Fast 'n' Furious

Sinclair User

Overall 4/10

Chris Jenkins 4/10

Label: Go! Author: Ernieware Price: £8.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins Otherwise known as "Attack of the Killer Carpets", Fast and Furious is a horizontally-scrolling zapper of a type I find particularly infuriating, where all the sprites are so HUGE that it's almost impossible to avoid being squished at every moment. You pilot a magic carpet, viewed from above, and your task is to either avoid or exterminate everything in your path. Targets include other magic carpets, huge swirly flying snakes, bats, groups of hairy spiders and towering... er, towers. While some of the graphics are nice, especially the flying snake, the sound effects are irritating and the gameplay is monotonous, broken only by regular opportunities to fly over groups of tokens picking up as many as you can to supplement your energy, money and so on. Since I thought this was a poor budget game when it loaded, I can't see that it deserves a place on the label which gave us Trantor.

Your SinclairYour Sinclair Megagame

Graphics 8/10

Playability 9/10

Value For Money 9/10

Addictiveness 8/10

Overall 9/10

Mike Gerrard 9/10

US Gold Reviewer: Mike Gerrard Never has a game been better named than this one from the Dutch Ernieware software house. Free with every cassette they should give you a darkened room to go and lie down in after you've finished playing. As well as keyboard control you can use Cursor, Protek, AGF, Kempston or Interface II type joysticks. There's a much needed PAUSE facility, giving you time to wipe your brow, and also an Abort Game option for those really trying moments when mere death is not enough. Step back to old Baghdad. Bung the player on a flying carpet and you've got Zaxxon with curly-toed slippers. But they should have left you in the present-day if you've got to believe there are military installations out in the desert as well. But enough of this and on with the fray - and the first person to make jokes about a frayed carpet gets a scorpion up their kilt. The game is basically a right-to-left horizontal scroll-and-shoot-'em-up. Climb on your carpet and you can move up and down, left to right. The first hazards are pillars and buildings which have to be avoided. It's great fun zipping along on your carpet, especially as you can fire at the other magic carpet-riders that come your way, as well as the snakes, scorpions, bats and dragons. The graphics aren't the greatest, but the speed of the gameplay more than makes up for that. The reason why you want to blast other carpet-riders out of the skies, is that you're an undercover agent working secretly for the military and nothing will stop you getting across the desert to the military base at the far side where you've some important documents to deliver. Well, nothing apart from all the nasties and a few outlaws that are waiting in between each of the levels. At the end of one level you fly over various icons, such as money, flags, music notes, revolver and oil symbols. You've some of these to your credit to start with, but choose carefully which you add by flying over them as you'll have to do some trading with outlaws in between levels before you can pass onto the next stage. The outlaws get the best graphics in the game, and one bears a frightening resemblance to the Man Ed, which surprises no-one. Beneath each outlaw, his temper, reliability, intelligence and aggression levels are indicated. This bit in between levels is called a sub-game, but it's really just some extra fun and the best bit is the blasting, of course, with many monsters requiring more than one shot to see them off. And you also have the option of single-fire (fast but forwards only) or multi-fire mode (any direction by firing and moving your joystick the right way.) There's even a magic-mode facility, which keeps you away from all harm for a few seconds but decreases your stamina by 10%. When your stamina's zero it's Game Over time, folks. The Fast And The Furious really is one of the fastest-action games I've seen on the Spectrum, and as for the excitement of riding a magic carpet, you can't beat it!

You'll notice there's no price details on these two games. Well, as those dull old men in cardies on TV panel games and chat shows always say, there's a story in that. When US Gold gave us these two Ernieware games to review, it bunged them on the same tape and we thought nothing of it. It never occurred to us that two such fine games would possibly be released on a single tape, at the usual one-game price of £8.99. But that's the way it is. They're two separate games, so Mike's reviewed them separately. What a bargain! Marcus

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Presentation 72%

Graphics 70%

Playability 66%

Addictive Qualities 63%

Overall 63%

Mike Dunn 52%

Nick Roberts 69%

Paul Sumner 68%

Producer: Go! Retail Price: £7,95 Author: Ernieware TWO GAMES ON ONE TAPE This is not going to be a very pleasant job. Disease-infested spaceships are returning to Earth from the once healthy colony on Jupiter's moon, lo. They must not be allowed to reach their destination and spread their sickness. In Thunderceptor, one of two games on this tape from US Gold's recently-launched label GO!, you command one of the craft in a fleet sent to destroy the colonists. Your multidirectional spacefighter carries both Phaser and Super Phaser systems - the latter effective against large spacecraft - and a defensive shield. All these are served by a single, limited power supply, and the energy complement of each can be altered. On encountering the 'lo-fleet', you are met by waves of attack craft varying in their manoeuvrability and fire power. At some stage large mother ships and fighters appear, and these must be hit many times with Phaser power, sometimes with unerring accuracy, before they succumb. Points are awarded for every craft destroyed. Meteor storms, satellites and wrecks also add spice to this space battle. After completing the first level, you can prowess to the next of the five, receiving medals and promotion as you go. Flying by the seat of your pants on a magic carpet in Old Baghdad while working for the military is the name of the game in The Fast And The Furious, on the other side of the tape. Your first mission is to deliver important papers to a base on the other side of the desert - but there's more to this silicon wasteland than sand, sand, more sand and cacti. Though the desert is larger than the beach at Weston-super-Mare at low tide, the villains and brigands who live there seem to have no difficulty in finding you. Riding their shagpiles and Axminsters they come at you, and any contact with them, or with the fireballs that they unleash, loses you stamina. You can return their fire - but be warned; you're not facing just a cutthroat band out to do you down, but also centipedes, dragons, bats and scorpions, any of which can inflict untold damage on even the hardiest carpeteer. You can collect useful items by flying your carpet over them, in a sort of reverse hoovering marked by icon displays. The objects collected, which include dollars. pounds, oil, hearts, flags, guns and musical notes, can be used in dealings with the villain's leader - he can be found at the end of each desert section. You can placate him by giving him the correct icons, and the result is a rise in your stamina level. Once your dealings with the despicable rogue are finished, leap once more onto your carpet to do battle on three more levels with more dragons, more no goods and more danger. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: very fast and quite colourful Sound: not an awful lot apart from a few bells and whistles

...but Cam's magic carpet never gets beyond the atmosphere in The Fast And The Furious.