Super Car Trans Am

Your Sinclair

Drive 40%

Visibility 74%

Road Holding 38%

FOATLF 50%

Overall 51%

Jonathan Davies 51%

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO DRIVING GAMES It's strange but true - normally courteous YS readers tend to turn into homicidal maniacs once they get behind the wheel of a Spectrum. We sent JONATHAN DAVIES, who still hasn't managed to get that wretched helmet off, to find out why. It's an expensive business, driving. Not only do you have to hand out piles of dosh to actually get a car, but there are loads of 'hidden costs' thrown into the bargain' too. For a start, you've got to get it insured (in case you crash), which means serious sponds for your average Spectrum owner Then there's road tax, servicing, MOTs, petrol, all sorts of things. And, if you want to keep up with the latest fashions, you'll want to purchase a few 'extras' as well, ranging from simple '-TURBO-' stickers for the back window to alloys, buckets and twin cams. And they all mean spending lots and lots of money. So wouldn't it be nice if you could get your Spectrum to sort of 'pretend' was a car, allowing you to zoom about to your heart's content for minimal outlay instead? Well, actually you can! Yes, all you need to do is buy a suitable driving game, load it up and you've got yourself a set of wheels. It'll be almost exactly the same as driving a real car except that you can crash as much as you like without having to worry about your no-claims bonus. And you'll be able to choose from all the latest posh sports cars like Porsches, Ferraris and Lotuses and drive them as far and as fast as you like without having to splash out on a drop of petrol! (In fact, because driving games are so much cheaper and more practical than real cars, it is predicted that by the year 2012 the motorcar will have become obsolete, replaced by the driving game.) The only trouble with all this is that it's a bit hard to pick up birds with a 48K Spectrum. JUST WHAT, EXACTLY, IS A DRIVING GAME? Mmm, knew we'd have to get round to this sometime. Well, I've had a think and come up with the following spec... - It's got to have either a car, a motorbike or a lorry in it. - That means no bicycles, boats, jet-skis, tanks or anything like that. - And no skateboards either. They're crap. Seems simple enough. It means we're including Grand Prix-type games (where you just race against other cars) and shooting ones (where you zap them) but not similar-looking ones that don't have cars, bikes or lorries in (like boat ones). Okay? Phew. I never thought it would be quite so easy. SO HOW ABOUT THINGS LIKE ARMY MOVES? Oh cripes. Look, just shurrup. will you, whoever you are. No, Army Moves is out, I'm afraid. It's rubbish anyway. So let's take a look at a few examples, eh? It's worth noting that, where driving games are concerned, the ratio of crap ones to good ones is a lot higher than with other types of game (apart from football games, of course). So you can't be too careful. RATINGS The YS Ratings System? You don't want that old thing. No sir, over here we have the brand-new top-of-the-range 1990 model. It's turbo-charged, fuel-injected, 16-valve, super-cooled and has a full X-pack (with droop snoot). And spots. You'll be doing yourself a favour. DRIVE It's no good having a driving game that seems to be simulating an FSO or something. You want real power, a feeling of being at one with the road and all that sort of thing. Control responses, speed etc are all taken into account here. VISIBILITY Assuming you remember to clean all the dead leaves and bird turds off the windscreen before you set out, what's the view like? A thinly-veiled graphics category, in other words, but jolly important all the same. ROADHOLDING It may seem to have everything, but once you've set off, and you've been on the road for a while, do you relish every second that you're behind the wheel? Or do you want to keep stopping at the services? Or perhaps you'd rather just take the bus instead, eh? FIRST-OFF-AT-THE-LIGHTS FACTOR A competitive edge is most important where driving's concerned, both in real life and on the Speccy. So do the other cars put up a decent fight, or do they just seem to be part of the scenery (if, indeed, there is any)? DRIVING GAMES FOR THE BUDDING LADA-OWNER As with all tried-and-tested formulae, driving games are big news in the world of the cheapie. Let's have a look at a few, and maybe try ad work in the odd drive-a-hard-bargain gag. AMERICAN TURBO KING Mastertronic This is a vertically-scrolling driving game where you've got to negotiate various obstacles and shoot things. QUite frankly, it's crap. The car is virtually impossible to control (even worse if you try it with the Magnum Lightphaser), there's nothing to hold your attention and the whole thing just doesn't work. Yuck.

Aaargh! Let me out of the screen! I can't bear it any longer! (Not that the next one's going to be any better, mind.)

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDY 'STREETHAWK' OUNSTED Few people would have guessed that YS had its own resident driving expert. We certainly didn't until our Design Asst told us so. "So, you've got a motorbike, have you, Andy?" "Yeah, I've got a bike. And call me 'Streethawk'. All my friends do." "Right. So, Andy..." "Streethawk." "Er, Streethawk, what sort is it exactly?" "It's a Yamaha or something, I think. It's well hard. It shifts." "Does it really?" "Yeah. It'll burn off anything." "Terrific. Could we have a look at it, do you think?" "Er, no. I didn't bring it in today." "Oh? Why not?" "It, um, wouldn't start. I had to get the bus instead."

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-BEHIND ONES These are the most common by 'miles' (yuk yuk), being those games where you see your car on the screen in front of you from a position behind and slightly above it, and with the road coming towards you in 3D. They all started in the arcades with stuff like Pole Position and moved onto the Speccy via Chequered Flag and later things like OutRun. And, of course, there was the classic Road Racer on the front of the May '87 YS. They're generally good fun, but can be a bit samey and tend to be just a case of pressing Left and Right at suitable moments. And an element of violence tends to creep in - you often get a gun or something mounted on your car to bag other vehicles with. (Roadblasters - um, looking at it from behind. And slightly above. (Simple really))

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-ON-TOP ONES Kicking off, these are the ones where you get a bird's-eye view of the course and see your car as a little blob hammering round the track (which may scroll if it doesn't all fit onto the screen at once). The basic idea takes its cue from a vintage coin-op called Super Sprint, and you can sometimes get anything up to 29 players on the screen at one time (giving them the edge where competitiveness is concerned). They do tend to lose out graphically though, as there isn't much scope for scrolling 3D roads etc. (Championship Sprint - yes, but is it ass much fun as a Scalextric set?)

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-THE-SIDE ONES We're heading into dicey territory here, as we could start wobbling on about scrolling shoot-'em-ups if we're not careful. They do generally scroll however, but they're a bit weird as you don't actually have to worry about steering. All you really have to do is get the speed right when going over ramps and maybe launch the odd missile now and again. Motorbikes, rather than cars, tend to feature prominently in this sort of game, which seems reasonable enough as they look a bit thin when viewed from the rear. One thing we've got to be careful of here is bicycles - they seem to crop up in these rather a lot and, as we already know, they don't count.

OH NO, IT'S EVERY SINGLE DRIVING GAME EVER 3D Stock Car Championship - Silverbird 4x4 Off-Road Racing - Epyx American Turbo King - Mastertronic APB - Tengen (Domark) Battlecars - Summit Beach Buggy Simulator - Silverbird Buggy Blast - Firebird Buggy Boy - Elite Championship Sprint - Activision Chase HQ - Ocean Continental Circus - Virgin Crazy Cars - Titus Crazy Cars II - Titus Cycles, The - Accolade Deathchase - Micromega Duel - Test Drive II, The - Accolade Dukes Of Hazard - Elite Eddie Kidd Jump Challenge - Martech Enduro - Activision Enduro Racer - Activision Fire And Forget - Titus Formula One Simulator - Mastertronic Full Throttle - Micromega Future Bike Simulator - Hi-Tec Juggernaut - CRL Grand Prix Circuit - Accolade Grand Prix Master - Dinamic Grand Prix Simulator - CodeMasters Hard Drivin' - Tengen (Domark) Hot Rod - Activision International Speedway - Silverbird Italian Super Car- CodeMasters Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart - Virgin Knight Driver - Hewson Knight Rider - Ocean Last Duel - US Gold LED Storm - US Gold Maze Death - PSS Motorbike Madness - Mastertronic Motor Massacre - Gremlin Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix - Martech OutRun - US Gold Overlander - Elite Pass Your Driving Test - Audiogenic Pole Position - Atarisoft Power Drift - Activision Rally Cross Simulator - CodeMasters Rally Driver - Alternative Rally Simulator - Zeppelin Road Blasters - US Gold Road Racer - Ocean/YS Scalextric - Virgin Speed King II - Mastertronic Spy Hunter - US Gold Street Hawk - Ocean Stunt Bike Simulator - Silverbird Stunt Car Racer - Microstyle Super Cycle - US Gold Super Hang-On - Electric Dreams Super Scramble Simulator - Gremlin Super Stock Car - Mastertronic Taxi! - Digital Integration Techno Cop - Gremlin Tranz Am - Ultimate TT Racer - Digital Integration Turbo Bike - Alternative Turbo OutRun - US Gold Twin Turbo V8 - CodeMasters WEC Le Mans - Ocean Wheelie - Microsphere

OTHERS With a theme as wide ranging as 'driving' we're bound to come across one or two miscreants that don't really fit into any of the previous categories (the scamps). Well, I have anyway. First of all there are ones like Hard Drivin' and Stunt Car Racer where you get a 3D view out of the window. Then there are the vertically-scrolling ones such as LED Storm which are really a cross between looking-at-it-from-behind ones and looking-at-it-from-the-top ones. And there are boring 'management' ones like Grand Prix. Best forgotten, those. (Erm... an 'other'.)

TEN SIGNS THAT HE'S A CRAP DRIVER 1. He drives round with his foglamps on all the time. 2. He wheelspins every time he pulls away. 3. He drives 3mm from the car in front, and as far to the right as possible ready to overtake. 4. He's always first off at the lights. 5. He's got an Escort 1600 Sport with all the usual accessories. 6. He always parks on double-yellow lines. 7. His car's heavily battle-damaged. 8. He makes frequent use of his three-tone horn. 9. He keeps revving up the engine at traffic lights for no apparent reason. 10. One of his brake lights doesn't work.

TEN SIGNS THAT SHE'S A CRAP DRIVER 1. She's driving a Mini. 2. She's got a Garfield stuck to her back window. 3. Simon Bates is blaring out and the Our Tune 'theme music' has just started up. 4. There's another girl with exactly the same style haircut sitting next to her in the passenger seat. 5. She's driving a Porsche.

THE FIRST EVER DRIVING GAME Despite a sore knee and a terrible fear of the dark, I crouched down in the murkiest corner of the YS shed to browse through our collection of cardboard-boxed archives. And did I come up with anything? Well, not really. I did find out that the Van Houten Chocolate in the YS drinks machine is actually the remains of a consignment of rations from during the war (no-one wanted to drink it then either) and I also came across some rather compromising photos of Andy when he was four years old, but nothing really very interesting in the driving games department. I was hoping to turn up some really ropey-looking Basic game from about 1982, but the best I could come up with was Chequered Flag, a Sinclair game that came out a year later. It's quite good actually - a bit like Polo Position without any other cars to race against. We'll give it a thorough going-over later, but in the meantime perhaps you'd like to think back and see if you can come up with anything better if you find anything older than Chequered Flag, do write in and tell us as we'd be jolly interested to know.

TOP FIVE GEARS 1. Third 2. First 3. Fourth 4. Second 5. Fifth (where available)

Sinclair User

Graphics 59%

Playability 58%

Sound 39%

Lastability 45%

Overall 48%

Chris Jenkins 48%

Label: Mastertronic Price: £2.99 Reviewer: Chris Jenkins Only when a game like this comes along that the efforts of top notch programming houses are properly rewarded. Compared to American Turbo King, virtually every other game on the market seems superb. It's one of those top-view vertically-scrolling driving games which went out of fashion with Spy Hunter. In this one you're taking part in five-stage race across America; through the California Beaches, Rocky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Great Lakes and New York City. The backgrounds are fairly dreadful; for instance, the natural splendour of the Great Lakes appears as a series of blue puddles. In the California Beaches level, spectators three times their scale size stand around the raceway like something from a Letraset catalogue. Now and again you get a boulder or a bridge, and if you see a series of vertical arrows, this indicates a ramp which you must drive up. If you do, you take a leap through the air which gets you over an obstacle such as a line of boulders or a chasm; if you miss the jump, you have to reverse and lose valuable time. Now and again hostile cars or helicopters appear; you can shoot the cars, but unless you have a Magnum light-gun you just have to dodge the helicopters' bombs, because if you're hit enough you lose a life. If you have the Magnum, you can shoot the choppers, and you steer the car by shooting the left and right bars on either side of the screen. To reverse you shoot the car itself. I leave you to imagine how accurate this method of steering is. The biggest problem with the game is that when you use a joystick, the control of the car is so sluggish that you can yank the joystick to the left, go out of the room, make a cup of tea, ring a pervy phone line, kick the cat around the garden, and come back, and your car is just starting to think about turning to the left. Not a winner by any standards you could possibly support.

Gaudy graphics and a ropey lightgun option make American Turbo a Sunday meeting in a calendar of Formula 1 events. (Eh-Ed)

Your Sinclair

Overall 60%

Marcus Berkmann 60%

BARGAIN BASEMENT Another delve into the recesses of Speccy softstuff with Dr Marcus "stand very still and try not to scream" Berkmann. AMERICAN TURBO KING Mastertronic £1.99 Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann Hello, what's this? There I am, drivelling on about how different, exciting and fun CodeMasters' Italian Super Car is and up pops a game almost exactly like it. American Turbo King - the location refers to the courses this time, not the cars - is very much the same kettle of fish and more than a mite whiffy, if you ask me. "Action! Action! Action" shouts the blurb, which is a slight exaggeration, as the game is both slower and less challenging than the Italian jobby. Here the control system is slightly different - left means that you go northwest rather than west, and you can't press two directions at once - but the game is very similar. Viewed from above, you drive through various terrains (California Beach Race, Rocky Mountain Pass and so on) in your turbo-charged , armour-plated supercar, which for some reason goes not a great deal faster than a C5. As in Italian Super Car, you have things firing at you, but the graphics are less impressive here, there's less colour, and it's all disconcertingly easy. I mean, if I can get to Stage Two on the first attempt, there's got to be something wrong. Ah, but you can use a Magnum Lightphaser™ if you happen to have one. Sadly I don't. Otherwise, a damp squib (glub glub).

Crash

Overall 61%

Nick Roberts 61%

BIG BUDGET BONANZA A veritable mini-flood of lo-price thrill packs to keep DJ Nicko from waggling his girl friend's ear and stuck to joystick wielding instead! Here we go... AMERICAN TURBO-KING Mastertronic £2.99 At last, a game that uses the new lightguns that everyone got at Christmas (didn't you?). Mastertronic are the first to produce lightgun games (to my knowledge) other than the ones you get with the gun. But they've played it safe by including a normal control method game on the B side of the tape. You take part in a race across the US, dashing across such stages as 'California beach race' and 'New York City in sight', shooting opponents and jumping hills. Keep out of the water though as it slows the car down and you only have a set time limit. American Turbo-King is yet another clone of Super Stuntman, a game from CodeMasters ages ago. The graphics are typically CodeMasters - hang on, it says Mastertronic on the inlay! CodeMasters did in fact produce the game along with Supersonic Software and Mastertronic have marketed it. All the sprites are in the small detailed vein used so much in budget games these days, and backgrounds are detailed too. Control with the lightgun is a real joke. I always thought the idea of plugging a gun into your Spectrum was to play games such as duckshoot, not shooting direction indicators to change direction of a car! What you want here is a steering wheel and pedals. As to sound, it could be straight out of anything vaguely CodeMasters in the past year! American Turbo-King holds nothing we haven't all seen before, and if you bought a CodeMasters car game in the past year or so don't bother with this, it's exactly the same.

Your Sinclair

Overall 56%

Phil South 56%

DEFENDER YOURSELF You may remember we reviewed the Sinclair Magnum Light Phaser a couple of issues ago. And you may also remember what we thought of it - good, but not that good. Now there's a new shoot 'em up contender in the lightgun wars - the Defender from joystick makers Cheetah. It comes with its very own specially penned selection of games too, this time written by those loveable CodeMasters chappies. We let our own Philip Snout loose with it for an afternoon. Product: Defender Light Gun Designer/Manufacturer: Cheetah Marketing Price: £24.95 As we all know, lightguns are basically a fun, if limited, addition to Speccy gamesplaying. I mean, they'll never take over from joysticks as the best all-round game controllers, but a change is as good as a rest I always say, so it was as inevitable as a slap in the gob with a mullet (but not as red) that sooner or later one would become available for the Speccy. First off the mark was actually the Stack Light Rifle years ago, but it was a bit crap. The biggie, of course, was the recent Amstrad/Spectrum Light Phaser. But that had its disappointments too, namely the rather flimsy construction and horrible black and white bars it splattered across Operation Wolf. This was one of a handful of games specially converted to the lightgun standard. The actual weapon was built by Trojan, best known for its lightpens, and it sort of showed. Nasty people around the office started describing it as "a lightpen with a handle on", which was a bit unfair, but that's the YS team for you. So it was only a matter of time really before joystick manufacturers started entering the fray (in fact it was only a matter of months which meant they must have had it planned all along) and the first of these to do so is popular joystick and musical funbox maker Cheetah Marketing. The Defender is a nice piece of work. The moulded plastic body is dark grey with bright red handgrips. The design is quite modern and sturdy looking I s'pose, but still with slightly naff Buck Rogers-like tendencies. The handgrip is raked forwards to make it aim and hold, and weights have been added inside the body to improve the feel and balance of the thing. It certainly seems quite hefty and gun-like, unlike the feeble Sinclair. Accuracy-wise the Defender seems to be pretty sharp. Most of the time I aimed at something I hit it, which means one of two things - either the gun is accurate, or the software is really good at reading the gun. (Of course the other thing it might mean is I'm flipping skill at using it!) You do have to be fairly square to the screen though, and not too close, or the focus of the gun goes all to cock. You'll hit everything on the screen with one shot, and that's no good if you need to be selective, like in Bronx Street Cop for instance (one of the games bundled in with it). So care should be taken, and a few experiments done, before you challenge someone to competition Unless you don't ever want to get to the second level. THE GAMES! (They made me deaf you know!) There are six games bundled in with the Cheetah Defender, all specially written by the wacky CodeMasters (those Darling, Darling boys!). The games will be available on cassette to start with, with disk loading versions to follow. JUNGLE WARFARE An out'n'out Op Wolf clone. You scroll sideways through a series of backdrops, from airports to bridges and jungles, as a battalion of enemy soldiers, choppers and tanks comes into your sights. You must shoot them in order to stay alive. (Nah, you don't say!? Ed) Unfortunately, you have limited ammo, so splattering the gooks all over the landscape on rapid fire is fun but won't get you far. The graphics aren't too bad, and there's some impressively life-like banging noises as your gun goes off. I think I could do without the screen flashing every time you shoot though. It's not half as bad as the Phaser but a little divot of earth flipping up to let me know where I hit would suffice. Still, the game isn't too bad, just a little bit repetitive, and it's obviously the ideal sort of thing to use a lightgun for. Overall: 60° ADVANCED PINBALL SIMULATOR Yegads, what's this? Pinball?! This is as good an example as you can get to show how odd the pairing of gun and games can sometimes be. What on Earth possessed the designer of this game to make it a 'shoot-at-the-flippers-'em-up'? It almost seems deliberately perverse! What happens is you shoot at the plunger to eject the ball into the machine. Then you shoot at the flippers to punt the ball back into play if it looks like it's going to make a break for it. Just like a normal game of pinball really (well, sort of). Works okay though, and although a bit strange at first, the program does play a mean pinball! Overall: 60° F16 FIGHTING FALCON This one is an Afterburner clone in which you shoot at all the incoming fighters and missiles, and shoot at your own F16 to make it perform what the manual calls "automatic intelligent evasive action". Hmm. Just looks like it bounces out of the way if you ask me. The scenery scrolls by underneath you as you fly along blasting the poop out of anything that moves and a few things that don't Trouble is you don't get much time to anticipate a plane coming on to the screen, and, if you leave it too late to blow it up, it gets a chance to launch its missiles at you. There are four levels to the game, over the Sahara, Tropics, Arctic and Ocean. Okay, I s'pose, but not enough control over the plane for my taste. Another slightly peculiar use of the gun. Overall: 55° SUPERCAR TRANS AM Hey, don't I remember something just like this by the late lamented Ultimate Play The Game about a million years ago? Trans Am it was called. This new CodeMasters version bears more than a passing resemblance to the old Ultimate smasheroo, but this time of course you've got God, or at least a lightgun, on your side. You steer by shooting steering icons and change from forward to reverse by zapping the car itself. There are five stages to the journey going from LA to NY, starting at the California Beach, then moving on to the Rocky Mountain Pass, the Grand Canyon Jump, past the Great Lakes Stage, and finally on to New York City in Sight. It's a sort of arcade road movie really. I dunno, I found it really hard to concentrate on steering the car without bumping into stuff let alone shooting as well. All along the route men with guns try to blow your bum off, and usually they succeed. Not as good as the original, but it probably rewards persistence. Overall: 56° BRONX STREET COP At last, a classic shooting gallery type game. You're a rookie cop on the Bronx street beat. In order that you don't wax some poor passers by in the process of blowing away... hem hem... In the process of apprehending a villain, you are put on the shooting range and presented with a couple of targets to shoot at. As they come up into the gallery you must decide whether they are legitimate targets or innocent bystanders. Brilliant. Overall: 89° BILLY THE KID Not quite as good as Bronx Street Cop, but nearly. You get to blow tins off cactuses in the practice round this time. The cowboy at the side of the screen also throws a tin which you can keep aloft by shooting at it - if you're skill enough that is. Then you go on to 'help Billy The Kid shoot his way out of' various sticky situations. You only have limited ammo for the main parts of the game, but in the practice round you can put on the rapid fire switch and blast everything to ribbons. This is one of the funniest ways to play any of the games. Skill to Middling I'd say. Overall: 76° HEAD TO HEAD So, how does the Detender stand up against the recently released Sinclair Magnum Light Phaser by Trojan/Amstrad? At first, it seemed the guns were compatible. This was, we thought, the idea. But whilst the Magnum gun worked with the Defender games, the reverse wasn't true. Jon 'Techno Flash' Davies was on hand at the time I tested them and his theory was that the Cheetah was being read by the games as if it was always aimed at the top right of the screen! Weird. Anyway, the possibilities for a standard are out the window unless someone makes a game which works with both methods, or at least can be selected. The Defender seems much more solidly built, and the weights in it do a lot to improve balance and handling. Having played with the Magnum beforehand I really did notice how much heavier and more business-like the Defender is. It seems to be more accurate too, but that could just be the way the software itself reads the gun. The stupid problem of the Magnum causing huge white flashing bars across the screen has been solved in the Cheetah software, and all the games react much more smoothly. The games in the free pack are a bit samey in their presentation I s'pose, as compared to the varied range that comes with the Magnum, but this is to be expected as the games in the Defender pack all come from the same publisher. Also, the way the handgrip on the Defender is raked forwards, automatically pointing the gun level at the screen, differs with the Magnum's upright hold. This means you have to bend your wrist back ever so slightly to aim the gun. A minor quibble, but worth bearing in mind. The down side is that it takes less effort to keep the Magnum aloft than it does to hold up the Defender. 'Cos the Def is heavier, it makes your arm ache after a bit. But the Defender does have a rapid fire button, and this is brilliant fun, especially on things like Billy The Kid, when ammo isn't limited. The major plus for the Defender is that the lead is longer so you can get further away from the screen. CONCLUSION I prefer the Defender as a gun, and its games are good overall. My favourite must be Bronx Street Cop, with Billy The Kid a close second. I still don't know why they bothered to do it but the pinball game is pretty enjoyable (so perhaps there's the reason why). The Defender looks better, it's cheaper and in general seems to be much more fab than its only current competitor. Let's hope we see more lightguns using this same Cheetah standard, and even rifles or Uzi submachine guns. Watch this space (or another very similar).

Crash

Richard Eddy

Go ahead punk, make my day!! Cheetah Marketing Not Known £24.95 Lean, mean and accurate... BLAM!! The new Defender light gun from Cheetah is here, and Richard Eddy takes an exclusive peek at the latest Speccy add-on that's aiming to rival Sinclair's very own Magnum. It's a fact! The people from Wales are absolute boffins when it comes to producing Speccy stuff. There's the Sam Coupe from MGT, the Sinclair Magnum developed in Swansea by Trojan, and now Cheetah in Cardiff have a spiffing new light gun called the Defender, which looks like it's going to knock the Magnum into a cocked hat when it's released any time now. Mainly 'cos it looks dead good, but especially as it's a fiver cheaper at £24.95. The Defender is the end result of a year's work by a group of Cheetah's top engineers, and it's just a smidgeon off being finished. Unlike the Magnum (featured in the August issue) it actually looks like a gun, rather than a space phaser, and is constructed to give the same feel as a real pistol with weight, trigger balance and precision. So remember - don't point this at your granny unless you're prepared to get into heaps of trouble! The 128K/+2/+3 version is the closest to being finished, This connects to the Speccy via the Keypad/Aux port. A 48K version is also underway, and will connect via a joystick interface. Unlike the Magnum, the Defender has the smart inclusion of a sliding autofire/function select switch. This, if the software suits, turns the Defender into a machine gun, or allows you to select different weapons on screen. Until recently Cheetah hadn't seen the Magnum - but when they did get their paws on it, they thought it a tad primitive. They're now confident that their Defender is designed, and works, a lot better. Of course, the TV screen will flash when the trigger is pulled, but Cheetah say it shouldn't interrupt gameplay as much as the Magnum does. Gameplay? Coo, yes! While Cheetah have been busy constructing the gun, best-selling budget house CodeMasters have been programming six super games to make the most of the Defender. And what are they all about? Read on and find out.. BRONX STREET COP Author: Pete Williamson It's tough on the streets... especially the streets of New York's Bronx area - unless you own a Defender! There's five levels to the game, starting with a training session. The action really hots up in the first mission, where you have to track down armed robbers and bump 'em off. More missions follow, each getting progressively more difficult as you face crazed muggers. evil drug pushers and other vile pieces of work. SUPERCAR TRANS-AM Author: Pete Williamson (prolific) Jump in the driving seat of a V12 turbocharged armour plated flyer and prepare to race from the beaches of California to the skyscrapers of New York. You're armed with ground-to-ground and remote-controlled air defences. You decide the direction the car takes by firing at a right/left icon on screen. Sounds like a novel way of getting about. ADVANCED PINBALL SIMULATOR Authors: The Oliver Twins A previous CodeMasters hit gets the light gun treatment with fast flippers, gates, barriers, bonus lanes, extra balls, a ball trap and loads more pinball features, and it's all controlled by the light gun firing at left and right flipper icons on the side of the table. BILLY THE KID Author: Gary Priest Become the most famous cowboy of them all and load up for gun-slinging action from the wild, wild west. You can practice shooting cans hurled into the air, and then go on to to become a fully-fledged outlaw in a bank raid. Watch out for the Sheriff now, or you maybe challenged to wild west high noon shoot out - five paces, turn, fire and all that milarky! F-16 FIGHTING FALCON Author: Pete Williamson (even more busy!) Four levels of 3-D flight combat. To defend your Falcon against the Soviet MiGs and 'copters, point the light gun at enemy targets and let rip with a barrage of heatseakers, sidewinders and heaps of other missiles to blast everything outta the sky! To avoid oncoming planes and their missiles, shoot(!) your plane to take evasive action. JUNGLE WARFARE Author: Jason Falcos Level after level of hostile forces to destroy - tanks, 'copters, jeeps, crack commando snipers, enemy aircraft... the list goes on. It's taken from Super Tank Simulator (reviewed this issue), the action viewed side on with the scenery scrolling right to left while you shoot at a seemingly endless onslaught of enemy troops.