Noah

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 2/5 MISS

Roger Willis 1/5 MISS

Ross Holman 2/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY All the latest software from around the houses! Passing judgement this month are Dave Nicholls, Ross Holman and Roger Willis. Our regular crew of software screw balls are in fine form this month. Draining the dregs of Christmas spirit are Dave Nicholls, the hairy hacker; JSW champion Ross Holman; and our own two-wheeled terror, Roger Willis. Just in case you find our scoring system too confusing, here's what it's all about. The score out of five at the end of each person's review is based on their own experience of the game. But that's pretty subjective... so, they also use the HIT and MISS system to indicate its potential as a commercial success. NOAH ESP Software £T.B.A. Ross: Deciding the fate of the whole animal Kingdom is no easy task... but as Noah, that's your lot! You've just three days to collect all 31 pairs of animals and return them to the Ark. And there are 256 screens to explore, so hunting down all the animals is a fairly daunting task! Noah is played by a large five-by-three graphic; the cursor movement makes everything look a bit jerky, but it's perfectly adequate for a game of this type. On each screen are a number of fixed graphics (such as grass, water, fences or huts) all of which you have to manoeuvre around; the impending flood has understandably made Noah rather nervous of water! There's also a lump of food which must be eaten before you can move on to the next screen. Watch out for the lamp and key, as you'll need these to explore the caves and the area behind the Great Wall. And if you get lost, you can access a map of the whole playing area with your position marked on it. The game features some very nice large graphics of animals, but overall I found the whole thing just a bit too repetitive and slow.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Crash

Use of Computer 67%

Graphics 49%

Playability 45%

Getting Started 52%

Addictive Qualities 27%

Value For Money 44%

Overall 47%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: E.S.P. Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £ Language: Machine code Author: In the beginning, Adam and Eve weren't as good as they should have been, and as a result of their indiscretions, humanity wasn't as good either. In despair, God decided to get rid of everything and start over. Only Noah was nice, so God told him to build an ark and fill it with pairs of animals so they should be saved. In this biblical epic you play the erstwhile Noah, not much loved by his fellow humans because of his tales of gloom and doom, and you must travel through the 256 screens collecting the 31 pairs of animals that live in the badlands and beyond the Great Wall in various unsavoury places. The basic colouring of this game is yellow, with large graphics of animals in blue. Various obstacles confront Noah in his search like shrubs, trees, fences and the Great Wall itself, to which he must find the Great Gate key. Puddles are also a problem, and with a prescience of what is to come, Noah is frightened of puddles! Hitting a forbidden object causes the screen to flash with the ominous warning, Whoops Apocalypse. Too much of this sort of thing will kill you off and condemn you to a very tong re-intro. Getting an animal to follow you is not very easy, some of them don't want to go, and there is the added problem that you cannot leave a screen unless you have first eaten the parcel of purple food. Some animals, snails especially, seem to cause an apocalypse, so what with avoiding them, dragging an unwilling animal, and trying to get at the food that the animal is obligingly blocking you off from it can become quite hard. COMMENTS Control keys: Z/X left/right, O/K up/down, M for map Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek, Sinclair Keyboard play: not very responsive Use of colour: not over colourful Graphics: animals nicely drawn, Noah poor, movement by block Sound: not much Skill levels: 1 Lives: 1 with allowance of apocalypses Screens: 256 Special features:

The animals went in two by two - well the old song made it sound easy. Here, NOAH is trekking along the Great Wall.

The map in NOAH.