Producer: Firebird
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: designed by Graham Everett and Steve Cain, programmed by Software Creations

Jack the jester's lot is not a happy one, he observes as he trudges out on an impossible mission to find nine enchanted lamps. The problem is he's in love.

Well, it's not actually being in love that's the problem, it's that his loved one is the king's daughter, Princess Grizelda. And the king is more than slightly peeved at Jack's interest in his daughter; after all, who wants someone who wears silly hats and hits everyone with a pig's bladder for a son-in-law?

So King Maxim has decided to get rid of Jack by sending him on a crusade to retrieve these nine lamps, including the revered Black Lamp of Allegoria. Once safely housed in the castle treasury, the lamps were stolen, and ever since the Kingdom of Allegoria has been plagued by strange and unearthly creatures.

Jack sets out after consulting his friend Pratweezle the sorcerer, who endows him with two magical powers: recuperation (allowing him to cheat death a few times), and energy bolts which Jack can fire from his belt buckle.

And the buckle-dusters come in handy on Jack's travels as he encounters witches, crows, goblins, werewolves and - the archnasties of them all - dragons. Energy lost in being beaten up can be replenished with food and drink, and other collectible objects include shields and weapons.

Once each lantern is found, it must be taken to a chest (there are 20, all around the land of Allegoria). Each chest has nine compartments, each one a different colour. Jack has to place each coloured lantern into its correct compartment - and defeat a fierce dragon to get at the eponymous black lantern.

Once the lanterns have been returned to their rightful places, peace and tranquillity will return to Allegora. And. as in all good stories, Jack will get to marry the beautiful princess.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor. Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: slow animation against a wide range of detailed backgrounds
Sound: superb 128K title tune

Black Lamp is most unplayable. Jolly Jack takes ages to respond to frantic movements of the joystick or keyboard, which is infuriating in such a fast action game. And because of poor game design most of your precious time is spent retracing the jester's footsteps back past the same old enemies over and over again.

But the simple game would be very addictive if it weren't for that. And the graphics are competently animated and well-drawn (though not very original), ranging from simply-drawn houses to magnificent mansions. Despite the slow-moving sprite, Black Lamp is mildly effective.
PAUL

At first glance Black Lamp looks interesting. The highscore-table picture is impressive - especially the two flickering lamps flanking the day's high scores - and the graphics are OK, with a porky little sprite wobbling around nicely-drawn backgrounds.

His movements are very sluggish, though, and after a few games Black Lamp becomes boring. There's too much wandering around to find the action, and when you do it's usually just shooting creatures. Black Lamp is a barely average collect-'em-up - it looks bright, but the lantern of interest soon goes out.
MARK

Jester Jack is an attractive little fellow, jigging through the countryside with his pig's bladder, and the monochrome magic kingdom is well-drawn, with enough detail to get you interested and plenty of scope for exploration.

Zapping wicked witches and wailing werewolves with one hand white grabbing the odd chicken leg to fill your ever-rumbling belly is quite fun in its way, and Black Lamp is very playable at first - but there's no challenge to keep you going back for more.

However cute the jolly jester and however attractive the felling of grumpy goblins, the gameplay just isn't difficult enough. Even the dragon which jealously guards the black lamp on each level doesn't offer much opposition; it takes only a few shots to make the dastardly demon disappear in a disappointing flash.
KATI

Firebird
£7.95
Reviewer: David McCandless

Imagine this your only aim in life being to marry the Kings daughter and fool around a little. A pretty reasonable ambition for a besotted jester I guess, unless you happen to be a member of a court plagued by hoards of demonic creatures, as you are in this new game from Firebird.

You are trying to gain the hand of Grizelda, the Kings' daughter, in marriage. But to do this you'll need to scour the Kingdom of AHegona in search of certain lanterns that were stolen from the Royal treasure trove and in particular, the Black Lamp of Allegoria. Actually, all it means is that you need to collect 9 objects to complete a level, and the carrot is a bit of Regal Nooky.

Naturally you ll find a lot of meanies chasing after you, flinging magic bolts at you or, as in the case of the buzzard, dropping ox-stunning eggs (everyone scramble!) But all is not lost, for you are armed with a magic belt buckle (blimey, do I these games designers come up with some weird ideas), with which you can destroy the nasties with differing degrees of success. Some, like the werewolves and witches, need only a couple of shots, whereas the dragons need so many it s more likely you'll fall asleep and/or die several times in the process.

One problem with all this magic stuff flying around is you can't duck. You can jump, but never high enough to dodge them completely.

The graphics are excellent with some nice touches to detail, but the two-tone scenes could have had some colour added. Jack's movements have been well thought out and executed - he walks he jumps, he jumps backwards, he swings his bum while climbing ladders but this only means massive reduction in game speed.

Jumping is essential just to keep the game moving Watch out when on certain platforms though, 'cos you sometimes jump straight through. A useful trick on the bottom of steps that hit the edge of the screen, is to jump backwards. Oh, and talking of neat tricks the dragon basically fires in two directions. You'll have to climb to kill it, so try to find a spot near the top where he aims downwards, then you can fire at will, with no ill-effects.

Another nice feature and one quite unlike most other games where you have to collect an object and plonk it somewhere, is that there are 20 separate rooms you can go to. It doesn't matter which, so you don't have to keep going back.

Your Jack has five lives and you can sustain a certain number of hits before his energy runs out. When low on energy, you can build it up again by collecting food and drink scattered around. Additionally, for a limited number of shots, weapons increase your firepower and shields protect you from direct hits from others. Falling from a great height - not normally recommended - can be made safe by collecting a musical instrument. It's a shame these bonus objects are so few and far between though, 'cos there's only one of you, against a seemingly inexhaustable supply of adversaries.

Now I'm a sucker for this type of game - lots of blasting, no puzzles of any magnitude to work out and, if it weren't for the effective lack of speed, just a damn wacky good time. The scenery in Black Lamp is undeniably (for me anyway) fabbo and the detail is cute (if slow). Okay, so it may not be everyone's cup of tea - best bitter, maybe - but don't knock it 'til you try it, I suppose.

Label: Firebird
Author: Mike Follin
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Christine Erskine

Since the theft of the enchanted lanterns from Allegoria, evil forces have been doing their worst in the land. Apart from having to raise court morale, Jolly Jack the jester is nursing delusions of grandeur and is hopelessly in love with the king's daughter Grizelda. Her father, true to form, doesn't approve. The king can see chance both to get rid of his daughter's unwelcome suitor and retrieve his lanterns by sending Jack off on the quest to fetch them back.

This brings us to the opening scenes of Firebird's Black Lamp. Quite what Grizelda sees in Jolly Jack is unclear, since Jack is rather on the stubby and chubby side, and looks distinctly downtrodden and gloomy as he sets off on his trek. It's something of a tribute to the game's graphics and animation that you can actually see this on the Spectrum.

Black Lamp is a horizontal flip-from-screen-to-screen arcade adventure, set in and around the buildings of Allegoria. Scattered over the screens are a number of lamps which Jack must collect and take back to store in one of several coloured chests in various locations. He can only carry one lamp at a time, so once you've got one, you must hunt for a suitable chest before collecting the next.

Your way will be blocked by a wide variety of baddies motiveted by the evil forces which took the lanterns in the first place. These won't necessarily kill you outright, but will deplete your energy level. The baddies range from werewolves, which flash past and don't drain off too much energy, through spitting witches and buzzards with explosive droppings, which are rather more harmful and should be avoided. You, as Jack, can ward them all off with bolts of magic from your belt, but some creatures take more shots to kill than others.

Aside from magic bolts. Jack can prolong his survival by grabbing useful objects lying around the place. A weapon, such as an axe, will make him impervious to baddies for 20 hits; a harp will give him musical 'bounce' and enable him to jump off high levels to the floor without injury; food and drink will top up his energy rating.

Although Jack basically trudges left and right between screens, he can also climb ladders and jump on to objects to reach shelves and gangways above floor level where many of the useful objects can be found. There is also some pseudo forward and back movement; if a rear exit is shown on screen, Jack can flip on to the screen 'behind', and similarly, markers at the foot of the screen appear when he can move on to a 'forward' screen.

Although based on the time-worn theme of exploring, killing, avoiding and collecting various objects, Black Lamp is extremely well implemented. The graphics, in a single colour against a black background (apart from the highly coloured chests) are clear and detailed, while Jack himself is beautifully animated, plodding doggedly on from screen to screen. The game oozes atmosphere, which makes it a pleasure to play - it truly is a shock to suddenly find yourself face to face with the dragon, for example. The accompanying music is surprisingly boppy; on other versions Jack wanders along to a rendering of Greensleeves, and although I think I can hear Greensleeves-ish bits in the Spectrum music, there's some hip hop in there too.

Another nice touch is the random starting screen for each game, and the fact that the lanterns, weapons, food, harps etc, will be located in different places each time you play, so that no game will be exactly the same as any other.

I liked Black Lamp enormously, although it's not without its minor irritants. I found the controls (joystick or redefinable keyboard) slightly slow to respond; quick aboutturns to blast away at nasties on either side being largely in vain. Also Jack must be facing in exactly the right direction to move back or forward a screen or to climb up or down ladders, which requires a certain amount of fiddly manipulation when all you really want to do is get the hell out of the firing line. At the beginning of the game you'll find Jack moves slowly, but he will speed up progressively as the quest continues.

This is definitely a major contender for search and collect game of the month. Not too much adventuring to get in the way of all that blasting.

Spectrum, £2.99cs
Amstrad CPC, £2.99cs
C64/128, £2.99cs

Arcade in style and requiring a considerable amount of hand-eye co-ordination this fine old piece of high-speed excavation is nevertheless a tough challenge for the grey matter.

Your job in each of the game's caverns is to dig for gems, but your progress is hampered by boulders, underground creatures and some rather strange weed. These have rules of behaviour which are quite easy to learn, but actually using them to your advantage can take a fair old effort of the brain - especially considering you need the answers in seconds rather than minutes.

The pressure and variety the game offers make it enormously addictive and certainly a bargain at budget price, but if you don't know one end of a joystick from the other or are just looking for a quiet evening's cerebral entertainment you'll probably find its arcade leanings too pronounced.

Firebird £7.95cs
ST version reviewed Issue 6 - ACE Rating 813

On the ST this one looked like an old Spectrum arcade adventure with great graphics and nifty animation; given that it lost the graphics and the animation on the way over, this was never going to be a great conversion. It's sluggish, colourless and unoriginal, with a dull game task into the bargain; just steer your jolly little jester round the castles and forests, collecting lamps and zapping nasties. There's some terrific 128K music - really top notch stuff - but the inevitable hits and poor control responses are simply too high a price to pay.