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Most of us have heard of the author Enid Blyton's creation, The Famous Five – four children and a dog who go on exciting adventures and solve mysteries. This text adventure is based on the first of the 21 books in the series, in which three of the gang travel by train to Kirrin village to stay with their Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin, and meet their cousin Georgina. Together, the gang explore Kirrin Island nearby and search for treasure. This is a great adventure which is very suitable for novice players, although completing it will still be a challenge. There is also excellent use of character interaction; some tasks can only be completed by a particular character, for instance. Unfortunately, the disc version (which contains graphics for some of the locations) is bugged and cannot be completed. It's a shame, but at least the cassette version is fully playable!
The extremely valuable Fantasia Diamond has been stolen and taken to a fortress. Boris the master spy has attempted and failed to retrieve it, so now it's up to you. Among the many characters that you will meet on your journey are a toy robot, a bunch of nasty pixies, an elf, a guardian, a conductor, and a rather unfriendly woodcutter, so there's certainly a lot of variety! Some locations have very crude pictures, although given the year this game was released, this can be excused. There are several random elements during the game which you cannot influence, and the need to find and consume food and drink is an irritation that I could have done without, but the puzzles, with one notable exception, aren't too difficult.
Take yourself on a journey through the human body. You have been miniaturised and injected into the body of a scientist and have to collect pieces of a submarine which you assemble in the brain. However, you also have to fight off infections and kill all the bacteria before the scientist's temperature becomes critically high. The graphics are a bit basic and very dark colours are used, although you can try the green screen option if you have problems. Despite this (and the horrifically awful tune on the menu screen), it's an enjoyable game to play.
This is the third of Dizzy's adventures and I reckon it is the best. Daisy has been kidnapped and is being held in a tower in the clouds, and he also has to collect thirty coins to show his love for her. This is the first adventure to feature Dizzy's friends, the Yolkfolk, and you'll need their help. There are also some mysterious creatures to watch out for, such as hawks, dragons, crocodiles and the armorog! Dizzy sure has a tough life... The graphics are better and more detailed than the previous two Dizzy adventures and the music is quite jolly as well, and at least you have more than one life this time!
See also: Bubble Dizzy, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy Down the Rapids, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Fast Food, Kwik Snax, Magicland Dizzy, Panic Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy.
Dizzy stars in a Pac-Man-style game, where he must eat all the items of food in each maze while avoiding the ghosts – Bonzo, Wiza, Pipa and Fido – each of which has their own personality. Fortunately, there are many power-ups to collect, and bottles of ketchup, mustard and relish will also help Dizzy out. There is a total of thirty levels to go through. It's a nice game with colourful graphics and some rather neat music, although you get an extra life every three levels, which makes things a little too easy. Still, the cartoons you get to see every three levels are fun to watch!
See also: Bubble Dizzy, Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Dizzy, Dizzy Down the Rapids, Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk, Fantasy World Dizzy, Kwik Snax, Magicland Dizzy, Panic Dizzy, Spellbound Dizzy, Treasure Island Dizzy.
Una Cum has now captured The Fear, a small but very powerful wooden casket. It is locked inside a stone circle, and to release it, you must touch the stones in the right order. Having done that, you must then take The Fear to the monastery for good to triumph over evil. You can take control of either Silver (Agravain's daughter), or her husband Frost. The graphics are OK, but there are few sound effects. As for the game itself, it's pretty average and not as good as its predecessor. Your character moves too fast, you can often find yourself getting lost in the scenery, and worst of all, you can only fire horizontally.
See also: Storm.
An evil dictator known simply as Fernandez has taken over the South American country of the Democratic Republic of El Diablo, and its exiled leaders have called on you to free the country. You must take on Fernandez's army single-handedly and blow up eight bases. The playing area is enormous, and you have to shoot (or avoid) soldiers, tanks and mines, among other things. You also have some explosive shells which allow you to enter prisons, which you'll need to do throughout the game, because the prisons link to other areas. The graphics aren't bad, but the music quickly becomes irritating – but it can be switched off. I don't like this game; all the shooting and exploration becomes repetitive, and even with a built-in map, the bases are quite hard to find.
This is another fine example of how original some CPC games were. You take the role of Learic the wizard and are pitted against your brother Leanoric in a sorcery battle to the death. You have to make your way across the medieval kingdom of Little Dullford collecting ingredients to make a wide range of spells. You then mix these spells in your cauldron and use them against your opponent. The graphics here are very quaint and the main theme tune is an absolute classic.
Your Big Top circus has taken out a loan of $10,000, but the bank wants it paid back in full tonight! You must raise the money to ensure that the show will go on, but Fiendish Freddy is determined to stop you. The show consists of six circus events – high diving, juggling, the trapeze, knife throwing, tightrope walking, and the human cannonball. As with nearly all such games, some events are easily mastered, while others (mainly the tightrope walking and human cannonball) are much more tricky, and as a result, are not much fun to play. Despite this, the game overall is still very enjoyable, thanks to the astonishingly colourful graphics and superb animation. There are many humorous touches throughout all of the events, as well as several jolly circus-themed tunes. This is a brilliant game that is full of laughs, especially if you're playing with one or more friends.
In the early 25th century, a scientist has managed to create a time machine. Unfortunately, it exploded and items belonging to other centuries are scattered all over his laboratory. You must collect them and build a new machine. By the way, there are a lot of cyborgs that have gone mad and who will try to kill you... Although it begins like a role-playing game (you must define the attributes of your character) this game is a pure platform game, in which you must find items, kick monsters and climb stairs. The graphics are rather weak but the music is fine and the animation is really smooth. Reaching the top platforms is hard because your character doesn't react quickly enough to avoid the numerous holes that will bring you down a few levels. So it's rather frustrating to play, even though it remains an enjoyable game.
Some aliens, the Zimen, have taken control of the space station Orion. You must guide four robots through a maze of rooms to find a way to get rid of them. The plot isn't very original, as a lot of other games use the same storyline. You can shoot at aliens, but they will quickly spawn again from nowhere and your ammunition is limited! You have to find power sources too, in order to continue your progress. Your four droids are exactly the same and it's impossible to elaborate some kind of strategy. The graphics are poor and the gameplay is far too irritating to make you want to keep trying to explore the base for more than a few minutes.
Every so often, the Strategic Air Command organise the Curtis LeMay trophy (although I don't know whether this is fact or fiction!). Choosing one of four types of fighter aircraft, you must take part in eight bombing missions, armed with a cannon and Sidewinder and Maverick missiles, which are used on air and ground targets respectively. What makes this flight simulation so good is that you see everything in solid 3D, and as a bonus, you can view your 'plane from any angle you want; it's great stuff! Unfortunately, you can't choose which missions you wish to fly, and of course there are all the keys to learn, but with great graphics like this, and several practice modes, it might just convert some people into liking flight simulators!
Ten nations (only ten?) are taking part in a knockout Olympic tournament consisting of four stages. You have to play as the United Kingdom; you can't choose another team. Each team has only five players, and you initially have three minutes of playing time. If you lose, you're out of the tournament, but if you are drawing or winning, you can continue to play the match for another three minutes. This seems a rather strange rule to me! The graphics are quite good, and this is one of the few football games that plays music during the game. The game plays reasonably well, although the scrolling is very jerky and the players are very big compared with the size of the pitch, which becomes confusing when there are several players crowding around the ball.
The evil Pharaoh has kidnapped Princess Thaya and is about to bury her alive in a sacrifice to the Egyptian gods. You must cross the desert to reach and save her, but many monsters and demons must be fought and defeated using your trusty sword. You may find some magic objects along the way as well, but some of them may release evil magic. The animation of both your character and the monsters is excellent, and the graphics were very innovative considering the year this game was released, using two different screen modes and a multi-coloured border. However, the music is dreadful, and there is no variety in the gameplay; the entire game seems to consist of nothing but fighting and defeating monsters.
If you don't know what this coin-op is about, it's likely you didn't play video games around 1990. Just choose your hero, knock down anyone standing in your way and rescue the girl. US Gold attempted the impossible in this conversion, and so they didn't manage to fulfil their objectives. The graphics are quite big, you'll see almost the same enemies, the same background graphics, the same character movements... and you'll see all these things scrolling just as they did in the original game. As a result, the game has very little playability. Nevertheless, I can't say Final Fight is a bad game; let's say the programmers did all they could to code a CPC version of the game. It's quite curious to see, but it cannot be considered a real choice if you want to play a beat-'em-up.
Nimrod the Biopton has been sent to rescue his comrades who have been taken hostage by the evil Cratons. Each of his fellow Bioptons is being held captive in a network of Matrices, but they are heavily defended, and you must watch out for alien guards, disruptors and mines. You are armed with one of three types of weapon, and you can find more weapons within each Matrix, as well as thrust packs which are useful for flying around. However, your weapons have little effect on the alien guards and it's extremely difficult to dodge them and their bullets. As a result, most players will be unable to make any progress at all, despite the benefit of being able to visit any of the Matrices at the beginning of the game. There are few sound effects, the graphics are very Spectrum-like, and the scrolling is jerky.
This is the first game which stars the fearless Magic Knight, who has been placed in the Castle of Spriteland by the King and has to escape from it while grabbing as much treasure as possible, to prove worthy of a place on the Polygon Table. All manner of objects are to be found in the rooms and mazes, which you can trade for cash. Some of them can also be combined to make more valuable objects. The graphics are a bit blocky and the music, while reasonably good, is grating after a while. It's certainly not my favourite Magic Knight game but it's worth the occasional go, even if it's a little bit too easy.
See also: Knight Tyme, Spellbound, Stormbringer.
Fly your helicopter through six missions, across jungles, cities, deserts and ice, shooting 'planes, helicopters and ground targets with a barrage of missiles. Shooting helicopters produces a bonus which you can collect to give extra fuel or firepower. The graphics are really wonderful, although the sound effects are very limited and the music at the beginning of the game isn't all that good. In fact, the programmer is one half of Black System, who produced many excellent listings for French CPC magazines which featured colourful graphics, but had one problem – they were too easy. That's also the case with this game, since you are offered infinite continues, and it's very easy indeed to complete! It's still fun to play while it lasts, though.
In a world in the future which is raging with conflicts in every continent, the United Nations uses armoured Thunder Master vehicles to resolve them. However, the Intergalactic Liberation Organisation regularly attacks the vehicles. There are three levels with six wars on each of them, and you can start on any level. Each war takes you along a stretch of road, where you will meet enemy fire. Collisions with obstacles and bullets loses fuel, and you constantly need to collect the fuel which lies on the road, or the game is over. Unfortunately, you often find yourself being destroyed very quickly, and the game ends almost before you know it. It's a real shame that a game with nice graphics and sound effects (the digitised music on the title screen is excellent!) is ruined by the ridiculous, and random, difficulty.
See also: Fire and Forget II.
More terrorist-busting antics await you in this disappointing sequel. The 3rd International Conference for Peace has been gatecrashed and a nuclear bomb has been placed inside the conference building. You control the new, improved Thunder Master II vehicle, with the ability to fire missiles and convert from a car to an airborne fighter. This time, there are five levels which become progressively longer; too long, in fact. You need to collect fuel, kerosene and missiles for the vehicle, and collisions and running out of fuel costs you one of your six lives. At the end of each level is a truck which you must destroy. The graphics are just as good as in the original game, and there's plenty of cool music to listen to as well. However, the very long levels make this a boring game with little variety.
See also: Fire and Forget.
A bit of an odd one, this – a maze game where you crawl around avoiding scorpions, collecting keys, hitting objects that move obstacles, all in an attempt to save the trapped queen. Upon playing this for the first time you quickly reach game over, but as you learn how your actions affect the maze, it soon becomes addictive. Once you find the way to the last key, you move on to the next level, which scrolls slowly upwards. Each maze contains secrets and new situations that have to be worked out – like the bridge you build in the third maze. Pleasant MODE 0 graphics with basic sound effects thrown in.
The kingdom of Torot has been cursed and only Sir Galaheart can return it to normality again by seeking the sacred Firestone, which is in the hands of the Evil Queen. Torot covers a large area, and to get anywhere, you're going to have to collect the objects which are scattered around and trade them with other folk. You'll also have to make a map and note some teleport codes! It has the look of a Spectrum port and the graphics aren't all that impressive, and there isn't much sound either, but it's a good game, if a little too large for me!
Fireman Sam and his crew have to go round the streets of town and get to the scene of emergencies quickly. Among the many tasks that Sam is asked to complete are fires (of course), getting objects off a roof, and freeing kids who have got their heads stuck in the railings. However, most of Sam's time seems to be spent looking for lost objects. I'm sure the fire service have better things to do than that! If you don't complete a task properly, you'll receive a warning letter; if Sam gets three of these, he's sacked. The game is obviously aimed at children – after all, it is based on a TV cartoon series – and the colourful graphics will appeal to them. For more mature players, though, that's not enough.
A large fire has started inside a huge skyscraper. Soon, it is completely ablaze and has spread to neighbouring skyscrapers. The city requires a daring hero to climb the walls of the skyscrapers and rescue the people inside; that's you, naturally. Starting at the bottom, you must work your way to the top and put out any fires that block your way and avoid the falling objects. In fact, you don't have to rescue all the people (that's not very nice at all!); your main aim is to reach the top, where a damsel in distress is waiting for you. However, the graphics show that the game is obviously a Spectrum port, and unless you keep moving quickly, you will become frustrated at the difficulty of the gameplay.
Although it's a Codemasters release, the person who wrote this also wrote several football management games for Cult, and you know what they're like! This isn't one of the better games, though. It has a graphical menu screen representing your office, where you click on objects on the screen to do things, but the graphics are poor, and the match highlights look awful as well. The worst bit, though, is that most matches end 0-0; in fact, I had to replay an FA Cup match six times because of this! You can train your players in certain areas, but this seems to be of little use, and it's very hard to get yourself promoted given that winning games is so elusive.
There are a few horse racing games for the CPC, but in this game, you actually manage your own horses and enter them for race meetings, as well as betting on other horses and competing with three other trainers. You can enter up to two horses in each race, and study their recent form before you do so. Watching the race itself is relatively amusing as you watch the eight cartoon horses gallop to the finish. However, the graphics are rather poor, and if you're not a fan of horse racing (like me), it's likely that you won't find this game interesting.
If you want to put some digitised speech into your game, at least make sure it's recognisable. As well as being possibly the easiest football game I've ever played (I won my first game against the computer 8-0 and the second 16-0 – and that was in the six-minute game!), it also has the worst digitised speech I've ever heard in any game. You can just about make out the words "Goal! G-g-goal!," but try listening to the attempts at saying "kickoff" and "half time". Thrashing the computer is fun for a while, but soon becomes boring. Playing against a friend might be more fun, but it's a pretty mediocre game, anyway – passing to other players is impossible. The sound of the crowd is good, though.
Oh, no! Don't talk to me about this one! This is a pitifully poor football game which is simply far too easy. It's not just the graphics, which look like a five-year-old drew them and which feature colour clash; nor the awful sound effects which pass for the crowd cheering and the ball being kicked; it's that the opposition are easy meat, and in some instances you can walk straight through them and into the goalmouth without any bother. The animation is dire as well. Avoid this game!
The Earth has been invaded by aliens and you must clear it! You’re a kind of bionic soldier who can transform at will into a jeep, a tank or a helicopter (!). Well, there isn’t much more to tell you about this game. The graphics are dull, the action is boring and the sound is awful. All you can do is try to stay awake as long as possible. I hate those games that haven’t got an ending; when all the aliens have been killed, the colours change and... it's back to the beginning!
If you're seeking a challenge for a few quid... whoops, we're not back in the 1980s. Flash Gordon consists of three stages which are very difficult but a worthy challenge in their distinct ways. The first stage involves a platform affair seeking out Lord Barin, who is hidden beyond the jungle where you first find yourself. There's only one way through this jungle, where you must keep your weapon topped up and try not to run out of time. It took me ages to find the route without cheating. The second stage involves meeting Lord Barin and having to fight him in a Street Fighter II-style game – quite impressive for its time. I never reached the third stage. Overall, good, colourful graphics with average sound effects depicting a game where you have to think in order to win.
Professor Franz Dandruff has kidnapped Pearly the princess from Dewdropland, and Flimbo must rescue her. There are seven levels to complete, and on each one, you must collect a number of scrolls by shooting the Professor's Genetically Undesirable Mutants (GUMs). There is a picture at the bottom of the status screen which shows you what type of GUM to look out for – the mutant to shoot flashes to let you know that it has the next scroll. Some GUMs leave money behind them, which you can use to buy some power-ups at Dazz Bazian's shop. The game has 'cute' written all over it, with colourful and cheerful graphics and fairly simple gameplay. However, every level consists almost solely of shooting random monsters repeatedly, which is not enthralling at all.
It's time to use the grey matter, to solve 105 brain-busting puzzles. Each puzzle consists of a pattern on a square grid, and you have to click on certain squares to produce the pattern shown at the bottom right of the screen. Clicking on squares changes the state of other squares in the grid, but you will need to experiment to find out exactly which squares are affected when you click on a particular square. The first few levels are easy, as one might expect, but it quickly becomes more difficult. Thankfully, you can start on any level. The graphics are unspectacular and the game is written in BASIC, but most puzzle game fans should like it. For the rest of us, it's not really a game that will keep you enthralled for long.
Fluff is the CPC's answer to Sonic the Hedgehog – so said Amstrad Action, and the similarities are there. Fluff has to rescue her four children on each level, negotiating platforms and lifts and avoiding insects, weeds and nasty pits of slime. This is one of the very few games that makes maximum use of the Plus' facilities, and it was also one of the last commercial games to be released for the CPC range. The graphics are nothing less than stunning and there's a cool tune as well. It's also an excellent game, although the scrolling is a bit jerky.
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be a servant at Buckingham Palace, catering to the Royal Family's every whim? As a flunky, your ambition is to get the autograph of five members of the Royal Family by helping them out. For instance, Prince Charles wants his polo balls back, Sarah Ferguson wants you to paint freckles on her face, Prince Andrew wants a boat to play with, and Princess Di can't find her wig! The graphics are very blocky but are bright and cartoony, and most of the tasks are difficult to complete, with some very obscure objects required.
Pilot a World War II biplane, the Flying Shark, over enemy territory, shooting 'planes, tanks and gun turrets. So there's nothing original about the plot of the game, which is another vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up that you've seen many times before. There are five levels, but you will need some seriously nifty reflexes, not to mention good eyesight, to make it that far. Yes, it's a rather difficult game, partly because there are so many 'planes on the screen at once, but mostly because the bullets are very difficult to see since they blend in with the background. The graphics are OK, but the music could be better, and so could the gameplay.
Another one of those bizarre games! In this one, you must locate the brain within a maze and destroy it with a bomb. You control a little helicopter and you can pick up objects to use in certain sections of the maze. There's a lot of teleporting to be done and it's easy to get trapped, and you'll also need a pen and paper to note the codes for the teleport stations. The graphics are great, the music and sound effects are both wonderful, and it's a lot of fun to play as well, too, especially with all the silly messages that the programmer has left in the maze!
Fly your Tornado fighter 'plane through four levels of airborne mayhem, shooting down formations of enemy jets and avoiding their bullets. Thankfully, unlike a lot of other shoot-'em-ups, the bullets are easy to see; they're red and orange to make them stand out from the background. At the end of each level is a huge target for you to destroy – a tank, a helicopter, a jet, or an airport control tower. There's no music, and the only sound effects you'll hear are when you're firing bullets, or you or an enemy 'plane is destroyed. However, the graphics are very nice, and it's a good game, albeit one that is slightly too easy.
See also: Q10 Tank Buster.
You have just been appointed as manager of a 3rd Division football team, and your aim is to become the manager of a top team and win the 1st Division. Unlike most other football management games, you won't be managing the same team for the entire game; if you perform well enough, you'll attract the attention of other teams and can join them instead. The game is entirely text-based with no graphics whatsoever, but thankfully, there are no extended match highlights; instead, the results of every match are listed on the screen, one at a time. Unfortunately you can't choose tactics, and although there is a training option, it's really difficult to judge its effectiveness, thanks to a lack of detailed statistics for your players. This is a below average football management simulation.
Yet another football management game in which you become the manager of any one of 96 teams and try to make your way from the 4th to the 1st Division. However, this simulation is rather more difficult than most others I've played. Your team consists of 11 players and 5 reserves, each of whom is a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder or forward, and is rated with a skill of between 1 and 5 – but as you play matches, their skills become worse, and even moving them to the reserves to rest them won't help. You can buy new players on the transfer market, but only one player is on the market each week, and it's nearly always not the type of player you want. The match highlights are quick, but that's not much of a bonus when the difficulty level is set much too high.
Can you win the coveted award of Footballer of the Year? If you want to, you'll have to show your worth and score goals – and lots of them. Starting in any of the four divisions, or the 'super league', you play matches and try to score goals by buying goal cards – and as you score more goals, you'll earn greater recognition, money, and maybe you'll be transferred to a better club. You can also buy incident cards, which might give you more money... but you might also lose money! This isn't a bad game by any means, but it didn't really grab my interest in the long term.
See also: Footballer of the Year 2.
Once again, you're aiming to win the title of Footballer of the Year by scoring as many goals as you can in a season. The main differences here are in the scoring of goals – you choose you many goal cards you want to use, and you have to select from 21 plans. After viewing the blackboard tactics, you have to recreate this on the pitch and score. There are no incident cards, though; instead, they're replaced by a 'double or nothing' game where you answer footballing questions. This also forms the basis of some transfer offers, and unless you're a bit of a buff about football, getting them right is a matter of guesswork. This game would be better than the original, but the appalling graphics let it down very badly.
See also: Footballer of the Year.
Grimesditch Rangers, a small and struggling football club, has somehow beaten many of the best teams and reached the final of the FA Cup. As the manager, this is your moment of glory – but with three days to go until the final match, everything that can go wrong does. Bills need to be paid; the kit needs to be washed and Ma Wallis at the laundry won't do it; there won't be a coach available to take the players to the match; your star player quits the team... and so it goes on. This is actually a text adventure created using GAC, and apparently it sold quite well. Unfortunately, it's a nightmare to play, thanks to an extremely unforgiving parser that demands you type an exact combination of several words, yet won't accept more obvious combinations.
This was the original football management game, and it was written a long time ago. You start in the 4th Division and must make your way towards the top of the 1st Division (remember, this was before the Premier League was formed!). There aren't that many options available, but you can buy and sell players and change the names of your team and players, as well as deciding which players to use. Although the match highlights are awful, they don't last too long. This game is certainly showing its age, though, and a lot of other football management games have been released since then.
See also: Football Manager 2, Football Manager 3, Football Manager World Cup Edition.
This game is much better than the original. Once again, you're in the 4th Division and have to work your way to the top of the 1st Division. The range of options is similar, but you can also do some passing training. You can now select where your players will go on the pitch, as well as choosing substitutes. The presentation is quite impressive and the match highlights are really nice and enjoyable to watch, too, with some realistic crowd noises! In fact, this is probably the best football management game for the CPC.
See also: Football Manager, Football Manager 3, Football Manager World Cup Edition.
Whereas Football Manager 2 is one of the best football management games on the CPC, its sequel is very disappointing. As ever, you can select any of 92 teams and are automatically thrown into the 4th Division with a team that consists of a bunch of ageing thirtysomethings. Although there is a greater range of options available and the statistics are more detailed (for instance, there are eight skill and fitness attributes for each player, and full league tables are available), it's such a bore to play. The entire game is very slow and cumbersome, and the match highlights seem to last an eternity – and why do you usually get two or three players in your team with the same surname?
See also: Football Manager, Football Manager 2, Football Manager World Cup Edition.
This was actually released after Football Manager 2, which may cause some confusion. You can take control of any of over 100 countries in their quest to win the World Cup. However, you don't really get to do much in the way of tactics; instead, you respond to questions asked to you by two commentators, which can affect the morale of your team. If you ask me, that's a silly way to play a football management game. The match highlights are all right, though.
See also: Football Manager, Football Manager 2, Football Manager 3.
The Evil Lord wants you to collect several parts of a message that he has left on the Forbidden Planet. The planet is heavily guarded with laser defences which fire at you, and there are also many plasma tunnels (basically, hollow rectangles) through which you must pass, or your ship's energy will be depleted. There are also 'dislocations' which teleport you to another area of the planet. It's a 3D space shoot-'em-up which is very fast, but actually it's a truly awful game; steering the ship using the map is very inaccurate, and your energy depletes so fast that you don't stand a chance of surviving for more than five minutes. As Amstrad Action discovered, entering swear words into the high score table is more fun than playing the game itself.
See also: Dark Star.
Princess Mara has been captured by the evil wizard Zarn, and you have been sent to the forest to rescue her. However, many foes lurk within the forest. This adventure game is actually a bit easy, although there are several confusing mazes, and the exits from each room aren't logical – for instance, you can go north at the start, but to get back to the starting room, you have to go west! The vocabulary is also rather limited, but this isn't too much of a problem, and the graphics, while reasonable, aren't quite up to the standard of Interceptor's other adventures.
As you are sleeping, you dream about being on a forest path... then you wake, and find that you are now on that path. You've entered some sort of fantasy world – Forestland. This is a text adventure which uses most of the clichés that are to be found in any standard text adventure – dark places which require a torch, doors to unlock, treasure to be found, and a complex maze. Despite the plot, the adventure is little more than a treasure hunt, and although I seem to be criticising it very harshly, it's actually not too bad – at least, if you're a novice adventurer. The HELP command provides clues at appropriate places to help you. Experienced text adventure fans won't find it much of a challenge, though.
The third and last of Charles Sharp's sports-themed GAC text adventures sees you at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, as the coach for the women's javelin team. For some reason, Britain's two best female javelin throwers, Fatima Sanderson and Tessa Whitbread, have been performing poorly since they arrived at the Hotel Olympus. Has their food been poisoned or drugged? Well, those Lithuatvians look suspicious, and you've got only three days to solve the mystery... Thankfully, this is a somewhat easier game to get to grips with than the other sports-themed text adventures which I mentioned earlier, although the parser is still limited and you will occasionally have to enter exact combinations of words to achieve the correct results, which is rather annoying.
The Emperor Bios and his minions have laid waste to the cities, turning them into forgotten worlds. You have returned to the cities and have to destroy the Emperor's minions and three monsters he has created. You have a jet pack at your disposal, so you can fly all over the screen and manoeuvre swiftly to avoid hails of rockets and missiles. You can also pick up coins and buy some power-ups. This is a very good shoot-'em-up, boasting colourful graphics and blistering action. It takes time to work out how to control your character, but once you master it, you'll really like the game.
There are lots of Formula 1 racing games on the CPC, but Formula 1 management games are very rare. Up to six players can play as you battle it out to win the World Championship. You get to choose your team, which drivers to hire, and your sponsors. Before each race, you can spend money on improving both cars, and you must also choose which tyres to run with. The races are fun to watch, but you do have some involvement in them, as you have to get one of your mechanics to change the tyres and fix the car in pit stops! The graphics are mediocre and the sound basically consists of rather nice engine noises, but if you're a Formula 1 fan, you'll probably enjoy this game immensely.
Qualify and race your car around any one of ten Grand Prix circuits. You'll first have to do a qualifying lap before actually racing against the other cars. You can choose whether to use automatic or manual gears, but if you use manual gears, make sure you don't over-rev the engine and blow it up! One thing you unfortunately can't choose is the weather, which usually ends up being wet, thus making the car more difficult to control. The game hasn't stood the test of time, though; the cars are just black silhouettes and there is no scenery of any sort, and the title tune is grating.
Lord Angkor's beautiful daughter, the 22-year-old princess Gwendoline, has been kidnapped and locked away in a fortress. Can a brave warrior such as yourself rescue her? This is a graphic adventure which is very easy indeed to get into. Gwendoline is wearing a suit of armour, and you must find padlocks to remove the armour one piece at a time. Once you have found all of them, Gwendoline will be revealed in all her beauty... What struck me most was the quality of the graphics; each of the dozens of locations is represented by a beautiful, full colour, digitised picture. Hardened fans of French adventures might not like the relative simplicity of this game – there are only six types of objects to be collected and only a small set of commands which are represented by icons – but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
This is a compilation of four soccer games – 11-a-Side Soccer, Indoor Soccer, Street Soccer, and Soccer Skills (a training game). There's not much difference between the first three, other than the rules and the scenery. The training game is a joystick-waggling game where you take part in various training programmes and complete them in the shortest time possible, and not surprisingly, it's dull. The other three are OK, and there are three difficulty levels for each. You can also play with up to three other people, although having four people crowded around a keyboard makes things awkward!
The Soviet Union has planted a nuclear device somewhere in the United Kingdom, and is intending to denotate it before the General Election to create a totalitarian British state. You are John Preston, an investigator at MI5, and you have to stop the Russians' dastardly plans. This game is based on Frederick Forsyth's novel of the same name and is in three parts. In the first part, you have to find out who is leaking some secret NATO documents to the Russians, but you'll need to keep your eye on other events. The second and third parts concentrate on the hunt for the bomb. The plot is certainly thrilling, but sadly, the game is let down by the awkward menu and control system.
Those who are fond of that virile sport have surely heard of Frank Bruno, former heavyweight World Boxing Council champion. Well, the game itself isn't very appealing. The graphics are blocky and it's really hard to be accurate during the fights. It's definitely arcade-oriented, for the behaviour of your opponents isn't realistic at all. For instance, just after having been knocked down, they will deliver an uppercut that knocks you out! So all you have to do is hit them as fast as possible, which quickly becomes boring.
A strange concept of basing a computer game on a pop group of the 1980s. They had several hits and I enjoyed their music but the game is rather original and different in all respects. You start in Mundanesville where everything is mundane – or is it? You travel the streets and explore the terraced houses in your goal to become a real person. It's an adventure-style game with a number of arcade elements that will keep you playing for a very long time. There are some nice touches like leaving milk for the cat and being required to solve a murder mystery by analysing the clues you are given. The graphics are on the poor side and an annoying version of one of the group's biggest hits, Two Tribes, plays throughout. It is definitely well worth playing, though, and it has an addictive quality about it.
Help Frank build his monster, Stein, together and bring him to life in fifty screens of this platform game. You must collect the seven parts that make up Stein's skeleton, but they have to be collected in the right order. Furthermore, you cannot jump up to higher platforms by yourself; you must use the springs instead. There are other surprises in store, such as ice, slime and teleporters, and of course, an array of monsters. Therefore, getting all the parts requires you to use your brain. When you've completed each screen, you are faced with a Donkey Kong-style screen to tackle. The graphics are simple, with a nice effect used to add extra colours. Overall, it's a rather average game, although the first screen is a lot harder than the ones following it.
Freddy Hardest, the intergalactic playboy, was flying home from another party when he crashed his spaceship on the planet of Ternat – remember, never drink and drive! The ship is damaged beyond repair, so he must enter the alien base on the planet and steal one of their four spaceships. Once inside the base, he has to collect a nuclear fuel cell for the ship and log on to the computer terminals scattered around the base to find out how to launch the four ships. The graphics are stupendous, particularly inside the base, which is quite big; you'll need to make a map to find your way around it. Although the first part of the game seems difficult initially, practice makes perfect, and once you complete it, you can always go straight to the second part.
See also: The Guardian Angel.
The aliens are invading your home planet. Can you fly in the Freedom Fighter and destroy them all? Yes, this is yet another space shoot-'em-up, and it's not very good at all. The aliens appear at the top of the screen and move steadily downwards, firing bullets and releasing concussion bombs. If a bullet hits you, or a bomb hits the bottom of the screen, you lose a life. Fortunately the bombs can be defused by picking them up (!). The graphics may be cute and colourful, but they are also very flickery indeed. The programmer may only have been 14 years old when he developed this game, but a poor game is a poor game. At least the digitised speech that says, "Get ready!" before each level is fairly clear.
Fres Fighter II Turbo, as its name implies, is a Street Fighter II-style fighting game and perhaps the most advanced of its kind on the CPC. It is a huge game spanning four disc sides, with very detailed MODE 1 graphics and a nice soundtrack along with nice special effects. The colours used change from stage to stage, and because of the ultra-detailed graphics, they look great! The game intro is one of the best I have witnessed on the CPC. The gameplay speed can be adjusted and the controls are easy to learn. There are also special moves for each of the six selectable contestants. Moreover, there are several game modes, including one for 16 players! On the whole, this is by all means a masterpiece for the CPC, from start to finish.
Based on the movie of the same name, this is a graphic adventure game. The loading screen is quite gory for the time and you hear a bellowing scream which I thought was quite well adapted. You play the role of one of the movie characters and you must find Jason before he kills off your friends. The grounds of the playing area are graphically quite basic-looking but do the job in its own sort of way. You do get the feeling it's a bad place, especially with the atmospheric type of tunes that play throughout and change with the screen, as well as the bellowing screams you hear as Jason attacks your friends. To stop Jason and save your friends from a gruesome death you must find objects and then find Jason, who is identified by being dressed in black, and kill him before he kills you.
Another classic game for the Plus machines only, Frogger puts us in the position of a frog that must cross an avenue full of traffic and a dangerous river! This very enjoyable game is from the early 1980s era – a time when gameplay was the alpha and the omega of gaming. The graphics are colourful, and faithful to the original coin-op game, while the sound is equally good. One problem regarding the gameplay is that you cannot move Frogger diagonally, thus making progress through each level more difficult and sometimes frustrating. Nevertheless, this game provides strong grab factor and can give the player much entertainment.
Guide the frogs across the busy road without being squished, then jump across the river using the turtles and logs and put five frogs in the holes on the other side of the river. Yes, it's Frogger time again. This version has colourful graphics and several merry little melodies which play in the background while you're guiding the frogs home. At first it's not too difficult, but the traffic becomes so heavy by the third level that crossing the road seems to be almost impossible and you won't really want to play any further.
A squad of troops has been sent to infiltrate enemy bases. Each troop member takes it in turn to enter and explore each base, firing bullets from his automatic MK gun, and lobbing grenades at turrets, guns and soldiers in trenches. While you're doing all of this, your real aim is to find a bag containing sensitive documents which has been carelessly placed somewhere in the base, and then go to the laboratory to complete the level. Extra grenades and upgrades to your gun are readily available, and there is a bottle of elixir which restores your strength. The graphics are fairly good, although the sound effects could be better, and despite the game being slightly slow, it's still nice to play.
The planet of Cosmia has been taken over by monsters, who are capturing and imprisoning the inhabitants, who are known as Kreezers. You play the part of a Kreezer called Hickey, who has just escaped from his cage and must venture through caverns filled with monsters and other hazards, rescuing five other Kreezers along the way. Hickey and the other Kreezers look and behave much like a slinky toy, and the controls take a lot of getting used to. It's very difficult to position yourself to jump or shoot at a monster when it's about to collide with you, and it can be frustrating to play at first as you lose life after life. However, if you stick with it, you will progress and hopefully find this game to be an enjoyable one, with the added bonus of colourful graphics.
This is not one of the better fruit machine games, I can tell you! OK, there's the three reels that you find on any fruit machine, with badly drawn cherries, strawberries, lemons, bells, bar symbols and £1 signs; but the screen looks so bare while you're spinning the reels. Neither do the reels actually scroll properly as they do in real life; some coloured blobs appear instead. There are a few extras which allow you to gamble some cash, such as 'winner spinners', and nudges are also available, but I wouldn't bother playing this game.
There aren't exactly many great fruit machine games about – after all, you can't win any money from them! Then again, you can't lose any, either... This one is crammed with extra games with enticing names such as 'Skill Climb' and 'Winning Streak', to win (or more likely, lose) some more money, and there's lots of digitised speech which you can actually make out. You can also decide to stop at any time if you think you've won enough money, which is nice. The graphics are a feast of colour and the music is seriously funky.
See also: Fruit Machine Simulator 2.
There really is little difference between this game and its predecessor – it's just that the array of extra money-making features is so great as to be bewildering. However, there's something about the game that doesn't make it just as appealing. Perhaps it's the absence of any digitised speech, although some may consider that a good thing. Perhaps it's that the graphics aren't quite as colourful. Perhaps it's the tune, which is jolly but nowhere near as good as that in the original game. I don't know, but I prefer the original Fruit Machine Simulator to this sequel.
See also: Fruit Machine Simulator.
Although I never got to play this game when I was a kid, I remember reading stories in CPC magazines about how kids loved this game – and it's not hard to understand why. It's such a simple game and yet it's addictive. Frank has to collect all the fruit on each level, while avoiding the enemies that run around. You have to dig tunnels to reach the fruit, and you can also use apples as boulders to crush the enemies. With simple, colourful graphics and jolly tunes, this is a game that almost anyone will enjoy, no matter what age they are!
Pilot your F-16 along four missions, flying over desert, snow, the tropics and the ocean. In this offering from Mastertronic, you take on approaching aircraft, dodge tank fire and take out the helicopter bosses. The sparse scenery passes under you at a rapid rate, as do the enemies in the sky. Each stage plays pretty much the same as the last and soon becomes tedious. The graphics are decent for such a game, with sound effects to match.
A man named Xocann plans to destroy the entire Akronn planetary system. You play Jack Bludfield, a former agent of the Foundation, half human and half machine, and you must stop Xocann from carrying out his plan. Your journey starts in New York, where one of his companions still lives. This is a graphic adventure with around 70 truly amazing pictures in full colour, yet using the CPC's higher resolution, four-colour mode; they really have to be seen to be appreciated. In fact, there are so many pictures that the game occupies two whole discs. Unfortunately, playing the game itself is not so amazing. You execute commands by selecting icons, but it's hard to know what to do most of the time, and the unhelpful responses when you use the wrong commands – "Impossible" or "There is nothing special" – make this a somewhat frustrating adventure to play.
Fu-Kung is a Chinaman who is inspecting all the casinos in Las Vegas to ensure that they are honest. Why he is doing this is a mystery... On each level, Fu-Kung must collect four playing cards, then head for the exit sign. This is a very poor platform game with blocky graphics and abysmal sound effects. It's certainly not fun to play either. Fu-Kung walks very slowly, and some very precise positioning is required to jump over some of the gaps between platforms – and if you fail, you must start the level all over again. This is definitely a game you should avoid playing.
Martech has a go at space racing and to be completely honest, it's at the same low standard as its other gaming ventures. It starts off with the most diabolical cursor movement I have seen on a CPC menu; you have to align a vertical and horizontal line to select the function you want. Then when the game starts, you're not sure what is really going on; you press left to go forward, and all these other cars zip past you. From what I understand, you have three race types – speed run, killing and tag – but they are chosen at random and you can't select the type of race you want to play. The graphics are Spectrum-looking MODE 1 and all the cars are the same colour, and the in-game sound consists mostly of a poor droning noise representing your engine. You're likely to load it, have a few goes and get annoyed and switch it off.
This is a shoot-'em-up which is set in a future where motorcycles are banned. But someone has developed an alternative mode of transport to replace it – the future bike. You race your future bike along five tracks, shooting other bikers and collecting money which you can use to buy power-ups to improve your bike, such as shields, smart bombs, extra energy and lives, and a radar to show the route the track takes ahead of you. The radar is very useful because the game is remarkably fast, and if you crash into the side of the track (which is easy to do), you lose a lot of energy. The graphics are reasonably good, but it's a standard shoot-'em-up, and the speed of the game will put a few people off.
After crashlanding on an alien planet, you, as the Future Knight, must escape your massive ship, fight your way along the planet's surface, and ultimately rescue some woman who was stolen from your ship. The first half of the game is undoubtedly the best, as you wander your ships corridors looking for the way out, using your ray-gun to blast the huge Transformer-like robot enemies into atoms. When you eventually reach the planet's surface, the pace lessens somewhat, and the difficulty level rises quite a lot, but not enough to render the game unplayable. The graphics are gorgeous (I love those huge robots!), there are some nice futuristic tunes and sound effects, and the game is hugely addictive. Another triumph by Gremlin! Oh, one more thing, leave Future Knight standing still for a while and see what happens...
In this game from Tynesoft, you play a very happy-looking chap in a strange world indeed. Collecting items is the task at hand as you wander around this very weird place. Certain areas allow you to levitate, while others take control of you, throwing you to some hidden room. Each room is decorated with some very crude-looking platforms and oddly chosen colours. The sprites are all blocky and flickery, adding to the poor game that this one is. As you listen to the pleasant tune (which can be turned off in the tabs above the play area) something springs to mind here – weird game!