is to handle the boring bits like keeping track of how much fuel each jet has consumed.

The author is clearly fixated on jargon, which makes the rules almost unreadable, and all moves are keyed-in in a jumble of letters and numbers. It is so easy to make a mistake that you'll never be entirely sure whether you're playing the game properly. Headbangers and retired Harrier pilots only.

A much better two-player wargame is Confrontation from Lothlorien. Confrontation is a wargame system which allows you to design your own maps and, within reason, choose the composition of your armies. That allows you to play at a tactical or strategic level. The flavour is essentially modern, with armour and mechanised infantry supported by footsloggers, artillery and air units.

To go with the system, Lothlorien has also released a set of four scenarios ranging from a fictional WWII invasion of Kent to guerilla warfare in Afghanistan and Angola. We found the Egypt-Israel scenario most interesting in that the open terrain left units extremely vulnerable without air support. The organisation of such support requires capturing and defending a chain of airstrips in order to reach Tel Aviv or Suez depending on which way you're going.

Nevertheless, Confrontation is still slow. The same cannot be said of Overlords, another two-player game from Lothlorien. Loosely based on an old boardgame favourite, Campaign, it is played across a large area of fairly basic terrain. The concept is abstract, involving footsoldiers, generals, and the Overlord. The objective is to capture strongpoints - ownership of which generates one piece per turn. The fighting is equally abstract, based on the number and strength of the pieces in contact with the enemy.

Both players play simultaneously, and the game is so fast that you'll almost certainly need joysticks - preferably one each. The pieces whizz about the screen and that leads to a magnificent confusion as both players simultaneously attempt to outflank their opponent.

By and large, it is the epic battles of WWII which command the keenest attention from programmers. Battle for Midway is a strange hybrid from PSS, and incorporates arcade sequences. The Battle of Midway was a crucial turning point in the war against Japan, when the US sent a force to smash the invasion fleet.

The PSS game falls into two parts. First, locate the course of the three arms of the Japanese forces. Having done that you must send out strike forces from your aircraft carriers to bomb them.

When battle is joined you get the chance to zap the Japs using a joystick, which rather spoils the point of a supposedly realistic wargame. The author claims it simulates the fog of war, or some such nonsense.

We found the game easy to beat - it's good to see the computer taking an active part in a solo game for once, but the graphics are primitive and not very clear. A year ago we might have had more praise, but there are better games around.

Much better, in fact, and the star of the bunch is undoubtedly Arnhem from CCS. CCS, like Lothlorien, specialises in strategy games. For years CCS games were worthy rather than exciting, and almost always written in super-slow Basic. With Arnhem the company has finally struck gold.

The game follows the thrust of the Allied armies across the Rhine against fierce German opposition. The main idea was simple enough. The British were supposed to hurtle down country roads to Arnhem while American paratroopers were dropped on the bridges ahead to hold them for the main advance.

Of course it wasn't as simple as that, and neither is the game. There are a number of levels at which you can play, until you get to the full battle. A time limit is set, and if you don't capture the bridges quickly enough you lose. The German task is therefore to hold up the advance.

The graphics are pleasant, and information about each unit's strength can be obtained by positioning the cursor. One of the best features is the movement system. You can choose to move in open or close order - open order means you are far less vulnerable to attack but cannot take proper advantage of the roads. The game can be played by up to three players - with three, one player gets the Germans and the other two play British and American forces.

The feel of the game is tremendously realistic, with the onus placed on keeping the British moving down the roads. Arnhem is absolutely recommended and will hopefully encourage other software houses to pull their socks up and match the standard.

Less attractive, but equally fast, is Lothlorien's The Bulge - the German counter-attack on Antwerp and Hitler's last great offensive in Western Europe. It was always doomed to failure, what with narrow country lanes and terrain choked in snow. The computer plays so quickly and viciously that you'll be hard put to survive.

Although The Bulge scores over Arnhem for speed, the graphics are less clear and the strategy less easy to fathom. Lothlorien has opted for simultaneous movement, and one is frequently reduced to hurling forces willy-nilly into the fray without much regard for tactics.

A pleasing feature of both Arnhem and The Bulge is that you can issue general orders to units which they will continue to obey until you change them. That is a sensible and much more realistic alternative and saves having to move fifty pieces every turn, slowing the whole flow of play.

Moving away from wargames, another category of great antiquity in computer circles is what is known as the land-management game. An early example of the genre was Hamurabi which puts you in charge of an ancient kingdom. You are head of a population, and there is corn in the treasury.

The idea is to manage the economy - based entirely on corn - so that everybody gets enough to eat. There is enough corn to sow for next year with some in reserve in case of natural disaster.

Of course, the way the game is set up at the beginning, there is never enough, so you get to make decisions about how many people to starve to death for the greater good of the rest, and so on.

Such games are very easy to construct on computers, and if you want to write your own strategy game we suggest you try something along those lines. The secret is to construct a set of formulae governing the relationship between various factors - for example, how much food do people need? How many people are needed to sow an acre of land? How much corn?

There are very few business-type activities that cannot be simulated in that sort of way. Two famous games of this type are Football Manager from Addictive Games and Mugsy from Melbourne House, in which you play a gangster trying to run rackets with the aid of a none too loyal gang.

Sadly, Kevin Toms - Mr Football Manager himself - has not managed to follow that enormous success.

Addictive has brought out a number of games along similar lines in 1985, but none of them match the old classic.

Software Superstar casts you as a producer of games. You have to allocate time and money each month to releasing games, programming, advertising and the like. Nice touches include the decision to hype games or be honest about them, but the overall impression is dull, and we found it easy to get a hit program and reach the targets set.

Grand Prix Manager from the same outfit was equally tedious, with poor graphics to boot. Luckily CRL brought out the infinitely more entertaining Formula One - a Sinclair User classic - which we found totally compulsive.

Formula One is a full simulation of a grand prix season. Start off by hiring drivers and building cars - you have a million quid or so but it goes very fast. When the race starts choose your tyres and then watch the cars whizz past in convincing graphics. Messages inform you of the state of the track and incidents involving other cars, while a leader board keeps you in touch with the race positions.

Best of all, you can call pit stops for tyre changes, and the correct choice of timing may win or lose a race. The pit stop sequence is arcade based, and you have to manoeuvre a mechanic around the four wheels to complete it. Purists may have their doubts, but the speed of movement is linked to the amount of money you invested in the crew, and does not therefore make a mockery of the strategic element.

Formula One is a good game against the computer, but becomes really exciting when played with friends.

Almost as enthralling, although less well presented and rather more anarchic in play is The Biz, a simulation of the record industry from Virgin Games. You begin by choosing your social class - from stinking rich to unemployed - and then form a band. Hire a manager, go on the pub or college circuit and send endless demo tapes to bored record companies. If you have the money, you can cut your own discs, but beware - without the clout of the big boys behind you it may all go to nothing. The ultimate goal is, of course, to get a number one, but the road is full of pitfalls.

The game is full of subtle humour - you may reckon a dry ice machine is just right for your tacky rock band, but watch your credibility plummet. You may even get a chance to sample drugs during the game. Try it and see where it gets you.

On then to simulation proper, by which is meant those worthy and sometimes addictive attempts to portray accurately a real-life experience. The original impetus comes from the flight simulators used by airlines to train pilots, and for some time software houses only seemed to be interested in mimicking those.

They all look more or less the same, with an array of instruments on the lower half of the screen and a view of the horizon with occasional crude landmarks. Some are better than others for speed and ease of use, and the best are still Psion's antique classic, Flight Simulation and Digital integration's Fighter Pilot, which is rather more difficult but does allow for aerial dogfights.

DACC specialises in those features, and recently brought out 747 Flight Simulator. We've taken a bit of stick at Sinclair User for giving it the thumbs down, but I still maintain it's an unexciting production, mainly because the Jumbo jet isn't a patch on a light aircraft for aerobatics.

Real enthusiasts will probably enjoy it, it is certainly a worthy and apparently highly accurate program. If you're looking for entertainment, though, try elsewhere.

You might try looking at Southern Belle from Hewson. The program simulates the old Pullman service from London to Brighton, and you have to handle the great steam engine all the way.

Initial levels involve handling only one or two controls while the computer does the rest, but you work up to a full schedule with stops, signals, hazards on the track, brakes and handling gradients, to name a few.

It is a surprisingly fulfilling program, and the wire-frame graphics of recognisable landmarks along the track are well executed. You are marked at the end according to your accuracy on the schedule and how economically you conserved fuel.

Another unusual simulation is Juggernaut from CRL, in which you have to drive a container truck around town picking up cargoes. The screen shows an overhead view of the lorry and road, with traffic lights, status, steering and gears. The movement is slow and there are no other vehicles around - presumably you're driving in the middle of the night, council bye-laws notwithstanding. The irrepressible John Gilbert reckons the lorry looks like a Gillette GII razor. He's quite right, and although Juggernaut isn't a bad idea, the end result is rather dull.

Finally, a look at a few odds and ends which don't really fit any categories. One such Minder, a much-hyped trading game based on the famous television series.

You play Arthur Daley, the dodgy entrepreneur, and the idea is to buy and sell an incredible range of weird goods such as gold acupuncture needles while steering clear of the law in the form of mean inspector Chisholm.

You do that by seeking out dealers and wide boys, either at their warehouses or in the Winchester Club. Terry, as ever, gets to do the fetching and carrying, and can also be hired to mind you - an important function when dealers discover goods are stolen.

In essence the game is simply trading, with a large text interpreter enabling you to bargain with characters in authentic Daley cockney - it understands words like bent, or pony. Once you get into it there's rather more strategy involved. You have to organise Terry's time so goods get collected and delivered on schedule, while you need sufficient cash to pay for the next lot.

Minder is a pleasant romp and deserved to do better in the charts than it did, but would have benefited from a greater variety of incidents. Memory taken up with slang during the bargaining is fun at first but since it is really only window dressing it leaves you with the feeling that the game lacks depth.

Alien on the other hand, from Argus, has plenty of depth but is difficult to get into. It follows the tense cult movie in which a devastating alien invades a spaceship and proceeds to exterminate the crew.

The game uses menus to pick characters, objects and locations in the spaceship Nostromo, while plans of the decks indicate your position. The idea is to destroy the alien either in a straight fight - fat chance - or by escaping from the ship and blowing it up by remote control.

You only see the alien when you are in control of a character in the same room. The rest of the time you can hear it as doors and ventilation grilles slide open, or your scanner picks up the presence of a living creature nearby. That makes for tremendous tension in the play, and the one drawback is the simplicity of the graphics which works against the otherwise strong illusion of involvement. Fans of the film will enjoy it. Others may find it tough going.

We have made no mention of some of the plethora of spin-off titles in the sports arena which might come under the umbrella of simulations. Those are generally disappointing, especially in comparison with the arcade based sports games. Two, which play quite well, are Steve Davis' Snooker and American Football from Argus - which has the added virtue of not involving a famous personality. Nick Faldo's Open is a lovingly programmed simulation of the course at Sandwhich which suffers from one horrible flaw. The closer your ball is to the flag on the green, the more difficult it is to judge the angle at which you should strike it. In fact, the reverse should happen.

It is heartening to see arcade games taking on more elements of strategy in their play. Arcade-adventures such as Knight Lore or Gyron - if you can categorise those masterpieces at all - have as much to do with logical thought and planning as they do with swift reactions. That argues a growing maturity, both among games publishers and also in public taste, as computer owners look for more than a quick joystick fix from their hobby.