Nonterraqueous

ZX Computing

Graphics 5/5

Addictiveness 4/5

Overall 5/5

Mastertronic £1.99 This game is one which puts some full priced offerings to shame. With over 1000 screens of well designed problems to negotiate, fast action, smooth well animated sprites and a set of problems to solve, this game is a must for any arcade addict. Put simply it is a variation on the maze search and dodge theme, but objects have not merely to be collected but also used to enable you to get further into the game. The ultimate objective is to explore the inside of a giant mountain to find and then destroy the computer which controls the population of your planet. Options for various joystick interfaces are provided and keys QAPO give up down left right movement. Space fires and I and U allow specific actions. The game is very addictive and the inclusion of a high score chart encourages you to keep trying to improve. Would I buy it? Yes!

Sinclair Programs

Rating 30%

Colette McDermott 30%

PRICE: £1.99 Maze games seem to be all the rage with manufacturers this summer, and Mastertronic have joined the throng with Nonterraqueous. The plot is somewhat thin. The game is set on a planet where a tyrannical computer uses the population as pawns in a universal chess game. The oppressed people have built a robot which must travel to the computer's base hidden with the bowels of a giant mountain. This is, of course, where you come in, for you control the robot. You must make your way through the maze, finding uses for the objects which you occasionally find lying around. Flying creatures sap your energy (yawn) and photon thrusters will kill you. If your psyche fades away to nothing through too much bumping into things, you will die. The graphics are uninspiring, viewed a room at a time. There are over a thousand rooms to visit, but the views in them are all much the same. The game is slow moving, for every time you die you return to the beginning and you must follow the same route over and over again. Size does not a good game make, as Quicksilva found with Strontium Dog and The Edge with Psytraxx. Nonterraqueous has little to recommend it besides its size. Produced for the 48K Spectrum by Mastertronic, [redacted].

Your Spectrum

Rick Robson 4/5 HIT

Roger Willis 3/5 MISS

Ross Holman 4/5 HIT

JOYSTICK JURY Have we got some great software lined up for you! But first a surprise - the hairy hacker is taking his annual rest (he calls it that 'cos it usually lasts a year!) so we welcome a new joystick juror to the bench, Rick Robson. Now join the three Rs - Rick, Roger Willis and Ross Holman as they find out where the arcade action is! What's the score? Well, the marks out of five at the end of each review is a shorthand way of summing up what each reviewer thought of the game. But will it be a commercial success? For that you'll have to check out the HIT and MISS system. Simple, eh? NONTERRAQUEOUS Mastertronic £1.99 Ross: Nonte...what...eous? Don't be put off by the weird name though, because this game's really excellent value for money. You are in control of the seeker, a spherical robot on its mission to destroy a computer hidden in the depths of a planet. There's no denying that the game's a cross between Underwurlde and Jet Pack with a thousand plus screens. These link up to form a labyrinth filled with blastable nasties - so blast 'em. The seeker has a finite amount of Psyche (that's a fancy way of saying energy) that decreases if you bump into some of the objects in the passageways. Other objects will bump you off outright while others will replenish your energy. It's also open to you to pick up and detonate bombs to open passageways or you can travel about in non-firing defenceless mode - the only way you can pass through some sections. The game's tricky if a little repetitive but for under two quid it has to be a hit.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Sinclair User

Overall 3/5

Clare Edgeley 3/5

Publisher: Mastertronic Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K Joystick: Kempston, Protek, Sinclair Send a robot seeker into an underground maze, find a computer console, blow it up and you've saved the planet. The theme of Mastertronic's Nonterraqueous is all too familiar and bears some resemblance to all other maze games of the same ilk. Once you've got your magnifying glass out to read the instructions, you will see that the game is all about keeping your psyche levels up. Some objects will give you psyche, others decay psyche - when you have no psyche left, you are dead. Start off point seems to be around level 40. The robot, a little metal blob, whisks into the air and the search is on. Blast away at a few flying aliens and find a bomb. When detonated, that blasts a hole through one of the electric fences which bar your passage. Photon thrusters block many paths and are fatal if touched. They also tend to come in twos and are the most frustrating aspect of the whole game. Some objects carry the word Swop, which means you can go into defenceless mode. The robot turns into a helicopter which cannot fire and though that apparently has its uses, it is not needed in the early stages. For all that, Nonterraqueous is fast with smooth graphics. Though not the most exciting game around, it is good value and should take some time to complete.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Crash

Use of Computer 78%

Graphics 75%

Playability 78%

Getting Started 78%

Addictive Qualities 76%

Value For Money 85%

Overall 77%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Mastertronic Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £1.99 Language: Machine code Author: Stephen Curtis and Mark Jacobs It is a truth universally acknowledged that a game, possessed of original graphics and good ideas, must be in want of a publisher. Yes well, thank you Jane, you are, of course correct. Nonterraqueous arrived at CRASH thought control with little more than the envelope it stood up in. Thankfully Nonterraqueous is only half as difficult to describe as it is to pronounce. There is a planet (type: cold and forbidding) that is ruled by a computer (type: schizophrenic, paranoid eg Marvin but without the smile) and populated by a people (type: suppressed for too long, eg CRASHless), the unfriendly computer is located in a mountain (type: big, cold and as yet unpenetrated). The population (type: defined above) decide to build a robot of their own (type: spherical, guided, thick) and send it into the labryinth (type: 1004 rooms, 42 levels) in order destroy the computer within. You (type: human, CRASH reader, smart) have to guide the robot past all sorts of lethal obstacles (types: photon thrusters, floaters, rapid repeat lasers, force fields, rooms of corrosive gas, bombs, rockets, more bombs, etc) in order to reach the chamber that houses the computer. To complete the mission successfully will require a great deal more than just a good trigger finger. Many of the obstacles require adventure-like solutions so it's thinking positron protective dome time again. As your robot moves from screen to screen it comes across some weird and wonderful shapes dashing all over the set. These little chaps are harmless (update: mostly harmless), they can be destroyed with laser fire but collision with them, or indeed with any other object, will damage your psyche level (dictionary: for Psyche read Energy). You can recharge the energy level by plugging into psychers. Keep a look out for objects that will help with the various problems, some you will be able to pick up and carry, bombs, fuel pods and the like, larger objects may have a more immediate use but some objects may have undesirable effects when picked up. Below the playing area indicators give the score, psyche, number of bombs carried and the level that you are currently on. The authors have had the presence of mind to give an indication of the game completed percentage to provide good players a means of describing to others just how good they are. COMMENTS Control keys: A/Q up/down O/P left/right SP fire Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2 and Cursor type Keyboard play: responsive, 8-directional Use of colour: very good Graphics: varying in size, definitely an original look Sound: miminal Skill levels: 1 Lives: 3 Screen: 1004 switch over

The impassable electro-barrier is about to be destroyed by the bomb which is falling to the floor beside it.

Unusually attractive graphics make their first appearance in the loading screen of NONTERRAQUEOUS.

Your craft is the round-shaped object on the right, firing a laser blast past a hapless alien.