Lightning Simulator

Your Sinclair

The View 60%

Realism 51%

Dakka Factor 62%

Net Weight 66%

Overall 65%

Jonathan Davies 65%

THE COMPLETE YS GUIDE TO FLIGHT SIMS Oh cripes. Whose idea was this? Couldn't we do it on something else? Nah, we promised. How about putting if off for another month? Or we could make JONATHAN DAVIS do it? Heh heh. Right, where's he got to? Ah ha! Neeeeeow! Dakka dakka dakka! Kaboom! "Crikey, Ginger, pull up! Over." "I can't! I think my flaps have gone a bit funny. Over." Neeeow! Boom! "Bail out! Bail out! Over." Dakka dakka dakka. (Ricochet noises.) "Er, okay then. Over and out." Sorry about that, just trying to inject a bit of excitement into this thing because, let's face it, flight sims aren't exactly the most exciting bits of software around. Or are they? No, They're not. But there are loads of them about, and people keep buying them. Why is this? Perhaps we'd better investigate. For thousands of years man has dreamt of flight... (Cut the crap, Ed) Erm, well, perhaps it's because they demand a bit more thought than your average arcade game. Fast reactions are all very well, but what about using your noddle occasionally? Keeping a plane in flight isn't just a matter of wobbling your joystick about a bit, which is the impression that lesser games give. You've got angles of attack to worry about, altitude, navigation, weapons systems, undercarriage... the list is endless. As are the manuals usually. And that's another thing. If you've never played one before you'll need to spend hours wading through one of these breeze-block tomes before you can even get off the ground. Once you've got the thing up in the air though you're well away. With any luck there'll be lots of scenery to look at and plenty of enemy thingies to 'take out'. You might even like to indulge in a bit of aerobatics to pass the time. The one thing you should always keep an eye on though is the ground. Stay away from this at all costs. Unless you're landing, of course, which is another story altogether. SO WHAT'S A FLIGHT SIM THEN, EH? In compiling this guide I was faced with the usual problem - what exactly is a flight simulation? What are the criteria? Where do you draw the line? I decided to seek the advice of one of Europe's leading experts in the field of computer games. "Er, Matt? (Cough.) Matt?' I ventured. "Mmm?" "Would you have said that, say, Fighter Pilot was a flight sim? Huh? Matt?" I enquired cheerily. "Er, probably," he replied. "How about Harrier Attack?" "I expect it is, yes." "Or Night Raider?" "Um, look, I've got to go out. To the, er, shops. I'll see you later. Maybe." Unperturbed. I decided to try Andy, but he didn't appear to hear me. I also tried ringing up a few friends. They all seemed to be out. So it's all down to me then. Well, I reckon that really, in a flight sim, you ought to be in control of a plane of some sort. Ideally you'd get a 3D view out of the cockpit, but I'll be flexible and allow ones where you see the plane on the screen from the back (like ATF) and even ones where you see the view in 2D (from the top or something). Another important guideline is the number of keys. Preferably there should be at least 2,452 of them, each with about three different functions. But, again, I'll allow a generous margin of error and set the bottom line at six. And finally there's the manual. Obviously this should be as large and impenetrable as possible, with lots of incomprehensible acronyms that you have to keep looking up in the glossary at the back. A rough guide to length? Let's say 500-600 pages for a decent one or, if the game comes in an ordinary cassette box, an inlay card that folds out into a thin strip long enough to wrap round Matt's tummy at least two and a half times. So now we know just what makes up a flight sim, let's take a look at a few… RATINGS Once again, the normally-so-versatile YS rating system doesn't really seem too appropriate here (Instant appeal? Addictiveness?). So what we've done is to come up with a revised system, specially tailored to meet the needs of today's flight sim. Let's have a nosey... The View: Can you see anything nice out of the window? Or is it all just green and blue wiggly lines? And does the scenery glide around smoothly or jerk around like an Allegro with a dodgy clutch? Realism: This can often be determined by the number of keys the game uses. So that's just what we've done. Counted 'em. As there are 40 keys on your basic Speccy, and each one can be doubled or even tripled up, the maximum comes out to exactly 100. Handy, eh? Dakka Factor: Is there much to shoot? Or is it all a matter of map-reading, gauge-watching and other such nonsense? And once you've shot whatever it is, does it explode dramatically and plummet to the ground leaving a trail of smoke behind it? Or not? Net Weight: A crucial part of any flight sim is all the junk that comes with it. So, adding together all the disks, maps, manuals, stickers and the box, what do the YS scales make of it? (All weights are, of course, approximate.) (In degrees.) THE CHEAPO SIDE OF THINGS You've got to give them credit - the budget people'll have a crack at anything. And flight sims are no exception. A full-pricey can take anything up to 18 months and a massive team of highly-trained programmers to develop, so what does your average beer-swilling cheapo programmer manage to come up with in the two weeks (evenings only) he's allotted? Let's brace ourselves and take a look. Lightning Simulator CodeMasters At last! A real, genuine, bona fide budget flight sim! As you might have guessed, it 'simulates' a Lightning which is a fast but extremely old RAF plane. Lightning Sim has the inimitable budget feel to it, but it's still and actual flight sim - and a looking-out-of-the-window one at that. It brings a lump to my throat, it really does. There are plenty of dials to keep an eye on, and all the usual flight sim features. As games go it's awful. But I don't care. It's a flight sim - and that's what counts.

Oh dear. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

EVERY FLIGHT SIM EVER (IN THE WORLD)* *(near enough) Ace - Cascade Ace II - Cascade Ace Of Aces - US Gold Acrojet - US Gold Airliner - Protek ATF - Digital Integration Biggies - Mirrorsoft Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer - Electronic Arts Combat Lynx - Durell Dambusters - US Gold Delta Wing - Creative Sparks Deep Strike - Durell F-15 Strike Eagle - MicroProse Flight Path 737 - Anirog Fighter Bomber - Activision Fighter Pilot - Digital Integration Flight Simulation - Psion Flyer Fox - Bug Byte Gee Bee Air Rally - Activision Gunship - MicroProse Nightflight - Hewson Nightflight II - Hewson Night Raider - Gremlin Project Stealth Fighter - MicroProse Red Arrows - Database Software Skyfox - Ariolasoft Space Shuttle - Microdeal Spitfire 40 - Mirrorsoft Strike Attack - Micro Mart Strike Force Harrier - Mirrorsoft Top Gun - Ocean

GAMES THAT AREN'T FLIGHT SIMS, BUT MIGHT JUST WELL HAVE BEEN Caesar The Cat - Mirrorsoft Mr Wong's Loop Laundry - Artic ZX Tool Kit - Star Dreams

GAMES THAT MOST DEFINITELY AREN'T FLIGHT SIMS Beaky And The Egg Snatchers - Fantasy Blue Max - US Gold Harrier Attack - Durell Heathrow Air Traffic Control - Hewson Monty Python's Flying Circus - Virgin Night Gunner - Digital Integration P47 - Firebird Scramble Spirits - Grandslam Spitfire - Encore TLL - Vortex

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-BEHIND ONES These ones are really the next step down from the True Flight Sim. They're essentially the same, except that instead of a view out of the cockpit you get a view of the back of your plane. This isn't quite as pointless as it sounds, because usually the plane is small enough so that you can see past it to the 'scenery' beyond. This type of view generally makes it easier to judge landings and to see if you're about to fly into anything, but there is often a corresponding reduction in the number of knobs and dials, and an increase in things to do. Not what we want at all. ATF is the perfect example of this sort of thing. "Chuck Yeager. (Well, he sort of belongs in this box.)"

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-JUST-ABOUT-ANYWHERE ONES Now these really are the business. They're like a cross between the True Flight Sim and the Looking-At-It-From-Behind one, with lots more as well. In fact, what you can do is look at your plane from all sorts of different angles, including weird ones like from-the-ground and from-the-front-of-the-plane. To tell the truth, games like this are a bit scarce on the Speccy (they tend to flourish on posh computers like the Atari ST) but there are one or two good ones. Chuck Yeager is a notable example, as is Fighter Bomber.

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-THE-SIDE ONES Now we're looking at things like Harrier Attack And they're certainly not flight sims. In fact, they're usually just scrolling shoot-'em-ups with planes instead of spaceships. There's always plenty of stuff to shoot, but technical accuracy is very limited indeed. You never have to worry about setting your flaps at the right angle or the navigational computer to the appropriate beacon, or watching your airspeed in case you stall. Useless. "Harrier Attack - definitely not a flight simulator. (Clear now?)"

LOOKING-AT-IT-FROM-THE-TOP ONES Now we're in dicey territory. We're talking about things like TLL here. Quite frankly, they're not really, are they? Flight sims, I mean. They've rarely got more than four or five keys, placing them firmly on the arcade side of things. So let's pass over them.

SO, YOU WANT TO WRITE A FLIGHT SIM? Er, are you sure? Stick your tongue out. Hmm. Say "Ahh". Crikey. Okay, let's take a look at some essential ingredients... THE SETTING Flight sims are always set in a spooky 'alternative' world where the sky is always blue and the grass is always green (and so is just about everything else for that matter). Other vegetation is pretty sparse, apart from triangles on sticks which look a bit like trees. These are usually about 600 ft high (if your altimeter is anything to go by). The only buildings tend to be in a modernist cereal packet style, with no-one living in them. Mountains are handy for flying into. KNOBS AND DIALS There should be a ridiculous number of these, all of which are unmarked and of no obvious use. If they start reading 'zero', eject. There should also be little red lights which start flashing and making a beeping noise for no apparent reason. They only stop when you press every key on the keyboard very hard, at which point the plane crashes. THE MAP Any relation to a normal map should be avoided. Flight sim maps consist of a large and (usually green-on-yellow, or something else that's probably outlawed by EEC legislation) covered in little splotches. Quite what these are isn't entirely clear. Somewhere in the middle is a flashing square - you. This never seems to move, no matter how long you look. Meanwhile, back in the cockpit, your plane has just been shot down. THE CONTROLS As previously explained, there should be as many as possible, and then lots more on top of that. They should all have obvious purposes (eg P for throttle up, K for map, Symbol Shift, Caps Shift and 3 for left etc). There should also be a disconcerting delay (say, five minutes) between pressing a key and anything happening. The need for constant reference to the manual can easily be incorporated, during which time the plane flies into a tree. SOUND Don't put any in. Apart from the 'crash effect', of course. THE ENEMY Somewhere on the screen there should be a radar with a little flashing dot on it. This is the enemy aircraft. The player will turn to face it, prime the air-to-air missiles and wait for the two aircraft to meet. This, of course, never happens. After a certain length of time the player will get bored, engage the autopilot and nip out to put the kettle on. His plane then gets shot down. LANDING As you'll no doubt be aware, this is impossible. Real F-15s and things land perfectly first time, every time. But not simulated ones. You get them lined up exactly, set the speed rate of descent and everything exactly according to the instructions, flaps and undercarriage down, set it down oh-so-gently and... kaboom. PLAYTESTING Once the game's nearing completion you'll have to thoroughly test it. Sit yourself down in front of it and ask someone to come and check up on you after an hour or so. If you're still awake the game is obviously in need of modification.

THE 'TRUE' FLIGHT SIM The obvious example of one of these is the original Flight Simulation, but that was pretty crap. What we're basically talking about here is the sort where you're placed in the cockpit looking out of the window in the bottom half of the screen (or, worse, on another screen altogether) is the instrument panel, which can generally be ignored, and in the top half is the view. This is generally green on the bottom and blue on the top. If it's the other way round you're probably in trouble. Scattered about will be lots of squiggly lines, and maybe a few dots on the ground to give the impression of 'speed' (ahem). "Night Raider - not of the best but it'll do."

THE A-Z OF FLYING TERMS Ammo: A Latin verb. Being Tail Gunner: Going to the loo. Chocks Away: Someone's pinched your lunch. Dogfight: These are illegal. Eject: If in doubt... Flaps: Do lots of these if the propeller stops going round. Ground: The main hazard faced by most pilots. Heading: See Football Guide, YS Issue 54. Instruments: In-flight entertainment. Joystick: Long thing between your legs with a red bit on the end. Kippers: Probably the nickname of a World War 1 pilot. Landing: The bit at the top of the stairs. Mae West: Something pilots like to keep handy. Normandy: A nice place to go on holiday. Orange: If you paint your 'crate' this colour you'll probably get shot down. Piece Of Cake: Dreadful drama series about planes on telly. Quebec: Keep an eye on the map if you don't want to end up here. Roger: (Er, do S. Ed) Six O'Clock: Tea-time. Take Off: Spoof or parody. Undercarriage: See Joystick. V-Formation: Give one of these to the enemy as you fly by. Wings: Something to do with Paul McCartney. X-Ray: You're meant to say this over the radio quite often. Yellow: See Orange.

THE FIRST FLIGHT SIM EVER Ha. This one's easy. It was Flight Simulation, one of the first games that ever came out on the Speccy. It was also the first game I bought. (Aargh! The secret's out.) It was one of those Psion games which came out on Sinclair's own label, and despite the mind-numbingly tedious piccy on the box (the instrument panel of a plane) it hung around near the top of the charts for years. In actual fact, Flight Simulation is a conversion of a ZX81 game of the same name. Yikes. We'll take a closer look at this one later on.

Crash

Overall 21%

Over the past few months, CRASH has tended to neglect the cheaper end of the software market - the ninety-niners - in favour of critical comment on all the full-price games. So in an effort to cover every single piece of software available for your Spectrum, CRASH has decided to introduce a new section, devoted entirely to budget software (games up to £5.00 in price); Budget Bureau. Each month, we'll pick out and feature our favourite cheapies, anything with 80%+ will receive a CRASH House Hit award! Each game still has its own overall rating (in brackets), so there shouldn't be a problem choosing the best games to buy. Only Blackbeard gets a House Hit this month. Read on, read on... £1.99 Code Masters' latest simulator attempts to bring the teeth-smashing sport of rugby to the Spectrum. International Rugby Simulator (68%) features a league of eight teams (any of them computer-controlled) competing for the championship. Matches are portrayed in Match Day-style 3-D. The player controls one player at a time: running, passing and kicking. Scrummages and line-outs are also featured for added realism. Graphics are simple stick-men but David Whittaker's title tune is good. Rugby is a difficult sport to simulate in a computer game, but this is a brave attempt which offers a fair amount of playability for rugger fans. After some deft promotion by Aussie superstars INXS and other style-merchants skateboarding seems 'in' again. Code Masters' Pro Skateboard Simulator (72%) has levels which alternate between attractive isometric 3-D skateparks and overhead-view cross-country courses. A number of flags must either be collected (skatepark), or passed through (cross-country), while avoiding obstacles. Once the odd control system is mastered, the game proves very playable, although very difficult on later stages. Also 'in' are 1950s styles, as Silverbird acknowledge with Video Classics (05% - oh dear). Simple bat and ball versions of tennis, football, and squash are featured alongside the more original Four Bat Blip and Asterbliperoids! All these games (load together) take up about 11k of memory - but it seems less. The minimalistic graphics are identical to early video game consoles, with the exception of some garish, chequered backgrounds. A serious contender for The World's Worst Games Collection. Keeping to the theme of complete unoriginality we also have another run-along-and-jump arcade adventure from Mastertronic. Called Hundra (33%), it's got a Viking heroine trying to rescue her father by finding three jewels. Although graphically fair, Hundra is a simplistic platform-style arcade adventure with no frills, and certainly no thrills. Dullness seems a positive virtue by comparison with Mastertronic's Motorbike Madness (20%), however. This has good isometric graphics, ten multiloaded courses and prize money for quick finishes. Unfortunately control is extraordinarily fiddly and every time you die you have to reload the course - even if it's only the first one. No wonder it's called Motorbike Madness. By contrast Lightning Simulator (21%) plays like the opposite of its title, with wireframe graphics moving more like treacle than lightning. Options allow flying skills to be practised before attempting a mission, and you can even take photos. The cassette inlay provides the minimum of instructions making for a confusing and disappointing game. Far more enjoyable is the latest Mastertronic shoot-'em-up, Star Farce (58%). This is a colourful, vertically-scrolling alien-blaster in the style of Lightforce. There's very little originality, but playability makes up for it. Worth a look, although the superior Lightforce is on budget too. Showing a more original approach is Silverbird's Hopper Copper (40%). Here a policeman rides around in a space hopper, catching villains by bouncing on them! A radar screen helps you find clumsily-drawn villains in a drab, monochromatic town. While novelty makes it fun for a while, the basic gameplay is very repetitive. Only marginally better is Tomcat (25%) from Players. A vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up, Tomcat has good, monochromatic graphics - with the singular exception of bullets which are simply small circles. Spotting them is exceptionally difficult which, together with the unoriginal gameplay, makes for an extremely difficult game. £2.99 An even older bunch of games than Video Classics form the basis of Zeppelin's Las Vegas Casino (26%). You start off with £250 and must try to turn it into £50000 via four gambling games (all in one load again). The games are blackjack (just like Pontoon 21 here), baccarat (you choose whether to bet on player or dealer), roulette and craps (a dice game). The only game requiring real skill is blackjack, which is still pretty simple. In fact, without even matchsticks to play for, and human opponents to bluff, all these games soon become incredibly tedious. Highly recommended, in fact, as an antidote to the perils of gambling. Wot no simulators? Code Masters have just released two games at the new higher price of £2.99. Ninja Massacre (45%) is a no-nonsense Gauntlet clone. One or two players explore up to fifty levels of a monster-filled dungeon, searching for treasure and magic potions. Gameplay is okay and there's a nice in-game tune, but if you want a Gauntlet game, you'd be better off getting the rereleased original, available from Kixx at £2.99.

Your Sinclair

Overall 3/10

Ben Stone 3/10

Mike Dunn 3/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT Ben 'n' Skippy take a seat in the stalls to play their way through this month's cut-price offerings! With a bit of help from the usherette of course! LIGHTNING SIMULATOR Silverbird £1.99 Reviewer: Ben Stone, Mike Dunn In this little number, you take control of the Electric Lightning aircraft and fly it through a number of varying missions. And if that's not good enough for you, you can always make it even more lifelike by bringing in a reality factor like cross winds, system failures, G limit and queuing for three hours at customs! Compared to games like Empire Strikes Back and Starglider the graphics in this just don't stand up - even if it is a budget title. Technically it could be excellent (we've never flown an Electric Lightning so we can't say), but as a game it's terribly boring. Fly over this one.

Sinclair User

Graphics 72%

Sound 48%

Playability 35%

Lastability 67%

Overall 68%

Tony Dillon 68%

Label: Silverbird Author: Michael Bauer Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: Kempston Reviewer: Tony Dillon Though not immediately apparent from its title, Lightning Simulator is in fact a flight simulator, or at least that is what it describes itself as. What it actually is is a rehash of the old PSION Flight Simulator with a new dogfighting catch and a built-in movie recording facility. All this for £1.99. Sounds like great value, but is it? For a start, as a flight simulator, it falls short on realism by quite a long way. As there are no ground features other than runways and control towers (situated next to the runways) there is no feeling of movement. In fact, for a lot of the time, all you will see is a plain screen with a black rectangle at the bottom and a white or blue rectangle at the top. Or maybe not a rectangle. If I said this game was hard, I'd be selling myself short. Controlling this plane is bloody difficult. Not only is it amazingly difficult to manoeuvre, it's also frustratingly impossible to fly in a straight line. It just won't respond when you want it to, and you end up overcompensating a lot of the time. Combat works quite well, I will say that. The vector graphics are quite fast and recognisable as what they are meant to represent. I.e. aircraft, tanks, etc. Unfortunately, there is very little in the way of reaction needed as far as the destruction of the enemy is concerned. The guns/missiles are automatically fired the moment the gunsight locks on. In the same instant, the cameras start rolling, and keep roiling as long as the bullets/ missiles are flying. I can see absolutely no point to the cameras whatsoever apart from giving you the option of seeing that ugly S.O.B. blow up in a cloud of triangles in glorious slowmoving-o-vision. Just in case you're worried about the lack of variety in most flight simulators, then worry no more. Lightning Simulator contains 6 basic missions, with lots of room to alter all the usual things like wind direction and strength as well as being able to add a cloud layer and varying amounts of tanks, just to add a little spice. Lightning Simulator doesn't really make any impression in the Spectrum games market. It's not a bad simulator, but unplayability and lack of realism don't make it anything remarkable.