Jetpac

Producer: Ultimate, 16K
£5.50

There's not much can be said about Ultimate that hasn't already been said. Graphics and presentation are of the highest standard. In Jetpac you must get your spaceman to assemble a rocket and fuel it, steal as many gems as you can and avoid the irate aliens or kill them with the laser. When assembled the rocket takes off for another planet to plunder. Re-assemble the ship after five planets. Five levels of different aliens. Joystick: Kempston. One or Two player games, continuous fire and movement in eight directions. Highly recommended.

Producer: Ultimate, 16K
£5.50

There's not much can be said about Ultimate that hasn't already been said. Graphics and presentation are of the highest standard. In Jetpac you must get your spaceman to assemble a rocket and fuel it, steal as many gems as you can and avoid the irate aliens or kill them with the laser. When assembled the rocket takes off for another planet to plunder. Re-assemble the ship after five planets. Five levels of different aliens. Joystick: Kempston. One or Two player games, continuous fire and movement in eight directions. Highly recommended.

Producer: Ultimate, 16K
£5.50

There's not much can be said about Ultimate that hasn't already been said. Graphics and presentation are of the highest standard. In Jetpac you must get your spaceman to assemble a rocket and fuel it, steal as many gems as you can and avoid the irate aliens or kill them with the laser. When assembled the rocket takes off for another planet to plunder. Re-assemble the ship after five planets. Five levels of different aliens. Joystick: Kempston. One or Two player games, continuous fire and movement in eight directions. Highly recommended.

INTERFACE GAMES ARE FAST BUT NOT FURIOUS

John Gilbert reviews the ROM cartridge software currently available.

The Sinclair Research Interface Two has had few kind words said about it and that it is not surprising. The add-on is supposed to give the Spectrum the ROM potential of the Atari games consoles and computers into which you can plug ROM cartridges which will load games into the machine directly on power-up. It should have been the ideal add-on for users who want a quick-load device and no messing with tape recorders or even Microdrives.

The main difficulties with the idea are that the software available consists of reproductions of arcade games which are already on the market and that many software companies have been deterred from producing software for the interface because of the conditions attached to ordering.

At the moment companies have to order batches of 1,000 cartridges in a sector of the market which is not fully-established. It is a risky business even for a company as established as Melbourne House or Psion. The situation could develop so that Sinclair is the only company producing the ROM cartridges. It certainly has the monopoly now.

The first ROM packages, together with their colourfully-styled display boxes, to arrive on the market were titles which already existed on the cassette format in the Sinclair software library. They included Planetoids, Backgammon and Space Raiders which are all from Psion.

The packages, one of which appeared originally on the ZX-81, are not particularly innovative or awe-inspiring and they are certainly not the kind of titles which would be expected to be produced when bunching a new peripheral for a prime-selling microcomputer. It is as if Sinclair could not wait to get Interface Two out of the way and so complete its obligations for peripherals for the Spectrum. One reason may well have been that the new QL machine was occupying its thoughts.

Backgammon featured as the only mind game in the first release, the others being held back because the Psion games were the quickest to produce. It is a pity that Backgammon was first instead of the chess package, which was left until later - chess has a far greater appeal to the majority of home computer users. Fortunately there was a gap of only two months before Chess was released and it has proved to be one of the better software packages in the launch.

Space Raiders is a painfully slow version of Space Invaders and could just as well be bought on cassette more cheaply. There are three spaceships with which you can fire at the aliens which amble across the screen.

Once you have finished one screen of the game, and that is not difficult, you will progress to the next level which is just as difficult or easy as the first. That makes the game a push-over and there is little challenge to tax even the newcomer to the arcade game scene.

Like most of the games in the range the price of the program on cassette is only £5 but the ROM version costs almost £10. Considering that the software does not show off either the graphics, colour or sound of the Spectrum to best effect it does not seem advantageous to buy the ROM version.

Planetoids is another arcade game with a familiar theme. Your spaceship first appears stationed at the centre of the screen and asteroids start to close in on it. You must try to destroy them and avoid the ones you miss. Alien spaceships make your task even more impossible.

The standard of the game is reasonable for the market, even though it was first produced in late 1982. The graphics are better than the original Atari version of Asteroids. The ship and the planetoids have been given a solid, almost three dimensional quality.

The program has a wrapround screen which allows your spaceship to go off one side and return on the other. That causes a strange effect when your ship fires across the screen, as the missiles will disappear off one edge and reappear somewhere else. The rogue missiles could even cause you to have some nasty accidents shooting at yourself.

Those packages comprised the ROMs available at the launch of Interface Two and there was a considerable wait until the other ROMs were launched in December.

The new packages include some old favourites from Melbourne House, already in the Sinclair software library, and some releases introduced by Ultimate Play the Game.

The Melbourne house offerings feature the clown of the software scene. The newest Horace adventure is not on ROM but it is pleasant to see Hungry Horace having a re-birth and Horace and the Spiders on ROM.

For those who know nothing of the Horace myth he is a little round, Pacman-type creature who has the habit of annoying everyone he meets.

Each of the games has a cute plot and Hungry Horace sees the round man taking the part of a Pac-man. He is, however, no ordinary powerpill eater. He has to eat the flowers in the park and avoid the keepers who will throw him out if he is discovered. If you go through one maze into another there will be more surprises and if you are adept enough you may start to think that there is no limit to the number of mazes in the game.

Horace and the Spiders is slightly different Horace has to dodge the spiders to gain points before he can reach the main part of the game which takes place in a cobwebbed house. You must destroy the spiders and their webs if you are to win the game.

The Horace adventures are a pleasure to play and it is good to see them in a format where they can be loaded immediately you feel like a quick game.

The range of Ultimate games is also worth having on cartridge, although they could be bought more cheaply on cassette from that company.

In chronological order, Jet Pac was the first game Ultimate produced for the Spectrum. In it you play a spaceman whose task is to deliver and assemble spaceship kits and to collect valuable treasures on the way. You will be faced with all kinds of odd creatures which you must avoid and destroy to complete your task.

The other games from Ultimate are Pssst, which involves a robot keeping away the bugs from a sunflower, and Cookie, which involves a chef bouncing ingredients for a cake, avoiding the nasties in the larder and keeping clear of the bins. Both games are arcade standard in quality and benefit from the ROM treatment.

The only mind game in the second release of ROM software is Chess. It is the original cassette version which has existed since the title was launched, with no changes. That is surprising since Mikro Gen, the original manufacturer of the game, has produced an upgraded version.

The game is standard so far as computer chess goes with options for playing or setting-up the board to play in particular situations. There are 10 levels and the highest, nine, takes several minutes to make a move. Each move for both you and your opponent is monitored in seconds, minutes and hours on a chess clock above the board on the screen.

The future of the ROM interface is still uncertain and many software houses are unsure what they will do in the way of supporting it. It seems unlikely that any large-scale production of programs on Sinclair standard ROMs is planned in the software industry and Sinclair could be in the unenviable position of having a monopoly of ROM software.

Sinclair Research hopes to produce some language and utility packages for Interface Two but the company still has no idea which language or utilities will be available, or when. It is likely that a ROM version of Micro-Prolog will be available soon but no firm date is being given even for that step forward.

The indications are that it will be the last interface for the Spectrum. The buffer at the back of the board will support only a ZX printer and Sinclair has given no intention of producing more peripherals for its home market machine. It would therefore seem logical to support the interfaces it already has as far as it can and to promote the use of those devices as much as possible. As far as Interface Two is concerned it has crept on to the market with more of a whisper than the bang which was expected.

Label: Ricochet
Author: Ultimate
Price: £1.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jason Roseaman

Oh boy. We really are going beck to the dawn of time with this one. Jetpac was first released by Ultimate in the days when Ultimate was the undisputed king of Spectrum software.

The basic idea is to collect the various bits of spaceship scattered around the first screen and from then on collect enough fuel pods to achieve lift off and get to the next level. Trouble is, you must get the stuff whilst dodging hoards of aliens that bounce about wildly.

You will soon realise that there isn't actually much gameplay in this ancient shoot 'em up but even as old as Jetpac is, it still retains some of its original addictiveness.

TRACK DOWN THE NASTY SIZZLING ALIEN ENEMIES

Building your rocket and fuelling it is the idea of the latest game from Ultimate.

The tape loaded successfully first time and while the game was loading an impressive title screen was displayed.

The game starts with a rocket ship in three parts. This has to be assembled by picking up each of the pieces in order and dropping them onto the base segment which is already in position at the bottom of the screen.

Once the rocket assembly is complete, you will need to get six fuel pods on board by picking them up as they appear randomly on the screen and dropping them into the craft.

When fuelled, you can board the ship yourself and blast off to the next planet where a similar task faces you.

If all this sounds too easy, then you probably haven't heard about the thousands of aliens who inhabit each planet and are, "in desperate need of blowing up". You are equipped with a laser weapon with which to do this and also a jet-powered transport system strapped to your back, hence the title. If you are hit by an alien then you lose one of your four lives. On the first screen the aliens are not too difficult to avoid but on subsequent planets they become more intelligent and are able to track you with ever increasing accuracy.

Jetpac is very playable, addictive and original arcade type game. The graphics are superb but the sound effects bore a striking similarity to a pan of frying eggs and bacon. By the time I reached the fourth planet I was starving!

The choice of movement keys is well thought out, although the program also accepts a joystick from Kempston.

Jetpac runs on any ZX Spectrum and is for one or two players. It costs £5 from Leicestershire-based Ultimate and comes complete with a five year unconditional guarantee which can't be bad.

PRICE: £5.50
Memory: 16K

The idea of this game is that you are an astronaut and your object is to collect as many of the valuable minerals, etc, of the planet which you are on, whilst also collecting fuel for your safe departure. Though the scenario is not the most original around, what puts it to number one in this review is the fantastic quality of the graphics. The characters are beautifully designed and colour is used very well indeed. But the thing that really caught my eye was the incredible smoothness of it all. Never in the game will you see one jerky move. As you get to more planets the inhabitants get more and more determined to stop you. Another nice feature is the way in which, as you proceed through the game, your rocket turns into the space shuttle - a nice touch.

There are five controls to be mastered: left, right, fire, thrust and hover. All of which maybe controlled via the keyboard or through a joystick.

Overall this is a very well put together piece of software. If you want a game with impact then this is one of the best around. An excellent program and game.

The first of a long life of sprite arcade games from a company which has built its name around quality.

The game involves a space man with jetpack who must build a space ship from the various bits of rocket scattered around the screen and then catch the fuel drums before taking off for the next screen.

Still a bestselling game it has set the standard for sprite games as the entire screen is covered with colourful movement without being affected by the usual slowness of response from input or movement of characters.

Position 15/50

Ultimate Play The Game
The Green, Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire.
16/48K Spectrum
£5.50

FROM DEEP-SPACE ADVENTURES TO WORLDLY BOARD-GAMES IN MEIRION JONES' SURVEY

Less than a year ago the appearance of Scrabble on disc for the Apple caused consternation among micro owners. The program defeated three-quarters of the humans who challenged it to a dual of words. At least Scrabblers could comfort themselves with the knowledge that they had been beaten by a £750 disc-based system. Now Psion has taken even that consolation away by launching an improved version of the game with a bigger dictionary and better graphics which will run on a £150 system - the 48K Spectrum and a cassette recorder.

This illustrates the rate at which Spectrum software is improving. The latest releases include clever implementations of board- games like monopoly and arcade favourites such as Scramble, long and complicated Adventures with names like Knight's Quest and combinations of arcade and Adventure like Pixel's Trader. While serious and educational material software is still thin on the ground, programs like Hewson's Countries of the World show how much useful information can be packed into the Spectrum.

MORE ORIGINALITY

Unfortunately the standard is not uniformly high. Sometimes imagination is lacking. Bridge software still insists on marketing what it calls "an exciting game for two to six players". Yes, you guessed, it is boring old Hangman.

At other times graphics are weak. Micromega sells a version of Roulette which features a roulette wheel which looks more like a flying saucer on an off day. There is still too high a percentage of unloadable tapes and of tapes which you wished had been unloadable. Davic Games Tape 1, for instance, features a game which has Tooth Monsters instead of ghosts, which is probably the dullest-ever version of Pac-Man. The Tooth Monsters themselves are about as threatening as a pair of jelly babies.

If you want real tooth monsters try Imagine's excellent Molar Maul. This is a real nerve-tingler from the moment that an enormous set of gleaming teeth appears on the screen like something out of jaws. Armed only with a toothbrush and toothpaste you have to defend these dentures from swarms of evil bacteria.

These germs go by the name of Dentorium Kamikazium which allows Imagine to talk about "the DK Menace" - a triple pun partly at the expense of Imagine's Ipswich-based rivals DK'tronics.

Imagine's punsters are at work again on the cover of Arcadia where we are told we are fighting against the "deadly menace of the Atarian empire". Perhaps this explains why Sinclair owners have shown such enthusiasm for Arcadia because the game itself is just a lacklustre version of Galaxians. Much better is Imagine's Schizoids.

If, like me, you have always wanted to be a bulldozer, Schizoids is the game for you. You are a bulldozer in outer space and your job is to push tumbling cubes and pyramids into a nearby black hole without falling in yourself. Perhaps this nearby anomaly in the space-time continuum affects the wavelength of light. At any rate the game itself is only in black and white.

Pixel is another company which cannot resist veiled messages. Trader is part space Adventure and part arcade game. The Adventure, trading commodities between different worlds, is more convincing than the crude skill tests such as finding the right orbit when approaching a planet.

Trader may well be bought as much for its attractive packaging - which includes a survival guide for the would-be Trader - as for the game itself. After buying supplies for your first trip you set out for the planet Psi where the inhabitants - yes, Psions - who look like a cross between Clive Sinclair's beard and a muppet ask you tiresome questions such as "What is the formula for carbon monoxide?" or "What is your first name?". Entering "Clive" as an answer elicits the response "What a strange name". So, for that matter, does any other reply.

If disaster should strike, a caption will appear saying "Is this the end...?" The answer is "No" because Trader is a trilogy so there are another two complete parts to load from the tape. There are many more traditional text Adventures of the "Go south, open door, take gold" variety but the narrowness of the replies they will accept is often irritating.

DOWN THE MINES

Mikrogen's Mines of Saturn starts with a cheery "Have fun" and then proceeds to ask questions like "Tunnels lead N, S, E and W - what will you do?" Attempts to answer "N" or "go N" or even "go n" will not wash. It must be "go North" or nothing. At least Phipps' Knight's Quest has a 120-word vocabulary to help you on your damsel-ridden way to a castle in the air.

Everest by Richard Shepherd Software is more of a strategy game than a straight Adventure. You have to take enough food and rope to climb the mountain and cope with every hazard. I enjoyed the climb but I never reached the summit - partly because the Sherpas are not what they used to be.

When Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest for the first time he managed to find a Sherpa called Tensing. The time when you visit a Nepalese hill village to recruit porters you are asked to choose between Sherpas with names like Keith, Brian, Ron, Tim and Paul. Presumably they are ex-hippies, lost on the road to Katmandu.

Things obviously still are what they used to be down at Mikrogen. If Andy Capp sends you into fits of laughter Mad Martha might just raise a smile. It is the same old story, boy meets girl, well, hen-pecked husband meets axe-happy wife - all very predictable. Mikrogen also sells arcade games like Cosmic Raiders - a competent impersonation of Defender with a long-range screen and grabbers.

Melbourne House's variation on the same theme is called Penetrator. The display looks more like the arcade version of Scramble. A training facility to help you build up specific game skills is a good idea. C-Tech's Rocket Raider is yet another competent variant on similar lines.

Artic offers a suicidally fast asteroids game called Cosmic Debris. Still in the arcades, both Elfin Software and Quicksilva produce robot battles which are of the Pac-Man-meets-Tanks variety.

Elfin's Tobor has the more exciting opening titles but loses on points to Quicksilva's QS Frenzy whose exotic science-fiction plot seems to offer a better justification for the game.

Speaking of Tanks, DK'tronics 3D Tanx was one of my favourite programs in the whole batch. You can track you gun barrel from side to side and adjust the elevation as you lob your shells at four lines of moving tanks which can fire back at you. Although the opposing tanks at first appear to be crawling across a structure that looks more like Brighton's West Pier than a battleground, this is one of my four games you might catch me paying to play in an arcade.

JOIN THE PROFESSIONALS

Artic's Combat Zone is another ambitious attempt at a Tank game. Your target and the landscape - a few pyramids on an invisible plane - look like refugees from Psion's Vu-3D program. They are very simple three-dimensional shapes but they change position smoothly and realistically as if you were walking past them in some world inside your Spectrum.

You and your opponents fire fragments of cubist paintings at each other but the abstraction is not so important as the fact that you are playing the first real Spectrum game in three dimensions - Vu-3D itself is a Psion program which allows you to build up three dimensional objects on the screen and then rotate them, or float them towards you and back again. In effect it is a crude version of the mainframe programs which create the effects for films like Tron.

ET makes an appearance too in an Abbex Adventure with voices called ETX. Unfortunately after loading pages of instructions about how I should phone home ending with the advice that I should treat any MI5 man who appeared as an enemy, the tape self-destructed.

This left me with an unnerving impression of "the strength of Britain's security services.

The secret police are certainly important in DK'tronics strategy game called Dictator. The setting is a banana republic. The instructions ominously point out that "your rule is measured in months". You have to balance political factions, army, secret police, peasants, landowners, guerillas and superpowers if you are to survive.

Breaking into embassies would doubtless be all in a day's work for a dictator. So for all prospective saviours of the nation, Sinclair's Embassy Assault will come in useful. It is very much like those maze games which present your view. standing in the maze. Instead of trying to avoid a minotaur, this time you are looking for secret codes and the like.

All this is enough to send you back into the arcades but Jet Pac's creators have moved from the arcades into home computing.

Ultimate Play the Game's Jet Pac puts you into the position of an astronaut who has to build a rocket from the pieces he can find sitting on clouds around the screen. The scenario is not entirely convincing but it makes for a good game. The same cannot be said of the simulations by CCS.

CCS's representations of the oil business, Dallas, running a printers, Print Room, and of international aviation, Airline, may be realistic but they are not very exciting. Although these were originally designed as training for middle management, livelier presentation would not necessarily have made them less useful. Hewson's simulations of air-traffic control, Heathrow, and the Nightflite flight simulator are more convincing.

Board-games seem to transfer particularly well to the Spectrum. Psion's Scrabble has already been recommended. With its four levels of play and 11,000-word dictionary it can offer almost as tough opposition as you could want. There are also two different approaches to that old favourite Monopoly.

Automonopoli offers a continuous display of the part of the board around your current position. This display moves smoothly when the dice are thrown. Do Not Pass Go from Workforce has a less interesting display but at least shows the whole board all the time. Automonopoli allows you to personalise the program with the names of players and both programs give the option of being either a board for humans to play on or of letting the computer join in as a player. In each case the computer becomes a soft opponent once you have reached the stage of building houses and hotels.

If you have ever wandered into a rundown dockland hotel or pub and been confronted by the sort of balding drunk who says he used to sail the seven seas and boasts that he can name the capital of any country you care to choose, I can reveal his secret. At home he has a Spectrum with Hewson's Countries of the World up and running on it.

At the touch of a button it will remind you that N'djamena is the capital of Chad or that Yaounde is the capital of Cameroon. In the corner of the pub someone with probably be playing a video game not unlike Firebirds.

Softek's Firebirds is a Galaxians-type game distinguished by good croaking noises from the birds. Still on the subject of sound effects Workforcé's Jaws Revenge is very noisy and fun. The graphics are great. You are a shark and you are after the divers and- boats which are after you.

Mined Out from Quicksilva is a very strange version of Mines. It is subtitled "Rescue Bill the worm from certain old age" and if you find a way through the first minefield you then have to rescue damsels in distress. Someone at Quicksilva has been playing too many Adventure games and it is beginning to show.

The last words on the cassette packet read "the image fades to soft focus which is replaced by waves falling on a rocky shore, except in Bill's dream there are no waves or soft focus..." It is certainly time that software cassettes carried a government health warning.

Situations Vacant
Wanted: Space Test Pilot
Qualifications: Rocket Pilot Licence, elementary technical knowledge and Award of Merit from League of Blasted Aliens
Special Details: Volunteer required to assemble and launch test vehicles.

Dangerous conditions (hordes of homicidal entities alien to all known galaxies), but good rewards for initiative can be acquired through a 10% commission on all minerals secured. (High profits assured on every trip.) Lengthy experience in laser weaponry required, strong nerves essential, and a preference for working alone. Xenophobiacs preferred, a pathological tendency to blast everything in sight helpful. Certificate of insanity not mandatory but also helpful.

Can you fulfil the above criteria and become the Ultimate test-pilot? This job is not for the faint hearted or for those with lethargic reflexes. The task itself is simple enough; as sole test pilot for the Acme Interstellar Transport Company 'you' have to assemble a space ship which is conveniently distributed in bits on the planet surface while fighting off hordes of maniacal aliens. Once assembled the test-pilot must wait for fuel supplies to descent from the heavens or he can supplement his income by collecting the various gems that also accompany the fuel supplies. The screen display shows the planet surface, the rocket parts awaiting assembly and three ledges at various heights. The screen has a wrap around effect which enables the jetman's laser to leave and re-enter the screen at opposite points. The aliens are of different colours, and their numbers are supplemented by new arrivals to prevent you from feeling lonely.

Your jetman can negotiate 16 screens and assemble four space ships before the game begins to repeat itself, but getting there is a difficult task as the aliens vary from subnormal laser-fodder to vicious 'intelligent' hunters who follow you around the screen. None of the aliens is armed but collision is usually fatal.

It is easy to see why Jetpac turned Ultimate into a household name virtually overnight; even now it stands out amongst the plethora of mediocre arcade clones. The presentation of the game is excellent, it loads reliably under a beautifully designed title-page which shows almost exactly the cassette inlay illustration. The keyboard controls and the game itself are comprehensively covered within the inlay; however, the program, once loaded, gives you a choice between keyboard and joystick controls, or between one and two players.

The graphics are colourful and the test-pilot jetman with a rocket pack on his back is accurately drawn with remarkable attention to detail. The animation of the jetman is superb and his movement in flight, and that of the aliens, is very smooth indeed. My favourite piece of animation is when the fully fuelled rocket blasts off for another planet with the frustrated aliens hopping about angrily in the flames from the rocket's afterburners. The smoothly animated multi-coloured laser blasts and the variform aliens are very eye-catching as well.

The only criticism with this cassette (if one is hypercritical) is with the sound, which is adequate without being exceptional, and with no catchy tunes being played.

In appraising this game it is difficult to find any real faults. The game is easily played with either the keyboard or joystick. The high-resolution colour graphics and excellent animation routines make full use of the Spectrum's capabilities. Ultimate have gone a long way towards creating the perfect arcade-quality game, and at only £5.50 my verdict is rush out and buy it before Ultimate realise that it's grossly under priced.

NAME: Jet Pac
SYSTEM: Spectrum 16K
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Ultimate Play the Game (0530) 411485
FORMAT: Cassette
OUTLETS: WH Smith, John Menzies, Sinclair dealers, mail order.

PLANETS OF PLENTY

Jet Pac is the first product from a newly formed company which claims it has 'the most experienced arcade video game design team in Britain.'

OBJECTIVE

In a word - greed. You're the chief test pilot for Acme Interstellar Transport and have been asked to go to various planets and assemble rockets. But that seems a mildly boring activity - once you've built one rocket the others are the same.

So when you arrive on the planet and start jetting around, you decide to take a few 'souvenirs' in the form of jewels, elements and gold - which oddly keep falling from the sky.

The aliens are a mite peeved that you've tried to walk off with their treasure, without so much as paying the V in VAT. So you have to shoot them with your Quad Photon Laser Phasers.

You also have to fuel the rocket you've assembled in order to get off each planet - and that means collecting six fuel pods - which also drop from the skies.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

This is one of the only cassette-based games - no, the only - I've ever played whose onscreen graphics match the artists' impressions that look so enticing on cassette sleeves. The documentation is also quite sufficient to explain the principle, so Jet Pac wins on both counts.

IN PLAY

The first planet features fireball-type creatures that don't get in your way too much as you build your rocket and then re-fuel to move on to the next planet. The trick is to stay hovering above the planet on the three 'safe areas' above the ground - if you don't the fireballs will get you.

However, the air seems thinner at the top of the screen and the aliens tend to keep away from it. The second planet harbours mean furry creatures, the third vicious bouncing spheres and the fourth some strange-looking little insects.

The insects are a new breed of tough creature that jealously guard both jewels and fuel pods and seems to have a heat-seeking capability that allows them to follow you around. The fifth planet (I didn't get any further than that) features flying saucers which seem even meaner than the insects.

VERDICT

Little to say here, except that I have never had more fun playing a game on the Spectrum.

A classic which should rank with Space Invaders and Pacman in the computer game annals of fame.

PC MICROPEDIA VOL 13 PART 3

SOFTWARE

Christmas Software Buyers Guide

SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE

SOFTWARE SELECTION

Whether you've just bought a personal computer, had one for some time or are expecting one on Christmas Day, one thing you'll be looking for is some good software to ease the digestion of the Christmas fare or to stave off boredom during the re-runs of old films on the TV.

In this Micropaedia we'll give details of how to select the best value programs for your money, as well as a list of the best games we've reviewed in our pages this year.

The first thing to do is look carefully at your needs. Software can be divided roughly into a number of areas such as: applications, utilities educational and games. This list is not comprehensive and there are bound to be some overlaps.

Applications: This covers word processing, database, accounting programs and so on. These are designed to take the slog out of paper work, it you're looking to make typing easier then you must bear in mind that there's no point buying a word processor unless you have a printer. You should also ask:

- Does the program give an adequate screen size, ie between 40 and 80 characters?

- Does it respond quickly when a word runs off the end of a line? How easy is it to use and is the documentation clear?

- Will it verity your text once you've saved it onto cassette?

- Can you print more than one copy of the text easily?

Databases: If you've reached the stage where you've got so many cassettes or records that you can't keep track of them, then you might consider looking at some database packages. If all you need is a simple card index, then you might be better off buying just that. Databases on micros can be misapplied quite easily. The problem with a card index is that you can retrieve the information in one of two ways: by picking a card from its main heading or by searching the entire set from start to finish. A card box is good for people's names and addresses etc, but no good if, for example, you wish to find out which of these people live in a given town.

The main advantage of a computer database is that you can select cards ('records') on a number of criteria. For example. If you run a club you could pick out all the members who are late with subscriptions and who live in a certain town.

The main limitation of computer databases is that you can't usually keep more than 300 cards at a time. If you have a cassette-based program you will have to SAVE and VERIFY the database every time you alter it - this can be a real pain.

The questions to ask here are, will it really save you time and effort? What is the maximum number of records you can keep on it at any one time? How many separate pieces of information can each 'card' hold? (eg product description, code value, number in stock, reorder limit.) How many characters (letters) are you limited to for each record?

Accounts: It's at this time of year that you are most likely to be feeling the pinch, financially. Investment in a home accounting or bookkeeping package may help with the management of money matters. In this area you will also find programs that help you calculate heat losses which may help you save money by proper insulation.

As with the database programs, the most important question relates to your needs - will the program really save you time and effort? Would it be easier, quicker and cheaper to use a calculator, pen and paper?

Utilities: These are programs for the more serious hobbyists, who enjoy developing their own programs and finding out more about their machines.

Perhaps the first thing you should consider in this area is another language. Basic is a good language for learning about programming but it shouldn't be the only string to your bow. Forth is now available on most micros which allows you to write arcade games which run very fast indeed. Pascal is becoming increasingly popular on a variety of micros and most versions will give you a good grounding in this structured language. Rarer but just as interesting are, Logo, Lisp and Prolog.

If you want your programs to go faster but don't want to learn another language you should shop around for a compiler. This is a program that will convert your Basic into machine code. This has the advantage of speeding up the program and making sure other people can't steal those routines that took you hours to code up. Certainly one thing most programmers will find of enormous use is a 'toolbox' of some kind. There are as yet only a few of these about due to their immense value more are being launched every week. Toolkits generally include REM strippers - to take out all the REM lines needed during program development. This can make for great memory savings if space is tight. If you're lucky a toolkit may also have a packing routine which takes out all unnecessary spaces and in some cases joins lines up to save space. An 'unpacker' should also be provided.

If you're interested in working at the heart of the computer, you'll be looking to machine code. In that case you'll need an assembler at least. This saves you the slog of having to convert op-codes to hex, or calculate branches and offsets. A disassembler does the opposite - takes the hex codes from memory and shows you the op-codes. You'll need both of these for getting right down to it and so it is probably worth considering a full monitor system. A good monitor should combine an assembler and disassembler and provide a machine code toolkit with such facilities as, block moves of memory, trace functions, break point settings and so on. The more functions the monitor has the more useful it will be... and the more expensive.

Education: In the last few months most of the major educational publishers have launched educational programs. These include, Heinemann, Griffin and George, Macmillan Longman and so on. There is also a lot of software being produced by smaller companies like Chalksoft and Widgit Software.

The standard of software in this field is probably more variable than in other areas, some is dreadful, some excellent. Five-Ways is a software company that has produced programs for both Heinemann and Macmillan. Its programs have set the standard by which others should be judged, so try to see them. They are available on Spectrum, BBC and RML380 from retailers, who should be prepared to demonstrate any programs in stock.

Games: There used to be a clear division between adventure and arcade-type games. This has been blurred over the last few months by programs which use ideas and techniques from the two types.

Arcade-type games can be subdivided into those that mimic the 'real-thing', games like Invaders/Galaxians, Phoenix, Pac-Man, Defender/Scramble, Kong, Asteroids, Berserk and so on.

The main differences between these games ties in how you move relative to the background.

There has been a move of late toward 3D games. These seek to produce the illusion of three dimensions on the screen, so that things don't just move left-right and up-down, but can appear to move into the distance as well. Some of these have tried to use the brain's capacity for giving this impression from the different information obtained from the two eyes. They do this by using two coloured pictures of the same image on the screen and you have to wear coloured glasses to get the effect. These are worth looking at, but they don't always work well on all TVs.

Other games use perspective transformations to get a similar effect. These seem to be pointing the way to a new and exciting direction in games. Of particular note here are Lunar Crabs and Ant Attack.

The main point about arcade-type games is the use of sound and colour graphics on the machine. Don't be misled by the packaging. Sometimes the cassette cover gives the impression that the game uses stupendous graphics, but you'll find that this may be an artist's impression of the title and bear no relation at all to the pictures on the screen. To avoid this, look in the magazines to find reviews accompanied by a 'screen-shot' - a photograph of the game being played. Sometimes you'll find one of these on the inside cover of the cassette.

Adventure games are often 'text-only'. This means that there are no pictures at all. In these you have to type in instructions such as 'go west', 'get rifle', 'open door' and so on. The idea is that you have to complete a quest which might involve finding some secret treasure or simply finding your way out of a labyrinth of rooms and corridors without being killed by some unsavoury thug.

Often you need to have picked up items before you can proceed very far - for example, you may not be able to read a crucial message (or even be told it's there) before picking up and/or using a torch. The best of the strictly text-only adventures should have a very large vocabulary. The program should recognise ten verbs as a rock-bottom minimum and at least twice as many objects. There should also be many locations to move to and from. The best way to find out about these is, again, to read through reviews of the programs or to look at the cover or instruction manual.

The problem with this is that some suppliers deliberately include very little detail about the words you can use, or the objects. One of the main points about an adventure game is that you are supposed to work out all this information for yourself.

There have been a number of games released recently which might be termed 'extended adventure' games. In these you get a picture on the screen of the room you're in and possibly some extra information at the foot or to one side of the screen.

Of particular note here are games like Valhalla. In this, you play the role of a wanderer in the Norse Gods' kingdom. The screen is split into two sections - the top shows your location, yourself and who/whatever might be present. The characters move around rather like those in a cartoon. The lower screen is used for entering commands and getting information about who's who or what's what. The point is that the characters have lives of their own and will move around without your doing anything at all!

Also in this vein are the Oracle's Cave and the Hobbit. There are more and more games breaking into this new territory every week. One to watch out for will be Alice in Wonderland from Audiogenic for the Commodore 64.

Adventure games require more wit than dexterity and it's easy to get addicted to the better ones, rather like getting completely taken up with a film or book. Try to see them in action before buying and bear in mind that the first few times you play them are likely to provide as much frustration as excitement while you're getting familiar with the basic framework.

The better games allow you to do more than just enter two words in the usual verb-object pair. Some will even allow you to enter such complex phrases as telling one of the characters to do something for you!

General rules: Avoid buying programs on the strength of advertising or covers. Some suppliers can generally be relied on to produce high-quality games, but everyone makes the occasional mistake! Check the top-ten charts in different magazines and look through back issues of magazines for reviews. Ask to see games before you buy, but make sure you know what sort of game you're after, or you'll waste a lot of your own time and that of shop assistants.

TRIED AND TESTED FOR THE SPECTRUM

NAME: Psst
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Ultimate
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 16/48K

NAME: Jumping Jack
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Imagine
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 16/48K

NAME: Cookie
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Ultimate
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 16/48K

NAME: Magic Mountain
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £4.95
PUBLISHER: Phipps
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K

NAME: Zzoom
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Imagine
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K

NAME: Splat
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Incentive
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K

NAME: Football Pools
TYPE: Utility
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Hartland
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K

NAME: Pimania
TYPE: Advent
PRICE: £10
PUBLISHER: Automata
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K

NAME: Horace Goes Skiing
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Psion
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 16K

NAME: Mad Martha
TYPE: Arcade
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Mikrogen
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K

NAME: Jetpac
PRICE: £5.50
PUBLISHER: Ultimate Play The Game, 0530 411485
SYSTEM: 16K
FORMAT: Cassette
OUTLETS: WH Smith, John Menzies, Sinclair Dealers, mail order.

This is a classic game that tops Space Invaders and Pacman and offers lots of fun.

You're the chief test pilot tor Acme interstellar Transport and your job is to go to various planets to assemble rockets.

Bits of elements, jewels and gold fall from the sky which you snatch, but the aliens get a bit peeved because you've grabbed their worldly goods without so much as paying the V in VAT. And there's only one way to settle the matter - shoot them with your Quad Photon Laser Phasers.

Before you can make a quick getaway, you have to fuel a rocket with six fuel pods which drop from the skies. Each planet has its own share of nasties that try and get you. The first planet has fire-ball type creatures, the second furry creatures, the third vicious bouncing spheres and the fourth some strange looking little insects.

With its good graphics and interesting content you'll have plenty to do to fill those free hours.

NAME: Valhalla
PRICE: £14.95
PUBLISHER: Legend
SYSTEM: 48K
FORMAT: Cassette
OUTLETS: Some retail, mail order from Legend, Freepost, 1 Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1UY.

Valhalla is half epic, half cartoon strip and its Norse setting is ideal for those with the fjords in their bloodstream.

With 200 crowns and your brains you have to wend your way through Asgard, Midgard and Hell to pick up a key, a ring, a shield, a sword, an axe and a helmet.

First of all you need to get yourself well equipped. Armour is a must. So are the bare essentials like food and drink. And as you progress through the adventure the condition of your soul is rated.

The graphics are good and varied, and the responses can be slow, but this is because the machine is processing the moves for a number of characters not just you, and the screen features a superb cartoon effect.

The program also allows you to stack instructions. For example, you can type in get food, eat food, go north in quick succession then see your character do all these.

I won't tell you how to solve the quest. What I will tell you is that Valhalla is well worth the rather substantial cost.

NAME: Manic Miner
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Bug-Byte, 051-709 7071
FORMAT: Cassette
OUTLETS: High street shops

For superb graphics and sound, humour and overall addiction there's little can beat Manic Miner for the 48K Spectrum. It scored top marks in Gameplay (Issue 23) and subsequently soared to become a bestseller.

Using keyboard or joystick, you manoeuvre Miner Willy through caverns in a long-forgotten mine-shaft near Surbiton in Surrey, collecting keys to unlock a great fortune on resurfacing.

Press ENTER and you're in Central Cavern beginning the great trek upward. The game needs a lot of thought, practice and timing. Robots, ducks and dozens of other creatures. Including humming penguins patrol the caves, platforms crumble and conveyor belts whisk Willy off in quite the wrong direction if he's not quick.

NAME: Rescue
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Computer Rentals, 01-247 9004
FORMAT: Cassette
SYSTEM: 48K
OUTLETS: Smiths, Menzies, Boots, Mail order

An adventure that has all the ingredients - graphics, variety, plenty of surprises, good plot and ease of play to make it a winner.

You have to rescue a princess who is in a castle, and you have four levels of skill from which to choose. You decide how to rescue the princess, you decide what tactics to employ, you decide what objects to use and how to use them.

The game is played on a 'board' made up of concentric circles, linked together like a spider's web - and a fresh board is created every time you play.

While you play you can keep tabs on the position of your enemies. The two guards keep on the move at the same time as you, and if they catch up with you, you're well and truly dead.

NAME: Fantastic Voyage
TYPE: Shootout
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Foilkade, 0225 834981
FORMAT: Cassette
OUTLETS: Mail order
MACHINE: ZX81

If you fancy a trip through the veins of a human body, battling against white blood cells - try Fantastic Voyage.

You are injected into a right arm and must make your way to the brain by navigating through the body's bloodstream. Your aim is to destroy a bloodclot.

On this interesting theme, forget all the medical jargon about veins and arteries you go straight into the scan mode to give a front and side view of the body. You identify your position by a tiny dot which represents a submarine - a strange object to be floating around in a body. Also displayed is your energy level, direction and size, which gets larger the longer you stay in the body.

The movement of the submarine is well done, as you see the artery walls moving past you. But destroying white blood cells is none too easy. They jitter about the screen at a rapid rate and you have to use laser power sparingly.

This is a very good game with clever programming. There's a good deal to do and you won't get bored.

NAME: Adventure 200
TYPE: Adventure
PRICE: £5.95
PUBLISHER: Foilkade, 0225 834981
FORMAT: Cassette
OUTLETS: Mail order
MACHINE: ZX81

The ingredients are here for a really gripping adventure. Disguised as a peasant you venture into the evil land of Grunlock to recover your King's stolen treasure. And you'd better not come back empty handed or the King will have you killed.

Starting west of the palace you give simple commands for directions you want to move. After every move, the ZX81 displays where you are, what's happened, and the obvious paths you can take.

During your journey you are offered several things, such as a lamp and a fish. And what you pick up affects your progress.

A very interesting adventure.