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Good evening, and welcome to yet another episode of...
...Five Games Five Minutes, from acornelectron.co.uk
THE LIVING BODY, from Martech, is an obscure edutainment package.
It contains six little playable demos, all related to the body.
Now you'll notice I didn't call them games.
There's a straightforward Guess The Body Part quiz, ...
...a tricky Pause The Moving Parts Of The Blood System test, ...
...a Mechanical Heart Operator, ...
...a Breathing Simulator, ...
...a Digestive Adventure Game, and...
...a Circulatory, um, "Experience" where you need to...
...react to the demands of the heart, body, kidneys and lungs.
The trouble is, although at least the simulators are...
...high-end machine code goodies, ...
...there's ultimately no real hook factor.
That's because, unless you introduce dramatic licence, ...
...the human body doesn't really mess about.
And, to be honest, that's probably the one thing you're gonna...
...take away from this title.
Of all the demos, the Breathing System is probably...
...the most difficult and challenging.
But I don't rate the package very highly...
...and it sold in extremely limited numbers back in the day.
STOCK CAR is a very early Acorn Electron game.
A simple idea in the form of overhead racing.
You have a car with a manual gear-shift.
So the idea is that you need to change up and down as appropriate.
The trouble is that the game is too fast for you really to...
...have enough time to operate these gears.
Controlling the car is more difficult than it appears.
You need concentration just to keep it on the centre of the road.
If your concentration lapses, then you end up...
...stuck on the edges of the track.
Even more annoyingly, however, there are some track layouts...
...that cross one another.
On these, you can be in the lead position, only to plough...
...into another car and be held up for several all-important seconds.
There's no real goal to STOCK CAR, ...
...other than to kill a few minutes of boredom.
However, it's got loads of options including...
...Circuit Style, Number of Players, Oil Slick Existence...
...and Skidding Percentage.
It's at its best when you play with a friend, and you turn...
...the oil slicks on, and the skidding off.
THUNDERSTRUCK 2 is a graphic adventure game...
...which is visually stunning.
You reprise your role as a Space Dustbin Man...
...and you've found that escaping back to Home Base -
- from the medieval castle in the original THUNDERSTRUCK -
- wasn't QUITE the happy ending you dreamed of.
All of your other Dustbin Men friends have been enslaved...
...by the 8-bit equivalent of Hal.
As this is a Peter Scott game, the solution is to find core pieces...
...and to take them to a ComCon terminal.
That's the same solution as in other Peter Scott games.
The size of the game is mammoth, ...
...with each room teeming with patrolling nasties, ...
...eager to collide with you, stick to you and drain your energy.
They are more difficult to shake than feels comfortable...
...because the large, lush sprites actually mean...
...that the playing area is quite cramped.
THUNDERSTRUCK 2 is the type of game that is...
...imaginative and, because you have to AVOID the nasties, ...
...it demands great perseverence to complete it.
I REALLY wish you had a gun!
THE BIG K. O. is a boxing game by Stephen Ruddy...
...and the K. O. stands for Knock Out.
You're challenged to win eight bouts against...
...eight separate boxers.
Each match is fought against three rounds...
...and you can win either on points or...
...by landing enough punches to knock your opponent out.
Two players can play against each other...
...or YOU can take on the computer.
There's very little TO this game.
Granted, the graphics are nice...
...and the introduction to each boxing match is atmospheric.
But, essentially, the game is little more than a key-hammering fest.
You need to press three keys at the same time to land a punch.
And, even if you carefully study your opponent's statistics before play, ...
...trying to concentrate on the right key combination is not easy.
Even worse, the game is multi-load.
So if you're lucky enough to defeat an opponent, ...
...you have to wait two minutes for the next one to load in.
Other than the sprite, and the increasing difficulty of...
...performing a Knock Out, there seems to be no variety between levels.
And little incentive to continue playing.
WAREHOUSE is a budget game where you play Fred -
- which I think is an EXCELLENT name for a hero.
Fred is stuck in a ware- house of exactly 400 rooms.
And littered around it are all manner of objects...
...including keys, scrolls and ammunition.
A bit of exploration also reveals The Office, ...
...which is where Fred must take certain objects to deliver them to customers.
The scrolls you find tell you which objects are to be shipped to which customers.
In many of the rooms you'll find marauding aliens...
...who teleport in through portals.
Once the portal is destroyed, ...
...that room will be free of aliens forever more.
But SOME portals are positioned so that destroying them is impossible.
Generally you only find this out after trying, unsuccessfully, ...
...to take it out.
For a budget game, WAREHOUSE is pretty good.
It's big and, after you've fulfilled the initial orders, ...
...there's a bigger challenge that awaits you.
The only real drawback is the sometimes clumsy control of Fred himself...
...who often just doesn't seem to move quite quickly enough.
Subtitles by Subtitle Workshop