1984's games i'm having problems reviewing: mutant monty - in spite of having collected all the items, i don't seem able to get out of the first screen, and I don't understand why. 3d lunattack - i can't shoot the tanks yet. postman pat's trail game - i can't move the ucking van. engineer humpty - i don't understand. battle cars - i suppose i should read the instructions. this is asking too much. zig zag - when i chased and cornered and then killed that poor creature i felt sick.
and others.
Pud Pud In Weird World [Ocean]
by Jonathan Smith, Christine Smith
One of the weirdest release of those years, Pud Pud is a cartoonish, grotesque, surreal and black humoured little nightmare in the shape of a maze game with gravity and platforms, but you move mainly flying, but you can even walk. And when you fly you use your feet as wings. The aim is to find 10 puddings, which will allow you to leave this nightmarish world.
One of the problems is that you can only collect them in the pre-establish order, and they appear just one at the time, randomly spreaded across the maze. The other big problem is that your energy vanishes very quickly, and to stay alive you must eat some creatures, but only the right ones - the others will drain your energy even faster. And, worst of all, if you remain too long in a location, Mrs. Pud Pud is going to appear, and she heads straight toward you and her kiss is lethal. The maze is littered with big ruins constituted by broken spectrums, heads, skulls, tombstones.
It's like a world through a very weird looking glass, in which only the name of the author is simply in reverse, while the rest is twisted.
All and all, it shows the precocious talent of Jonathan Smith, implemented in an original game, in which he poured his peculiar imagination and humour - mostly kept at bay in the following softography, mainly characterized by coin op conversions. Technically he was very good already, with its trademark use of the beeper, sounding as a synthesizer, smooth and colourful graphics. The game starts off quite hard, but gets better when you learn which creatures to eat and which to avoid - but it doesn't become terribly addictive anyway. Still, it's a peculiar and overall well done game - and the debut of one of Spectrum's greatest talent. 3/5
p.s. The first review is from april 1985, but the copyright on the main screen of the game says 1984.
p.p.s. I don't know what the role of Christine Smith in making the game is.
Pud Pud was featured in that TV documentary Commercial Breaks, the narrator said that David Ward paid him ?1000 for the game and gave him a job at Ocean:smile:
Trashman [New Generation Software]
by Malcolm E. Evans
This is a game part of the classic pick-up-the-can genre, and it's as exciting as one might expect it to be. You just can't stop picking up those trash cans. You want to try it again and again. And again. That said, it's very colourful and well designed, the little sprites are cute and allow the view to be more comprehensive of the surroundings, people will invite you in, and if you do it right, you will be compensated with extra time, which is quite handy, because it passes rather fast, especially if you DON'T KEEP OFF THE GRASS and things like that. Beware of the dog. 4/5
Was playing Pud Pud last night. I couldn't get very far but liked the way the colours kept changing when you went in and out of the screen - can't think of any other games offhand that do this.
Strange Odyssey [Adventure International]
by Scott Adams
Nice and playable enough text adventure, with a sci fi setting, you're stranded on some planetoids, your scoutship is broken, and you don't see mechanics in the immediate surroundings, or even galaxies. So you go out [if you manage to] in the smallest piece of space rock ever, but if you use your items well and then learn how to use the rods, then lots of new horizons will open up.
No less than 3/5.
New Cylon Attack [A'n'F Software]
by ?
From time to time you find a game that the other people don't seem to appreciate much, but you quite like - and this is the case of New Cylon Attack for me, although it's not horribly rated [7,09 from 11 votes], I would expect it to have a slightly higher average.
The game is a cockpit shoot'em up, you are in space, there's a Star Wars feel, and you must move your sight to shoot the enemies' spacecrafts, coming and going, shrinking and getting bigger, while moving in the starry playing area - of which you have a radar version, showing the position and direction of the hostile spaceships for a good range, covering almost all the "star battlefield" [but not all, because sometimes you notice that they disappear, so there must be a portion of it that always remain out of range]. The alien fleets are often quite thick, and you have to develop some strategy if you want to destroy it all before they annihilate your shields, killing you. There's even the fuel problem, which you can resolve by finding your mothership and giving yourself a break. Another moment when you need to go back to the mothership is when you have destroyed a whole wave of aliens, if you want to progress to the next level. It's a sort of tense space western shoot-out, quite playable, with some good acoustic explosions gratifying your good aim. 4/5
Ad Astra [Gargoyle Games]
by Roy Carter, Greg Follis
Right now the average of this one on WoS is 7.40 from 44 votes, while the not totally dissimilar and vastly superior New Cylon Attack has only a 7.09 or something. But, beside the big colourful graphics [the asteroids more importantly], the rest is not much impressive: there's something wrong in the perspective, which makes you inadvertently collide against enemy ships, asteroids and bullets - there's no sign of motion, you seem to be completly still, no sense of depth, a star field completely still itself, the sounds are little silly "bip's": a starship explodes and all you hear is "bip". The playability is not that good either because of the perspective problem aforementioned. I'm tempted to give it 2/5, but for now I'll settle on a very narrow 3/5.
Sky Ranger [Microsphere]
by ?
The Watchers are dronecops going mad and are hovering all over the city doing bad things. So you, with your vector graphics jecopter must fly through it and with the help of a radar, spot them and destroy them.
As mr. Alessandro Grussu writes in his review this is a mix between a simulator and a shoot'em up, and at the same it's neither, and it falls in a uncertain limbo. There not hot action, nor very complicated and "realistic" commands and such. It's nice learning to fly among the building and trying to fly over some of them, in the attempt of find the drones. But in the end there's not much going on. 3/5
Ah well, I thought of that, but then wondered if I down in the canyon how the tanks to either side find the right trajectory for their missiles to take me down... :confused: :)
Dark Star [Design Design]
by Simon Brattel, Neil Mottershead, Graham Stafford, Jon Ritman
Superfastest subjective space graphics, lots and lots of options to set the game as you prefer, four graphical cockpit approaches, peculiar hall of fame, and some of the most wicked flying bastards ever.
Space shoot'em up with lots and lots of planets and galaxies and whatever's to explore in order to destroy EVERYTHING THAT MOVES, and even lots of towers, which tend to stand still. It's impressively done, but too much space voyaging and fastest and cruellest enemies ever. 3/5 although on the highest side.
3D Starstrike [Realtime Software]
by Ian Oliver, Andrew Onions, Graeme Baird, Oliver Frey
As WE ALL KNOW, brilliant unofficial conversion, by the vector graphics masters of Realtime Games Software, of the famous Star Wars coin-op by Atari, with big and relatively colourful vector graphics, and ok speed and smoothness - the latters not comparable with the absurd Dark Star, which, anwyay, has less happening all at once in the screen, and has a certain pointilistic style. On the playability side, Starstrike is still a bit hard, but there are various skill levels among which you can choose, but the gameplay is dense and pauseless, and it's fun enough. This makes a certain difference. 4/5
Booty [Firebird]
by John F. Cain
Flip screen platform'n'ladders'n'doors game. Collect all the treasures, avoid the pirates, parrots and rats, don't fall from the platforms, and use the numbered keys to open the relative doors, inside the same screen. The other doors, not numbered, take you to another screen. If in a specific screen there's an unreachable spot, closed by door with an unreachable key, probably you can get there from a door in an another screen.
Nice jolly [roger] tune, beautiful glimmering loading screen, ok colourful graphics, with a bit of colour clash, it's quite addictive, partially because it's a bit frustrating, and you get a bit angry at the game [well, I did]: there are too many random deaths. Rats and parrots coming out of nowhere while you have no possible escape, doors that sometimes, in a particular game, take you directly in the arms of some affectionate pirate, items hiding bombs, appearing while a pirate is chasing you and such. The thing is that these defects aside, is quite playable. So let's give it a [not on the abudant side] 4/5. It's cute. Just slightly sadic, at times.
Nifty Lifty [Visions Software Factory]
by Kevin J. Bezant
A simple concept: run on the platforms taking all the objects, ascend automatically at the end of each of them, and beware while you're passing through the central part of them, because there's a sort of bad elevator going up and down, who could lethally hit you. Arrived at the top, you're onto the next level, where the bad elevators augment, along the same vertical line, but even other lines start to appear. It's smoothly done, but the concept is not exactly exciting, and I can't see what should make people get back for more. The main sprite is the usual appearing in other 2389293 Visions Software Factory games. Probably he has even got a name, but I don't know it. No more than 3/5.
Devil Diver [DK'Tronics]
by John R. Edmonds
Cute subaquatic one-screen game between Jet Pac and Fantastic Voyage. Of the latter it has the same sprite, the same way of carrying objects, and the same kind of swimming inertial movements - and for a reason, the author is the same [his only two games], of the first it retains the classic one screen arcade feel and setting, and the need to complete a task carrying and dropping objects: in Jet Pac it was pieces of shuttle and fuel tanks, in Devil Diver you must complete a submarine pipeline, so you dive from a boat with a piece of it at the time, drop it on the bottom where a piece is still missing, take the treasure that as a prize appears, and bring it to the boat, where your limited air supply is restored. Not so easy as described until now, of course, the other Jet Pac feature is the shoot'em up part: the sea [or ocean] flora is varied and lethal, but luckily you have your weapon. Once you complete a section, you're onto the next, where the marine animals, each with its own movement pattern and behaviour, and the difficulty augment. Playable, cute and nicely done. 4/5
The Snowman [Quicksilva]
by David Shea
The animation of your character is not very good: he looks like an insect moving frantically its legs. Anyway, it's Burgertime again, but this time you have to cook a whole Snowman, snowball by snowball, chased by quick little flames that wants to burn you and melt the snow. It's playable enough and ok to watch, a bit ruined by the difficult alignement with the platforms while using the ramps, frustratingly slowing down your race. 3/5
Gilligan's Gold [Ocean Software]
by Ronald Rhodes, Keith Burkhill, F. David Thorpe
Pick up the bags of gold, and put them in your purple wheelbarrow, or drop them on the head of your chasers, while they're climbing a ladder under you, in a series of flip screens, in the usual mine, full of elevators, shafts, trucks and hooks. It's bloody hard and picking up the bags is awkward, and right now my headache doesn't help either. I have a deep dislike for this game, although it's technically well done, and not totally unplayable, so it's a 3/5
Gilligan's Gold [Ocean Software]
by Ronald Rhodes, Keith Burkhill, F. David Thorpe
Pick up the bags of gold, and put them in your purple wheelbarrow, or drop them on the head of your chasers, while they're climbing a ladder under you, in a series of flip screens, in the usual mine, full of elevators, shafts, trucks and hooks. It's bloody hard and picking up the bags is awkward, and right now my headache doesn't help either. I have a deep dislike for this game, although it's technically well done, and not totally unplayable, so it's a 3/5
I want to like this game so much, but I have to disagree about its playability. It's just too hard from the start, could have been a classic.
Comments
mutant monty - in spite of having collected all the items, i don't seem able to get out of the first screen, and I don't understand why.
3d lunattack - i can't shoot the tanks yet.
postman pat's trail game - i can't move the ucking van.
engineer humpty - i don't understand.
battle cars - i suppose i should read the instructions. this is asking too much.
zig zag - when i chased and cornered and then killed that poor creature i felt sick.
and others.
edit:
borzak - i can't jump.
Pud Pud was featured in that TV documentary Commercial Breaks, the narrator said that David Ward paid him ?1000 for the game and gave him a job at Ocean:smile:
Ex-Ocean Software graphic artist -
Download my FREE PDF 'LOAD DIJ DIJ' (180,000+ words): https://ko-fi.com/i/IG2G3BEJZP
ZX Art page: https://zxart.ee/eng/authors/m/mark-r-jones/
https://twitter.com/MarkRJones1970
https://www.facebook.com/OceanSoftwareLtd/
https://www.facebook.com/ultimateptg/
by Malcolm E. Evans
This is a game part of the classic pick-up-the-can genre, and it's as exciting as one might expect it to be. You just can't stop picking up those trash cans. You want to try it again and again. And again. That said, it's very colourful and well designed, the little sprites are cute and allow the view to be more comprehensive of the surroundings, people will invite you in, and if you do it right, you will be compensated with extra time, which is quite handy, because it passes rather fast, especially if you DON'T KEEP OFF THE GRASS and things like that. Beware of the dog.
4/5
Brilliant game.
Remember trashman walking very slowly though!
And the spectrum being a very British computer, why was it not called dustman? (he wears cor-blimey trousers...)
by Scott Adams
Nice and playable enough text adventure, with a sci fi setting, you're stranded on some planetoids, your scoutship is broken, and you don't see mechanics in the immediate surroundings, or even galaxies. So you go out [if you manage to] in the smallest piece of space rock ever, but if you use your items well and then learn how to use the rods, then lots of new horizons will open up.
No less than 3/5.
by ?
From time to time you find a game that the other people don't seem to appreciate much, but you quite like - and this is the case of New Cylon Attack for me, although it's not horribly rated [7,09 from 11 votes], I would expect it to have a slightly higher average.
The game is a cockpit shoot'em up, you are in space, there's a Star Wars feel, and you must move your sight to shoot the enemies' spacecrafts, coming and going, shrinking and getting bigger, while moving in the starry playing area - of which you have a radar version, showing the position and direction of the hostile spaceships for a good range, covering almost all the "star battlefield" [but not all, because sometimes you notice that they disappear, so there must be a portion of it that always remain out of range]. The alien fleets are often quite thick, and you have to develop some strategy if you want to destroy it all before they annihilate your shields, killing you. There's even the fuel problem, which you can resolve by finding your mothership and giving yourself a break. Another moment when you need to go back to the mothership is when you have destroyed a whole wave of aliens, if you want to progress to the next level. It's a sort of tense space western shoot-out, quite playable, with some good acoustic explosions gratifying your good aim.
4/5
by David Aubrey-Jones
More or less, the neatest Galaxian conversion possible, and one of the best shoot'em up's of the year.
4/5
by Roy Carter, Greg Follis
Right now the average of this one on WoS is 7.40 from 44 votes, while the not totally dissimilar and vastly superior New Cylon Attack has only a 7.09 or something. But, beside the big colourful graphics [the asteroids more importantly], the rest is not much impressive: there's something wrong in the perspective, which makes you inadvertently collide against enemy ships, asteroids and bullets - there's no sign of motion, you seem to be completly still, no sense of depth, a star field completely still itself, the sounds are little silly "bip's": a starship explodes and all you hear is "bip". The playability is not that good either because of the perspective problem aforementioned. I'm tempted to give it 2/5, but for now I'll settle on a very narrow 3/5.
its a canyon, and you are flying through it
by ?
The Watchers are dronecops going mad and are hovering all over the city doing bad things. So you, with your vector graphics jecopter must fly through it and with the help of a radar, spot them and destroy them.
As mr. Alessandro Grussu writes in his review this is a mix between a simulator and a shoot'em up, and at the same it's neither, and it falls in a uncertain limbo. There not hot action, nor very complicated and "realistic" commands and such. It's nice learning to fly among the building and trying to fly over some of them, in the attempt of find the drones. But in the end there's not much going on.
3/5
Ah well, I thought of that, but then wondered if I down in the canyon how the tanks to either side find the right trajectory for their missiles to take me down... :confused: :)
by Simon Brattel, Neil Mottershead, Graham Stafford, Jon Ritman
Superfastest subjective space graphics, lots and lots of options to set the game as you prefer, four graphical cockpit approaches, peculiar hall of fame, and some of the most wicked flying bastards ever.
Space shoot'em up with lots and lots of planets and galaxies and whatever's to explore in order to destroy EVERYTHING THAT MOVES, and even lots of towers, which tend to stand still. It's impressively done, but too much space voyaging and fastest and cruellest enemies ever. 3/5 although on the highest side.
by Ian Oliver, Andrew Onions, Graeme Baird, Oliver Frey
As WE ALL KNOW, brilliant unofficial conversion, by the vector graphics masters of Realtime Games Software, of the famous Star Wars coin-op by Atari, with big and relatively colourful vector graphics, and ok speed and smoothness - the latters not comparable with the absurd Dark Star, which, anwyay, has less happening all at once in the screen, and has a certain pointilistic style. On the playability side, Starstrike is still a bit hard, but there are various skill levels among which you can choose, but the gameplay is dense and pauseless, and it's fun enough. This makes a certain difference.
4/5
by John F. Cain
Flip screen platform'n'ladders'n'doors game. Collect all the treasures, avoid the pirates, parrots and rats, don't fall from the platforms, and use the numbered keys to open the relative doors, inside the same screen. The other doors, not numbered, take you to another screen. If in a specific screen there's an unreachable spot, closed by door with an unreachable key, probably you can get there from a door in an another screen.
Nice jolly [roger] tune, beautiful glimmering loading screen, ok colourful graphics, with a bit of colour clash, it's quite addictive, partially because it's a bit frustrating, and you get a bit angry at the game [well, I did]: there are too many random deaths. Rats and parrots coming out of nowhere while you have no possible escape, doors that sometimes, in a particular game, take you directly in the arms of some affectionate pirate, items hiding bombs, appearing while a pirate is chasing you and such. The thing is that these defects aside, is quite playable. So let's give it a [not on the abudant side] 4/5. It's cute. Just slightly sadic, at times.
His author, John F. Cain, made a similar game some time after, Moonlight Madness. Too similar, I'd say! :)
by Alan J. Lloyd, Peter J. Stevens
Pretty good Defender clone, with lots of JetPac-like lasers.
4/5
by Kevin J. Bezant
A simple concept: run on the platforms taking all the objects, ascend automatically at the end of each of them, and beware while you're passing through the central part of them, because there's a sort of bad elevator going up and down, who could lethally hit you. Arrived at the top, you're onto the next level, where the bad elevators augment, along the same vertical line, but even other lines start to appear. It's smoothly done, but the concept is not exactly exciting, and I can't see what should make people get back for more. The main sprite is the usual appearing in other 2389293 Visions Software Factory games. Probably he has even got a name, but I don't know it. No more than 3/5.
by John R. Edmonds
Cute subaquatic one-screen game between Jet Pac and Fantastic Voyage. Of the latter it has the same sprite, the same way of carrying objects, and the same kind of swimming inertial movements - and for a reason, the author is the same [his only two games], of the first it retains the classic one screen arcade feel and setting, and the need to complete a task carrying and dropping objects: in Jet Pac it was pieces of shuttle and fuel tanks, in Devil Diver you must complete a submarine pipeline, so you dive from a boat with a piece of it at the time, drop it on the bottom where a piece is still missing, take the treasure that as a prize appears, and bring it to the boat, where your limited air supply is restored. Not so easy as described until now, of course, the other Jet Pac feature is the shoot'em up part: the sea [or ocean] flora is varied and lethal, but luckily you have your weapon. Once you complete a section, you're onto the next, where the marine animals, each with its own movement pattern and behaviour, and the difficulty augment. Playable, cute and nicely done.
4/5
The Snowman [Quicksilva]
by David Shea
The animation of your character is not very good: he looks like an insect moving frantically its legs. Anyway, it's Burgertime again, but this time you have to cook a whole Snowman, snowball by snowball, chased by quick little flames that wants to burn you and melt the snow. It's playable enough and ok to watch, a bit ruined by the difficult alignement with the platforms while using the ramps, frustratingly slowing down your race.
3/5
by Ronald Rhodes, Keith Burkhill, F. David Thorpe
Pick up the bags of gold, and put them in your purple wheelbarrow, or drop them on the head of your chasers, while they're climbing a ladder under you, in a series of flip screens, in the usual mine, full of elevators, shafts, trucks and hooks. It's bloody hard and picking up the bags is awkward, and right now my headache doesn't help either. I have a deep dislike for this game, although it's technically well done, and not totally unplayable, so it's a
3/5
I want to like this game so much, but I have to disagree about its playability. It's just too hard from the start, could have been a classic.