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Time for another selection of five games over in...
...Five Games Five Minutes from acornelectron.co.uk
ICARUS is one of my favourite games of all time.
And it's set on board a starship.
Somewhat revolutionary for its time, it lets two players...
...play at the same time.
The idea is to explore each level, ...
...find the numbered keys and open the corresponding doors.
You also have to destroy the cyan boxes which have a capital L on them.
These are lifts which bring in the droids.
You cannot escape a level until all of these have been destroyed.
The game is put together well, with a sparkly introduction...
...and its own unique inclusions.
For example, droids can fire at you from adjoining rooms...
...and you can fire back from the room next-door.
Playing ICARUS now feels a bit like an early vision of the future.
Much the same as modern shooting games, ...
...you blast off a few gunshots then leap for cover behind walls.
Another nice feature is the force-fields...
...which are deactivated by pressing switches in a particular order.
ICARUS includes twenty levels...
...making this game as big as the classic EXILE.
Yet it hasn't achieved anywhere near the same level of fame.
So if this is the first you've ever heard of it, ...
...then you MUST check it out!
KING BURGER is a kinetic thrill-ride.
Just when you think you've seen all the possible permutations...
...of ladders and levels, Your Computer throws this at you!
You have to assemble two giant burgers...
...by running over each bun and each filling.
You should also try and hit them in the right order too, ...
...else you'll incur a score penalty.
The game has been written in such a way as to resemble...
...one of the old arcade machines...
...with a little intro telling you, somewhat pessimistically to...
...'kiss your yoke goodbye'!
And you'd better believe it when I say that your adversary, ...
...a fried egg, is the fast-food equivalent of The Terminator.
It does not, and will not, stop until you are dead.
It's got speed, and a homing instinct.
But you've got speed, and brainpower.
Put those together and you get a manic ride in KING BURGER!
Some people will think it's TOO fast...
...but personally I think it's a simple idea, ...
...perfectly presented and flawlessly executed.
THE ART STUDIO was a game for all those Electron owners...
...that were also budding artists.
Released by Impact Software in 1989 -
- far too late for many! -
- it has both a four-colour lo-res and a two-colour hi-res version.
In this review, we're looking at the hi-res version.
The title page, all done in red, is a bad idea...
...and you should immediately change the foreground colour to white.
Fortunately, the icon bar at the bottom of the screen...
...is very easy to use.
The game features lines, a freehand tool, an eraser, ...
...a fill command, circles, triangles and the all-important magnifying tool.
The best way to create an image is to start off with an outline...
...and gradually fill in the detail...
...using the magnifier as you need to.
The game has one awful limitation.
It won't let you design full-screen...
...because the icon-panel takes up the bottom two lines.
If you want to make a full-screen picture therefore...
...you have to hack apart the program, ...
...move the picture up in memory, design the bottom bit...
...and then stick it all back together again.
Hardly user-friendly!
But then, by modern standards, it's all very fiddly.
That said, you can get some very good results out of it.
ALIEN DROPOUT is a rather dull game from Superior Software.
You control a laser base, and your task is...
...to blast away the bugs above you.
The bugs are dispensed into ten columns...
...where they sit patiently.
You hammer down on the fire key...
...to try to wipe out enough bugs in each column...
...that they don't start to descend towards your base.
The butterfly in the middle of the screen hails down bullets...
...and hinders you from crossing from beneath...
...one set of columns, to the opposite side.
The game gets steadily faster and faster...
...which does inject some degree of life.
The trouble is that there is other- wise absolutely no variety at all.
ALIEN DROPOUT falls into the truly-terrifying category...
...of feeling like work when you're playing it.
There's no real problem with the playing controls, ...
...or the graphics, or really anything else!
It's just built on an incredibly boring foundation.
Some power-ups, bonuses or different weaponry...
...would really lift the game.
But as it is, I can't break out of it quickly enough.
Up next is ZENON -
- a sideways scrolling blast- 'em-all from Impact Software.
And one of those games...
...where you really wonder what the point of it all is.
It's lovely looking, that's for sure.
You control a nicely- animated spaceman...
...who can run along the bottom of the screen...
...or hover in the air, until gravity slowly returns him to terra firma.
You can unleash a stream of machine-gun fire...
...and there's a steady stream of power-ups and lives to reward progress.
As you run, the bottom of the screen animates...
...to give quite a convincing movement effect.
There's also some very impressive baddies to avoid or blast...
...including multi- segmented snakes.
But the difficulty level -
- Oh, the difficulty level!!
You have NO idea WHEN baddies will appear, ...
...WHERE they will appear from, ...
...how many shots it will take to destroy them, ...
...whether you're about to face ONE of them or FIFTEEN of them...
...at the same time, or...
...EVEN if they will run towards you, or sneak up on you from behind!
The author has fallen into the trap...
...of trying so desperately to show off all the capabilities...
...of his game, that he forgot the main one -
- Playability.
There's no skill that you can learn to conquer ZENON at all!
You load it, you marvel at the graphics, ...
...you attempt a level...
...then you turn it off forever.
Subtitles by Subtitle Workshop