Motorbike Madness

Your Sinclair

Overall 8/10

Marcus Berkmann 8/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT Yes it's Marcus Berkmann again, rootling around in the lucky dip for all the latest cheapoid games. And what did he pull out? A bunch of bargains no less! MOTORBIKE MADNESS Mastertronic £1.99 Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann Nice one this, not unlike Pro Skateboard Sim earlier, but more sophisticated and more addictive. The main difference, of course, is that you're riding a motorbike on this one, and scrambling around an extremely testing mountain course. There's a time limit, natch, and the faster you complete the course, the more dosh you get to upgrade your machine. It's not terribly original, true - I mean, there's a virtually identical game on another part of this page - but above all it has been well designed. Your skill is always being tested, which can be a problem if you don't have any - but even I got the hang of things, so it can't be too difficult. The programmers were Binary design, who have done a lot of Mastertronic games, but this, I think, is one of their best. Neat stuff, and worth two nelsons of anyone's wad.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Overall 20%

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.

Sinclair User

Graphics 75%

Sound 59%

Playability 68%

Lastability 69%

Overall 74%

Chris Jenkins 74%

Label: Mastertronic Author: Binary Design Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins Strap on your leather gear, stick your helmet on your head and get ready to burn some rubber. Motorbike Madness makes Kikstart look like Noddy's Scooter Ride, and if you can master it you're just about ready for the Barry Sheene Tin Leg Award. The 10 levels of obstacle-avoiding zaniness are loaded separately from the tape. The landscape is in many ways similar to that of the classic Glider Rider; about half the screen, scrolling in all four directions, shown in glorious monochrome and consisting of various slopes, planes and ramps. Your task is simply to steer your motorbike around each course, avoiding all the obstacles and heading for the gate to the next stage before time runs out. But it isn't that simple, is it Barry? No, because the landscape is littered with things which are likely to turn your bike into a little heap of scrap, not to mention you. The first challenge is a ramp. Steering carefully around the trees, simply pushing the joystick in the direction you want your front wheel to turn, you must line up with the ramp, build up speed (shown on the bar graph to the right of the screen) and zoom over the ramp, veering sharply to the right to avoid a pile of tyres. Too slow, or inaccurately lined up, and you'll end in a crumpled mess, probably sustaining a punctured tyre or leaking petrol tank in the process. Damage to your bike is shown on the display at the bottom of the screen, and each bit of damage impairs your performance more. Other hazards to contend with include patches of cinders. water, spiked blocks and skiddy patches. It's pretty blinking difficult to control the bike, though; it tends to jump suddenly from left to right, rather than coming around smoothly. I don't know if this is deliberate, but it makes it remarkably difficult to concentrate on finding your way around the course. Fortunately, if you get knocked off, you're returned to the last ramp you jumped, rather than right back to the start of the level. The 10 levels are ridges, floodlands, parapets, slopes, maze, origin, hillside, speedway, mud trouble and final. Goodness knows what the later levels look like, because I'm having enough trouble slogging my way through level one. Sound is OK, but for some reason you have to reload each level after losing all your lives. Great fun, then, but too difficult for my feeble brain.