Producer: Sinclair
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £5.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Hudson Soft

Bubble Buster is pretty simple to describe. You are a small man at the bottom of the screen and you can move left or right. firing missiles upwards. A large yellow bubble comes sailing in from the top left and bounces about all over the place. The object is to hit it, when it will split into two smaller bubbles. Hitting one of these will cause it to split into three tiny bubbles, and each of these hit will burst. You're dead if any bubble should hit you. Points are only scored for hitting the small bubbles and bursting them.

The first three stages have increasing numbers of bubbles. The fourth is a bonus point stage where the bubbles don't harm you and you must score as much as you can in a limited time period. After this everything repeats at a greater pace.

COMMENTS

Control keys: A/D or J/L left/right, CAPS/SPACE = fire
Joystick: ZX 2
Keyboard play: responsive, but slightly irritating with the left/right key
Use of colour: poor
Graphics: large, fast, not detailed
Sound: fair
Skill levels: progressive difficulty and speeds
Lives: 3
Originality: not totally original as concept seems to be based on several others like Asteroids, Galaxians and Breakout

Bubble Buster is another relatively original game provided by Hudson Soft for Sinclair. It's a shoot 'em up but the aliens are of a different breed. In fact, if you saw the recent re-run of The Prisoner on TV, you may know what they are - bubbles. The graphics, though simple (i.e. round things) are extremely well animated. The bubbles move just like the real thing with gravity involved to make them bounce about all over the screen. I found this to be a very original shoot 'em up type of game - it had a fair bit of addictivity but did tend to become a little repetitive. Perhaps a little variation would have improved the situation.

Why Sinclair should have put out a game as simple as this one makes me wonder whether they ever designed computers in the first place. Shooting balls with what looks like an arrow tied to a piece of green gardening string is not very thrilling. This game does have an element of "Asteroids" when balloons split - but not very effective. Both colour and sound are weak and could be improved upon. The keys are responsive but not well positioned. Overall, a fast, completely uninteresting game.

Bubble Buster is a very simple idea, which turns into a pretty fast game the further you go. However, the initial fun wears off very fast too, as there's little more to it than shooting balloons and dodging them. I'm not saying this is an easy task, but some of the difficulty involved is a bit unfair. "You" are just fat enough a character to get hit by the balloons too easily, so there's no fine adjustment possible, which lowers the skill factor. And that together with the extreme simplicity of the game means it isn't very thrilling to play for more than about ten minutes. The graphics are reasonable, with good bouncing effects, but "you" are a bit primitive looking and couldn't a bit more fun have been added with some more colours? Not really worth it.

FEEBLE FOUR FROM SINCLAIR

ERIC AND THE FLOATERS
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
Joystick: Interface 2

ZIPPER FLIPPER
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
Joystick: Interface 2

DRILLER TANKS
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
Joystick: Interface 2

BUBBLE BUSTER
Memory: 48K
Price: £5.95
Joystick: Interface 2

Sinclair Research is continuing its policy of marketing games under licence with four new releases. Zipper Flipper by R.E-D Sunshine is a pinball program with a fruit machine feature included. You have to break down a wall of bricks with the ball to bring the fruit machine into play.

The other three games are all by Hudsonsoft. Driller Tanks, which sounds like a video nasty, is a simple game of underground warfare, as you use your tank to prevent marauding monsters tunneling to the surface.

Bubble Blaster is a slightly more interesting program in which you must burst bubbles with a ray gun before they land on you.

Those three games all suffer from a very simple concept which has not been developed to provide any real variety during the play. The graphics on Bubble Blaster, though they could be better yet, are of higher quality than in the other two programs but are also the least complex when seen on the screen, even though they may be well-programmed.

The fourth in the series, Eric and the Floaters, is clearly superior to the other three. Eric is attempting to explore a lost underground civilisation by planting bombs in a network of tunnels to clear blockages and reveal treasures.

He is pursued by balloon-like Floaters, which also have to be killed with the bombs. The concept is again simple but in this case there are a number of hidden surprises which increase the enjoyment for the player out of all proportion to the extra trouble taken to program the refinements.

To play the games with a joystick you will have to use Interface Two, or one of the programmable interfaces, as Sinclair is clearly not interested in supporting peripherals manufactured by other companies.