Lazer Wheel

Your Sinclair

Overall 4/10

David Powell 4/10

There are mounds of cheapies on the racks this Chrimble, some good, some indifferent and some terminally pitiful. We asked the Joystick Jugglers for their thoughts (the printable ones, at least) on some of the more recent offerings... LAZERWHEEL MAD £2.99 Reviewer: David Powell Converted from the Commodore - perhaps something got lost in the translation. You shoot at aliens and their bombs revolving in a large circle, while bombs detonate and unhit objects reflect your fire. Okay in theory, but all eight sections are identical, and the aliens are just too damn fast! I bust a gut to reach level 5 with 65000, only to start again and get 54000 without touching a key. No answers on a postcard please - I lost interest hours ago.

Sinclair User

Overall 6/10

Chris Jenkins 6/10

Label: Mastertronic Author: Steve Parys, Andrew Morris Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins I once swore that I would eat my socks before describing any game as 'simple yet maddeningly addictive'. So here goes... mmff, grumpf, glup, glup, glup... eeyuch. Lazerwheel is both simple and addictive. It's also the first shoot-'em-up I've come across where you can't even move your ship. It just sits there, revolving in the middle of a circle of space. Around the screen are counters for score, level, number of hits, time remaining and damage caused. All you have to do is pick off the aliens which circle, indian-like, around the rim of the circle. If you hit the rim of the circle, you will cause damage. Hit the same spot again, and your missile will bounce back and kill you. If the damage count reaches 100 percent, you're snuffed. To reduce the damage count, you have to hit certain types of alien. Different aliens react in different ways. Hit a spinning square, for instance, and it will split into two 'mixers'. Eliminate these when they cross, and you will clear all your damage and score yourself a fine 100 points bonus into the bargain. Other aliens simply reverse direction, get smaller, or speed up the first time you hit them. The challenge is to keep track of lots of little nasties rotating at different speeds in different directions, and to zap them without blowing yourself away by shooting wildly. The clever bit is that there are eight levels which you have to defend simultaneously, jumping to whichever level is most in need of help. Looks awful, sounds awful - but at £1.99 I don't think you'll be disappointed by Lazerwheel's play value.

PROGRAMMERS Mr Chip Software are the company behind Lazerwheel. Steve Prys (28) worked originally for Odin Computer Graphics, and joined Mr Chip in January this year. Softography: Arc of Yesod (Odin, 1987), ICUPS (Odin, 1987), currently working on Rollaround for Melbourne House. Andy Morris (17) started Mr Chip nearly two years ago, and now specialises in computer graphics. Softography: Trailblazer (Gremlin, 1987), P.O.D., Video Meanies, Kikstart II, also working on Rollaround with Steve.

Crash

Presentation 48%

Graphics 44%

Playability 44%

Addictive Qualities 34%

Overall 43%

Bym Welthy 56%

Mike Dunn 44%

Nick Roberts 28%

Producer: M.A.D. Retail Price: £2.99 Author: Steve Parys Aliens are attempting to cross your eight-sector hyperspace causeway, and that makes you real mad. You'll have to defend this astronautical M25 with your spacecraft, which rotates at the centre of a circular area. In each section there's a circling bomb on a short fuse, threatening your territory and flickering with increasing intensity as it approaches detonation. And those multimutated aliens travel around the perimeter of this space zone, within range of your blaster. Some aliens are blocks, which when blasted release rotating circles (these in turn produce green discs that can be shot to temporarily keep alien bombs out of the zone and earn hit points); others are orbs, and destroying them reduces the damage done to the zone in which you're fighting. But your own laser blasts can rebound from reflective spheres, produced when an alien target is missed, and damage your precious property. Coloured bars in an eight-sectioned laser scan indicate the time remaining before a bomb explodes in each sector, and you can also use the laser scan to move to another sector. COMMENTS Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor Graphics: plain and unappealing Sound: BP spot effects

Shooting little blobs - a new concept in entertainment.