ZX SPECTRUM - IT LIVES!!! now has a new home:  https://zxspectrumitlives.wixsite.com/home

PART II- EARTH FIGHTS BACK!!!

NEWS HEADLINES!

Lookit, an adventure!  I haven't reviewed many adventures due to my chronic inability to get anywhere in them.  I don't think I've ever completed one without help of various kinds throughout the ages.  Cue wibbly flashback.

In 1984 I bought A Guide To Playing The Hobbit, which bailed me out quite nicely, as probably the best adventure game ever was a toughie in parts.  How else would anyone get past those chuffin' bulbous eyes?  Thereafter Crash's Adventure Trail often proved helpful, what with their sdrawkcab seulc and all.  

Now flash forward please to 1995.  My wife-to-be is reprimanded by an over-zealous Game employee for going in maybe a little too often to nose in the Discworld tips book.  A few years later she ends up phoning Gremlin Graphics' helpline at great expense to get us unstuck again in Realms of the Haunting.

Flash forward once again to, erm, whenever the internet was invented and widely used, and suddenly cheating becomes so very easy.  Much to my missus' relief!

So yeah, I normally need some weird infinite goblins poke or loads of help to get anywhere in any adventure at all, often embarrassingly getting stuck on the first screen, cough, Rigel's Revenge, cough.  As such I tend to petulantly quit them after a brief and frustrating attempt or two, so this would not be conducive to a fair review really.

But I think I've now seen enough of this little game to do it justice.  As we well know, in Russia the Spectrum managed to live on quite well after its commercial demise, and some quality games continued to be made.  The only problem was that they were all in Russian!  To be fair, some of those games are so good, I'm almost tempted to try to learn the lingo myself.  One title called Twilight: The Land of Shadows looks amazing, but can I get an English version, which apparently does exist, to work properly?  No I cannot.

Star Heritage/Inheritance: Black Cobra, to give it all of its alternative titles all at once, is a fine looking game.  Apparently it's quite epic in size but I don't think I can confirm or deny this claim, as it looks like the version I've been playing may merely be chapter one of the story, as this seems to be as much as has been translated into English.  They even made an upgraded PC version of this game, which again looks awesome, but sadly seems to be largely unavailable.  Although I did spot a version online in German oddly....getting closer.

Anyway, the blurb says the game is set in the Elite universe, which itself prompts questions/lawsuits.  You play a secret agent of The Central Union of Human Colonies, who crash-lands on an unknown planet after his spaceship is attacked by an Artang patrol.  Now you have to get your bearings and get off this godforsaken planet.  So far, so compelling.  On startup, the Russian version has a nice musical intro, showing your ship crashing to earth, while the English version misses this, but still starts on the front foot with great location graphics, a nice amount of well-translated text, a simple command interface and a great ongoing tune.

Alarm bells start to ring though when you see the box to the bottom left of the screen, featuring stats for health, power, stamina, experience and licentiousness, although that last one might be luck.  And also a day/night graphic.  Is this going to get overly complicated?  Oh yes it is!

For some reason the game is massively keen to kill the hell out of you most of the time.  Instant death courtesy of the local flora and fauna is common, as are fights with most everyone you ever meet.  That old woman was nice though, shame I instinctively went and blasted her head off, as I'd become conditioned by that point.

You tend to lose your energy very rapidly whatever you do, and I'm not sure how the other stats work really.  You can rest and regain some health regularly, but you do then risk being attacked, particularly at night-time, or sometimes you attempt to rest and end up just plain losing more health anyway.  Never quite understood that one - bad dream, maybe?

So in order to get anywhere in Star Heritage, you absolutely have to save every go or so, or you'll stand no chance.  Kind of a shame as I'm really getting into it, and it looks so great, but I've now run out of health pills and appear to be too knackered to carry on.  I'm still talking about the game here, not real life, although I am a bit sleepy, now you mention it.  I even tried to use an immunity poke.  It didn't work.

I suspect there is probably something pretty epic in here somewhere, and if it was about 50% less harsh, it could really be special.  As such, I've half enjoyed and half endured it, but I'm impressed all the same.  Right, I'm off to the library to get me an Idiot's Guide To Russian, then at last the world will be my potato, comrade!  Mwahahaha, maniacal laughter, etc.

Remember when Wally Week ruled the world?  No, he actually did back in the mid-'80s.  First he had a job in a garage, consistently failing to put bits of car together, mostly because he had this terrible noise constantly repeating in his ears.  Then even when he was at home, wandering around in his pyjamas, it seemed like everything was out to get him.  And the curse slowly spread to the rest of his family too, then his baby son, and trouble even followed them when they went on holiday.  And to make matters worse, Mike Berry insisted on singing a song about them in a never-to-be-forgotten hip-hop/metal crossover that the Pi-Man would be proud of.

The Wally games were universally liked.  They were incredibly 'busy' and had a typically British feel to them, i.e. casual snobbery, racism, sexism etc.  Despite Wally himself insisting on clashing colours with everything he came across, they were pretty much all top games.  But if I think back, I'm struggling to remember whether I managed to progress any of them to any extent whatsoever.  Apart from getting to car 2 in Automania (HYPERLOAD), but that hardly counts.

They all had oodles of locations, about a million objects to continuously accidentally pick up and put down, and worst of all - on practically every screen there'd be some bastard monster moving up and down and all around, slowly but surely depleting your Wally Power, or whatever it may have been.  As such, you'd be lucky to last through about ten screens.  Or is that just me again?

In a time when we were almost literally bombarded by brilliant games on a regular basis, I doubt that many people took the time to try to complete games like these.  We most likely checked out as many screens, and Space Invaders mini-games, as we could survive through, thought "This game is cool", then moved on to another one.  They do seem unreasonably difficult, bearing in mind they mix arcadey bits with adventurey bits, highly skilfully it's true, but how could one possibly master both?  I am but one rather whingey mortal man after all.

So now that Wally has retired/died/been executed, who can step into his outsized pants in this modern gritty world we live in?  Enter Glenn Glockenspiel, resident of Midnight City.  Alright, that's not his name, his name disappointingly is just 'you' in the game blurb.  Anyway 'you' do live in Midnight City, I didn't lie about that bit, in the year 2031, in a skyscraper which has a sinister history, and which is apparently still having an adverse psychological effect on some of the building's residents.  Like that one in Ghostbusters probably - I blame Ivo Shandor.  One night you hear a laser shot and then you see the building is on fire.  Right, ACTION, you're on!  Your motivation for the part?  To not get burned to a crisp.

What's this got to do with Wally Week?  Well, this game just resembles those games quite a lot really.  But this game thankfully removes the arcade element of the 'arcade adventure' so you actually have time to think about things a bit.  No 'orrible meanies to kill you softly with their song/fists.  There also doesn't seem to be one of those awful time elements to it either, unlike most of poor Magic Knight's travails, which is surprising really considering the building is gradually burning down around you.  You just wander around casually and figure out which object can be used with which other object.  You can still die in many ways though, so saving your game frequently is always a wise move.  But generally the pace is quite sedate in a "Phew, it's starting to get a bit warmer in here, don't you think?" kind of way.

Skyscraper of Doom is by no means perfect.  Occasionally a glitch seems to happen where you lose your objects permanently if you try using them in the wrong place, so yes, please do save a lot to avoid frustration.  And there's not much sound to speak of - maybe a crackling noise, slowly getting louder, might have been good!  And some of the building's inhabitants are a tad stereotypical perhaps.  And going up and down stairs is a bit of a hit-and-miss process.

But despite these issues, this game does feel pretty original and is fun to play.  A bar in the top right corner of the screen even shows you how close to your goal you have got thus far, which is a nice touch.  The graphics are mostly pretty good and colour is used well, less clashy than Mr. Week's outfits, but then most things are.

Considering most new Spectrum games have a tendency to be straightforward AGD platformers, Rafal Miazga deserves credit for taking a different approach, creating quite an unusual storyline, and for making your planned escape from The Towering Inferno an entertaining and colourful jaunt.  

Wonder if he's got any more games in store for us? (knowing look)

Has any game spawned as many clones as Knight Lore?  I wonder how many there have been, surely hundreds.  And how many of those suffered from terrible go-slow syndrome when you entered a room with more than half a table in it?

The 3D isometric game originated of course with Ultimate's ground-breaking classic, one of those rare games we all actually bought instead of...well, you know.  It arguably peaked with Head Over Heels (well, now we're arguing anyway), and now we wait with sporadically bated breath to see if Melkhior's Mansion can arrive on the Speccy and not be dog slow, since it looks so very attractive thus far.  It's still on, right?

When you look at the screenshots of Oddi the Viking, you could be forgiven if your heart sinks a little.  It looks like another visually impressive isometric offering, which must surely fall short in terms of speed and general gameplay.

But wait.  This is a puzzle game.  You are restricted to one room at a time, not free to wander willy-nillily, turning into a werewolf halfway through a crucial jump every few seconds or so.  In each room your only objective is to reach the exit door in a non-dead state.

There's no real background story here.  You are evidently a viking ancestor of Sabreman, or have at least nicked someone's horny helmet, and you are stuck in a haunted castle.  Maybe in merry old England, who knows, and the ghosts of dead Englishmen are out for your Scandinavian blood?  Nah.

You start in the dungeons, work your way up to the castle proper, then the courtyard, the cemetery and finally freedom.  All the while you are pursued by skeletons, usually just the one but sometimes two in a room.  This doesn't sound overly pants-wetting, but here's the catch.  The undeadites move two squares to your one, in quite a refreshing twist from the norm, since they're usually such tardy buggers in every single movie or game you've seen.

The instructions advise that skeletons will always try to move east or west, but if they can't go any further that way, they'll go north or south.  This sounds, and is, confusing, but kinda makes more sense once you start playing.  Ish.  I never realised they had such strict rules myself.

Most of the time the trick is to get your skeletal foe trapped somewhere for a bit, so you can get some distance between you, and thus you can inch nearer to the door that way.  There are 40 screens to negotiate, and it's really quite addictive trying to find the right route through each room.  But without the right route, it's a rout.

The graphics are really good, with lovely detail in the characters and scenery.  Colour is of course monochromatic, but does at least change with every room.  And sound is...ACE!  Admit it, you didn't expect that, did you?  Yes, there's a cool tune running throughout.  Where's your tune, eh, Alien 8?  HA, you haven't got one!

Sorry, I must apologise for getting over-excited there.  Very unprofessional of me, good job no-one reads this website (Hey Dave!)  Yes I know, it's not exactly a fair comparison.  Still, always nice to have choons, eh?

I wonder if this started off as an arcade adventure and then someone had the bright idea of making it into something different.  Well, whether by happy accident or inspired design, this is a puzzler well worth pursuing.

HARSH SCORES, BUT DESERVED?  AND HOW MANY DID YOU BUY?!?  THE LIST OF DOOM CONTINUES AFTER...

Well well, here's the follow-up to good old Skyscraper of Doom, which you are now an expert on, having read the earlier review.  Let's hope you liked it, as this threatens to be more of the same.

Having escaped from the previously eponymous skyscraper, you find yourself in the currently eponymous streets.  Ah, that's kind of given away the ending to the earlier game, hasn't it?  Well, there's not much I can do about that, I'm afraid.  Blame our new best mate Rafal for spoilering it on the inlay.  Some people.

The biggest shock at the start of this game is finding out your name is Ron.  Not Glenn Glockenspiel or even 'you'.  Now apparently there was some supernatural shenanegans at the end of the first game, and no, I didn't get that far, but the inlay mentions murder and black magic, though not Milk Tray unfortunately.

Your first task is to get out of the gritty, mean streets of the Midnight City slums, an even more treacherous hive of scum and villainy than Night City from Cyberpunk 2077, but considerably less glitchy.  And also to go on a date with your new girlfriend, no doubt involving hilarious comedy hijinks and inappropriateness.  Don't lose your shirt, Ronnie boy!

So this is a bit like Wally Week Gets Shivved In The Back Alley (painful), only the folk you come across aren't anything like as terrifying as Wally's family members.  There's a drunk or two, a stereotypical dealer and ladies of the night to converse with, plus over-zealous cops and mysterious oriental gangsters later on.  Not forgetting your gal pal, who's probably the most awkward character amongst them all.

As usual, there are objects lying around everywhere, ranging from sausages to Spectrums, whatever they are.  There's a bit more freedom to this game than its predecessor, and not as many instadeaths.  The puzzles aren't too hard, although I've certainly made heavy weather of most of them so far, but generally I'd say the difficulty level is fair, and so increased playability follows.  Quite nice after playing Star Heritage.

Again the graphics and colour are good.  A slight shame the sound is nearly non-existent, as a spooky darksynth soundtrack would have suited the mood well and made me squeal with joy.  In a manly way of course.

Rafa seems to have sorted out those glitches from Skyscraper, which is great news - no vanishing objects or anything.  The whole experience is highly enjoyable, and apparently a third game in the series has been mooted by the author.  However, since that was 11 years ago now, maybe best not to pin your hopes on it too much.  Although Guns 'N' Roses did release that album eventually, didn't they?  So you never know, Day Nursery of Doom might soon be a hit of the 2030s.  Us retro types know how to wait $hit out.

THE GAMES THAT TIME FORGOT

1990s EDITION

Zenobi were a funny lot, weren't they?  They stoically turned out adventure after adventure, some with graphics, some not.  All done using The Quill or PAW, unless I'm mistaken.  They carried on doing this well into the '90s and even beyond.  You've got to admire that level of stubbornness, just carrying on regardless, not swaying to any passing trends, but keeping on trucking all the while.  I hope to be as stoic with this website, as it's largely just to amuse myself and keep me out of trouble!

The consensus seems to be that they were pretty decent at doing adventurey things.  They certainly TAKE CARE with their games, EXAMINE ALL the available plot options and GO WEST as it's peaceful there.  Ah, that bit was shaping up nicely for a brief moment, just ran out ideas.  Mind you, all of Zenobi's 3D vector graphics shoot-em-ups were $hite.

This one looks interesting from the off, because ALIENS!  An alien research centre, you know like the one in the high street, is floating helplessly in space for some reason, and it's up to you to channel your inner Jones The Cat (and his owner, wossername) and repair the ship so you can return safely to earth.  Unless you're actually an alien yourself in the game of course, never thought of that.  Could be a M Night Shyamalanamanan ending.  Ooah...

You've got a gun, which is nice, though it's wildly inaccurate, or maybe it's the user that's the problem.  The inlay advises you will encounter security androids and grotesque creatures roaming around the place, since the whole thing's gone FUBAR, SNAFU and effed up generally.  You have to make it/take it to the bridge and activate the EHD, which the blurb helpfully doesn't expand upon.

Wait, I've done them a disservice there!  There's a little 2 page comic together with the inlay, I didn't spot it at first.  Right, let's have a butchers.  Aha, one of the ship's crew went doolally after inhaling a hallucinogenic drug and released all the aliens from their holding cells.  There may or may not be human survivors somewhere, and the EHD is actually an Emergency Homing Device, of course!  Awesome - a nice touch too.  I loves me a good comic.

So no wizards or dragons here, as far as I've got anyway.  Just icky alien folks, who are pretty peed off since your kind have been experimenting on them all the while, sticking your anal probe where it's not wanted (their sixth ear probably).  Makes a change from them violating us I suppose.  Hillbillies everywhere rejoice!

This game looks really neat.  There are very nice, colourful graphics for every location, a nice easy on the eye font, and cunning two-tone lettering for your input.  Nice!

You can wander freely for a bit, happily collecting objects and wondering what on Jupiter to do with them.  I solved a couple of puzzles quite comfortably, but then came unstuck as inevitably happens.  I consulted a walkthrough and found it was pretty much a vocabulary issue, which was a tad annoying.  Now that's out of the way, I've carried on making reasonable progress again.  Such is the life of an adventurer.  Which is why I hate it.

I think the parser for this game could be better.  Surely, as time has gone by in the Adventuring Kingdom, more synonyms should be acceptable for most situations, not always the EXACT wording required.  And call me fussy, but when I EXAMine something in my inventory, I expect a unique answer, even if it's a relatively bland one.  The game sometimes plays a little dumb, which is a pity.

But that aside, it's still quite a fun space jaunt, reviving memories of the likes of The Long Wait For A Response, sorry I mean, The Long Way Home perhaps.  And two more sequels were produced more recently I notice, so I guess our fascination with little green men (and also dungeons, to be fair) continues unabated.

I had to check a few times for this one, as I couldn't tell at first whether this was a release on its own, or if it only appeared on magazine covertapes, both Crash and Sinclair User unusually.  I was leaning towards the latter when I found an advert showing it was indeed originally available to buy independently by mail order only, for nearly six of your earth pounds.  That'll do, that counts!

"Psycho" Hedgehog was of course the company name for Andy Remic's games in the main, and his stuff often appeared on said covertapes in the Speccy's later years.  Mostly adventures, but some more arcadey titles as well, they were nicely made and well received, a good example of how the little guy could compete alongside multinational companies.  This was why the Spectrum was so great, there was such an open market, with room for everyone.  Andy sadly passed away this year, an even bigger blow as he had contributed greatly to the retro scene recently, with the likes of the impressive looking adventure The Iron Wolves.

So now to check out this arcade game of his, which of course evaded review in the big three mags of the time, hence why it's right here, right now.  You play the Right Hon. Bob Fossington Kiwi (see the Monty Python Big Book of Silly Names), a freelance mercenary and assassin with a remarkable hydraesque hairdo.  Hired to infiltrate a colony asteroid full of mutants, you must obtain four pages of an ancient manuscript for your employer by confronting four asteroid worms.  Trippy stuff, man.  It would never happen on Arrakis.

There are a mere 200 muties to moider, as well as the occasional wandering wizard who may help or hinder you, depending on his time of the month.  I found he mostly f***ed you up.  You have your trusty gun of course plus some spare bullets, a few immunity potions, 'shrooms for energy/enlightenment and some jelly-like monsters to feed to the worms.  Aaaahhhh, bless 'em.

When you walk with rhythm and attract an asteroid worm, you feed it a jelly sweet monster and enter a sub-game.  In this, numbers from 1 to 5 flash up in quick succession, and you have to press the matching keys around 10 times in a row to defeat the worm and grab the ancient manuscript page.  It's a simple idea, and makes for a tense, if frustrating, experience, which is also pretty tricky on an emulator, but I managed to do it.  Once.

The game reminds me quite a bit of several Players budget titles from times of yore, you know, all the Joe Blades and that game with the Thing, called....ah, can't remember.  I wonder if they all use the same 'engine' or whatnot, as the graphical style and gameplay have strong similarities.  But this is no bad thing.  Those games were latter day budget goodies, and this one is a goodie too.  Admittedly, it's not really a £6 goodie, but perfect for a covertape or budget release.

The graphics are big and crisply detailed, each area has its own monochrome colour, but the sound is a little sparse.  Nevertheless it's fun to play for a while.  I saw off about a quarter of the mutants before running short on bullets, then health not long after.

Maybe a little like Joffa Smith's games, it's great to see the odd little quirky feature and amusing comment pop up during gameplay, as that sort of thing really allows the programmer's personality to shine through, which is a great legacy to have.

It's all Daley Thompson's fault of course.  Our mild-mannered Olympic hero of the 1980 and 1984 Gameses went on to invent the most violent game ever experienced on home computers.  Grand Theft Auto (Maximum Bloodthirst Edition) has nothing on that game - you basically just battered your keyboard or joystick until it ceased to function.  That's it.  Ludicrous.

Debates raged over which was the best method.  Waggling or bashing, or even rubbing a golf ball over it frantically.  I did try that one myself and haven't been quite the same since.

The Daley games were kind of classics, but in a mighty battle of the '80s moustaches, that guy from Hypersports arguably won the day.  Then there was a whole clutch of similar games, mostly budget titles, until in 1987 the truly evil Combat School dared us to prove our manly manliness once again.  Yet more Spectrums were lost forever during this terrible period.  Rest in pieces.

So Players certainly took their time in releasing a budget homage to/rip of Combat School, with this 1990 offering.  Although, to be honest, they probably brought out tons of similar games before this, either with macho soldier types or ninjas, if Clive Townsend agreed to let the odd one out of his Ninja Warehouse (TM) every now and then.

But times and attitudes change over time, or a similar sentiment put into a better thought-out sentence.  In the old days, my attitude was "Let's scrag the crap out of this keyboard to beat the high score, that's all that matters".  While nowadays my attitude is "No way am I gonna risk f***ing up my elderly, but still rather expensive, laptop by breaking the O and P keys, which let's face it, are pretty f***ing important when it comes to forming most sentences, and then not be able to use it to work from home ever again, as I can't afford a replacement and my work are too mean to give me one of theirs, so I live out my remaining days in a haze of depression, trudging to work five days a week, until it all becomes too much and I snap, embarking on a random killing spree before turning the gun on myself, yelling my last words to the grey, foreboding skies "DALEY BLOODY THOMPSON!!!!!!".  Erm, "in order to play an old generic budget game".

But I gave it a go anyway and it's alright, you know.  My elderly reactions prevented me from being anywhere near able to complete the first stage however, as I kept stopping along the way to examine objects and try to put them in my inventory, which admittedly was time-consuming and on reflection moronic.

There are various obstacles along the way, which is exactly what you would expect of this Tough Mudder.  There's barbed wire to crawl under, monkey bars to jump onto and along, and even a slippery log, which you have to slow down for.  A nice touch, I had no problem with that obstacle, funnily enough, just not the ones you need speed for.

The graphics look nice, Joe Blade engine to the fore again most likely.  Colour is sparing (yellow only if you can't do the first course) and a halfway decent AY tune plays on the start menu in 128K mode.  But on the whole, it was hard to get too excited, and watching the RZX playback, each level looks identical, so not much incentive to get any further really.  Ho hum.  The army life is evidently not for me.  Big surprise!

There had been one or two football games for the Spectrum by 1990, if my memory serves me well.  The budget market increased this figure dramatically, mostly selling to new machine owners who hadn't already tired of the genre by then, I'd guess.  So for something to stand out would take quite an effort.  And what could possibly top Peter Shilton's Handball Maradona, I ask you?

Not this!  Gamebusters (cue song) must have decided that the rest of football, sorry soccer, was rubbish, so why not just skip to the penalties?  Watching some of Mourinho's teams, you'd be inclined to agree of course, but generally you need the bit before as well.  It's the done thing, whatwhatwhat.

So can this game successfully replicate the excitement and nail-bitingness of a big match's all too inevitable conclusion?

No.

Right, next one.  I used to love Wacky Races on telly in the old da....what?  You want more?  I'm sure I heard somebody somewhere say that.  Ah, could just be that conscience thing in my head I've heard about.  Alright, I'll do this thing right...s'pose...

Not content with already diluting the beautiful game down to a few crappy stuttery toe-pokes, Gangbusters (cue song) have seen fit to dilute it even further, even more than I dilute my kids' squash.  Well, times are hard.

Yep, you merely play the part of the goalkeeper.  You don't even get the chance to take a peno yourself.  Can you believe that?  You choose your opponent pointlessly from a list of '80s legends and Steve Hodge, then balls fly at you from around 6 or maybe 7 different angles, mostly ending up in the middle of the goal anyway.  Catch 10 before the striker scores 10, then you go up a level allegedly, but I'm pretty damn sure nothing actually changes.  I completed the game ludicrously easily and you don't even get a trophy, lap of honour or punch in the gut from a rival fan when you do it.

Graphics are functional enough, colour is apparent, sound is barely evident.  No fancy tunes.  No loading screen.  Pah.

This game is in short a travesty and an insult to the Ghostbusters name.  Take it away, Ray Parker Jr......PLEASE!

How awesome was Wacky Races?  Surely one of everyone's fave 'toons back in the day.  Apparently it only ran for one series back in 1968, but I remember it fondly.  From the '80s re-runs I mean, thankyouverymuch!  But who was in it though, there's a question?  There was Dick Dastardly and Gnasher, Penelope Mudflaps, the Beetle Hill Gang and...all the other dudes.  Ah, memories, they're not what they used to be, eh?  Now where did I put my ear trumpet again?

Hi-Tec Software had quite a bit of joy in the early '90s with their Hanna Barbera tie-ins, producing a few surprise hits at budget prices, featuring the likes of Top Cat, Yogi Bear and even Hong Kong Phooey.  All classic cartoons that probably shouldn't be watched again nowadays, as they undoubtedly contravene all sorts of standards of decency and morality.  But hey, it was acceptable in the '80s...

In this game you (brilliantly) get to play legendary bad loser Dick Dastardly, with his unfaithful hound Muttley.  You appear to be up against Peter Perfect in his huge phallic dragster, The Slag Brothers in their cave-car doobrie, and one other who always disappears so fast, I can't identify it.  Might be La Pitstop or one of the Banana Splits, not sure.

You have a race stage, with all four cars vying for position on the same bit of track.  Your car has a spiky weapon you can protrude from its front, which is handy for stabbing occasional creatures who get in your way, and enemies too after a few good shoves.

If you manage to complete the race stage in the required position, the next one involves good old Muttley wandering around the course on foot/paw, picking up traps to use against the other cars.  I don't think you actually get to use these traps per se, in a Spy vs. Spy way, but it's a nice little interlude between the brummy sections anyway.

I'm impressed by this game.  It's a bit like the minecart bits in Donkey Kong, combined with a smattering of Mario action, especially the Muttley stages.  You have to bounce your car all over the place, and the courses seem to be fiendish in the extreme, as befits the premise of the game.  The idea of having the other cars getting in your way works well too, so there's a lot going on in a relatively small space onscreen.

The graphics are small but really well detailed, but colour is merely adequate.  A more colourful version was once previewed, but didn't quite come to fruition unfortunately.  Sound is a let-down actually, hardly any to speak of.  Not even a snatch of Catch The Pigeon, shame that!

It's also really quite hard.  My version was cunningly hacked to provide me with infinite lives, but I still couldn't get past the second driving stage even so.  The trick is to memorise the best route possible, as the road often splits into higher and lower levels, and with enough practice it might gradually get easier.

But this aside, it's a really admirable attempt at reproducing an early console type game on the humble Speccy, which deserves great praise.  "DO SOMETHING, MUTTLEY!!!"

EXTINCT JIM AND THE RATINGS SCROLLS

-FIN-

Sometimes it's nice to review the odd old game, since everyone and his dog already knows all about it, and so I don't have to go into endless boring detail about the plot and gameplay.  Instead I can digress somewhat and ramble on about a subject I can pretend is vaguely relevant to the game.  Like...

Games magazines, eh!  When you look at it, as I briefly have, there were millions, weren't there?  Well, at least a good 15 or so.  In my search to back up the claim that Kosmic Kanga, like Airwolf, is one of the Spectrum's most Marmitey games ever, I consulted the encyclopoed...encyclopes...encyclaed...oracle that is the Spectrum Computing database (thanks guys).

Let's start with the proper mags.  The mighty Crash gave this game a Smash (poetry), even though it dipped slightly below the 90% range which usually applies to such things, getting an impressive 88%.  So they liked it.  Next, the mighty-ish Sinclair User, who decided it warranted 5 out of 10.  Not big fans then.  Your Spectrum either ignored it, or didn't exist at that point, but frankly there's no excuse either way, it's just plain sloppy.

Then come the more dubious publications.  I think we've all bought some of these in our time.  Maybe there was nothing better in the newsagents that particular day, or maybe we had been promised a games mag by our parents, and so were forced to buy SOMETHING there and then.  But sadly, on closer inspection, they tended to have little Spectrum content or were just plain dull.  Bummer.

First up is Personal Computer Games, which to be fair wasn't too bad and fun-ish on occasion.  I may even have bought this issue, as I remember the caricature of Vyvyan from The Young Ones on the cover, although I think all the mags had one of those at the time, and quite right too!  They gave KK a respectable 7/10.

Next we have Big K, which I'm sure was a brand of peanuts.  They gave KK KKK, which is frankly racist and should therefore be dismissed and reported immediately.  Seriously, did they not even think that ratings system sounded dodgy at the time?  You know what they say - some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.  Uh.  However, not everyone is totally evil, as they clearly liked kangaroo-based Speccy games.

Sadly there was no review from Ace magazine, but I have to mention them anyway.  They had four categories in their reviews:  Visual Effects, Audio, IQ Factor and Fun Factor.  All of these were rated out of 7...obviously.  And the final total was therefore rated out of 1000.  For instance, Thundercats scored 6 for Visual Effects, 4 for Audio, 1 for IQ Factor (harsh) and 7 for Fun Factor, which clearly gives a total of 931 out of 1000.  There's even a graph on every review showing the game's Predicted Interest Curve.  What sort of mental illness was at play here?!

Next up is Popular Computing Weekly, which pretty much looked like a newspaper, and tended to be rather worthy and not very game-y.  They liked KK, calling it "excellent".

What the heck was Sinclair Answers?  I've literally never heard of it.  Whoever they were, they said KK was "reasonably good fun but..." and then the print is too smudgy to read unfortunately.  Didn't like it much, I surmise.

And finally MicroHobby, which wasn't dodgy at all.  In fact it looked pretty ace, but it was of course in Spanish.  Looking at the review, they gave KK between 1 and 2 thumbs up (great system, guys) and called it "un juego bastante", which translates to...well, you can probably figure that out yourself.  No need for such language though surely.

So much for the media, now onto the plot.  The excellently concise inlay says "Help Kanga find his spaceship so he can return to his home planet.  Take control of Kanga as he leaps about buildings, trees, clouds, mountains, etc.  Kanga scores points by picking up bonuses, throwing boxing gloves at his enemies, and by completing each different screen."

That's all you need to know.  The plot and gameplay are simplicity itself.  Which doesn't mean it's easy to play straight off though, far from it.  I suspect those who strongly dislike this game never quite got to grips with the control method.  It's a bit of a black art, controlling the height of Kanga's jumps, but I've largely mastered it, so it can't be that hard!  Just keep as low as possible most of the time, until you feel like a nice big bounce.  Easy.

Once you make it through a horizontal level, you're faced with a vertical challenge instead.  These bits tend to be the trickiest, and are a definite step-up in difficulty.  But they're certainly not out of line with other 'Spectrum difficult' games of the time.  If you ever saw the third level of any game, you were a frickin' genius frankly.

There is nowadays of course the option of semi-cheating, in the form of saving your game state, which in my view often gives new life to many on old hard classic.  In this way, I've got up to around level 6 or 7, and very much enjoyed getting there.  It's still bloody hard even so.

I've seen some complaints about flickery graphics in this game, but on the whole I think they're very good, and the main sprite is a bonafide Speccy icon, so you can't diss that!  There's bags of colour and decent use of sound, considering this was 1984.  And the screen in between levels is fun and colourful, with a good beepy rendition of the Australian national anthem "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport".

An 11-year old Al back in '84 would probably have more or less agreed with Crash's 88% rating.  In fact he went and bought the game on the strength of the review.  But after returning to Kosmic Kanga after all this time...49-year old Al actually agrees with 11-year old Al.  Well, whaddyaknow?  I've literally learned nothing.

Alessandro Grussu is a busy chap.  He's written quite a few Spectrum games over the last 10 years or so, including the critically acclaimed Doom Pit (not actually a sequel to Skyscraper of Doom and Streets of Doom, but that's okay) as well as writing a book or three.  His Spectrumpedia promises to collect all that is essential to know about Sir Clive's baby - quite the task.  But he must have missed a bit, as he's just released a revised and updated version.  Not only that, but he's also written 2 years' worth of Al's Spectrum Annuals, which are well worth a read, though I still can't forgive him entirely for only giving Bonnie and Clyde a one star rating.  Shocking!

Where does one look for reviews of more recent Speccy games nowadays?  I don't really look at any video reviews of games personally, I'm more of an old school "read about the game, go away, mull it over and think whether I want to buy it" kind of guy.  So reading material these days tends to be the resurrected Crash mag, which is always a joy, and I'm not just saying that because they printed one of my letters a few months back.  That and Paul Jenkinson's brill The Spectrum Show PDF mags, which I may even prefer to his Youtube shows, mainly as the mag has way more games reviews, which pleases me no end.

Anyway, my point is that I don't think I've seen a review of either of Mr. Grussu's Sophia games in either mag, which seems strange really.  It's also strange that I've not reviewed any of his games thus far, but this is a strangeness that I now intend to...make less...strange, as I give his original Sophia game the once-over.  Starting...now!

There's a big long backstory in the inlay, which is rather impressive.  It's a bit like Game of Thrones, only with better characterisation and fewer boobs.  I won't pretend I can follow it fully, but will summarise it thusly.

Evil sorceror, Yojar (Binks) has invaded the Empire using his sick magical skills, and the rubbish Imperial troops seem incapable of dealing with his mystical might, due to not having enough MP.  Up steps the tiny, cute Sophia, top swot at the Xixerella Magic Academy and arch enemy of Barry Trotter, who voluteers to rid the Empire of Yojar's foul stench.  Literally nobody tries to help her.  Brave gal.

Sophia has to battle her way through four different zones, fighting various manifestations of Yojar's power, in a quest to destroy the skulls which are the source of his power.  Like those crystal ones you used to be able to buy years ago from QVC or some such.  These skulls have to be thrown into your cauldron to dissolve them, and once you've done four, onto the next level ye go.  The fourth and final level includes a fight with Yojar himself, which sounds quite exciting.  Hope I get there in time for the end of this review...

This game was made using AGD, but it has a number of features one would probably not expect.  You have at your disposal light and dark magic to fire at enemies, but the catch is that some enemies are vulnerable to light but unaffected by dark, and vice-versa.  And some even split into two if you choose wrong.  Yeeks.  This means you have to constantly choose your spells carefully or come a cropper.  A clever device.

You get mana points when you successfully smite an enemy, which you can then trade in at Wizard's Guild huts.  These buildings are built on chicken legs, which is bat$hit crazy, but was also in The Witcher, so is clearly part of folklore.  But still...chicken legs.  Just why?  And how did they get planning permission?  At these odd places you can buy more magic, an extra shield, an extra life or a family bargain bucket.

There are also three doors on each level barring your way, so you need to collect the matching talisman to open them, man.  Oh, and you can only carry one skull at a time, being an ickle girl, so there's plenty of wandering back and forth to be done.

Those of a nervous disposition will be dismayed to learn that everyone's favourite feature of Cybernoid also comes up very regularly in Sophia.  Yes, you knew it.  THE HELLTUBES!  Great name for a band, but surely not welcome here?  Good news however is that these versions are a bit more humane, so that's Grussu United  1  Cecco City  0.  Phew.

This game is beautifully designed in so many ways, both graphically and gameplayly.  It's tricky to start with, but you slowly get the hang of which spells destroy which enemies, and the maps are just the right size so you don't get horribly lost too often trying to find where you left your cauldron.  Or Cauldron II if you prefer that one - gotta love that bouncy pumpkin!

However I did find that I had to save my game state very regularly to get anywhere, but I pretty much accept this as a normal part of gaming nowadays, so it's no biggie.  Others more skilled than me will probably fare better.  So far I'm on the last level, but haven't met the head honcho just yet, so that mystery will have to wait for another day.  Which is good really, I think it's always a shame when you finish a game you've enjoyed - it's never the same again.  Sigh.

The graphics are ace, some excellent sprites on show throughout, with fantastically colourful rooms as well.  And there's a different tune for each level, all good 'uns too.  This is the kind of attention to detail that makes a great modern Spectrum game.  "Well done, Al!" says this Al.

Having scoured my cache of modern Spectrum games for quite some time the other day, I happened across this one, which I'd forgotten all about.  Only released last year by the excellently named Noentiendo (Spanish for 'je ne comprends pas'), Get Out Of Mars was written by Cristian Gonzalez, who also gave us Gandalf, Manic Pietro and Pietro Bros.  Sadly I haven't played any of those, but maybe when I'm retired I'll get the chance to do so, you never know.  When I'm not larking around with my hoverbike and jetpac(k).

It seems that you're stuck on the red planet after an attempt to prove David Bowie wrong goes terribly awry.  Turns out there is life on Mars, and most of it is reassuringly hostile.  You are one of 50 colonists, the inlay tells us, who have irritated the neighbours no end by setting up shop on their turf.  You get 30 lives in the game, so they must have picked their top 30 most heroic types to attempt this mission.  But hey, 30 lives eh!  Wait, no...argh, Technican Ted flashbacks...

So the Mars bars went bananas and wrecked your only spaceship, when they were only meant to blow the bloody doors off.  Now you have to find the eight missing parts to get it skyworthy once more.  Or else you'll never (readies dramatic '60s B-Movie narrator's voice) hem, hem "GEEETTT.  OUUUUUT.  OOOOOOF.  MAAAAAAARSSSSS."

There are three special objects you can pick up on your space travels.  There's a jetpack (get in) which when you find it, the game amusingly states "Silly Jetman!"  So maybe it was actually his, imagine that!  Gasp.  There are also some special double jump boots, so just adding those to my Xmas list now.  And finally a slimesuit, which sounds disgusting, but is presumably meant to help against slime.  That would make more sense.

You can also pick up keys to open doors, plus coins to make you rich if and when you return home.  And apparently xenoplasm samples for the Egon Spenglers back home to pore over and add to their collections of spores, moulds and fungus.  Oh and your trusty Sinclair PDA2K keeps track of your progress, number of colonists left etc. in the same way that a QL probably would, i.e. boringly.  Only kidding, it's tres handy really, if not quite a Pipboy.

"So that's the plot, but how does it play?"  I ask myself.  Pretty well really.  Your spaceman is a cute little dude, even if his animation isn't quite on a par with the Number 1 spaceman sprite of all time.  No, not Jetman, he's Number 2.  I mean the extraordinary somersaulting guy with the ludicrous name from Nodes Of Yesod.  But the sprites, small as they are, are pleasing on the eye and have a certain charm about them, so they do.

Moving around is easy enough and jump distance is fairly generous.  If you time it just right, you can even pretend to be Will Smith and punch the aliens/Chris Rock on the nose.  Even big ones, but then equally you somtimes embarrassingly end up being bested by a small amoeba.  Thems the breaks in space.

The game is pretty colourful, with a more than average amount of red as you'd expect.  But the sound - wowzers!  I've often gone on about just how much difference a banging soundtrack can make to a game, and this is a great example.  There are some great tunes on show here, two by the main man in my eyes MmcM (swoon, "what a guy!"  Not really sure how to pronounce his name though, with no vowels and all) who is the master of the dark and slightly menacing spacey theme, which here transforms this game utterly.

So in conclusion, this is that relatively rare thing.  A platformer with a point to it, rather than just going round collecting money or shiny objects, so that you really want to keep playing to see how things pan out.  I've managed to find a few ship bits and the odd special item so far, but it looks like there's still quite a way to go before I manage to (here we go)  "GEEEEET.  OUUUUUUT.  OOOOOF.  MAAAARRRRSSSSS!"

Thanks, got that out of my system now.

From its strange title, it doesn't sound like this game is going to be very much fun.  Sounds a bit medical to me, uncomfortably close to vasectomy, and at best involving cutting up live animals, like a Future Serial Killer Simulator.  Those Darling chaps would probably describe it as "Terrifyingly nefarious" and "Satanically addictive".

But thankfully, no.  This isn't a rival for that hideous-looking real game Surgeon Simulator, and no animals were harmed (that we know of) in the making of this game.  Furthermore, Survivisection was filmed in front of a live studio audience.

So this is a little-known game from 2012 by those ace folks the Sanchez Crew.  Or at least I'd not heard of it, maybe it was big news ten years ago and I'm showing my ignorance yet again.  If so, it won't be the last time.

Once you've gotten over the bizarreness of the title, and then that weird boggle-eyed cactus staring at you on the start-up screen, things start to hot up.  As we'd expect from los Sanchezes, there's a nice intro, with some cracking digitised pics and cool music.

Then you redefine your keys several times, until you've got it just right, and you're good to go.  Got to be QAOPM, right?  But what next if you need another one?  I plump for Z myself.  But if you need even more?  Maybe work right on the keyboard through X and C....any more than that, and I'd need to invest in a cardboard keyboard overlay thing, which I actually did not long after getting my Speccy.  Fair enough for playing Flight Simulation, but rather pointless for Space Raiders though!

Anyway.  You're confronted by a screen that looks a lot like Commando, but wait.  There's something a bit odd here.  Remember that ace game from years ago, Cannon Fodder, possibly on the Amiga?  You pointed your arrow where you wanted your little troops to go, and off they marched to their deaths.  Likewise, here you move a similar arrow and your dumb-but-obedient army man hops to it.  It's a pretty weird system, but it helps this game stand out somewhat from other Commando/Ikari clones.

Plotwise, you are part of a small group of marines sent to a remote island in order to bring down an evil professor, known as "The Professor", who is busy with his evil experiments in his lab, attempting to take over the world, you know, the usual.  But your helicopter gets hit, leaving you as the sole survivisector.  Time to lock and load, and chew bubblegum and ass.

Naturally there are many enemy soldiers trying to shoot you, but it's wise not to go too gung-ho straight from the off.  Prof. Moreau has created huge crocodile men to confront you, and even cool-as-hell spiders, who have escaped from Manchester, sorry Antescher, on a later level.  These are all very nicely animated in an almost top-down but at a slight angle kind of way.

You have to ration your bullets sometimes, so stealth can pay off if you're the sneaky sort.  Health power-ups are also scattered around and about.  Sometimes you get a mini subquest to occupy you - searching houses for a gate key or disabling an electric fence for instance.  Thus the game keeps you on your toes and maintains your interest level admirably.

All the while you are constantly bombarded not only by gunfire, but also by amazing music.  See what I did there?  It's almost dizzying, but again this sonic onslaught really gives the game a great arcadey feel.  How many times as a kid did you leave the arcade with a blurry head after the extreme aural assault, and how great was that!  Crank the choons up on this one and get a headache all over again.  It's alright, I've got plenty of Ibuprofen, being an ancient.

The difficulty level seems pretty reasonable, but I've got myself stuck on level 4 (I think), The Corral, which is not OK.  I may have to restart the level as I've run out of ammo, you know how it is.  The movement method is a little strange admittedly, but I do think it lends the game a distinctive feel, and this together with everything else exuding the usual Sanchez Crew quality, makes this another winner in my book.

THE '80s COVERTAPE WARS

5 KEY BATTLES

Way back in the mists of time, someone at the otherwise humdrum Computer & Video Games magazine had an idea.  Giving away a free game on the cover of their rag.  It might be the first example of this happening, or certainly the most high profile one.  You'd have to grudgingly applaud their forward thinking, since magazine cover tapes didn't really catch on until 1987 generally.

They had somehow arranged with the mighty Quicksilva to publish a game based on 'funky skillo' pop group The Thompson Twins.  Poor David Shea had the dubious honour of programming it, and he would go on to write many top games, but how would this one go?

First point to note is that the game came on flexidisc, not the more accepted medium of cassette tape.  So which hole in your Speccy do you ram that into, then?  The only solution of course was to borrow your folks' ye olde recorde turntable-e, play your slippery disc on it and record onto your fave over-used C60 in the vague hope of success.

Presumably this worked for some, seems like a bit of a long shot though.  Flexidiscs were notoriously fickle.  They probably suited music rather more than computer games.  I'm sure White Dwarf did a few with goblin-themed death metal tracks on them, so sound quality wasn't too crucial!  I did like Blood For The Blood God by Sabbat though, scratchy bits and all.  It's a classic innit, everyone loves that one.

So this game was apparently based on the Twins' fab song Doctor! Doctor!  There's a mystery to solve involving said doctor, and you have to find out about some potion he's working on.  In fact, if you complete the game and send a self-addressed envelope to C&VG, you could win tickets to a TTT gig and meet the band backstage.  Wowee!  It might be a little late now of course, but God loves a tryer.

That's the tenuous plot, now onto the tenuous game.  You control all three Twins all at once in a slightly scary hive mind scenario, all "We can go east" and "We see nothing of interest", bordering on Hal in 2001.  "We can't attack the fat troll with the long pointy sword...Dave".

You move Tom, Alannah and Joe (for it is they, but riddle me this:  which, prithee nuncle, is which?) around at breakneck speed, which is to say waiting around five seconds for every response.  This can make progress a tad wearisome.  There doesn't appear to be a huge number of locations and they're repeated in a bizarre way that means trying to make a map won't really work.  For instance, it'll say "You can go north, south, east and up" but you then find that all of these options take you to the exact same location.  That just don't compute with me, pardner.

There are some nice enough graphics for each location though, occasionally bearing some resemblance to the description.  The Twins appear to have been turned into human chess pieces or something, which is odd but arty I guess.

Tragically there are no beeper versions of the group's hits, such as...erm, oh yeah, Doctor! Doctor!  Only kidding, they had a few good tunes as we all know, but eventually they had to retire from public life after losing in battle to Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw in the Thunderdome.

Sadly the poor response time and constant confusion regarding the directions contribute to making this a rather unsatisfactory experience.  Or maybe I'm just bitter because I've accumulated stacks of objects (a pound coin, a bottle of spice, a sack of potash, a fuse, a jar and a kite) and not been able to do a thing with any of them.  Apart from dig some sand with a spade.  Big whoop.

To summarise, it seems when playing this game that you don't even have "Love on your side", and you're much more likely to shout out "Hold me now!" as a cry for help than manage to solve any clues, thus claiming "We are detective".  Sorry TTTA, I can't tell you that "You lift me up".  Nice try though.

So by 1985 we had the opportunity to purchase a games magazine on tape, shouting "Print is dead, man!" as we went.  It was an odd concept in many ways, but the novelty of the thing meant that some companies managed to sell at least a few of these before giving up on the idea not long after.

The most well-known was surely 16/48 Magazine.  I remember buying a couple of those myself.  There'd be an editorial claiming that this concept was the future and here to stay.  And possibly a game review with a screenshot or three.  And some adventure tips, mostly for The Hobbit in "Of Dungeons and Green Men".  And some pretty darn basic games.

But 16/48's saving grace was The Long Way Home, a spacey adventure series with graphics, which seemed pretty unique back then.  Despite slow response times, they had a good atmosphere about them, and were a cut above their other progs on tape.  I was half tempted to review one for this article, but The Thompson Twins game put me off any further adventuring for now.

Spectrum Computing appears to have been a similar kind of publication on tape, although I'd not heard of them myself.  Looking through their games on (confusingly) Spectrum Computing (the website), they mostly don't appear to be any great shakes.  But I found one that hopefully deserves further mention.

The Archaeologist was written by Paul Sneesby with the intention of it being a commercial release, but it wasn't to be and instead it wound up on a tape magazine.  Well at least it's getting some overdue attention now, Paul.

Despite the screenshots above, this is actually a 3D vector graphics space flight sim.  Of course not, it's a Wet Set Jelly clone naturally.  Well at least we know what we're dealing with here.

You have no name but let's call you Oldiana Bones, and your mission is to enter the volcano Sneffels Jokul (can't figure out if that's an anagram) and pass through the earth's core, as you do, to finally re-emerge at Mount Etna, collecting various probably quite burned artefacts as you go, 'cos "they belong in a museum".  Sounds like it goes a bit HG Wells there, maybe it should be called Jet Set Jules (Verne).

I guess this game was probably made using a JSW editor of some sort.  I'd ask Geoff Neil, but he's too busy getting his Spectrum Next to print his name over and over down the screen in different colours.  The mechanics are so faithful to Matthew Smith's classic games that that must be the case.

The screens are pleasingly full of rotating skulls, waggling joysticks and speeding snails, as you'd expect.  One nice feature is that there are five types of artefact to collect, and there's a visual icon for each on screen, showing your cache thus far.  There's a counter for the number of days you've spent, not sure why.  And you get five lives, which of course is nowhere near enough.

It's as much fun as it's ever been to bounce from screen to screen trying desperately to get at least the odd treasure item.  And yes, the infinite falling instadeath syndrome is present and correct, you'll be delighted to hear.

There's a perfectly pleasant warbly rendition of some classical number I can't remember the name of, and is therefore nigh on impossible to Google.  Not quite as groovy as The Perils of Willy's Led Zep choons, but good enough.

All totally predictable and all great fun for a little while.  Will we ever tire of performing a quirkafleeg?

By 1988 covertapes were very much the norm, and the magazines were getting thinner and thinner, with the Spectrum software scene decidedly on the wane after six years of frenzied activity.  So the tapes compensated slightly for this, usually consisting of some dodgy old games, a dodgy new game demo and a dodgy properly new game.

Of course that's totally unfair.  Let's not forget that a covertape brought us the ace Batty, mainly because Elite's version was too close to Arkanoid to release commercially without their asses getting sued.  And getting the odd old classic for free was pretty great, especially for any newbies to the scene.

And every now and then the mags would unearth a gem or two, hence this article.  I've tried to focus on some of the better or more interesting offerings here, and this here Hyper Active game is certainly worthy of note.

The Special FX crew were behind this one, and that means the wizardry of the late, great Joffa Smith is apparent.  He and his brother Matthew (*citation needed) were true geniuses of the Speccy scene.  While Matthew's light shone so very brightly so quickly, only for fame and wealth to take their toll, Joffa created many great games over a long period, Mikie and Cobra being my personal faves of his.

This game was presumably intended for a commercial release at first, or maybe it was just an excuse for Joffa to show off his technical prowess.  It boasts great presentation and definitely looks the part, but it's fair to say the game element is not quite as strong here.

You, as Mr. Spaceman, are trapped on an unstable asteroid.  To survive, you have to collect 8 round energy pods one by one and return them to the crystal holds at the centre of the asteroid.  Then shoot all the remaining aliens.

Level 2 has you under attack from 4 marauding space dragons, who need to be shot multiple times.  Then Level 3 is an attack wave where you simply blast 'em till they drop.  Level 4 is a bonus level where you drop bombs on bubbles and bravely bag bonuses.  Then the waves repeat back to the start, only harder of course.

So lots of zapping with a little variety thrown in here and there.  It's nice to play and everything about it is smoothly done.  If this had been a full price release, I've no doubt that later levels would include bigger and badder bosses, and much more variety in type of alien.

The graphics though are excellent and the scrolling, this being Joffa, is super smooth.  Colour is mostly white on black but is suitably spacey (not Kevin) and sound is pretty good, with a nice title tune to boot.

So as such it's hard not to get a feeling of what might have been about this game.  As a freebie on a mag it's very good, it's just that its interest level is a little limited the way it is.  But you've got to marvel at Joffa's brilliance even so.  The guy was a legend.

In the same month as SU got us all Hyper Active, YS introduced us to those lovely People From Sirius.  This game wasn't quite produced purely to be on the front of a mag, as it was released in Spain a couple of months earlier.  Entitled El Mundo Perdido (The Lost World) this Toposoft title received a mighty 'cinque estrellas' in MicroHobby.  Of course we knew nothing about that at the time, so we thought it was a gift just for us.  Harumph.

The plot informs us that thousands of years ago, folk from Sirius came to Earth by spaceship and taught us many wondrous things, like that cheat code for Manic Miner.  Sadly a virus killed most of them off, all apart from some zombies kept alive with life machines in a cavern in an Amazon warehouse, I mean jungle.

You are an intrepid but clearly rubbish explorer, as you get yourself trapped in said cavern, and need to then collect 5 parts of an electronic key.  Once collected, this takes you to the alien spaceship, where you have to destroy their computer to escape.  Sounds harsh and a bit like genocide to me.  Game on!

I remember buying this copy of YS at the time and playing this game for a bit.  I think I probably didn't do it justice, due to having another 368 games to play at the time that week.  But now, with the benefit of age and experience and so forth, I can give it my full attention perhaps.

There's a tune on the title screen, and a rather boring intro if you choose to read it.  But once you start playing, things take off.  The graphics are really attractive and things slightly resemble Heartland, in that you can go into or out of doorways, but you can't tell which way to face unless you've got a good memory (nah-ah).  I normally end up standing facing the wrong way looking foolish, like those times when a lift door opens behind you unexpectedly in train stations.  Quite often.

The first few screens are spent jumping around trying to avoid your enemies, until you find one of those life machine doodads.  Then you're in business.  You get your full health back, new torch batteries and even better - weaponry!  In the form of what looks like a rocket launcher Duke Nukem would be proud to own.  This heavyweight baby is fun to fire, but there's a trick to it.  You press fire once to fire a shell, but then press fire again to explode the shell.  This is an unusual idea, but it adds to the mayhem nicely when confronted by numerous foes at once.

You can also recharge your torch by shooting the flying alien sensors in each room, which can be pretty handy.  Otherwise your screen turns a moody dark blue on black, which doesn't help matters even slightly.

So you have to find 5 parts of the electronic key to earn your freedom.  I think I've managed 3 so far, but the real trick is trying not to murder every alien possible, but to pick your route well and avoid them where you can.  Otherwise your ammo tends to run out, which leaves you highly vulnerable to alien tentacles.  Gulp.

In conclusion, this game is brilliant for a freebie, and deserves a second look from ignorant folk like me who ignored it back in the day.  And yes, I'm totally Sirius, and don't call me Shirley.

So the '90s arrived and the covertapes were still plentiful.  The Spectrum games market was drying up badly, so this gave an unexpected opportunity to budding bedroom coders everywhere to get their games on the covers of the big mags.  Which was a good thing on the whole, so go go indie dudes!

This particular game was an updated version of one that appeared on a Crash covertape in December 1989.  The game resembled Starquake, deliberately I'm sure, hence its title, and borrowed several of its sprites and ideas.  But was the 1990 remix more Tom's Diner (ace) or Reach Out I'll Be There (pants)?

Cue voiceover.  Earth is under attack from marauding slimy aliens (is there any other kind?)  Not to worry, the Mega Team has arrived to see them off with a big bomb.  But two of the three Mega Teamsters proved rather unmega and got captured by the aliens when teleporting aboard their ship.  Seriously embarrassing.  So now it's up to you to beat the alien menace alone.

First you have to locate the bomb ('cos you lost it, duh), take it to the ship's hull and set the timer.  Rescue your teammates if poss.  To escape, collect 4 fuel rods and enter the escape shuttle.  Simple as.

There are also teleporters around the place, which require you to put numbers in order very quickly and erratically in order to progress.  Otherwise you lose yourself a life in trying.  I didn't much care for those bits, too much pressure.

The status panel on the right incidentally is possibly a bit too detailed for its own good.  If anyone understands it much, I'm impressed.  The 2 big heads are your teammates, I've got that much.

It's quite fun wandering around for a while, picking up objects and figuring out their higher purpose.  But things do get quite tricky quite quickly and you tend to have to restart pretty often, which proves frustrating.

But it's nice and colourful to look at, the sound is decent with a title menu choon, and on the whole the standard is certainly up there with many good budget games of the time, so everyone's a winner and hopefully Stephen Crow in his passing Bubble Bus doesn't sue!

AFTER THE WARS - SERGEANT JIM'S DEBRIEFING

-FIN-

I've been dying to try out one of this guy's games for a while now, mainly due to some of the brilliant pixel art he always seems to display, but also because he is known as 'Cthonian Godkiller', which is surely the most awesome name ever, just about edging out 'Alan'.

His real name sadly appears to be Maxi Ruano, which is still way better than mine.  He did a couple of Godkiller games, then the two Harbinger ones, of which this is the first.  You've got to admire his relentlessly atheistic attitude, though maybe he's a Man of God in reality, the world's funny like that sometimes.

Here's a thing.  I always think it's a shame when a game has a nice tune on the title screen, but nothing much in the main game.  I imagine it's because it would slow down gameplay too much, and in an ideal world surely the programmer would prefer music in-game too.  So I sometimes try to find a way to get that tune playing throughout to add to the general atmos.

The easiest way is if I can find an MP3 of the music online.  Then I can download it and start it playing on the music app on my phone.  It continues to play while I start up my Speccy emulator (also on my phone) so the effect is seamless.

But for this game I couldn't find the music online anywhere.  So I tried a few programs to copy the music in situ, but generally it didn't come out half as well as I'd hoped.

So in the end I had the barmy idea of using an old abanonded mobile of mine, installing the Speccy emulator on that, and leaving that just playing the looping menu music, while playing the game as usual on my current phone.  This actually works quite well, and my old phone looks visibly happier due to getting some use, so it's a win-win.

Okay, so now you think that I'm clinically insane, best to check out the game itself.  The inlay is remarkably impressive looking and really goes to town on the background story.  I'll summarise it down a tad.

You land on an alien planet and need to infiltrate an enemy facility to gain crucial info about their technology, which will likely save the world.  That's enough really.  I love a detailed plot in sci-fi movies and comics, but for games, sometimes it's best to keep things simple.

There are 2 separate loads to this game.  Part 1 has your ship landing in a swamp (watch out for Yoda) and you have to find and enter the alien facility.  Part 2 has you stealing the alien techie stuff and blowing the place up.

After enjoying the slightly leftfield space-ish music for a bit, I ended up spending bloomin' ages on the first bit as I couldn't find an entrance to the base despite wandering here, there and everywhere.  I resorted to checking the RZX playback and amazingly my version of the game was somehow missing a crucial platform, needed to make a jump to collect...some required object or other.  Bizarre.  I actually ended up completing it anyway when I fell out of a screen somehow, dropped down two more screens, then was told I'd been successful in my mission!  I count that as a win, since my version seems glitched AF.

To be honest, part 1 was an up and down affair.  If you fall into slime, you lose all your lives in one go, which is a bit much.  There are red and yellow objects to grab, but what they are and what they do I dunno.  The enemies are samey and unintelligent, and the scenery is rather fragile, as I've indicated.  But I was still intrigued to see where all this was going.

Onto part 2.  This seems a much tighter proposition thankfully.  There are door keys and other quest items to collect, the enemies fire at you in more threatening ways and the scenery seems to hold together much better.  It's more like Star Wars to Part 1's Blakes Seven.  I've got some of the tech info needed I think, though I've only got vague pictures to go by.  But it's not too clear whether I'm nearing the end of my quest or not.

To conclude, this game is a mysterious beast.  It doesn't give much away along the way, giving it an air of intrigue, but it leaves you still not totally sure just how good it is, even after playing it for quite some time.

Might have to check out some more of Rev. Godkiller's offerings some time, to see if I can get a better idea of things.  For now, I is confuzzled.

Don't worry, this game isn't solely in Spanish!  If my one-year Spanish GCSE course has taught me right, it means "Teodoro doesn't know how to fly".  This is yet another example of kindly European programmers catering for us pig ignorant Britishers by offering a version translated into English.  We really don't deserve such consideration, so a big thanks to all those who do this for us.

This game, I think I'm right in saying, could well have been written in BASIC, then put through an assembler.  Or compiler.  Or something technical anyway.  The sprites move in character squares only and some (but not all) of the enemies move remarkably slowly, whether by design or not.  Interesting.

There have been some intriguing experiments this millennium, which this reminds me of.  The acclaimed Loxley was written in BASIC somehow, despite not looking like it at all.  And Zosya's cool Lava game was originally written in BASIC, but turned out too slow, so they opted for machine code instead, but nevertheless crammed it into just 16K somehow.  Muy impressivo.

So I wonder if this was likewise an experiment to see if a BASIC game could work well, look good and play good...erm, well.  To be fair, I wouldn't review it if it was garbage, so you probably have an inkling already.

A nice little intro gives us the lowdown.  Teodoro the parrot is a jester at King Ruy's court.  So this story is based on real life clearly.  Unfortunately he can't fly for reasons unclear, so this means he can't be a soldier.  One night the castle is attacked during a particularly raucous party, and the king is kidnapped.  The alarm is raised, but Teodoro seems to be the last bird standing who can rescue the mugged monarch.  Isn't it always the way?

So if this is a BASIC game, it'll look like cr@p, right?  Well, the screenshots above certainly give the lie to that statement.  What an extraordinary explosion of colour we have here!  This is why the Spectrum is so amazing.  What other system can look like that, primary colours blazing out at you, burning your retinas out like crazy?  Even on my screenshots ;)

I happened across a website reviewing this game on the Speccy, Amstrad and MSX.  It was extolling the virtues of the other versions over the Spectrum one.  But you know what?  They can stuff it!  When you look at the other versions, they look like s**t compared to the majestic colours of our machine.  Speccy games always look better, as long as colour clash isn't running amok, and that's it, as far as I'm concerned.  They probably play better too mostly.  End of.

Anyway, rabid patriotic fervour aside, how does one play the game, and how indeed does the game play?  Well, you waddle left and right, and are armed with a small jump (up key) and an even smaller jump (down key).

You have to go round finding the keys to 4 locked areas around the castle, in order to find the king, while occasionally happening across the odd upgrade to your jumping skills, which is much needed by then, I can tell you.  And if you collect 3 lots of spinny coins, you get an extra life to add to your starting total of 10.

Sounds quite generous that, but those lives do disappear pretty (polly) fast in the usual manner.  With this in mind, I've taken the usual 'Al Mod'(TM) precaution of saving my game state regularly.  I've also incorporated the quite good title tune into the main game itself, much like I was prattling on about in the previous review.  Much more civilised.

Thus armed, I am ready to take on this psittaciform platformer.  It's a bit odd, not judging your jumps to pixel precision, but rather to character block perfection instead.  But you get used to it once you know it's there, and the jumping and timing still needs to be as accurate as always with these things.

It's a lot better than most modern platformers, this game.  The room layout is well thought out, the upgrades spaced regularly, and it's a joy to play.  As far as a platformer can be - without save-scumming you'd have next to no chance!  But this is why we must adapt/cheat, you see..

The graphics are very cute and ludicrously colourful, the sound is perfectly fine as is, but do try to import that title tune for added gaming satisfaction, otherwise known as 'AGS' (TM).

There's not much more to say really.  Platform games do tend to leave me somewhat lost for words.  But you gotta love 'em, and this is a squawkingly good example.

This game was a bit of a sleeper hit back in '84 and a great example of what odd games you could find on the Spectrum back in those days.  Silversoft had been doing the usual early software house rounds of producing average to passable arcade rip-offs, when out of nowhere came this title.

Unlike all those Frogger and Missile Command clones, here was a truly original idea.  Can you say you've ever seen a game anything like it?  Other quirky original games ended up spawning sequels, e.g. Trashman and Skool Daze, so ultimately they kind of ended up ripping themselves off!  But there was no follow-up to this one, so it remains unique.  Shame, they could have had "Even Worse Things Happen In Mid-Air" where you play the inflatable autopilot guy from Airplane II, bravely trying to keep airborne with bits of the plane falling off all around him.  I really should design games, me.

There was the infamous advert for this game too of course, with the tagline "For added realism, try playing this in the bath".  I don't think they got told off too much for it, but at least Silversoft showed they had a bit of personality in this respect, albeit little grasp of health and safety.  Still, it was the '80s.

WTHAS, as it became known, was programmed by Mindseye, whoever they may be.  Looking at their few other Speccy games, this is far and away the standout.  Wonder who they were though, very mysterious.  I do occasionally get feedback from some of the programmers of these games, so maybe they'll get in touch after this, who knows...

As you no doubt know, you play a mostly waterproof and mostly reliable old robot called a C-Droid, who has been left with sole responsibility for ensuring a big old boat somehow manages to crawl to its destination port, with at least some scraps of its cargo remaining intact.  Funnily enough, I work in the shipping industry and this sort of thing is happening all the time - how they get away with it, I'll never know.

Leaks spring up all over the rusty old ship, so you have to patch them up pronto, while also pumping out the various bits of ocean which have come in as a result.  You only have so much robot power though, and tend to run out at crucial moments, thus having to return to your USB charger cable on a regular basis.

As long as there's more ocean outside your ship than inside it, you may eventually make it to port.  Then you are scored according to how much damage has occurred and how much expense incurred.  If you're lucky, you might come away from it with enough dough for a bottle of rum, some smokes and a good time down the docks with a C-Droidette.

Voyage 2 adds the further complication of the ship meandering off course regularly, so you have to keep going back to the wheel every now and then to make sure you don't end up in Hull, while the water puddles constantly around your robo-ankles, giving you a nasty robo-rash.

Furthermore, voyage 3 also involves keeping the temperature of the cargo constant, otherwise the ship blows up, which is embarrassing for all concerned.  Things get really hairy here, and I've not yet managed to crack this level.  My cargo of Sinclair QLs gets blown sky high every time!  What did Sir Clive put in 'em?!

You have to have a plan of attack to be successful at this game, and a good amount of patience, a bit like in Trashman.  The pace of your poor bot  is fairly leisurely, which increases the tension greatly when your ship is slowly sinking around you, so keeping your head is paramount.  And when things do start going wrong, they tend to escalate fast, so it's fine to panic by that point, feel free.

So is this still a Speccy classic or a load of bilge?  Most of the mags liked it at the time, particularly Your Sinclair and Crash, who gave it a Crash Splash, I mean Smash.  Groan.

Given that so many games have had so many newer versions or equivalents over the years, that sometimes makes it hard to reassess their initial impact.  I mean, Match Day was great but would you really play it nowadays, when you've got the marginally superior FIFA 22?  But in this case, WTHAS really has no rivals or descendants, and so seems all the better for it.

The kingdom of Kimeria has fallen into disgrace, probably something to do with Boris Johnson.  A spell of perpetual night threatens its existence.  A sorceress named Lisistra enlists the help of a luckless jester and a half-crazed magic goat, on a quest to save the kingdom.  Well why do it yourself?

There's something about European games and jesters for some reason (see Teodoro review).  It's a bit of a Euro thing, isn't it?  In this country we are rightly scared silly of clowns, and jesters are a little too close for comfort.  So when you see this game's terrifying loading screen, hopes don't run high and Hunchy/Punchy nightmares are sure to follow.

But thankfully there's no horrendous digitised speech in this recent release, and instead it has quite a pleasant title tune, which continues throughout the game.  It's fair to say it doesn't look that amazing right out of the blocks.  The colour scheme is highly red and blue, which is unusual and a bit reminiscent of Metamorphosis, a recent classic I couldn't quite get my head around, but probably should.

But it would be unfair to conclude that this is just another AGD platformer with nothing more to recommend it.  You start off stuck in a cage, when you manage to summon your spirit animal to assist you.  Despite initially being unimpressed by the choice of a goat, your hairy friend soon proves his worth.

You can only cast him to the far left or far right of wherever you are positioned yourself.  Then you are able to alternate between moving the jester or the goat.  Luckily if your goat dies, it's no biggie - just cast another.  The jester only has 6 lives though, which don't last long.  Both jester and goat are quite bouncy, so when one jumps on the other, much useful boinging results (dodgy ground here).

Sounds a little like other platformers with a cooperative element, like Alter Ego and Bean Brothers.  But this game also includes more adventure elements along the way.  You have to collect many a treasure to afford key items...like keys.  And I've come across quite a few little encounters with characters, which raises this title above many other platformers, and slightly into Castlevania: Spectral Interlude territory perhaps.

Many of the screens are highly fiendish, and you'll be cursing yourself plentifully as you fail again and again to reach that elusive object.  But you'll usually get there with much perseverance.  Probably.  Obviously I've got stuck myself after a while, but that goes without saying, so why say it?

Although I've gently dissed the initial appearance of the game, I have to say the graphics are pretty well animated generally, even though the jester himself moves around the place by constantly side-stepping, silly chap that he is.  And the colour scheme does suit the game, giving it a certain atmosphere, which befits the scenario of perpetual night and all.  And the music is decent and happily unjesterly.

So this is a good 'un then.  Another AGD game with a difference, and a further evolution of what Miner Willy unknowingly started all those years ago.

Storm Software released this game and very few others, apart from the acclaimed Street Dragon, or should that be Saint Dragon?  But this was way too late in the Speccy's heyday for me to have caught it first time round, so it's all new to me now.  And it received a colourful update in 2012 from that man again Rafal Miazga.  He's not actually sponsoring this website honestly, though maybe he should at this rate.

The game was advertised with the line "So cute, it'll make you puke!" which is quite something, interesting PR approach.  I guess they were trying to appeal to the Rainbow Islands/Bubble Bobble kind of audience, but felt slightly ashamed of themselves for doing so.

So just how cute is the plot?  Am I in danger of barfing all over my laptop?  Here goes.  Our two heroes, Tam (of the family Pon) and Rit (of the family Alin) live in a fairy village.  One day they find that something awful has happened overnight to the other villagers.  They've gone all wrong, captured their mum and locked her in the top of the Maboots Tower ("No, not the Maboots Tower!", "Yes, the Maboots Tower!")  Luckily for Tam Pon and Rit Alin, they've inherited the Rods of Sheesanomo (bless you) from their dad and some rainbow shoes from an elder I've named Disco King Drogo.  Armed with these, they can tackle the tower by 'wopping' cuddly beings on the head with their rods and by climbing ladders built with the help of the rainbow shoes.  Yes, I did type that right, just checking.

With plots like that, who needs hallucinogenic drugs?  It's uber cute and uber violent, this game, like Tarantino producing Dora the Explorer.  It was of course originally an arcade game, therefore originating in Japan, therefore f***ing crazy.

The game consists of over 40 levels apparently.  You have to 'wop' the nasties/nicies, which will give you a useful weapon or a bonus, and collect the flowers, 'cos they smell nice.  The levels are quite ladder-heavy, a bit like Chuckie Egg, so it's a bit odd that you can magically create extra ones of your own.  What's the point?  I don't get it.

Another oddity is that the flowers are mostly just for decoration.  If you beat up all the enemies on a screen, the stage ends after a slightly awkward couple of seconds, no matter how many flowers you've collected.  Why not make it so you have to get all of them?  What's the point?  I don't get it.

I do rather like the way you bash the enemies.  You kind of envelope them with your magic rods, throw them over your shoulder, then do it again, then one more time just for fun.  It's hilariously and unnecessarily violent.  Well done.  Trouble is, animation of the process does take a little time, so make sure no other baddies are too close before you start getting nasty.

The graphics are large and nicely detailed.  Colour is black and white on the original, but so much nicer on the revised version.  Sound is very good, with some nice tunes here and there.  There are also quite a few cut-scene stills which enhance the whole experience admirably.

Gameplay is not at all bad, despite the strangenesses mentioned earlier.  Though you could say the levels are a bit small, possibly due to the large graphics.  Every now and then you get a different type of level, the first being one with crocodiles attacking you from both sides, then later on an annoying whale.  If anything, these levels suffer from being a bit drawn out and tedious.  Some people are never happy, are they?

But were the big mags of the time happy with Rod-Land?  YS went totally hatstand and gave it 95%, which is insanity.  I mean, that's only 1% lower than undeniable classics Zoids and Technician Ted got in Crash !  Sinclair User also loved the pants off it with 91%.  Crash opted for a more chilled 88%, as did good old MicroHobby, who additionally gave it their usual 5 Estrellas.  Which is making me very thirsty, off to the fridge I go.  Pretty good marks then.

So it's an enjoyable game overall, maybe not quite hitting the heights of the likes of Rainbow Islands, but still well worth a play.  And even better in sparkling technicolour thanks to Senor Miazga.