Devastating duellit duo

Producer: Capcom/Go!
Spare Wheels: £8.99 cass, £12.99 disk
Author: Tiertex

According to the King, Princess Sheeta has been kidnapped by baddies from the evil planet of Mu. While you may suspect she's run off to change her name to something bearable like Ingrid or Beatrice, you've still got to try and rescue her.

Your rescue attempt takes the form of six distinct levels (multiloaded one at a time) of vertically-scrolling blasting. Your vehicle changes after each level, alternating between a Reliant Robin look-a-like and a spaceplane. In the simultaneous two-player mode, one player controls the car while the other gets the spaceplane. The main difference between them is the way the car must jump over holes in the play area, whereas the spaceplane just hovers. Extra firepower for both can be gained by collecting floating symbols. This is useful for the huge alien which must be defeated at the end of each level - after which the Princess appears again, with more desperate cries for help.

The monochromatic vertical scrolling and the car suggest a LED Storm clone, but here the scrolling is glitchy and not as fast. The main fault with Last Duel, though, is the way progress can easily be made by mindless, continuous jumping and blasting. Only partially compensating for this fault are some impressively-large squirming monsters and the two-player option. Worth a look, but certainly not the game to break my LED Storm addiction.

PHIL [70%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: some impressive, large aliens, but dubious vertical scrolling
Sound: in-game effects
Options: one or two players

Last Duel is frustrating. But when eventually mastered the game reveals itself to contain more luck than judgement. And unlike say LED Storm I never had the feeling there was a good game underneath worth persistence. It's also very difficult to see what's happening on later stages, with lots of bullets swirling over a repulsive purple background. Disappointing.
MARK [62%]

When US Gold's GO! Brought out 1943! I thought they'd forgotten how to produce a decent vertically-scrolling action game. With Gold's LED Storm (Smashed on page 12) out this month I was forced to set my words - Last Duel has shoved them even further down my throat. Tiertex (Thunder Blade) have produced some slick presentation combined with some impressive graphics (albeit a bit jerky at times) to form another addictive shoot-'em-up. The frequent appearances of the Princess add that extra bit of addiction. It may not be as good as LED Storm, but at least you can shoot things!
PAUL [75%]

US Gold
£8.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: David Wilson

Blimey O'Reilly! if I was faced with a road like the one on the first screen of Last Duel, I'd probably take an alternative route! I mean it's worse than the M1, judging by the number of holes and bumps in it. Mind you at least the M1 is bereft of gun turrets blasting away and crazy cars that come speeding up behind you - which aren't just trying to read your car stickers!

This, then is Last Duel, the latest from US Gold, and it's a vertical scrolling, overhead viewpoint, shoot 'em up in which you control a fabulous three wheeled vehicle - no not a Reliant Robin - an armoured, rocket powered mean machine which becomes a rocket fighter on alternative levels. There's some loony story about twin planets and princesses to be rescued too, but the only difference this makes to the game is that if you didn't know it, you would be totally baffled when on completing the game, some crazy chick called Sheeta (Oo-er!) comes onto the screen to wink at you!

Anyway back to the game. What we have here is a sort of LED Storm but with guns and a meanie at the end of each level. At the end of the first level the meanies appear in the form of three Chinese New Year procession dragons. I don't know about you, but I always rather liked these when I saw them on telly and it seems a little unkind to machine gun them to bits. Still, if you wanna get onto the next screen... blast away! Once there you step into a flying machine, to fly in the 'Golden Mystery Zone' as the game blurb calls it. Blast the giant bat meanie at the end and it's back to the three wheeler, and so on. Like LED Storm you can boost your vehicle's bits by driving through icons in this game the icons are letter P's and they will give your gun rapid fire capabilities (Can I have a pee please, Bob?).

Last Duel is fast and tricky but it's a bit too samey for my liking. The vertical scrolling is smooth and fast, but the road overlaps onto side screens and scrolling in this direction is a bit jerky. Colour is limited as usual, which is a pity and makes a fast moving game like this all the more tricky, as you have to distinguish between incoming and outgoing bullets!

Another little moan is that the game is a multi-load and it's always more difficult to get into a game when you have to break off the gameplay to load each level. On top of all this, value for dosh, in my opinion, is affected by the fact that this game only comprises six levels. Ho-Hum! Still, if you have room in your games collection for another rolling road/scrolling space blast em up, then this is a fast, difficult example with some variety.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

RICH PELLEY and JON PILLAR are at it again and they want us to join on. Oo-er. (So bring along an extra lightbulb just to be safe.)

Kixx
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

Hmm. Another re-release. Let's check up on the YS records to see what we made of it first time.

(Several hours later.) Ah - here it is, under T for 'The'. Who filed this lot? And oh dear. It seems as if we didn't like it much. The usual highly improbable plot for a start, right down to the captured princess and lone hero (a bit strange, seeing as it's a 2-player game). It also boasts a pretty unoriginal bog-standard 2-player vertically-scrolling-bog-standard monochrome-format screen - okay if a game is an exceptionally brilliant one, but a bit of a stupid idea if it isn't (which this one is, or isn't it you see what I mean).

You play the part of a car and ship on alternate levels (or both at the same time in simo 2-player mode). The plane can apparently drop bombs and the car can jump holes in the road (as opposed to falling into them and dying), and frequently jumps anyway when you're trying to blow something off the road, as the control is Forward and Fire. The gameplay consists of continuing forward whilst shooting things. This gets very boring as the 6 levels are all very samey, and only 2 different power-ups are available. Playing with someone else is more fun (Oo-er. Ed), but because the screen is scrolling left and right a bit (as well as forwards), this makes things a bit confusing. It's just one of those games that tried something a bit new. but failed miserably at the end of the day. I'm sorry, but all the Last Duel deserves is the Last Post.

Label: US Gold
Author: Tiertex
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

It's a tough life in 2012, not only is there constant interplanetary war, but those small plastic things you put under plant pots cost £1,000,000,000 each and there are 192 television channels, all showing nothing but The Price is Right.

However, it's the interplanetary war which mainly concerns us in Last Duel, as you might expect. And what a stonking interplanetary war it is , full of biffs, bangs and explosions which you should thoroughly enjoy contributing to.

Suspend your shock and disbelief when you see the first section, which is utterly, utterly similar to LED Storm (also reviewed this issue). What can US Gold be doing, releasing two such similar games? Probably hoping to make twice as much dosh, tee hee. Anyway, Last Duel has a lot more to it than LED Storm, which is largely racing and dodging. Last Duel has loads of SHOOTING! Great!

A third of the screen is taken up with the score and energy displays, while the remainder shows the battlefield which scrolls fairly smoothly (though things get a bit jerky where there are a lot of moving objects on the screen.)

The first level is a motorway over which your heavily armed skimmer, er, skims. Roadside emplacements bombard you, saucers try to shove you off the road, and huge pits threaten to plummet you to you doom. However, a smart zap of the laser trigger or a death-defying leap into the air, and you can actually complete this phase in about thirty seconds - not counting the time needed to destroy the three wiggling, energy-breathing mechadragons at the end.

Phase two is a bit of a surprise; rather than more of the same, you switch to a spaceship making its way through intergalactic space caverns (huh?) Here, huge shooty-tubes fire bouncing rays of energy at you, while giant flying monsters periodically descend from the skies, and insist on being blasted to pieces before they let you go on.

At the same time, power capsules float down the screen. Pick them up, and you can double or triple your fire-power, restore your energy and add exploding missiles.

So what the verdict, Eugene? Last Duel is smoothly programmed, nicely designed and fast-moving. It hasn't a jot of originality, but it's a meat and drink to shoot-'em-up fans. You probably won't want both LED Storm and Last Duel, though take my advice and plump for Last Duel.

Label: Kixx
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Strap yourself into your neutron-powered star racer and prepare to do battle with the evil forces of the planet Bacula, it sez here. In fact, though there are six levels of mayhem to battle through, The Last Duel is more of a heavy metal car racing game than a shoot-'em-up.

Your space racer appears at the bottom of the screen, scrolling vertically. There are some neat background details - forking roadways, ramps, gun emplacements, alien snips, and icons which fall from destroyed globes and allow you to pick up zippy weapons.

Picking up a T icon increases the time limit for each level, and pressing Fire and Forward together allows the car to jump and the hover-plane to drop bombs.

The hover-plane appears on later levels in one-player mode, but if a two-player game is selected, one player controls each craft.

Lost Duel's graphics are well-defined and the game is pretty fast-moving, but the action's a bit repetitive and it's annoying that the delay when you plummet off the edge of the roadway is so long. But since, like Thunderblade, The Last Duel comes with a token allowing you to get another Kixx title for 99p, it's worth checking out.

ANDREA'S COMMENT:
There's just enough destruction in this one for my delicate and perfectly proportioned trigger fingers.

Capcom's final fight.

Shades of LED Storm in this, another of Capcom's vertically-scrolling driving games, as a car roars through futuristic scenery. However, the addition of flying craft, simultaneous two-player action and lots of shooting make it altogether a different test of the player's skills.

There are six levels to get through, each with deadly guardians at the end of them, never mind the hordes of defences along the way. In Levels One, Three and Five, Player One drives a car and takes out ground obstacles, while in Two, Four and Six he flies a plane - which Player Two flies on all six levels.

The defences cover the whole gamut of alien forces, from gun emplacements to kamikaze cars, fire-breathing dragons to deathly plunges into the void. If there is no second player then the aerial defences do not appear on Levels One, Three and Five.

Along the route you can pick up icons that enhance firepower. This increases the number of bolts fired forward and also enables sideways shooting. The car can jump over obstacles and holes, but be careful of getting trapped on the scenery.

It's standard arcade fare, enlivened only by the two-player option. Fair enough for shoot-em-up fans but offers nothing special.

Reviewer: Bob Wade

RELEASE BOX
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Out Now
Amiga, £19.99dk, Imminent
Spec 128, £8.99cs, £12.99dk, Out Now
Amstrad, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Out Now
C64/128, £9.99cs, £14.99dk, Imminent
IBM PC, £24.99dk, Under development

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 48/100
1 hour: 55/100
1 day: 50/100
1 week: 40/100
1 month: 10/100
1 year: 5/100

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £12.99
Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Amiga: £19.99

HOLY SHEETA!

Last Duel concerns duality in that it involves the tribulations of twin planets, Mu and Bacula. Being of a like nature, it seemed rational for them to join forces against all things hostile in the galaxy. This they did quite happily for decades. In the end, though, greed got in the way, as it often does, and imitation, intentional or otherwise, became not the sincerest form of flattery.

Bacula had devoted more funds to weaponry. Her Galden tribe invaded Mu and captured the lovely Princess Sheeta. She is being held somewhere in the tribe's new complex, and must be rescued to preserve the morale and future of Mu's people. Two heroic warriors have been found to control Mu's most advanced assault vehicles - a three-wheel car capable of leaping into the air and a space plane, both armed with rocket launchers - to fight their way to her.

Last Duel is designed to be a two-player game, but a lone fighter can be a real hero by tackling the Galden tribe single handed.

There are six levels to get through, each full of potholes, gun emplacements and enemy craft. On even levels each player controls a space plane, on odd, player one guides a car and player two a plane. Both increase their firepower by collecting 'P' symbols. And they need to to defeat the huge end-of-level guardian, whether it be an animated dinosaur skeleton, metal spider or, the ultimate behemoth, a mechanical crab monster.

THE SPRITES OF LIFE

Extra enemy sprites are added for the flying player two to destroy, and it is quite easy to accidentally try to tackle aircraft when controlling the car, or land features when piloting the space plane.

In the coin-op market, particularly the huge shoot-'em-up field only big (or at least medium-sized) names are worth converting, unless the coin-op is something special that most people have overlooked.

Unfortunately, Last Duel is a bog-standard two-player game with little interest added by the two vehicles and leaping car - shades of LED Storm here, with level three being particularly inspired from the racing game.

Duel is nothing amazing but worth looking at if driving shoot-'em-ups are your thing.