The greatest show on earth?

Producer: Tynesoft
Safety Net: £8.95 cass, £14.95 disk
Author: Subway Software

Roll up, roll up ladies and gentlemen for Circus Games, with four action-packed events available for your entertainment. Once the customary menu screen has been set to your satisfaction, the evening's proceedings start with you being cast as a brave tiger trainer. You are allowed three attempts at three tricks and with a cage full of very hungry looking tigers, the evening may well end right here.

The next event takes you way up in the air to the trapeze where, after donning your leotard, you have to complete another three tricks without a safety net. We stay up in the air for the next event which is the tightrope walk, but as usual things aren't as easy as they sound. You don't just have to walk across the tightrope (that would be enough for most people), somersaults, backflips and a unicycle ride have also to be performed for maximum points.

And last but not least the trick horse-riding rounds off what I hope has been an entertaining evening. Here the three tricks have become four, and range from avoiding being knocked off the horse by a custard pie-lobbing clown, to gracefully leaping through a series of hoops. That's showbiz folks!

If thought those endless Christmas circus specials were boring, then be assured this is even worse. Blobby sprites, poorly drawn backdrops and repetitive gameplay make for a show that never seems to end. I hope Superman is better.

MARK [39%]

THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: blobby sprites on dull backgrounds
Sound: fair 48K title tunes but few in-game effects
Options: definable keys. Play one or all events

If this is what life under the big top is like, then it's not for me. But at least life in a real circus would be more exciting than watching the sloppy sprites in Circus Games do silly tricks with a whip, a rope and a chair! Worse still, you have to wait an age for each event to load. But all the events are extremely simplistic anyway, and about as entertaining as Jimmy Tarbuck's golfing anecdotes. When you've finished a game, you even have to reload the starting menu! The 'greatest show on earth' is a joke which looks like it was programmed by the clowns.
PHIL [27%]

Tynesoft
£8.95 cass/£14.95 disk
Reviewer: Sean Kelly

Well, why not? We've had Winter Games and Summer Games, Olympiads and Decathlons, so why not try and inject a little originality into an old format, and have Circus Games. That's what Tynesoft has attempted, a novel slant on the old stop-start-rewind-reload type of games.

In Circus Games, you'll find yourself trying to work your way through four events, attempting various tricks at each, in a bid to get onto the high score screen. Why should you want to?

The first event is the Bengal tiger training (wooh), where you, the trainer, armed with nothing but a chair and a whip, must put three tigers through their routine, and avoid being eaten for lunch. There are four tricks to complete: persuade the striped terrors to lie down, walk through a tube and sit down in a line. But how does it play? Not very well actually. I eventually got bored and went onto the next section: the trapeze.

Here I found myself got up in a girlie leotard thingy, having to perform yet more death defying feats. The actual animation of this event was again the most attractive aspect, but the speed with which each trick was accomplished is very slow, and hardly got the adrenalin going. If you have insomnia, however...

The penultimate event was the tightrope, and guess what you had to do here? Got it in one. Cross the high wire, performing a somersault in the middle, then cross it on a unicycle. and lastly cross it performing a flip in the middle. About the only one of the events which had you continually prodding at your joystick in order to keep balanced whilst moving slowly forward and backward, and as such, the most exciting event. This isn't saying very much, however.

And what about the grand finale of the nights gripping performance, ladeez han gennelmen? Yes it was the stunning 'girl doing things on horseback' routine. This is the most unplayable event, which is indeed an achievement considering the strong competition from the others.

Presenting a list of the aspects which make this game so bad would be boring, but no sound on the playing sections and totally unfriendly multi-load systems should give you an idea of what to expect. Tynesoft is, if my knowledge serves me, a software house more used to putting products out for the BBC and suchlike computers, only occasionally making a foray into the Speccy market. On the showing of Circus Games, I think this is something we should all be grateful for.

Label: Tynesoft
Author: Subway Software
Price: £8.95/£14.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Whether it's complete and utter coincidence, whether great minds think alike, or whether one pinched the idea from the other, it's remarkable that TWO arcade games based on the circus should appear in the same month; especially since there are hardly any circuses left in operation in real life. I mean, you wouldn't expect anyone to do an Olde-Tyme Variety Music Hall would you?

What's remarkable about Circus Games - if anything can be said to be remarkable about it - is that it's a licence. Yes, the famous Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey "Greatest Show on Earth" has singled out Tynesoft for the honour of having their name on the cover of Circus Games; they obviously don't know as much about Speccy games as they do about mucking out tigers.

What we have here is a collection of four events. You can quit any one and move on to the next load if you wish, but obviously to finish the game you must succeed in all four events; Tiger Taming, High Wire, Trapeze and Trick Horse Riding (that's doing tricks while riding a horse, not a funny collapsing animal).

The graphics are unremarkable throughout, and the music is hideous, which is a bit of a shock since it's by David Whittaker. The first event, Tiger Taming, is particularly poor. The aim is to make the tigers perform three tricks; you have a whip and a chair, and must keep all three under control if you hope to escape uneaten. The tricks vary from making the tigers walk through tubes, to walking them from one side of the cage to the other; very exciting, you'll agree.

The next event, Trapeze, is a bit better; left and right makes you swing higher on the trapeze, fire makes you jump to the other trapeze and perform a somersault. It's unfortunate that the animation is too slow to make things very thrilling.

Event three, Tightrope, COULD have been interesting. It features a split-screen display, and demands that you move across the tightrope while balancing your big pole (oo-er). In the middle you have to perform a somersault, which is tricky as you tend to lose your balance on landing. Tightrope is quite good fun; pity there isn't a bit more to it.

Lastly and leastly, Trick Horse Riding. Here, you balance a stunted Christmas-tree fairy on the slowest-moving horse you've ever seen. Her task is to avoid custard pies thrown by the clown, to jump through hoops and so on.

After completing all the events you load the Menu section to display your high score, but frankly dears I wouldn't bother. There's nothing in Circus Games to really make you want to get involved - though Circus Circus from Martech is superficially similar, it's a whole lot better than this bag of tricks.

Tynesoft, £8.95, cs, £14.95 dk
ST version reviewed Issue 19 - ACE rating 535

Other than monochrome graphics the only real difference between Spectrum Circus Games and the 16-bit versions is that the tiger training takes place over a single screen, with only three tricks to perform. However, limitations of the gameplay in general are compounded by the obligatory cassette multiload, and its appeal is even more short lived than that of its relatives.

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £8.95, Diskette: £14.95
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.95, Diskette: £14.95
Amiga £24.95
PC £24.95

LOITERING WITHIN TENT

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we proudly present... Warren, the famous Birmingham artiste. Watch and wonder as Warren competes in international circus competition...' Now every Tom, 'Dick and TGM reviewer can experience the thrills of performing amazing feats in the Big Top.

The options are standard for multi-event games: you practise events or compete in one or all of them. Up to tour players can take part and be human or computer-controlled.

The dizzying heights of the Top are tackled first with the dexterous footwork of tightrope walking. Balance is kept by adjusting the pole you carry, but to gain substantial points you must perform tricks while traversing the gently swaying rope: somersaults, handstand, cartwheels, and a 180 turn. Fall, and one of your three lives is lost. Success leads you to the second stage, where the wire is crossed on a unicycle.

Performing a quick sex-change (not part of your act), you become a female bare-back horse rider and, once in the saddle, attempt to perform a number of moves. Stand, sit, handstand, jump to left or right, spin left or right, and somersault are required for the set-move sequences.

NOTHING MORE THAN FELINES

Up in the air again to be a daring young man on the flying trapeze. Left and right movements build up your swinging speed and a plan view shows you when the trapezes swing closest together. In your three-part performance, you first swing from trapeze to trapeze, then perform a corkscrew and somersault as you go, then a double or triple somersault before being caught by a second artist.

The final event is the most dangerous - training extremely ferocious tigers. You attempt to guide three tangy felines across an obstacle course, using a whip as an incentive. A wary eye should be kept on the tigers' Threat Meters - they tend not to like being told what to do. A chair can be used to keep them at bay, but its all too easy to become a tasty tiger-treat.

A circus Olympics is an original, if silly, idea, but disappointment is expected even before the game is loaded, as there are only four events (acts). And because the acts aren't exceptional, Circus Games is doomed to limited lastability.

The difficulty level for each event is constant across the versions: tightrope walking is quite easy, tiger training too difficult, but more importantly, none of the acts hold attention for long.

Circus Games is simply too expensive for what little entertainment it offers.