North Star

Your Sinclair

Graphics 8/10

Playability 7/10

Value For Money 5/10

Addictiveness 6/10

Overall 6/10

Duncan MacDonald 6/10

Gremlin £7.99 Reviewer: Duncan MacDonald Well, what can I say about Northstar?? (Why not say that it's a nutritional timesaver for today's busy 'Mum on the Go'? Bung it in the microwave for seventeen pico-seconds and hey presto - scrumlicious E336 shapes enveloped in lumpy brown spook-sauce. Yum). No, I'd never get away with that, I'm going to have to tell the truth. Northstar (a space-station which is overrun by, gulp, aliens) is a right-left, left-right scrolling shoot 'em/avoid 'em/collect 'em up. Run, from left to right, through level one and you'll reach a lift. This will take you down to level two. Run, from left to right, through level two and you'll reach a lift. This will take you down to level three. Run, from left to right, through level three and you'll... ("Okay, okay, I think we've grasped it!" - lots of astute YS readers). Anyhow, your ultimate goal is the 'Northstar Project Centre' where you have to 'reactivate the life support systems.' Crikey! Nothing actually 'shoots' at you in this game, but any 'sprite-contact' is fatal and believe me, the aliens come at you hot and fast. The killing of certain aliens results in an ascending bubble (catch for extra points), while others result in ascending star-shapes. Catching these stars, lights up little icons at the bottom of the screen, but as they weren't mentioned in the instruction-sheet I was sent, I'm afraid their purpose eluded me, and I'm far too thick to work these things out on my own. Anyway, these 'spook-icons' aside, I'm afraid that Northstar isn't going to break any records in the originality stakes, so let's weight the price, gameplay and graphics. Gameplay: Control response is good and the difficulty level is pitched correctly, ie pretty hard but by no means impossible. Graphics: Nicely coloured backgrounds (inducing some attribute clashes), prettty good scrolling and nice sprite animation (especially some boingy 'spring things' on the first two levels). Price: Crikey... Eight quid!! Eeerm, let's put it this way: if Northstar was a three quid 'budget' game, it would have scored ten points. At eight quid it scores six. Make of that what you will (draw a graph if necessary), and buy according to taste. What more can I say??? (How about 'Yibble yibble'? Ed)

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Sinclair User

Overall 7/10

Tony Dillon 7/10

Label: Gremlin Author: In-house Price: £8.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon Isn't clairvoyance a wonderful thing? I mean, isn't it amazing how the people who write the dodgy storylines on cassette boxes can tell us exactly what will happen in, say, 500 years' time. Funny too, how they always say the same sort of things. For example, in the year 2499, a huge space station is going to be built. But, just as it is about to be completed something will go drastically wrong (again). An alien force will take over (again) and this one little robot fellow will be sent up to conquer the aliens (again). Sounds like a lot of fun, eh? Guess you know what's coming next. Guess what? You're going to be that little robot. Yes, in Northstar, you get to play a little robot who has to destroy a whole alien force. Why a robot? Well, there's no oxygen out there, so a human wouldn't survive 5 minutes. Inferior races, eh? (Why do I keep using the word, eh, eh?) You are armed with a grabby arm kind of thing, a little like the club in Rygar. With it you can destroy the aliens as well as opening pods that contain extra points or weapons such as smart bombs. I tell you, you need them, things can get pretty hectic. And talking of pretty, the game is. Very pretty. The graphics are clear and large, and the animation is quite good, as is the scrolling. Colour is used badly, though. In Spectrum terms, that means that a lot has been used in large lumps with very little thought. The attribute clash is appalling and the enemy are practically invisible when you see them walk in front of something yellow. Tut tut.

CrashCrash Smash

Presentation 93%

Graphics 88%

Playability 91%

Addictive Qualities 90%

Overall 90%

Gordon Houghton 91%

Mike Dunn 90%

Nathan Jones 90%

Producer: Gremlin Graphics Retail Price: £7.99 cassette, £12.99 disk Author: Jon O'Brien Orbiting Earth, surrounded by mystery, is the largest space station ever conceived. Built to solve problems of overpopulation and starvation on our planet, the vast construction was nearing completion when Earth lost all contact with it - and in Northstar you are sent to investigate the silent space ark. But aliens, scheming to destroy human existence with their devastating weapon of predictability, have occupied the station. You must eliminate the hostile forces, complete each of the levels of the space station, and reactivate the life-support system - that is, if any of the human staff are left to make use of it. Of course you carry a weapon, a short-distance lance, and earn points for destroying aliens - patience and quick firing are important. And you can bound over the obstacles that block your path. To help you survive the rigours of space. you have been equipped with implanted oxygen converters, and an onscreen indicator shows how much breathable gas remains. If it falls to zero one of your four lives is lost, and you are no closer to solving the strange and dangerous problem of this eerie space station. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: superbly-designed characters and a fantastic use of colour, complemented by attractive animation Sound: atmospheric synthesized tune and attractive spot effects Options: definable keys

'Very much in the Exolon mould'.

Atmopshere in outer space.

Everything but a rough, tough tune: Northstar

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

The Games Machine

Overall 80%

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.99, Diskette: £14.99 Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99 UP THE POLE An alien horde is running riot over a heavily-inhabited space station, built to ease the pressure of over-population on Earth. The task of destroying the intergalactic interlopers and re-activating the life-support systems falls on the player's broad shoulders. Written initially for the Spectrum and Amstrad by Gremlin newcomer Jon O'Brien, conversions to the Commodore 64/128 and Atari ST are likely to follow very soon. North Star is little more than a simple but enjoyable horizontally scrolling platform shoot 'em up reminiscent of Gun Runner - a title Hewson released last year. It scores well on the graphical front with both the Amstrad and Spectrum versions being colourful and extremely attractive. As our hero rambles through the space station -comprising several separate levels - additional equipment is collected from bonus pods scattered around the corridors. Extra features include the ability to shoot upwards, anti-skid boots and temporary invincibility, plus a Smart bomb for the mass elimination of alien species. An oxygen meter slowly ticks away at the bottom of the screen, signalling the inevitable approach of death. This is replenished by further collection of bonus pods, which also give extra score. Like other games of this kind, the gameplay can prove annoying until the layout of the landscape and the location of the bonus pods have been learned. Once that knowledge is secured, however, North Star provides worthwhile entertainment for quite sometime.

Our daring alien blaster leaves his space ship at the start of his thunder rolling exploits.

The North Star hero dices with death.

"...North Star is little more than a simple but enjoyable horizontally scrolling platform shoot 'em up..."

AMSTRAD CPC Overall: 73% Definitely the most colourful of the versions, with distinctly 'Gremlinesque' chunky graphics. The gameplay is surprisingly fast, considering the Amstrad's scrolling capabilities, which have been overcome by considerably reducing the size of the action screen. Although there's nothing really new happening, North Star's attraction - apart from the fact that it's a rather nifty piece of Amstrad programming - is that it's smart, fun and relatively addictive.