Producer: Icon
Memory Required: 48K
Retail Price: £6.95
Language: Machine code
Author: Peter Fothergill

Nasty little bug-eyed monsters have decided to destroy all intelligent life in the universe. For some inexplicable reason they decided to start with Earth. You, the player, have been recruited to save us. The enemy space ship is closing in and you must secretly enter it, outwit the alien beings within and destroy its power source.

Bug Eyes is a fairly easy game to sum up, it's a platform game. Each of the 10 screens has two main types of hazard objects that go up and down threatening to crush the hero should his timing be anything less than perfect; or the second main hazard which takes the form of bridges that exist only just long enough for them to be crossed. In the unlikely event of your getting past those problems you will occasionally be called on to deal with a few minor hazards such as descending doors or 'the big nosed gliding ogre'. In the first screen, called 'stamping stompers' the player has to avoid being crushed by Romanesque type pillars. Should he manage that then the next screen's crushers take the form of the 'blinking bouncers' in fact the author of this program is something of an artist when it comes to alliterations, the game is drenched with such goodies as 'dreaded dastardly descending door' or 'the terrible twisting thingies'. The game doesn't require great speed from a player but it does require impeccable timing and judgement.

The game is made even more difficult because the time allowed to complete each screen is limited, as you make your way through the screen you will notice that the energy level drops as time passes, fail to reach the exit before zero energy and you lose a life. The energy counter, shown at the top of the screen on a bar chart, is renewed with each new screen or life. Points are awarded for each obstacle that is cleared but sadly there is no high score facility.

Some times you will escape death by virtue of a feature called 'automatic alien repulsion device', there is no means whereby the player can invoke this machine it simply means that there will be times when the player should have been got, but wasn't. In fact the only controls required to play the game are left and right, no jumping or blasting is required.

COMMENTS

Control keys: 6/7 left/right
Joystick: yes but type not specified
Keyboard play: very responsive
Use of colour: very good indeed
Graphics: chunky but well defined and attractive
Sound: not extensively used but amusing
Skill levels: 1
Lives: 4
Screen: 10

This is really a very ordinary game, except perhaps for the graphics which are very attractive not to say smooth. The most outstanding feature of Bug Eyes is the characters portrayed within, but I gave up drooling over those after only ten minutes. I will confess that I have had more than a little difficulty penetrating the starship but that's because my sense of timing lands me in trouble crossing the road. I think this is one of those games that is immensely challenging and addictive until you've cracked it. It does make a change to have a platform game that doesn't require zapping and leaping, just not a very good one. It would be fair to say that this game would suit people who enjoy playing challenging computer games but don't require an extra pair of hands and a double jointed hip to play, from that point of view it's an ideal beginner's game but not up the level of adept arcaders.

Bug Eyes is a very hard platform game. It only has two keys, so it seems quite simple at first, but after a couple of screens, timing your runs correctly becomes increasingly difficult and your four lives go very quickly. Bug Eyes has nice big graphics and fair sound with all the characters being well animated. The only thing that really gets up my nose in this game is at the very start - a message appears on the screen and an utterly untune-like noise is played. I quite enjoyed playing this game and on several occasions it had me going for the jump button that didn't exist

Bug Eyes is a very simple game to get into after all you only need two keys to play the game. The graphics are quite good and the sound isn't bad either. Colour is used well and the whole game is quite good. I found Bug Eyes moderately fun to play at first but after a while I soon got bored of the whole thing. Overall not bad for a while but nothing to rave over and not enough to hold the player's attention for very long.

Ross: Well, I'll be bug-eyed. Agent Starman's our hero in this game but haven't we been here before? Alien Space craft bent on the destruction of civilisation and eventual domination of the galaxy. You have to penetrate the ship and press on through its power generator. Sounds familiar? Like 99 per cent of all previous space-age shoot 'em ups!

The little space-suited chappy can move left or right and drop any distance without suffering noticeable brain damage. The ship's populated by a scruffy assortment of crushers, bug-eyed monsters and spiders, all of which prove harmful to prolonged existence if touched. You'll also have to negotiate bridges that appear and disappear and the old stand-by, moving platforms. At the top of the screen is an energy bar that gradually reduces until you top it up by completing a screen. You can wave goodbye to another life if this reaches zero.

Each screen's a colourful concoction consisting of various blocks that form walkways and bouncing nasties that pose some tricky timing problems. No way is this original, but the screens take some thinking out if you're to get through. 3/5 MISS

Roger: It takes more than ten screens of intergalactic body-swerving to et me bug-eyed. 2/5 MISS

Dave: A pretty proficient, perambulating platform game with very smooth graphics. Why aren't there more screens though? 3/5 HIT

PRICE: £6.95
GAME TYPE: Arcade

Precise movements and timing are essential elements in Bug Eyes.

The storyline of Bug Eyes is simple. The aliens are committed to destruction of all intelligent life in the universe, starting with the earth. Your aim is to stop them by crossing all ten levels of their space ship and switching it off. This you do, not by shooting , zapping and jumping, but by walking left and right around obstacles.

With only two controls the challenge is to work out the correct timing on each screen. Moving platforms, lifts and bouncing aliens are the main problems to be faced, and it is often essential to pass several obstacles without pausing.

The graphics are clear and flicker free, but there is little variety to be found in the theme of aliens and spaceships, however liberally you interpret those subjects.

Bug Eyes is produced for the 48K Spectrum by Icon Software, 65 High Street, Gosforth, Tyne and Wear.

Icon
Arcade Adventure
Spectrum 48K
£6.95

Axabanean Rule OK. Well, of course it's not OK since they intend to wipe out all intelligent life and have the universe to themselves. The dummies have invaded earth in a giant starship disguised as a meteorite. Your job is to penetrate down through the 10 levels of the ship and destroy its power generator.

Well-implemented graphics and a sense of humour make this game worthy of comparison with games in the style of Manic Miner. The big-nosed gliding ogre, the terrible twisting thingies, the wigglers and Big Jake all combine to despatch you with a despairing little squeak - all the more pathetic because of the Spectrum's not-wonderful sound capacity.

On the first screen you encounter the stamping stompers, a fiendish arrangement of ascending and descending plungers which make it a little like trying to walk through an internal combustion engine. Your little spaceman can only walk forwards or back, no jet-packing. Timing is of the essence. On most screens it is worth finding a place to ponder on how to scramble through the next set of obstacles.

When you fall through into the second screen you face the blinking bouncers. You also have a problem with disappearing bridges. The combinations of problems seem to grow increasingly more complex as you approach the base of rach screen. You might miss the bouncers just to find yourself plummeting onto needle sharp rocks from a non-existent bridge.

Lazer phazer blazers, the third screen, is really two screens in one. There are three layers of ray guns then you have to work through a cavern of spiders casually reeling and unreeling from the roof on their grisly gossamer threads.

Icon may not be a prominent name now, but with quality like this they soon will be.