Players Premier
£2.99

Oh hum. The solar system is in deep peril once again. An evil Allen Syndicate has gone and taken control of the mining installation on the asteroid XR27B. Using this base they swarm across the entire system bringing a wave of death and destruction. You've been selected to go and reclaim the base. You must kill all aliens you find, destroy all equipment and collect pieces of a mega-weapon that will allow you to zap the evil queen who started the whole ball rolling.

Sounds easy doesn't it? It would be if the programmer hadn't made the screen layouts so infuriating to get around. There are bits of scenery sticking out all over the place, and moving past them without banging your head is a skill. The game is nicely detailed and coloured though, with Exolon style sprites and movement in the main character. There are some really good music and effects through the game, better than most so called full price software!

War Machine may not be original, but it provides a cheap challenge for any arcade adventure freak. Even if the movement is annoying to begin with this is worth taking a look at.

Players Premier
£2.99 cassette
Reviewer: Linda Barker

We found this one lurking behind the footie sims in John Menzies. As we'd never seem it before, we thought we'd take it back to the Shed and guive it a good blast on the old Speccy. We wondered why YS had never reviewed it before, but we didn't dwell on the fact, we put it down to fate and postmen.

Alter two seconds playing time it was all too too clear why we'd never been sent War Machine to review - it's a lod of old twaddle. Okay, so it was originally released in 1989 but that's no excuse. War Machine is the everyday tale of a spaceman on a mission to destroy an alien queen, the alien breeders and the alien equipment. While he's at it, Mr Spaceman must also gather up the parts of pod that's needed to kill the alien Queen. (Yawn.) It's a familiar plot and I'm sure it's been put to good use before. In fact, if a game's good you can often ignore the vagaries of the plot. But if the plot's bad and the gameplay's bad, there's only one conclusion to be drawn - it's a bad game.

War Machine has absolutely no addictiveness, no nice little touches (apart from the 'You Are Now Dead' box that pops up from time to time) and no originality. The gameplay is dull, the graphics are blocky in the worst sense and your little sprite often disappears behind some obstacle. You can play War Machine, but there isn't any fun to be had in doing. A couple of people who know all about programming games saw me playing War Machine, "Oh dear, it's one of those ready-in-a-week games isn't it?" And d'you know, in a funny kind of way - it is.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Fancy a bargain? Look in the basement! But mind the sta-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-airs! (KLUNK!) Marcus Berkmann supplies the bandages.

Players Premier
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Players is to be congratulated for its determination to keep bringing out new cheapie games - even if sometimes they're not up to much. Certainly War Machine is hardly the most inspired game, taking its many ideas from so many other games that I could scarcely keep count as I was playing. It's part arcade adventure (collect the bits), it's part shoot-'em-up ( and avoid-'em-up too - you need quick reactions), but mainly it's not much cop. You're in the usual alien fortress, trying to collect parts of a top secret weapon in order to kill the chief alien - I mean, PLEASE, we have been this way before. So you jump around some blocky graphics getting killed a lot, and although it looks alright and plays alright, there's nothing terribly imaginative about it and the whole game has a slightly unfinished, bodged-together look. Monstrously unoriginal, its main challenge lies in wondering whether to turn it off and throw it out of the window. There she goes!

YPrice: £2.99
Joystick: Kempston
Reviewer: Andrew Buchan

War Machine is a really the complete Bore Machine. You'd expect the Players Premiere label to come up with something better than this crap but no.

As usual, you have been selected for a dangerous mission. You must rid an asteroid of a nasty alien queen and her swarming armies of nasty little breeders. To accomplish this you must collect the parts of a secret weapon in order to kill her whilst creating the maximum amount of destruction on the asteroid.

There's nothing new here, in fact I thought this type of genre of game was dead and buried but like the living dead this lives on.

The complex of the queen is large and you need to collect keys to get from one part to another. You get five lives with which to complete your long and boring task.

There are two weapons: a gun and a grenade and I didn't see any scoring on the game.

EDITOR FOR A DAY

Label: Players Premiere
Price: £2.99
Joystick: Kempston
Reviewer: Garth Sumpter

Yet another platform 'leap, sproing, cavort whilst dishing out a bit of mega death' game. The plot is a little tenuous as Andrew points out and I think he's probably showing some of the dissatisfaction felt by punters when a game seems to have a scenario written vaguely around it once it's completed. War Machine isn't as bad as he makes out however as the graphics are crisp and the game does move nicely along. It is somewhat boring though as he says with not quite enough of the added bells, whistles and depth of gameplay that buyers now expect.