£2.99
Codemasters
Richard Chaney
Fast, fun, and lethal! That's the essentials for Mig-29. Roaring through the skies in Afterburner style is what this game is all about. Taking off from the airstrip takes you right into the middle of a frantic air battle, with endless enemies coming at you from the front and lauching ground-to-air missiles from the battlefields below.
With a generous supply of weapons, and more being dropped by parachute to you - and even an H-bomb at your disposal - killing the opposing forces is not as difficult as it first may seem. We managed to get through the first three levels (mountains, desert, North Pole) on our second go!! £2.99 is good value for what Mig-29 offers - instant appeal, fast action and decent graphics - but don't expect your interest to be sustained for long.
Overall | 64% |
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BARGAIN BASEMENT
He's chirpy and chatty, he's the chap with the cheapies, he's Marcus Berkmann, and he's back with a meaty BARGAIN BASEMENT.
Code Masters
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann
Yes. he's back! "Fast, frantic 3D action - as fast as a real arcade game! BRILLIANT!" Good ol' David, you can always rely on him for sound and solid good sense. There's also the usual photo of the brothers inside with the "David and Richard Darling first started writing computer games when they were still in their early teens and still at school!" blurb. I think we know that by now, eh, Specchums? Even so, I find myseif agreeing with most of David's hopelessly over-the-top assessment of his own company's game. "Fast" - yes. "Frantic" - very much so. "3D action" - no doubt about that one. "As fast as a real arcade game" - well, it is, just about. There only one word I don't find myself agreeing with - "BRILLIANT" 'Cos while this is indeed an immensely swift 3D shoot 'em up (inspired by the Afterburner school of coin-op) there's very little actual game here. There's nothing much to see, and what you can see amid the mayhem is not that well drawn either. But my word it's fast. I just get the impression that once they had sorted out the speed there wasn't really much room left for anything else - like a game. A good try, but defeated, as so often, by the Speccy's manifold limitations. So let's change that entirely unbiased review of DD's to "Fast, frantic 3D action - as fast as a real arcade game! Pretty rubbishy, actually." Much more like it, isn't it?
Overall | 59% |
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THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO FLIGHT SIMS
Oh cripes. Whose idea was this? Couldn't we do it on something else? Nah, we promised. How about putting if off for another month? Or we could make JONATHAN DAVIS do it? Heh heh. Right, where's he got to? Ah ha!
Neeeeeow! Dakka dakka dakka! Kaboom! "Crikey, Ginger, pull up! Over."
"I can't! I think my flaps have gone a bit funny. Over." Neeeow! Boom!
"Bail out! Bail out! Over." Dakka dakka dakka. (Ricochet noises.)
"Er, okay then. Over and out."
Sorry about that, just trying to inject a bit of excitement into this thing because, let's face it, flight sims aren't exactly the most exciting bits of software around.
Or are they?
No, They're not. But there are loads of them about, and people keep buying them. Why is this? Perhaps we'd better investigate.
For thousands of years man has dreamt of flight... (Cut the crap, Ed) Erm, well, perhaps it's because they demand a bit more thought than your average arcade game. Fast reactions are all very well, but what about using your noddle occasionally? Keeping a plane in flight isn't just a matter of wobbling your joystick about a bit, which is the impression that lesser games give. You've got angles of attack to worry about, altitude, navigation, weapons systems, undercarriage... the list is endless. As are the manuals usually. And that's another thing. If you've never played one before you'll need to spend hours wading through one of these breeze-block tomes before you can even get off the ground.
Once you've got the thing up in the air though you're well away. With any luck there'll be lots of scenery to look at and plenty of enemy thingies to 'take out'. You might even like to indulge in a bit of aerobatics to pass the time. The one thing you should always keep an eye on though is the ground. Stay away from this at all costs. Unless you're landing, of course, which is another story altogether.
SO WHAT'S A FLIGHT SIM THEN, EH?
In compiling this guide I was faced with the usual problem - what exactly is a flight simulation? What are the criteria? Where do you draw the line? I decided to seek the advice of one of Europe's leading experts in the field of computer games.
"Er, Matt? (Cough.) Matt?' I ventured.
"Mmm?"
"Would you have said that, say, Fighter Pilot was a flight sim? Huh? Matt?" I enquired cheerily.
"Er, probably," he replied.
"How about Harrier Attack?"
"I expect it is, yes."
"Or Night Raider?"
"Um, look, I've got to go out. To the, er, shops. I'll see you later. Maybe."
Unperturbed. I decided to try Andy, but he didn't appear to hear me. I also tried ringing up a few friends. They all seemed to be out.
So it's all down to me then. Well, I reckon that really, in a flight sim, you ought to be in control of a plane of some sort. Ideally you'd get a 3D view out of the cockpit, but I'll be flexible and allow ones where you see the plane on the screen from the back (like ATF) and even ones where you see the view in 2D (from the top or something).
Another important guideline is the number of keys. Preferably there should be at least 2,452 of them, each with about three different functions. But, again, I'll allow a generous margin of error and set the bottom line at six.
And finally there's the manual. Obviously this should be as large and impenetrable as possible, with lots of incomprehensible acronyms that you have to keep looking up in the glossary at the back. A rough guide to length? Let's say 500-600 pages for a decent one or, if the game comes in an ordinary cassette box, an inlay card that folds out into a thin strip long enough to wrap round Matt's tummy at least two and a half times.
So now we know just what makes up a flight sim, let's take a look at a few…
RATINGS
Once again, the normally-so-versatile YS rating system doesn't really seem too appropriate here (Instant appeal? Addictiveness?). So what we've done is to come up with a revised system, specially tailored to meet the needs of today's flight sim. Let's have a nosey...
The View: Can you see anything nice out of the window? Or is it all just green and blue wiggly lines? And does the scenery glide around smoothly or jerk around like an Allegro with a dodgy clutch?
Realism: This can often be determined by the number of keys the game uses. So that's just what we've done. Counted 'em. As there are 40 keys on your basic Speccy, and each one can be doubled or even tripled up, the maximum comes out to exactly 100. Handy, eh?
Dakka Factor: Is there much to shoot? Or is it all a matter of map-reading, gauge-watching and other such nonsense? And once you've shot whatever it is, does it explode dramatically and plummet to the ground leaving a trail of smoke behind it? Or not?
Net Weight: A crucial part of any flight sim is all the junk that comes with it. So, adding together all the disks, maps, manuals, stickers and the box, what do the YS scales make of it? (All weights are, of course, approximate.) (In degrees.)
THE CHEAPO SIDE OF THINGS
You've got to give them credit - the budget people'll have a crack at anything. And flight sims are no exception. A full-pricey can take anything up to 18 months and a massive team of highly-trained programmers to develop, so what does your average beer-swilling cheapo programmer manage to come up with in the two weeks (evenings only) he's allotted? Let's brace ourselves and take a look.
Soviet Fighter Mig 29
CodeMasters
Cor blimey. This is almost exactly the same as F-16. What's going on? Could it be the lightgun connection again? There are a few minor differences (improvements, luckily). There are things to collect, which come down on parachutes, and it's a bit easier. Apart from that, no difference. It's still a bit crap, and doesn't even come close to being a sim. Let's search on...
The View | 63% |
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Realism | 6% |
Dakka Factor | 80% |
Net Weight | 5% |
Overall | 43% |
Codemasters, £2.99
Spectrum, C64, Amstrad
Codemasters, choice of aircraft for this arcade game is very clever. NATO rate the Russian jet as the best fighter to emerge from their designers ever. Although the USAF will not admit it, informed sources think it is a match for the F16 Falcon.
Unfortunately you cannot get much of an idea of what the plane is like as it appears very small on screen, and there is no manual al all. Gameplay makes up for it though, being Defender-like as you pick up parachutes for bonus points. Not a real simulator - but it still has lots of dials to be watched - fuel, distance, weapons, to name but three. Best of all though, this is your turn to be the enemy
Overall | 3/5 |
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Code Masters
Spectrum/Amstrad £2.99
The Russian military chiefs amongst you needn't worry about Code Masters giving away military secrets in this game because it's just a very basic Afterburner clone. You might get four types of weapon but for some reason shooting anything is nigh on impossible so completing each stage is a matter of dodging missiles for about thirty seconds until you land. The graphics are jerky and unconvincing, and the gameplay is about as interesting as chatting to Wayne the office rubber plant. Not really worth considering, even at this price.
Overall | 35% |
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