Before you play Zynaps Spectrum you’d better invest in the toughest most responsible joystick you can find. ‘Cause Zynaps is the best all-guns-blazing left-right-scrolling arcade game I’ve seen in ages.

Graphically you’ll believe a Spectrum totally lacks attribute problems, you’ll believe a Spectrum can shunt sixteen sprites and background around at 25 frames per second. And you’ll believe a game can have sixteen varied and detailed levels with some of the largest sprites leaping around the screen.

Zynaps Spectrum is by Dominic Robinson whose previous claim to fame is as converter of Uridium to the Spectrum, the game they said could not be converted.

Pretty good credentials. It even manages to incorporate a few original looking aliens.

Let’s spend not too much time on the plot. For some reason your battleship has a very good reason to zoom through assorted backgrounds from high-tech space city interiors through asteroid belts past craggy alien landscapes to peculiar floating bubbles and beyond.

For some reason you need to destroy anything that moves and a few things that don’t and everybody is firing at you. For some reason when you destroy a wave of aliens or obliterate a particular alien gun tower you get to pick up an energy diamond. And for some reason the more energy diamonds you have the more fire power you build from useless single-shot laser to multi-pulsing photon blasts plus bouncing bombs and guided missiles.

Having failed to do anything particularly spectacular with Gunrunner, Hewson seems to have spent some considerable time on the gameplay of Zynaps Spectrum.

My God, the game is difficult. That is, it took me zillions of goes before I even managed to escape from the first level. This was mainly because of the very unpleasant gun emplacements which lob blob bombs at you. So unpleasant are they that the little bombs even get lobbed at your from behind (blighters). If you do manage to take out a gun emplacement however you are guaranteed of an energy diamond. Get on to those higher levels of firepower as quickly as possible.

There are sixteen levels but in any one play you only get a partly random (ie start levels are the same) selection of twelve. The graphics really are stunning, the kind of backgrounds you sometimes see in lesser games as static backgrounds but scrolling very smoothly. Color have been arranged so that there is almost no evidence of color clash whatsoever.

Even the sound is better than OK inluding a particularly stomach churning “neeeeeeekl” when you bite the dust. Again.

The weapons system gets pretty nifty, although the start laser is pathetic and your ship is slow accumulation of energy lets you hurtle across the screen and loose guided missiles, which bounce around the screen under your control taking out dozens of aliens at a time. It’s a bit like a round boomerang. When you get to the seriously large alien mothership you’ll need it. It is, by the way, spectacularly wonderful and even animated.

That’s about it really. Zynaps is the game your joystick was designed for.

Download Solomon’s Key Remake

Boulderdash of the second generation, Solomon’s Key game, has similar appeal. The art of it is as much thought as speedy response (although you need plenty of both).

And the game is both mind numbingly simple and very addictive.

Where Boulderdash had boulders Solomon’s Key game has blocks. Blocks that may be destroyed by well aimed head-butt or created out of nothing.

The game idea from the bottom of the screen your little man has to climb up using blocks as stepping stones – building as he goes – to reach an exit at the top of the screen. The whole thing is under the clock – the quicker you do it the more points you get and – also – on the way there are bonus items to be collected for even more points and a key to be found to open the exit to the next level.

To begin with the problem in time – just choosing sensible routes, learning the art of manipulating the blocks and getting the key within the time limit. After two or three goes you get the hang of it and the first screen becomes comparatively simple. On later levels though, things get more difficult. Assorted creatures start to wander around the blocks – you either have to dodge them or destroy them by collapsing a block from under them at a key moment.

There are firebomb bonuses to help which mean you can wipe out on coming aliens when the going get really tough one another peculiar objects scattered around each screen which bump up your score by mysterious amounts.

As you progress it gets very, very difficult indeed.

It took me ages to figure out how to do the second screen – you hardly have time to think before what appears to be a fire-breathing fox and disembodied head hurtle down the screen at you.

The programming is excellent. True there isn’t really anything very difficult involved – nice attribute grid-shaped objects and not too many moving objects – but nevertheless the end result is really colorful, smooth and fast.

The only significant criticism I can make is that, like adventure games, once you’ve found the solution to a level that’s it.

After trial and error I cracked Level 1 so that I could always achieve a time bonus of more than 7000 – and the level soon became merely an irritating obstacle on the way to Level 2 which I hadn’t yet cracked.

A “choose your start level” would have been much appreciated. A small point, though.

Generally the game is wonderful, it may be simple but could well be a seriously big hit.

Download Barbarian Dos Version (runs with DOSBox)

I don’t know how they’ve done it, but they have. Melbourne House has managed to faithfully convert one of my all time favorite Amiga games to one of the mist feeble computers around today. Barbarian Spectrum is just so wicked, it makes Eugene Lacey look poor in comparison. Barbarian Spectrum is just the slickest, bestest speccy arcade adventure ever, and that even rules out my old favorite, Firelort.

You a Hegor, the rootin’, tootin’, slashin’, bashin’, dinosaur-slaying Barbarian, who also claims to be the toughest son of a chicken ever, and you’ve been sent to take care of an evil wizard, who’s done something bad I suppose and (yawn), I guess he’s hiding somewhere down a dungeon with lots of levels and nasties. Oh, why should I carry on, you’ve heard it all before anyway…

So, off you trot, and before long you find yourself in a nice little field near the entrance to the dungeon, and this is where the game begins. As this first screen is completely void of any nasties and traps and things, now is a good time to hone your fighting skills. To perfect these, you have to get used to the icons at the bottom of the screen. Look at any convenient screen shot that happens to be near this review, and I’ll talk you through the icons, left to right.

First, you’ve got a group of four arrows pointing in the four normal directions. These are the commands to make Hegor walk left or right, and climb up and down ladders or steps. Next to that, you’ve got what looks like a VC. This means stop all actions, oh please, or for god’s sake stop, no don’t go there you’ll die, etc. Next to that you’ve got a badly drawn umbrella, which makes you somersault – useful for getting over collapsing bridges. Then you have the icon that looks like the rewind button on your video. This makes you run in the direction you’re facing. Next to that, there’s a picture of a sword. This means use the item you have in your hand. Then you’ve got another piccy of a sword, which means, curiously enough, do a backward somersault. Finally, you’ve got the two arrows that are cirling each other, this means drop everything and run away. This is not advisable because you drop everything and lose your weapon as well.

Right, that’s the confusing bit over with. The rest of the game is a regular hack and slash adventure through quite a large map. On various screens, traps will appear out of the blue and try and kill you. One nasty trap is the old “collapsing bridge” trick. Then you’ve got the “large door with spikes falling from the ceiling” jape. As well as traps, there are lots of different types of nasties, just waiting to eat you, or put their head up your bum – whichever is more painful.

Just like the Yellow Pages, not all the things in the game are nasty. There are some good things, as well, like blocked drains, broken windows and extra weapons. You can find a bow and a very limited amount of arrows in place of the map, and these are used to kill baddies at long range, as there are some that you just can’t get to. Also a shield lies hiddn somewhere, and it’s with this that you kill the Wizard, but I’m not telling you how.

The graphics have come down very nicely, and do bear quite a bit of resemblance to the original, though some of the animation is decidedly dodgy.

Thankfully, MH hasn’t tried to get the sound onto the humble black box.

Automania Spectrum is the first Wally game and perhaps that is why it is almost entirely an arcade game.

Automania Spectrum is a superior Manic Miner-alike, in that MicroGen has adopted the best features from the seminal precursor and added some originality of its own. You have to help “Manic Mechanic” Wally Week (a neat bit of graphic characterization) gather the six parts of a car from around his garage workshop, which is graught with the usual assortiment of weird and whackies, collapsing walways, and so on. There are ten cars to build, which works out at 20 screens, each scenario using two screens.

All Wally’s quest is against the time, and different moving parts of garage stuff. While you have to assemble a car, the program plays the “Laurel and Hardy” theme non-stop and… why are you looking so bored? Thankfully it can be turned off.

Good graphics and varied fun, Automania Spectrum is well worth giving a go.

Wham! Bounce! Help!.. Just three seconds of play and I’m head over heels. Literally. Because the nasties in this game don’t kill you, thay just bounce you around the screen. It’s hilarious. It’s brilliant. And the game itself plays and feels quite different to Sabre Wulf, or indeed to any other game around. You’re sich of hearing it, folks, but it has to be said: Ultimate have done it again.

You could describe Underwurlde as a vast platform adventure game. Vast because there are over 500 locations. Platform because you have to do an awful lot of leaping to get anywhere. Adventure because the game involves exploring in search of weapons to destroy the evil guardians.

The first thing that strikes you is the animation of Sabreman himself. Make him jump and he soars into the air like a bird, arms outstretched, body gracefully angled. Collide with an object or a creature and he spins to the ground in an ungainly sprawl. It’s magnificent programming.

And the creatures are just as good, with winged “harpies”, jellyfish-like creatures, gremlins and, in some locations, eagles which may pick you up and carry you through several screens away from your desired course.

Contact with any other creature will send you flying – sometimes this is just a nuisance, but in many of the screens, it means you get knowcked off the platform you’re standing on, fall just a bit too far and… SPLAT.

If you’re to have any hope of getting anywhere, you must find a weapon to keep those nasties at bay. Fortunately, there’s a catapult available right at the start which can send out a spray of projectiles in the direction you’re facing.

As you painfully bounce your way around you discover that the scenery is of two different kinds. There’s the interior of what could be a castle, decorated with book-shelves, chests, eagles’ crests, torches and other objects all of which double as platforms to leap onto. Then there are screns of underground tunnels and caverns in which lines of bubbles drift gently upwards from numerous small volcanos.

These bubbles are an essential means of transport. Jump onto on, and up you go with it – a refreshing change from platform leaping. Also in the caverns you can use a rope which automatically fastens itself to a cavern roof if you jump close enough to it – a brilliant touch.

Other features include a variety of gems which temporarily make you invulnerable, extra lives to be collected in the shape of mini-Sabremen, and the guardians themselves.

Once you’ve got past the third guardian, you have to try to find an exit from the Underwurlde. There are apparently three different exits, and finding just one won’t be enough! I say no more.

What puts Underwurlde in a class above most other recent arcade-adventures is the way it plays. The action is incredibly hectic, yet wonderfully different. This is something to do with the fact that a single leap can carry Sabreman the entire width of a screen.

It’s one of that tiny elite of games which you fall in love with in seconds, yet keeps you going for weeks.

However four criticisms are worth making:

• there is no high score table;
• once the game is solved, interest in it will fall of. This could be avoided to some extent by including a timer, so that one could try to complete it more quickly next time.
• Ultimate are still pesisting with their strange control key layout. Why not have user-defined keys?
• some copies of the program appear to contain a bug which causes the ropes to stop working after a while. Ultimate insist only a few are affected and that these will be replaced.

Despite this, the game is another certain number 1 and another glossy chapter in the Ultimate success story.

Biggles – bi-planes, caves and secret weapons, Capt W. E. Johns could have coped with. But a time warp? Biggles in the 1980s? Helicopters in 1917?

W. E. Johns, the author of the Biggles books, is probably turning in his grave right now.

Biggles online the game, like Biggles the movie is a curious concoction of caracters and objects all in the wrong time zones. The bizzare plot hinges on a “hole” in time which unites Biggles with his time-twin, Jim Ferguson. The time tunnel idea functions as a neat link between a number of separate games between which the play flips quite unexpectedly, every time you are killed.

You take the role of Jim, rather than Biggles. He’s young, American and definetly from the 1980s. One day, without warning, his Spectrum goes Whooosh! and turns into a Sopwith Camel high above a WW1 battlefield.

Taca-taca-taca-tac. Bullets stream out as Biggle’s arch enemy the evil Erich von Stalhein closes in for the kill. A dog fight ensures, the two bi-planes weave about in an almost convincing manner. Andi-aircraft shells pumped from tanks below are surprisingly accurate.

Suddenly you’re hit. Whooosh! That familiar sinking feeling – the time tunnel again – and you end up in some caves fighting German footsoldiers. It’s all very confusing.

The second arcade game gets underway with you trying to make it to the test site of the enemy’s secret weapon. The screen scrolls and your stick-like character trots along firing as he goes. Repeater fire in 1917? Surely not.

Grenades can be lobbed, from a descrete distance at enemy pillboxes, silencing their deadly fire. Get the distance wrong and you’ll waste your fire.

The enemies are only intelligent-ish. Once you start running forward, they tend to foolw, but stand still and they’ll mill around, ignoring you completely. If you get killed then it will be by accident and a stray bullet.

You can’t last forever and soon you’ll walk into a bullet when Whiz! Bang! you’re depisited with Biggles on a London rooftom in 1986. This is the third arcade game and the only one which leaves you weaponless. Here some nifty toe work is needed if you’re to guide the dynamic duo to the secret code which enables you to play the final game, a kind of fight simulation on the other side of the cassette.

There is an aim to each of the four games and they have to be completed in order if you’re to get that secret code. It’s very difficult because just as you feel you’re getting somewhere, you’re thrown off-course by a time warp. Three symbols, one for each game, lie at the bottom of the screen and disintegrate each time you’re killed. The game ends when one disintegrates entirely.

By that time you will have visited the three battle areas several times.

Although the background is clearly depicted the graphics tend to be a little scrappy but the games play well and smoothly and even the Spectrum Beep manages to sound like gunfire.

It’s Side Two of the cassette, the final part of your quest, that’s the surprise – a neat but simple helicopter fight simulation with an arcade twist. The controls are simple – up, down, left right, take and drop. The graphics are fairly comprehensive and there is a range of instruments which guide you when landing and taking off.

You can toggle between two maps – I found the radar map which shows enemy outposts and the positions of landing pads the most useful. Flying at an altitude of 500 feet, set a course for your first drop – the allied camp. There you can choose what objects and which of Biggles’ mates you’re going to take with you. The secret weapon can only be destroyed if you have the right combination. Marie, a secret agent must be found and picked up to guide you to the next location.

The graphics are excellent. When you put the nose of the aircraft down the objects on the ground become recognisable as people, tanks, trees etc. They don’t get larger on your instruments. When you land, you’ll be told to if there is anything there for you to take. If not, take off and try elsewhere.

Biggles online has something for everyone. You get three arcade games and a pretty good flight simulator. If the graphics are on the simplistic side, the play itself is often very challenging.

The link between the first athree sections is unusual and the constant changes of scenery add to the difficulty.

The people at Bubble Bus are probably very tired of having their games compared to those of Ultimate. If so, then they’re not going to like this review, because I’m going to do it again.

Just as their previous game, Wizard’s Lair, was a derivative of Atic Atac, so Starquake Spectrum seems to have been inspired by Underwurlde. Howeber, as with Wizard’s Lair. Bubble Bus haven’t slavishly copied Ultimate‘s games but have added to the complexity of the games so that they stand on their own merits.

The controls are simple to handle and quite responsive, though you do have to be very careful when typing teleport codes as there doesn’t seem to be any facility for correcting mistakes. The graphics and animation are, if anything, a little clearer and neater than in Underwurlde. All in all. I found Starquake Spectrum an enjoyable and addictive game, and one which should be sufficiently complex to hold your attention for quite some time.

Who remembers Game Over? Everyone. Why? Booby artwork. Thoroghly forgettable game. Not quite the same stroy with the sequel. Nearly, but not quite.

Your old drinking partner, Arkos the scientist, has been banged up in the intergalactic nick by the forces still loyal to Gremia (the shocking tart adorning the front of the box), it’s up to you to free him.

There are a couple of stages in Game Over II (or Phantis). You kick off in a fighter spaceship on an apparently impossible flight towards the center of the aliens’ prison complex. You can’t move too quickly, so you’ll have to gen an angle on the aliens’ attack waves if you’re to stand even the slightest chance of getting through.

Graphically things are pretty low-level. There has been absolutely no attempt to minimalise attribute clash and – with the exception of the explosions, which are great – it’s a teensy bit basic. Still, there’s no shortage of action. You can blast away quite successfully with your laser and enter into some reasonable skirmishy-dogfight with the bad guys.

The screen scrolls from right to left woth the standard fare: asteroids, stars etc. After a period of time you’ll find yourself in Zone 1 where there’s a floor to crash into and life becomes unspeakably difficult. Huge red balls shoot up from craters in the rocky surface and do their utmost to collide with you. Owing to the plain obstinacy of your ship on the movement front, you need to predict when one of these guys is about to appear, rather than merely reacting when one pops up.

As well as the red balls, blue bubbles fall from the top of the screen and hamper your progress. There are a number of aliens, too, which fly up from behind you and smash you to bits.

If you’re picking up the feeling up the feeling that Game over II is bloody impossible, well, you wouldn’t be far wrong. It’s all a bit erratic. The action is all there, but your spaceship is too big and you keep crashing into things. The aliens rarely pose much of a threat, except in unfair caught-up-the-backside sort of ways. It took me ages and ages to get through the open-air bit and 2 seconds to clear the following underground chamber section.

Zone 3 of the first part is the weakest point of the whole game. You climb down from your spaceship and climb aboard an absurd space-ostrich. Here you’ve got to walk along a riverbank combatting galactic toads and suchlike with an extremely hopeless boomerang item.

At the end of this stage, you are endowend with the mystical secret code number of Dinamic which lets you load and play Part 2, which is a whole lot more interesting. Map and explore, pick up items and gradually work your way towards the scientist (the one you’re rescuing – remember?)

Game Over II is by no stretch of the imagination a great game, but there is lots and lots of it, and there’s quite a bit of variety too. Coupled with the fact that you get the first game Game Over, imbecile – on the B side of the disk, it’s worth a look, but don’t expect lasting appeal.

Sweevo’s World was on of the great underrated peculiar games of our time. Now we have Hydrofool which is funnier, cleverer and, if there is any justification in the world, destined to be not underrated but instead lurch to number one with a bullet.

There are not many 3D games set underwater, this is the first point in Hydrofool‘s favor. The graphics are marvellous, this is another. And it’s funny this is a third, the music on the 128K version is by Rob Hubbard – yet another – and well that’s enough to be getting on with.

Faster Than Light has effectively dispensed with plot on this one, the scoring system is beyond human calculation – all you need to know is that you are trapped inside a giant goldfish bowl looking for the various objects which will enable you to pull out the four plugs that will drain all of the water out of the bowl. On your way you do battle with assorted denisons of the deep including an extremely cute baby whale and some extremely aggressive seahorses. Other elements include garden gnomes, these can be collected to advantage and spoons. The spoons appear to be a means of attack but whenever I chuck them at the fish they seem to be singularly unimpressed.

The central hero of Hydrofool is again, Sweevo, although clad in a diving suit he looks very much how I always imagined Gollum from “Lord of the Rings” looked. Bumbing fish and generally the time spent in the water causes rust. This is measured by a rustometer at the bottom of the screen. Rust can be resisted collecting cans of Oil. This is logical in a way – as logical as anything else in this game.

Movement between screens is up via a passing bubble or down via a whirpool. In the best traditions of 3D games some rooms are seemingly impassible, others contain hidden secrets or are themselves hidden. The bubbles are not merely lifts – as you enter a room you gradually sing to the floor. Sometimes to get past through obstacles you’ll need to leap on to a lesser bubble – these only travel up half the screen or so before bursting but hitching a ride gives you enough height to over passing stalegmites and rocks.

The graphics are superb – particularly if you like fish – large, smoothly animated and detailed. Unlike most 3D games, rooms in Hydrofool do not reset when you go in and out – no chance to correct mistakes – worse still, sometimes the gigantic fish you managed to avoind in the previous screen follows you through a conveniently placed porthole and comes after you.

There are various problems to be solved – some exits remain closed awaiting some special action (but what?), there are various weapons scattered around but few of them seem to be serious death-ray quality. Sometimes useful objects are effectively guarded by a monster fish – you need to skewer it somehow.

The music on 48K is passable blips (and nasty fairground music at the beginning) and the 128K stuff by Rob Hubbard is excellent although more jovial and less funky than some of his previous work. The game is an absolute winner.

There was a new game in the office. The screenshots looked great. I smelt the work of Zeppelin games. “Great!” I screamed horrifically, I slammed the cassette into the tape recorder.

The game was for the Spectrum – 48K! Good! It wasn’t long before the game loaded. “Yoiks!” I roared. “I’m impressed!” Slobbering, I played the game. It was Draconus online. It was ser on an alien planet. “So what!” I shreiked. But this was different. I was a half-man, half-frog, it’s a good laugh. I made my way through the chambers. They looked fab. THe backgrounds were full of detail. The characters were well animated. And they were big, very big. Wrenching the joystick, I controlled Frognum. He’s the tall one. He can walk, run, jump, duck, breathe fire, and, best of all, punch! And he has to! There are loads of things to punch: giant rats! Bats! Sea serpents! Terrortoads! Catapelones! “This is great!” I bawled. Everyone came to have a look. They went mad! Everyone wanted to get to the final chamber, and kill the Tyrant Beast. But they had to wait.

There was a lot to do. I had to find the Demon Shield, the Necromancer’s Staff, the Dragon’s Eye and the Morph Heliz. “Hah!” I went, triumphantly. When I found the Morph Helix, I could change into Draconewt. I just had to find the Morph Slab. Then I could swim and spit water. It was as simple as brutally twisting the joystick. If I hit too many mosters or spikes, I lost a life. Mine! But I had three. And I returend to the last record slab I’d passed, not right to the start. So that was alright.

There was something else that was alright too. There were flasks of flame fluid to restore my bad breath, and energy packets for my strength. So it was good. It was more than good. It was cheap. There were lots of colors. They were in the backgrounds, but there was no attribute clash. There were sounds. There was no music! Good! You don’t need it for a great game like this!

I was hooked! It was the design. It was the originality!

It was the difficulty. It was the novelty! I was lots of other things I couldn’t spell! I went back to my desk, ready to punch anyone who disagreed with me. But no-one did! Official!