Code Masters
John Ferrari, John F. Cain
£7.99

The author of the first ever Smashed budget game, Booty, has written this platform game. For some inexplicable reason, the game's focal point is the killing of a dragon and the rescuing of a princess - hardly what you'd expect, eh?

The star is a princely hero, who has to battle through four levels of fearsome monsters before he can get destroy the dragon. Once the dragon's dead, he can get down to the real princely business of marrying the princess and living happily ever after...

Some of the more benovolent monsters leave behind a helpful icon: shields, extra energy, or a spell ('cause this prince is no Paul Daniels - he's a real magician!).

I'm afraid I don't like Super Dragon Slayer. Its graphics are poor, colour clash is rife, and apart from an average title tune, the sound's very dodgy.

MIKE

I don't really see the point in Code Masters going into full-price games with graphics like these. I mean, just lake a look at the screenshot - they don't look worthy of the price tag do they? Having said that, Richard likes it - (It's alright, playable 'n' stuff! - Rich) The control method and the clash are the first things to hit you. It wont let you jump in a diagonal direction, so every time you want to jump up you have to stop dead and jump on the spot - very tedious. The only good thing is the music - it's the usual Code Masters stuff but at least it's there.
NICK

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Another delve into the recesses of Speccy softstuff with Dr Marcus "stand very still and try not to scream" Berkmann.

Code Masters
£2.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann

Crikey, if it isn't yet another inventive and challenging game from the Codies. (Not words I'd have written a year ago, but then they really seem to have got their act together.) Super Dragon Slayer is a shoot-'em-up, and it's a blast on every level. You, poor misguided wretch, are an ever-so-brave knight in soon-to-be-not-so-shining armour, and all you really have to do is run through a scrolling background killing as many of the formation meanies that fly at you as you can. With nasties always coming a the same time and place, and with a bit of jumping around for different platforms , this is much in the same vein as Cobra, but with one difference - colour! This is as colourful a game as you could ever hope to meet, 'cos for once the programmers have thought "Attribute clash? Who gives a monkeys about attribute clash?" As a result it's not the slickest graphical display I've seen but certainly one of the most vivid.

As for the game itself, well, it's fast and frantic. There are spells to be had, and part of the fun is in finding out what these actually do. And there are two levels of difficulty - Novice for dullards like me, and Smug Git for clever clogses like you. Well worth your pennies.

Label: Codemasters
Author: John Ferrari
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Take a look at the screenshots of Super Dragon Slayer Simulator (sorry, it's not a simulator, though I'm sure Codemasters would claim it was the most authentic dragon-slaying game on the market). What's the first thing you notice? Everything surrounded by horrid great squares. It looks like a day out in Legoland, doesn't it? Remember all those reviews you've read over the last couple of years saying "I just don't know where all the attribute problems have gone" Well now you know: someone packaged them all up and sent them to Codemasters.

Never in my life have I ever seen so many blocks of ugly colour. And what, prey tell, is the justification for this assault on the senses? None so far as I can tell. It could have been a perfectly jolly game if they had been happy to do the graphics in arty monochrome, but no, they wanted horrible colours, and they didn't care that all the sprites fly about surrounded by big coloured squares. The scrolling's pretty jerky too, which is a big pity because the gameplay is really rather good.

As a brave-hearted dragon slayer, you set off into the eerie magical kingdom in search of fame, riches and quality television programmes. But, oh crikey! You come under attack from a selection of flying medusas, skulls, eyes, demons, giant Chinese dragons and what look suspiciously like whirling pieces of toast. You can jump up onto platforms, duck under enemies and zap them with your magical powers, but to get anywhere you have to find and pick up spell-books. These give you extra magical skills which are activated by the number keys; one spell is the magical equivalent of a smart bomb, one turns you into a darling little frog, in which form you can hop over crevasses, and the third spell does something I can't quite figure out. There are different spells on later levels, such as mystic shields, mega-flight and chain firing, but you have to experiment to find out what to do with each one as you find it, and you can only use each one once.

At the top of the screen a falling bar shows your energy level, which you can boost by picking up scrolls. If you lose all you lives, on the Standard version of the game you can continue from the last level you reached, but you can't play further than level 3. On the Expert version, you go back to the first level at the start of each game, but you can play the thing all the way through. The last four levels are on the B side of the tape.