Spring showers bring heavy weather (eh? these comments are getting as bad as the games machine's - Ed)

Producer: Go!/Capcom
Led in Petrol: £8.99 cass, £12.99 disk
Author: Mike Follin, graphics byt John Tatlock, music by Timothy Follin (Software Creations)

In a future time, traffic congestion has got so bad that special 'skyways' have been built. But although they're free from stupid pedestrians, there's more than enough kamikaze drivers (no bears, though) (thank goodness! - Ed) to make life interesting.

Nine vertically-scrolling tracks range from the high flyovers of the Capital City to the uninviting landscape of Ruins Desert. Contact with small cars and other obstacles slows you down and reduces your energy level. Some of the tracks also contain huge gaps which can only be cleared by hitting a ramp at full speed.

Although your turbocharged car is completely unarmed, it does have one useful trick up its sleeve: it can perform huge upward leaps to avoid other cars, and can even crush them as it lands. But beware the pesky frogs which hang on the back of the car, stopping it from jumping: they must be shaken off by quickly moving left and right.

Each of the nine stages must be completed before your energy level reaches zero. Fortunately, extra energy can be gained by driving through fuel cans and energy tablets. The latter are either static, floating around the track or flying (in which case the car must jump to get them). Small bonus letters may also be collected for extra points and even a battering ram to allow you to destroy other cars on contact.

Falling into gaps or fatal car smashes do not, strangely, mean the end of the game. Instead a new car is brought onto the track by a large, hovering spaceship at the cost of much vital energy.

What really makes LED Storm so superior to other driving games is its exhilarating speed: it must be one of the fastest games on the Spectrum. The super-fast, and smooth, vertical scrolling is stunning, and the effect of speed is cleverly enhanced by the horizontal marks on the track. Furthermore, the various vehicles are all well drawn, especially the extra large juggernauts. One minor flaw is the horizontal movement of the screen which is stepped instead of smoothly scrolling, but it doesn't affect play anyway.

Sound is also used well: brilliant 128K tunes accompany both the title screen and high scores table, while the furious driving action features a variety of excellent effects. 48K owners aren't too badly off either, although there is a multiload with two levels being loaded at a time.

As a fan of that golden oldie, Spy Hunter, when I first set eyes on LED Storm my eyes popped out. And playing it proves an even more amazing experience - genuine skill is required to make progress, rather than the repetitive blasting featured in other recent driving games. Excellent game design and superb presentation go together to produce one of the most playable games for a long time.

Even so, I wondered if the simple idea of jumping and zooming along the highway would eventually get boring, but the opposite is true: the more I played, the harder it was to tear myself away from such a compulsive game. If the soon-to-be-released coin-op is anywhere near as enjoyable, it's sure to be the arcade hit of 1989. And just remember, you saw it first on the Spectrum!

PHIL [95%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: very fast vertical scrolling of the monochromatic track
Sound: excellent 128K tunes and neat in-game effects, including a nice metallic 'thump' sound when the car lands
Options: definable keys

From the programming team who brought you Bionic Commando comes a nine level, rip-roaring, nail-biting racing game. Initially you may, like me, puzzle at the lack of offensive weapons to blast all the unfriendly road hogs. But once you get into the game the sheer thrill of racing down the track, at a vast rate of knots, pushes all thoughts of blowing up motorway monsters from your mind. Besides, who needs poncey machine guns and rocket launchers when you can leap and flatten the dudes. If you think you can stand the pace buy LED Storm now!
MARK [92%]

GO!/Capcom have done an excellent job with a detailed scrolling landscape and sprites that, although monochrome, are very effective. You' need good reflexes to be able to survive even the first level, which makes it extremely addictive. The soundtrack that accompanies the split-second action is excellent with a host of arcade-type effects and a selection of tunes that grip your attention and add atmosphere to the game. The basic idea behind the LED Storm is very similar to the classic Spy Hunter, but instead of using weapons you can jump over your enemies and shake off passengers. I'm sure that LED Storm will be a hit with everyone, and it certainly deserves to be.
NICK [91%]

Kixx
£3.99

In the future, traffic congestion forces huge skyways to be built, but that doesn't mean the amount of traffic is any less. Indeed, as you travel through the nine vertically-scrolling levels that make up LED Storm, you're hassled by attackers.

You start in Capital City with the task of reaching the checkpoint at the end of the level in one piece. Conspiring against you are cars of various sizes, frogs, patches of oil and water and huge chasms that seemingly appear from nowhere.

Although your car has no guns to defend itself with, it has the rather natty ability to jump in the air, squashing all beneath its tyres when it lands. The current level must be completed before your energy runs out, or its game over for you, matey.

Luck is on your side because fuel cans and energy tablets can be collected and used to push you a bit further.

I loved this game to bits when fast reviewed two years ago and my opinion hasn't changed one bit. This is one of the best racing games around and although it takes a lot of practice to reach the end, it's well worth the effort. You would be very silly indeed not to add this game to your collection.

Go!
£8.99 cass/£12.99 disk
Reviewer: Matt Bielby

Whizzing along in your special supersonic (I'll bet) supercar at hair-raising speeds through a city centre isn't the wisest thing to do at the best of times, I'm sure you'll agree. You are liable to get pulled over or even sent down for frightening old ladies, creating unacceptable noise levels and generally being a ruddy nuisance (Mr. Spencer).

The driver in US Gold's LED Storm is even more reckless though. He obviously thinks that if you use a road you must be totally hatstand cos he likes nothing better than to race across the tops of city buildings, using his handy jump button to bound from one to another.

What's so wrong with that, you might say? Boys will be boys and all, and it's not as if he's harming anyone - except for flaking a bit of ceiling piaster and spilling a few nice cups of tea each time he lands. All very well, I answer self-righteously, until you topple off the edge and plummet to the ground, causing untold inconvenience to those below, and proving yourself to be a rather inconsiderate and antisocial individual after all.

LED Storm is all about this sort of wacky lark, though, to be fair, our hero does eventually take his high jinks out into the desert where he's less likely to be a bother. And - cue fanfare - quite fun it all is too, though there doesn't seem to be a great deal of variation between the nine levels once you've got over the shock of a new background colourway (as they say in Habitat and all good furniture shops).

The first thing to be said is that it's all very fast - even more so when you keep the pedal to the metal, your foot to the floor and your knees in the weeds (?). The screen scrolls upwards at such a rate that obstacles such as twists and splits in the road, boxes, other cars and chasms are often upon you before you've time to do anything about it. Worst of all are the small gangs of thugs who grab hold of the back of your car, dragging behind you until you stow right down. Most frustrating, and best dislodged, I found, by making a tactical minor crash into some other object.

Unless you collect extra fuel/energy/whatever, you are going to run out of steam long before the end of a level. So do this by collecting letters that litter the track to build up the word ENERGY, and by jumping into the air to collect the floating fuel drums, which look like hot air balloons or light bulbs (take your pick). Be careful when you jump though - failure to look ahead could place you tottering on the edge of the roadway, then falling majestically to your doom like the Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon.

Later levels take place along sandy valleys, through caves, across a coral reef and so on, ending up m cloud city which is just like the first level except, erm, cloudier. Some of the objects and nasties change, but the game, like the song, remains the same - a quick, fun blast through a twisty, turny environment.

Soundwise it's on the minimalist side - a high pitched squeal whenever you spin the car, and a wibbly sort of noise as you jump being the most noticeable. Sprites are small and not particularly striking, but it is the speed of the thrills that makes the game, not the graphics. It's also the only way that I personally know to fully enjoy the thrill of driving along building tops that doesn't require the co-operation of a few ropes, a winch (to get the car on the roof), a ramp (to get the car into the air and heading in the direction of another roof), another building (one that doesn't mind being landed on by a heavy and out of control car) and the local constabulary (to prevent yourself being locked away and later heavily featured on the News At Ten as a dangerous loony).

Circumstances and practicalities thus conspiring so neatly against my partaking of my favourite sport, I am reduced to playing the simulation instead, which is one of the reasons why I still work on a computer magazine (and not the mail room at an institution for the criminally insane), and why happy shoppers are still safe to walk the streets around Castle Rathbone, free from the fear of tumbling metal.

REPLAY

Most of JON PILLAR's friends are old speccy games. No one else really understands him...

The Hit Squad
£3.99
Reviewer: Jon Pillar

An arcade conversion from a year or two back (with a name like that what else could it be?), LED Storm is a futuristic race game with a difference. Instead of Out Run 3D, it's an overhead scroller. it's slick and smooth with crisp, clean graphics, but the real attraction is the speed - this game is faster than an eight-legged cheetah with aerodynamic styling! Racing flat out over the nine levels, swerving between petrol tankers and leaping spectacular gaps in the road is a pretty exhilarating experience!

Unfortunately, there are a few probs. For one thing, the collision detection is weighted in favour of the bad guys. You can eliminate them (by leaping on top of them!) but if you're caught in a pack then you'll be flung around more than MC Hammer's knees. More frustratingly, there's an energy system instead of lives. Consequently you're tempted to play recklessly (a case of 'full speed ahead and damn the killer joggers!'). Grabbing the vital energy icons themselves is a bit tricky - if the dreaded Black Car hasn't run them down, the twists of the track often mean they scroll offscreen before you can reach them. A tad unfair, methinks.

S to sum up. LED Storm is a spiffy game that's just a leetle too tough for its own god. If you can handle running out of energy three feet from the checkpoint though it's a game well worth investing the coins in. As a simulation of superfast racing it couldn't be more complete if you set fire to a couple of tyres and bound some dead insects off your nose. (Eh? Ed).

Label: Capcom
Author: In-house
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Ooer! This sounds like one for me; futuristic racing cars with protective bumpers, astounding laserpowered turbo-charged engines, nine stages of crumbling raceway to negotiate and a bunch of slavering alien taxicab drivers and not a Give Way sign in sight. After the Huntingdon Ring Road on a Saturday, it sounds like a doddle.

LED Storm is another Capcom licence. Never having found the arcade machine in local newsagents, I'm slightly unsure as to the fabness or otherwise of the coin-op. I'm assured by other people in the office that it's an extremely good conversion.

Still, maybe it's better to approach these things with a fresh eye. LED Storm is a tunedup variant of the old old Race game. Remember? Driving a car along a plan-view track which widens and narrows and twists and turns. There were oilpatches and bonuses and extra fuel cans to pick up.

Well, while things have definintely been seriously tweaked, the basic principals still remain. You've got to make your way through nine stages of top-bottom scrolling roadway. The bonuses have now become extra energy stores, hazards come in the shape of the other racers a the oil patches, well, they're still oil patches Now. When I say scrolling, don't go thinking of jerkyspaz, slow-scroll. This is very fast fcU indeed and once you've had the pedal on the floor for a couple of seconds and you're running at top speed, the scenery really flashes by.

In your path are futuristic equivalents of today's traffic nightmares. There are the unspeakably inconsiderate truck drivers will simply mash your vehicle into the wall, cars and motorcycles are to be avoided and there are leftovers from Frogger - roller-skating toads that cling to the back of your motor in a desperate revenge attempt.

First impressions of LED Storm are great. The action is fast and you can memorise the tracks and gradually drive faster and faster. Jumping over the chasms and breaking crash barriers is great fun and you can sneak up behind other racers, boost yourself into the air and smash on top of them. Har har!

After quite a short period of time, though, I found myself re reading the instructions and asking myself, "is that it?' Well, old stick-shift, that is yer lot. The later levels are obviously more varied and the bad drivers appear with frequency. The backgrounds are different too, but that's hardly a big bonus.

While there are stacks of games around that rely on a single basic idea - Arkanoid et al, most shoot outs - the payability has to be tuned to perfection and I just didn't feel that Storm was there. Maybe I failed to pick up on the addictiveness, because I found myself feeling thoroughly ambivalent towards it.

If you thought the arcade a was your cup of tea. then I'd happily suggest you give this one a whirl. It looks like a good conversion and. so far as I can tell, all the elements from the original have been included. If the idea of racing the bottom of the screen to the top for an eternity fails to do anything for your spark plugs, steer clear. (Yak!).

Label: Kixx
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £2.99 Tape, N/A Disk
Reviewer: Alan Dykes

Kixx claim that L.E.D. STORM is "The Ultimate Devastation Machine". Wowee Matt, git out the S.U. Mobile. Always ready for a real challenge Cap'n Sumpter decided to see what would happen when this unstoppable object was pitted against an immovable force (sic); The S.U. Crew.

Driving a futuristic vehicle through nine challenging race scenarios demands the sort of skill and concentration that Nigel Mansell only dreams about. These future zones known as The Capital, Netwood Forest, the Coral Sea, Big Cave Tunnel, Ruins Desert, Marine Snow Pipeway, Sky City, Thunder Road and Million Valley, feature a variety of landscapes and road conditions, all designed to kill. First impressions are that it's the roads, not the machines that are designed for 'Ultimate Devastation"

The race tracks consist of highways varying in width from wide to narrow with stationary or moving objects and obstacles. Solid ones such as brick walls and mines must naturally be avoided while collecting as many fuel tokens as possible. Try to shake off as soon as possible the rotten robots that hang on to your vehicle, known as "Manic Frogs" (I wonder why, they don't look foriegn..), they're really more like Klingons, they slow things down and you can't flush them off.

Controls are very straightforward which is of course the direction you should be going! Accelerate, slow down, right, left and jump are easily and precisely controlled by joystick or user defined keys. Less easy to access but darn useful for that extra bit of speed and manouverability is an option to change from car to motorcycle.

The jump feature is essential as it allows you to avoid obstacles, collect parachuting fuel canisters, and breach gaps in the road, but beware, if you jump at the wrong moment, ie. Just before an unseen bend in the road you'll end up falling into an abyss or doing pancake impressions on a wall which inevitably results in being deaded dude! And that ain't nice. Fortunately under such circumstances you have a number of replacement vehicles which arrive conveniently on flying platforms. Simply jump off these and you are back in the race travelling at breakneck speed once again.

The graphics are quite detailed with busy but clear background screens, a smoothly scrolling main screen and a fast clear main sprite. The baddies and the goodies are also clear and this combined with the availability of precise control means that L.E.D. STORM is indeed a game of quick wits and fast reactions rather than one that relies on lady luck and prehistoric brawn. It's difficult to find too much wrong with L.E.D STORM, but... sound isn't really up to scratch, much better to play the game on a frosty morning while one of your lousy neighbours is warming up his 1978 Morris Marina (still going after six hundred and fifty five million miles you know!) which will give adequate background sound effects.

L.E.D. STORM is well worth a look, though I suspect many readers are already familiar with the game and don't need to be told this. It demands skill and concentration and is difficult to finish it might seem a bit repetitive at times but there's always competition and surprise around the next corner.

MATT:
I agree with Alan on this, and that's certainly a rare thing! I like my action firm and fruity and LED Storm definitely delivers the goods.

TONY:
Fast, furious, futuristic and fab, a fantastic flight into the fierce, freewheeling frolics of a frosty faced freight train driver from the far reaches of time, let's face it, it's even got freaky frogs.

Capcom thunder across the countryside.

Any mental images of huge thunder clouds raining light-emitting diodes on an unsuspecting populace should be ignored immediately, since the LED of the title stands for Laser Enhanced Destruction. However, since there's precious little destruction - laser enhanced or otherwise - we'll have to stick to the plain old truth instead.

LED Storm is the latest conversion in US Gold's Capcom range, and follows the player's fortunes at the wheel of a high-powered motor vehicle as it tears across nine regions of futuristic landscape to reach the ultimate destination of Sky City.

The course taken is described by land features such as aerial roadways, dirt tracks and valleys which scroll vertically beneath the car. Progress is continually hampered by the appearance of other road-users, such as trucks, cars and frogs (getting their own back from the Frogger episode, presumably) which cause the car to spin out of control on contact. The course is also punctuated by gaps in the crumbling flyovers which are jumped over using ramps, plus other ground features such as rocks and trees which have to be avoided.

Similarly, onboard problems constantly beset the driver: energy is the ultimate limiting factor and the replenishment of energy and fuel systems is achieved by collecting the corresponding icons en route.

Reaching the end-of-stage checkpoint before the car's energy runs out allows access to the next stage of the course; failure signals the restart of the whole course.

Reviewer: Steve Jarratt

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

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 55/100
1 hour: 52/100
1 day: 50/100
1 week: 30/100
1 month: 5/100
1 year: 0/100

MACHINES: Spec/Ams/C64/ST/Amiga
SUPPLIER: US Gold
PRICE: Spec £8.99 cass/£12.99 disk, C64/AMS £9.99 cass/£14.99 disk, ST £19.99, Amiga £24.99
VERSION TESTED: ST/Spec

I don't like to start a review on a negative note, but it has to be said that LED Storm is one of the most feeble arcade games of the year. It really isn't very good.

So why did US Gold buy the rights? Well, when they signed their deal with Capcom, they secured the licence to convert the next ten Capcom titles, and unfortunately LED Storm is one of them. I suppose that's the way the cookie crumbles - in such a deal you get brilliant titles like Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (Ghosts 'n' Goblins II and Black Tiger, and turkeys like LED Storm.

The game is basically a derivative of the old Bumpin' Buggies theme which was popular about five years ago. The player takes control of a car, viewed from overhead, and races up a vertically scrolling road. Pressing fire makes the car jump, which is useful for leaping on and destroying fellow road hogs, and also housing over holes in the road.

There are nine levels of very similar action, and the objective is simply to race to the end of each. An energy meter on the right of the screen ticks down as the car zooms up the screen, but fortunately extra energy can be picked up by running over fuel cans, or passing one of the three checkpoints en route, Should all energy be used, the game ends.

If the car falls through a hole in the road or crashes into an obstacle, it's replaced - but vital energy is lost in the process.

And that's LED Storm in a nutshell.

The ST conversion is weak, and suffers from a major fault: it's far too easy. The game is already simplistic, and this is further compounded by the fact that it's possible to complete all nine levels with little practice. The graphics are pathetic, with poorly-drawn backdrops and sprites that lack definition. Sound is good, though, with the ST's normally tinny sound chip producing an atmospheric tune - without the use of samples!

The Spectrum version is far more playable and is a lot tougher to - but the gameplay is still very simplistic and not particularly addictive. The graphics and sound are alright - it's just the gameplay that's lacking.

LED Storm would make ideal fodder for the Kixx budget label - in fact I'd more than likely recommend it at budget price, but as a full-price game it just doesn't make the grade.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.99, Diskette: £12.99
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99
Atari ST: £19.99
Amiga: £19.99

LED-FREE MOTORING

Hitting the accelerator, your LED machine's wheels squeal as you roar away from the starting line in a cloud of burning rubber. In the distant future, car racing is even more thrilling than today's high speed competitions. Ideas and goals remain the same, but circuits are refreshingly futuristic.

Your objective, like many games before it, is to make it through each stage within a time limit in this case time takes the form of decreasing energy topped up by collecting icons en route or from passing tanker vehicles.

All self-respecting LED racers take a pedal-to-the-metal policy in the fight to win. But to complicate matters, cars, motorbikes, juggernauts, oil, grease, chasms and holes in the road pose problems.

STORMY REVVER

A normal automobile wouldn't get five yards on some of the courses, Luckily, your Storm 11 racer is state-of-the-art four wheel driving. Along with a phenomenally over-the-top engine throbbing under the bonnet, an awesome hot-rod chassis and a specially strengthened shell, your Storm 11 has the unique ability to turbo-leap over obstacles.

To spoil your aerial fun, mutant frogs hop along looking for cars to hang onto. Shake them off or jump over them, otherwise you're grounded.

As well as a car to be proud of, a K1 navigating computer is fitted onboard. Unfortunately it's practically useless at navigating - up to you to keep the car on the freeways and avoid collision in your race to the ninth checkpoint, Sky City.

Software Creations (Bionic Commandos) have created a good, fast-paced race game. And, while lacking variety, the simple nature of LED Storm keeps addiction levels high and instills a strong compulsion to progress.