BUDGET BUREAU
£1.99
New on Mastertronic's 'flippy flippy' label this month is Nonamed (56%), a tale of kings, wicked wizards and courageous knights. You have to battle your way (ninja style) through the Castle With No Name which has been filled full of terrible ogres. All the graphics in the game are excellent and would do any full-price game proud, it's just a pity the gameplay isn't so good - it takes ages to get used to the continual attack by various nasty creatures. After a bit of practice you can get some enjoyment from just walking around and admiring all the locations.
Another Mastertronic 'flippy flippy' game, with the Spectrum and Amstrad versions on the same tape, is Reveal (24%). The object of the game is to memorise an onscreen isometric pattern. Then, when the screen is plunged into darkness, you have to manoeuvre your object, lighting up the blocks again (sounds like fun, doesn't it?) Once they are all fully lit you can move onto the next screen and repeat the process. This soon gets extremely tedious, especially when aliens decide to darken the blocks on the opposite side of the screen again (fume!). I doubt whether anyone would find Reveal worth even £1.99.
If, on the other hand, you'd rather suffer with blocky sprites and plenty of colour clash then Gamebusters have for the very thing. Zone Trooper (30%) is another arcade adventure but this time you're the lucky crew member chosen to collect plasma pods scattered across a spaceship. This involves bouncing around the ship - and surrounding landscapes - while popping the odd alien and collecting anything in sight. Some particularly nice sequences are the airlocks and the ship's computer but it's hardly worth buying just for those. Zone Trooper could provide an hours exploring for the hardened arcade adventure player, but it won't last long.
If you liked the last two Atlantis titles - Gunfighter and Cerius - then the author's latest should prove welcomed. Called Tank Command (71%) it asks you to fight your way across an island in a tank, blasting away the enemy with a choice of either grenade or bombs. This may sound easy but you soon find out that if you don't bomb the enemies in the correct order you will end up in lots of little bits all over the screen. Simple sounding, but incredibly addictive. Tank Command is a pleasing mixture of arcade and strategy wih simple, but effective graphics. Well done, Atlantis.
The new offering from Silverbird this month is a simplistic race game, International Speedway (24%). you have to test your streetwise racing skills in the world of league racing. All it involves is racing around track after track of simplistic graphics, the most exciting part is when you crash into another racer - not my idea of fun. If I had £1.99 knocking about this would be one of the last games I would buy, definitely not recommended.
£2.99
Code Masters dominate the £2.99 slot this month with three games, the first of which is yet another of their famous cartoon adventures. This time it's called Bigfoot (47%) and stars a furry monster who goes by the name of Footsy! The graphics in the game are just mindblowing, not because they are any good, but because you just can't tell what's going on. There are three colour options to try but they are all pretty bad and cause clash unless you them totally monochrome. There just isn't enough in this game to keep me occupied for long and I don't recommend it unless you are a hardened Code Masters fan.
What, another Code Masters BMX game?! Yes, I'm afraid so. The programmer that brought you 4 Soccer Simulators has now come up with BMX Freestyle (76%). It's a great improvement on the original BMX game that had an overhead view and tiny bikes but BMX Freestyle is just too hard. All the graphics are excellent (what I've seen of them); well-defined bikes and backgrounds on most sections with the usual jolly Code Masters tunes and effects. The only problem is that it's almost impossible to get past the first section (wheelies), I did it once, only to foul up and squash my mates on the ramp section that comes after (splurt!). If you think you are skilled enough to do well, give this one a whirl.
Flushed with the success of winning the Embassy World Darts Championship Jocky Wilson has gone and got himself a darts game, Jocky Wilson's Darts Challenge (54%) courtesy of Zeppelin Games. It's one of theose games where all you do is aim the wobbling dart somewhere near the place you want it to go and hope for the best. You would have thought a beer drinking tournament would have been included but alas all you get is the screen where you throw the dart and an aerial view of some beer belly throwing a dart at the board. It's a fair simulation and I'm sure fans of the sport will rush out to buy it.
Another Zeppelin Games offering is Rally Simulator (27%), a dire car racing game that just has no appeal at all. The car skids and slides about the monochrome play area seemingly out of control and it can even run over the houses causing hardly any damage. There are no decent sound effects to speak of and to complete even the first level is an impossibility. Rally Simulator would simply be a waste of money if you bought it, stay away! (No way! This is a great game - well, not bad. Phil and I had great fun struggling to complete the first, incredibly hard level. Level Two is extremely hard - Stu.)
The final £2.99 priced game this month is from the Hewson budget label, Rack-It. Called into Africa (69%) it is, unsurprisingly, set in the jungles of Africa. If your Spectrum days go back a few years you may remember the classic strategy/adventure Lords Of Midnight, well into Africa is very similar in look and feel to that. The control method is the first thing that hits you, for some strange reason it has only three keys to select a whole host of options making it slightly difficult. The game itself should provide hours of play for adventure fans with forty controllable characters, eight radio operators and a massive landscape to explore.
BMX FREESTYLE
Code Masters
£1.99
Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann
In a way you can't really blame those Code Masters boys. BMX Simulator was their vastest seller, so it's not surprising that they keep trying to do it again with umpteen variations on that oh-so-successful theme. Bit boring for the rest of us, though, as yet another opportunity to perform wheelies, jump ramps, do the half pipe and so on appears on the shelves. Do we want to know any more? I certainly don't.
This game wants to be a sort of BMX equivalent of those Winter/Summer/World/California Games compilations, but it's infinitely more boring than any of those (yes, even California Games). It's all very slick, of course, but well past its Sell By date, and so rather stale and mouldy. Oh. hang on, I got that completely wrong - on the packaging David Darling says "They're all great - amazingly playable." Well, of course, how foolish of me not to notice. I think I better shoot myself in remorse. BANG!
Label: Codemasters
Author: Peter Williamson & Neil Adamson
Price: £2.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins
Just what the world needs, you might think - is another BMX game. BMX Freestyle, thankfully, is pretty good, ignoring ridiculous novelties in favour of a good, basic stunt simulation.
The fabby, bouncy David Whittaker theme music and inter-game jingles are of a very high quality, though the in-game sound effects are unremarkable. The opening menu lets you choose your control method, select one or two players, and name the contestants; you then have to choose your event.
There are six events, some played simultaneously with a split-screen effect, some done in turn. Unfortunately, if there's only one player, the split-screen events have half of the display blank, which is a bit dull.
All the events demand a combination of joystick (or keyboard) co-ordination and precision with the fire-button. Animation and backgrounds aren't bad, but the main excitement lies in honing your BMX skills as you compete for the championship.
Event 1, Wheelie Trials, requires you to jump up on your back wheel, and travel as far as you can without toppling over backwards. Event two, Ramp Jumps, is more of the same - parallax scrolling backgrounds, joystick-waggling and fire-button bashing - but this time the aim is to leap over the ramps and make a safe landing.
Event three, is the Half Pipe. Each player has to ride from left to right inside the pipe, hitting the fire button to turn at just the right moment. The most turns in one minute wins.
Next up is the Tricks Track, where the aim is to pull off as many wheelies, spins and bunny-hops as you can without colliding with the many obstacles.
Next is Slow Race, where you have a vertical view of the track. You don't have to pedal here, just steer; veer off course or "stall" and you're out of the race The aim, of course, is to finish last!
Last event is quarter-pipe High jump Here you take a run-up, pedalling furiously, and launch yourself into the air as you shoot off the end of the pipe. Again, you have to time your turn just right if you don't want to land in a crumpled (and disqualified) heap.
There's a comprehensive high-score table, and overall front-end design is fairly rad. I still reckon that if you're interested in BMXing, you'd probably rather be out there doing it than sitting at home simulating it on your Spectrum. Having said that, BMX Freestyle is one of the more sensible and enjoyable of the recent rash of BMX games, and it should shoot right to the top of the Christmas charts.
All information in this page is provided by ZXSR instead of ZXDB