Producer: Code Masters
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Christian Urquhart

Here's your chance to develop interplanetary athlete's foot, by representing Earth in the Olympic Games - one century in the future. In this far off contest the traditional Marathon has been replaced by Star Running, a distance event set on a floating space platform. You are Earth's champion, and represent the planet against the cream of alien athletes.

The Star Run is a race of no fixed distance - the runner who travels furthest accumulates the most points, and thus wins. The score is shown at the bottom of the screen.

Your character moves automatically, with your task being to guide him left and right, and make him stop and jump as necessary. Jumping allows time wasting obstacles to be avoided - open pits trip, some surfaces cause slow running, fire pits return you down the course and teleport pads take you even further. A continual update of your course position is displayed at the top of the screen, with a flashing message displayed on reaching the half-way point.

There is a specified time limit for each of the six infinitely repeating levels, with the time remaining shown at the bottom left. Crossing the finish line allows the next stage to be reached, and extra time is gained by picking up the clocks which are found en route.

COMMENTS

Control keys: S left, X right, H stop, SPACE jump
Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2
Use of colour: mainly monochromatic playing area with colourful front end
Graphics: basic, but strangely pretty
Sound: uninspired spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: six

What a totally useless concept. Let's face it, running around and jumping over hazards isn't exactly an exciting gameplan to begin with, so the action could hardly be very compelling. The thing is that Star Runner has been very well implemented, it looks slick and is adequately presented, giving the overall impression of being a neat little game - and if there was more content it would be. Sadly, in its present form it's about as compelling as watching paint dry… stay well clear.
BEN

As with all Code Masters games, Star Runner contains some very slick presentation - but the content is very thin. What kind of an Olympic event are you competing in? One without opponents, but with fires to jump over, and holes to fall in! Not really in the Olympic spirit, is it? The perspective is very misleading, and the childish comments at the end of the screens ('Would a pair of crutches help?' for instance) are boring. A totally unaddictive game, for which even two pounds is too much
PAUL

Code Masters
£1.99

Here's one from the cheap and cheerful department, a brisk little number from Code Masters. Written by Christian Urquhart, co-programmer of Daley Thompson's Decathlon. Star Runner also has an athletic theme, but there ain't no joystick juggling to run screaming from here, thank de Lawd! It's 2087, as you might imagine, and you're running for your planet in the interstellar Olympics (strordinary!) But they've junked the dear old Marathon (a fistful of peanuts in every bite) and instead you have to enter the fiendish Star Running event. What it all amounts to is a sort of cross between Shockway Rider and Zaxxon, a race against the clock through twelve levels of a viciously hard obstacle-strewn course.

Your runner, a curious little chap in a cloth cap, beetles along at a rare old pace, and the skill lies in dodging the hazards and getting through each level with time to spare. There's certainly room to manoeuvre, with five lanes to weave in and out of throughout the course. Hazards include fire pits, which turn on and off and when active can send you back to the start of that screen, high resistance surfaces which slow you down, numerous aliens fizzing around banging into you and all sorts of other things to trip over. Worst of all, though, are the teleport pads which bung you back two or three screens and almost certainly doom you to failure.

It's all clever, simple and well executed and I'm a fan! You'll need a good memory - too many of the hazards are unavoidable unless you've remembered they're coming up and nipped into another lane accordingly. But that's the learning curve, innit? If you like Shockway Rider, it's my guess you'll go for Star Runner as well. And what more can you say about a game that'll set you back only £1.99?

Label: Code Masters
Author: Christian Urquhart
Price: £2.99
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: John Gilbert

You may remember programmer Christian Urquhart from his stint at Ocean when he co-wrote Daley Thompson's Decathlon.

Well, since then he's moved into space, first with Gun Runner for Hewson (reviewed this SU) and now with Star Runner for Code Masters.

It's the year 2087 and time for the Olympics, which the Earth hasn't won for 19 years.

So, the people of Earth expect your best when you take part as a Star Runner in the space marathon - not just long distance running but hurdles as well. The joystick controls are simple enough. Left and right takes you across the track while forward thrusts you and fire makes your cloth-capped figure jump. There's no turning back.

The 3D course is set out a bit like Hewson's Impossiball but action is slightly jerkier. There are more obstacles through which to steer, though. For starters there are the knee-high hurdles over which you've got to jump. If you hit one at high speed your runner takes a tumble - the funniest aspect of the game.

Once past the hurdles you get a mixture of flame-filled pits, deep holes and slow-pads which reduce your speed. All can be dealt with by jumping but you can also move your runner left and right to avoid them. The course is mapable so it's not too difficult to work out where each obstacle will be on the next screen.

The obstacles you can't jump over you'll have to go round. They include a battering ram which knocks the wind out of you and blows you back on to the previous screen, and a robot which just obstructs your path. Toward the end of each level there are a series of teleports which take you back to an earlier screen and lose you time.

After you finish each level of this sprint-a-thon in space you're given a time and a score rating. If, however, you fall down on the job and don't get to complete the race, the auto-scorer comes up with a suitably sarky comment such as 'My Grandmother could do better?'

BUDGET GAMES ARE ACCOUNTING FOR MORE SALES THAN EVER. ZX LOOKS AT THE LATEST RELEASES.

If the computer press is anything to go by, budget software is taking over the world. Nobody is buying full-priced games apparently (unless they're conversions of coin-op titles), and certainly Mastertronic, if they're not taking over the world, are taking over Melbourne House.

There are a number of software houses competing for the budget market but for the most part it's a three way fight these days. Mastertronic were the first in the field, closely followed by Firebird's Silver range, and these two have been slogging it out enthusiastically for a while now. Recently though, Code Masters, the label founded by a couple of ex-Mastertronic programmers, has made quite an impact with games such as BMX Simulator and Terra Incognita.

This month we've received some new releases from all three of these companies, giving us a good chance to compare a Super Robin Hood variety of products and take a look at the state of the (budget) art.

CODE MASTERS

It's been a good month for Code Masters, with five of their games arriving for review, and, apart from the unfortunate Brainache (reviewed elsewhere this issue, along with Transmuter) they're all faring quite well. Transmuter is a good version of the old Scramble format, and Ghost Hunters ("featuring voice synthesis") is one of the better platform games to come our way recently. Set in a haunted house, the game sets you the task of rescuing someone who has been trapped within the house. There are all sorts of ghoulish sprites out to do away with you, but fortunately you're armed with a ghost busting rifle which evens the odds somewhat. There's nothing at all original about platform games, but this one seems to have been thought out quite well. You use your rifle by moving a hairpin sight around the screen, but while you're doing this your character is immobilised and this adds an extra little edge to the game since you have to be quick when it comes the choice of whether to use the rifle or just run away.

Super Robin Hood is along similar lines, except that it's Robin Hood helping out Maid Marian in a medieval setting.

Star Runner is from programmer Christian Urquhart (who's just released a full price game on Hewson's label). It's a simple game involving guiding a running figure along a route dotted with fire pits, stumbling blocks, robot guards and the like. The graphics are quite nice, but the game does seem to be a bit too simple to offer a lasting challenge.

Generally speaking, Code Masters' games seem to be a little less formularised than those of Firebird or Mastertronic who at times seem to be a bit over fond of the dated maze game format. This seems to be paying off for the newer Code Masters and they've done well to establish themselves so quickly whilst other budget labels (even from such big names as Elite and U.S. Gold) have failed to make a dent in the apparent Mastertronic/Firebird monopoly. If I had to pick a couple of games from this month's budget releases I'd go for Transmuters and Ghost Hunters. That puts Code Masters ahead this month, with Mastertronic in second place and Firebird in third.

Still, a month is a long time in budget software so perhaps next month things will change (perhaps with the release of Thrust 3 from Firebird...).