Mean Streak

Sinclair User

Overall 8/10

Graham Taylor 8/10

Label: Mirrorsoft Author: Byron Nilson Price: £7.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Graham Taylor Imagine Paper Boy with firepower and you have some of the flavour of Mean Streak - new out from Mirrorsoft. Where you had to dodge around obstacles and deliver papers in Paperboy in this game you have to dodge obstacles and blow away a whole series of computer controlled rival bikes. We're not talking push bikes either - these machines are mean. You control a bike speeding across a featureless landscape. Featureless that is except for assorted brick walls, tin-tacks and other obstacles that will total or seriously damage your bike. And here and there are useful items you actually want to bump into - bonus oil (for causing oil slicks), extra fuel and missiles. The objective is pretty simple - destroy the other bikes and get to the end of each level within a tight time limit. This is also going to involve carefully timed jumps over ramps and sometimes the destruction of barriers with only moments in which to respond. On early levels dealing with the bikes is mainly a matter of getting behind them and blasting but as they get cleverer you will need to swerve and weave your way around. One entertaining option is to barge the bikes on to a ramp which runs along the side of the road. The barging can get very frenzied as the two bikes push back and forth - not unlike a James Bond film actually. More fun is to be had by dropping oil slicks... The combination of bike-to-bike fighting and obstacle dodging makes for a pretty potent game. It's nicely presented too. The screen scrolls smoothly and diagonally at la Paperboy and the movement of the bikes looks pretty authentic. On a game as fast moving as this the screen is inevitably two-colour though exactly which two colours you get depends on the level. It must be said, the backgrounds are pretty plain and uninteresting but then the bikes are really where most of the action is. The only real criticism I have is that after a point there are few surprises in the game - the levels look pretty much the same and only the intelligence and numbers of the enemy and the variety of obstacles changes. To be fair though tactics is the point of the game rather than lots of vastly different levels and in that sense it succeeds magnificently.

PROGRAMMERS Byron Nilson has only been in the programming business for a year or so and Mean Streak is his second project. Softography: Little Computer People (Activision, 1987)

Crash

Presentation 64%

Graphics 66%

Playability 67%

Addictive Qualities 63%

Overall 64%

Ben Stone 75%

Paul Sumner 53%

Robin Candy 64%

Producer: Mirrorsoft Retail Price: £7.95 Author: Dalali Software Think once, think twice, think bike - for in Mean Streak they're going to be coming after you, on this Sunday afternoon ride with a difference. You're out there on the road, minding your own business, when a succession of computer-controlled psychopathic bikers try to bump and bore you off your two-wheeled chariot. And if that fails, they're not averse to taking a pot shot at you. But you're not standing for that. You too can push attackers off the roadway, or get behind them and blow them away using the guns and missiles you just happen to be carrying. But these fiendish bikers who have never passed a proficiency test in their lives aren't the only dangers lurking on the streets. Scattered across the blacktop are tin tacks to puncture tyres, rocks and oil slicks that can send you careering and make you vulnerable to an opponent's nudge, ramps that have to be cleared, walls that can flatten a face, and gaping holes the council have forgotten. Lose control of your machine and you end up as an accident statistic with one of your three lives gone. To avoid these odious obstacles, the bike can accelerate or slow down, be swung across the road or leap into the air. Advance warning of the problems ahead on the scrolling screen is given Defender-style by a radar screen showing a vertical view of the road section with the position of your bike and opponents displayed. Fuel, oil, missiles and tyres are in limited supply, though there are engine-refreshment cans and missiles on the road. There are three restart cones that can be picked up as you ride onward; should you succumb to an unwholesome end, a cone will allow you to restart from the point where you picked it up. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: good main characters, marred by jerky scrolling Sound: reasonable tune and spot FX

The Mean Streak battletrack (just past the Milton Keynes turning).