US Gold/Tiertex
£9.99 cass, £14.99 disk

First advertised well - over a year ago, this foray into fantasy land finally slips out - quietly. Three dragons, bored with peace in the land they perceive, stage their version of an acid party and incinerate most of the population! This sort of behaviour is out of order as we all know, and true enough, out of the wastelands comes a hero with retribution on his mind and the muscle power to achieve it.

Known as Black Tiger he stalks six levels of dank caverns and spooky places full of nasty creatures, skeletons. mad axe-wielding trolls and vampire bats. He will not rest until he tastes the dragons' blood.

He starts on armed with an extendable mace which also shoots daggers - impressive and devastating. By collecting the Zenny coins (a la Forgotten Worlds) that appear when certain creatures are killed and taking them to the grey-haired merchants standing around parts of the maze, modes can be bought potions, armour and more powerful weapons - essential for killing the end of level creatures, and most especially the dragon at the end of level six. Vengeance will be yours if you follow the right path, but if you put a foot wrong you could end up on the dragons' dinner menu.

Great stuff, plenty of hack and slash fun for all the family! Black Tiger in the arcades is a very beautiful looking game, and tough to play. On the Spectrum a great deal of effort has gone into making it look as authentic as possible. The hero sprite is a chunky little chap who is certainly no push over, whilst the enemy match him for graphical detail and savageness. Black Tiger is a tough no nonsense effort that pulls no punches.

MARK [84%]

Black Tiger has taken a long, long time being released. It was first previewed way back in Issue 54, July 1988. I played it then and thought it was an almost finished version! So has it been worth the 20 month wait? Well, both the sprite and background graphics are highly detailed, mating it hard to see what is going on half the time. The yellow monochrome doesn't help much either. There are a mountain of different monsters to battle it out against ranging from maniac skeletons to bricks with eyes! The movement of the main character is a title jerky when the scream sends, and this can put you off what you were doing. Successfully moving around is a mater of adjusting your movements to cope with the scrolling. One area the game does fall down on is sound. There is one pathetic effect when you fire and no tune! Black Tiger isn't one of the most amazing games every to be released, but all fans of this style will find it quite fun for a while.
NICK [72%]

US Gold
£9.99 cass/£14.99 disk
Reviewer: Robert Corredi

US Gold's deal with Capcom has already brought us some real corker conversions such as Bionic Commandos, Strider and Ghosts 'n' Ghouls. And here's its latest offering - a nifty little number by the name of Black Tiger. "Funny, Johnny Morris never mentioned these on Animal Magic!" I hear you say. Yes, well, that's because this has absolutely nothing to do with dirty furry felines, does it?

The plot revolves around the well-worn 'save all of humanity' theme. This involves you, Blackie, one very hard monster-mashing dude, setting out to slay a particularly sadistic dragon, who's obviously got nothing better to do than make peoples lives a misery. However, before you can confront this fiend, you must thrash your way through six levels of multidirectional scrolling caves, catacombs and fortresses, all seething with dragon-breath's hench-things. Yes, the dragon has hoards of cronies for you to contend with. These vary from the evil-looking, axe-wielding trolls to intimidating killer onions (well, they look like onions to me).

Obviously, all these monions - sorry - minions are going to become a bit overwhelming if they're not put in their place, so it's a good thing that our hero comes equipped with a veritable barrage of weapons to assist him. One jab of the fire button sends a couple of knives slicing through the air, as well as activating your powerful mace. Once activated, this nifty piece of medieval weaponry launches itself rather like a demented yo-yo. Unfortunately, most of the nasties require a couple of whacks before they bite the dust, so if you're the impatient sort you'll have to fork out some dosh to improve your arsenal.

Scattered around the landscapes you'll stumble across vases which, when whacked a couple of times, reveal the ever-important cash, keys or even extra time. (Oh sorry, did I forget to mention that there's a time limit? Well, there is, and if you don't complete each level within the allotted time you lose a life, so keep moving!) Many of the nasties also carry around money which they will kindly leave behind for you to collect once you've smashed their heads in. So, should you find a shopkeeper (they're easy to recognise - they just stand around looking stupid), you can upgrade your weapons and armour, buy some spare keys for the treasure chests and maybe even invest in a bottle of elixir to improve your dwindling energy level. Wizards also put in an appearance, giving information, money and weaponry in return for being freed from the dragon's wicked spell. Just touch them - that should do the trick.

Each level is quite large, so arrows have been provided to point you in the direction of the treasures and the exit respectively. However, this doesn't mean you can get away without mapping the game, since there are some pretty nasty traps awaiting the unprepared adventurer. So hang onto you pen and paper!

Graphically, besides the lack of colour, (yup, it's monochrome time, folks) the game compares very favourably with the arcade machine itself. It sports some beautifully smooth sprite movement and well-detailed and smooth-scrolling backgrounds. Soundwise, the game is full of the usual spot effects on both the 48K and 128K versions, though the 128K version is also endowed with music.

To begin with, the gameplay didn't really prompt me to enthuse upon its virtues. It does take quite a bit of practice to get used to the persistent attacks of the dragon's chums, but I'd be a liar if I said that it didn't grow on me pretty quickly. Very soon I was having a ball, slicing and dicing quite proficiently.

To sum up, Black Tiger is a competent conversion - not quite up to the standard of US Gold's best Capcom conversions, but quite palatable nonetheless.

Label: US Gold
Author: Tiertex
Price: £8.95
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Maces Away! I get some weaponry to juggle in this job, I can tell you. Laser pistols, swords, hand grenades, machine guns and axes. This time, it's the delicate charms of the mace that I've had to master.

Playing Black Tiger isn't something to be taken lightly. No flimsy lightweight hack and slash this. No, Black Tiger is the double-headed broadaxe of fantasy fighting games.

Your quest is simple. Find and kill three dragons which are hiding at different ends of a dangerous, mythical world. Even from the very start, you're tooled up with some heavy kit. You've got a huge mace and a fistful of daggers. This should give you a clue of what's to come. Sure enough, you've only walked about ten paces what a wopping great man-eating vegetable (Sounds like my Mum - Wayne) leaps up and, well, swallows you. Eurgh.

It quickly becomes apparent that your environment is as hostile as the dragons' guardians. As well the huge plants, there are horrible surprises lurking at the top of some ladders, and ultra-poisonous spikey mushrooms lurking underneath wide jumps.

There's no option but to attack from the word "go". Once you've discovered and memorized the walking patterns of the bad guys, you can then work out the best positions to ambush them. When one comes along, you can drop off a ladder and bring the mace crashing down on their heads, followed up with a volley of flying daggers.

Your level of equipment (fnar quack) can be increased once you've collected enough money. Nice to see that the free market economy still operates even in fantasyland. Fortunately, money can be found simply lying around on the floor. It's everywhere in fact. On the floor, in pots, in chests. And you need every last penny to tool yourself up for the battles to come.

Graphically, Black Tiger is about as good as they come. It's true that there have been lot of side-on monochrome games around, but the scrolling screens and the platforms that hang in mid-air have the same sort of appeal as Myth with their feeling of scale.

The gameplay is spot on. It's tough, but addictive enough to keep you coming back for more.

B.T. makes an extremely welcome break from the plethors of space exploration games around at the moment. If you fancy a bit of extremely violent fun, get your cash ready now.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Atari ST £19.99
Amiga £19.99

GET A TIGER IN YOUR COMPUTER

Then it happened, somebody thought of dragons. One day, a menacing darkness extended over the land and from the east came three minacious dragons spreading not only their expansive wings, but also evil and tyrannical reign, over the land.

Out of the wastelands came a hero fighting under the name of Black Tiger. His business: freelance trouble shooting. Anyone makes trouble, he shoots (or slashes) them. Called Tiger to his friends (he doesn't have many of them, though; and those that are don't stay alive long enough to utter the word), the scarred warrior must complete six levels of dank caves and dark dungeons, killing dragons, trolls and vampire bats, before encountering the three despicable dragons.

To slash your way past the numerous skeletons, man-eating plants and other monstrosities you wield an extendible mace and carry a clutch of throwing daggers. These may keep you going for a while, but soon the action will hot up and you'll be hungry for more powerful stuff. As you progress along the levels you'll see precious coins glinting in the wilderness (some drop out of pots, too!). Obtain as many of these as is super-humanly possible, for later in the level you'll come upon a little grey-haired man who'll invite you to shop within his store.

In the old man's humble abode, you can purchase armour to protect your frail body, a more powerful mace, keys and magic potions. You'll need all the help you can get because at the end of each of the six levels you encounter the ubiquitous big and bad guy. Sounds familiar...?