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Hello, and thanks for joining us...
...for another episode of Five Games Five Minutes...
...from acornelectron.co.uk
In GISBURNE'S CASTLE, you play Robin Hood.
You're on the trail of Guy of Gisburne, hence Gisburne's Castle, ...
...and you have to rescue Maid Marion from the castle.
To do so, you've got to get out of Sherwood Forest first.
Some screens that you enter contain items that you can pick up and use.
Most however, are simply teeming with unfriendly characters...
...lobbing rocks at you.
It's impossible to avoid many of their shots.
And each hit decreases your strength, shown at the top of the screen.
When you shoot back, with your quiver of arrows, ...
...you only neutralise the enemy if you hit him in the UPPER body.
The way you can fire arrows in eight different directions...
...is quite impressive, as is the speed of the game.
But what the author was thinking when he introduced...
...the protracted death sequences, I don't know!
After you hit a bad guy, he takes five seconds or so to fade out.
If he's blocking the exit, waiting for this to happen is extremely boring.
At the top of the screen, you'll see a description -
Things like "You are in Sherwood Forest. You can see nothing."
Hang on, it's not a text adventure!
So do these descriptions actually serve any real purpose?!
Whilst GISBURNE'S CASTLE has some potential, ...
...ultimately there's not a lot of variety to it.
So I don't recommend it.
The title COMBAT LYNX is also the name of your helicopter.
In the game, you're charged with protecting four bases...
...across a landscape that's under attack from tanks, planes and anti-aircraft missiles.
You can tell upon loading that this is a complicated game.
Now that's not a problem in itself.
But COMBAT LYNX falls into the trap of being NEEDLESSLY complicated.
And that IS a problem.
Even after studying the appalling instructions, ...
...you're likely to be none the wiser.
The first thing you need to do in every game...
...is arm your helicopter.
To do this, you need to press SHIFT whilst still at your base.
Personally, I've lost count of the number of times...
...I've forgotten to do this, and happily set off into battle...
...with five seconds' worth of fuel and no weapons.
It's also a good idea to identify a destination, or a target, using the map.
Only after arming and working out where you're gonna go, ...
...should you attempt to fly.
You press different keys to go left, right, up and down...
...or speed up and slow down.
The keys you use are pretty eccentric, to say the least.
Don't be fooled therefore, by the somewhat pretty screen displays.
COMBAT LYNX is a prize-winning turkey.
If you're lucky, you might at least see a bit of action...
...before you smash into a hillside.
But it's rare to be alive for longer than a minute.
MANIAC MOWER was released by Kansas City Software.
It was available via mail order only and, if you were unlucky enough to buy it, ...
...then you were had!
The game is, at best, a poor quality type-in.
You control a red mower, and need to avoid a blue mower.
The blue mower tries to copy your movements, ...
...and to put itself on a collision course with you.
Gameplay therefore consists of avoiding the obstacles...
...and the evil mower.
Now the screens can only give an indication...
...as to how truly AWFUL this game is.
It's written entirely in BASIC, and the colours chosen could hardly be worse.
This was an era when most people tuned their computer into their TV set.
You could barely SEE the red on top of the green!
You get three mowers, and the game continues until...
...you've crashed them all.
Then you get a pathetic high score table to celebrate your, um, achievement.
What drivel!
I wish that I could say that this is the WORST Kansas City Software release.
Alas, it is NOT.
Even WORSE horrors followed.
MAGIC MUSHROOMS was one of the final Acornsoft games.
It was also one of the first games to be shipped...
...with its own, built-in, editor.
There are nine re-definable screens, ...
...with the object being to collect mushrooms dotted around them.
Whilst the layout of the screen is identical each game, ...
...the mushrooms are plotted randomly.
This injects a bit of variety into the game, ...
...whilst also, on some occasions, making it harder to complete some screens...
...than on other occasions.
You have a mixture of bricks, trampolines, conveyor belts, disappearing blocks, ...
...shaking blocks and bonus blocks to deal with.
And, after you've collected all of the mushrooms, ...
...you need to find the chessboard and stand on it...
...to complete the screen.
The screen designer is easy to manipulate...
...and it operates with just the cursor keys, ...
...and the letter keys to insert different bricks.
Actually, the designer's probably the saving grace for this game...
...because the screens already included with MAGIC MUSHROOMS...
...are not particularly imaginative.
The game practically cries out to you to define your own!
The screen "Curse of the Lemming", for example, ...
...is just completely impossible.
SNAPPER needs no introduction.
It's the Acorn Electron version of the ever-popular PACMAN.
In the 1980s, this game was every bit as impressive...
...as the arcade version.
In fact, it probably convinced all those youngsters...
...who'd been pumping ten pence pieces into the PACMAN machine...
...down the arcade, that they REALLY needed a home computer.
Right, you all know how this goes...
...so goodness knows why I'm explaining it.
It's you versus four ghosts.
You've got to collect all the dots, ...
...the four power pills, ...
...and you've got to eat as many bonus fruits as you can...
...to increase your score.
What I like about SNAPPER is, it really is timeless, isn't it?
It's still being re-made for practically every mobile phone or iPod...
...that comes out, and it's still made now in exactly the same way...
...with exactly the same screen layouts.
Whether you're playing it on the Electron or the PC, ...
...if you like it, this game is always gonna be great.
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