Obliterator

The Games Machine

Overall 61%

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99 Amstrad CPC Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £14.99 As was the case with Psygnosis's Barbarian, Obliterator's appeal lay with the quality of graphics and sound on the 16-bit originals. Drak is blocky on the Amstrad, animated badly and slowly, against backgrounds of a bright and jagged appearance. On the Spectrum. the hero walks strangely but smoothly, and despite some clash, the graphic detail is adequate. The Amstrad music and effects are annoyingly crude, but although the Spectrum's music is monotonous, its sound effects are very good. The real problem with 8-bit Obliterator lies in its control system. Because the icons are cycled through using up/down, this slows the speed at which you can react - and its also easy to accidentally change a selected icon. This is a large but ultimately unthrilling 8-bit game.

Tougher controls make Spectrum Drak harder to manipulate.

AMSTRAD CPC Overall: 56%

ATARI ST Overall: 65% TGM007 AMIGA Overall: 70% TGM007

Your Sinclair

Graphics 8/10

Playability 6/10

Value For Money 5/10

Addictiveness 6/10

Overall 6/10

Matt Bielby 6/10

Melbourne House £9.99 Reviewer: Matt Bielby Obliterator is a bit of a corker from Psygnosis. It's a mappers delight, featuring endless corridors packed with maurauding aliens of various sorts, plus guns and components that you have to pick up to complete your mission. Your task is to escape an alien infested space craft before it blows up - a task made harder because you have to rebuild your shuttle from scattered components before you do so. Your largish sprite lollops around the ship, going up ladders or through teleports as the mood takes him. Some of the backgrounds and monsters are rather well designed - as they were on the spectacular 16 bit versions - but the game has the same faults: slightly jerky animation and limited scrolling. Not only that, but you soon get the feeling that there's not very much to do except keep running around blowing those muthas into next week. I don't know about you, but I found this tends to pall after a while. Once you've completed the game you're unlikely to come back for afters. What a shame, because it's well packaged, looks quite good and the unusual control system works very well once you've got used to it.

Icon strip: using the fire option here Spec-chums, but check the column (Oo-er) on the left for clues to the other ones.

Lift down: better use this fast matey or that alien meanie's going to blow your ass away (But I don't even have a donkey. Ed)

Teleport doorway: it's a handy way of whizzing around the ship or nipping out of trouble.

What he should be doing here is rolling about on the floor (Excuse me? Ed) That way the alien won't be able to hit him. (Oh. Ed)

You'll need a map to finish off Obliterator. This one won't do, but it'll give you a rough idea about what you're aiming for.

OUT OF CONTROL A word in your shell-like about the controls. At first I though 'Eek! This looks a bit tricky, what with movement controlled by one hand on the keyboard, while the other must nimbly flip across a baffling strip of icons to deftly pick from among other actions. This stump me and no mistake.' In fact, it's really easy. On the left hand side are the up, down, left, right icons, with halt next to that. Into, which you use to go into teleports or doorways is next, followed by (Xmas tree shaped) jump. The twin lightning strikes are the shoot icon (using this and the keyboard, you can choose between which of the guns to use) and beyond that are defend (use this while running to roll under alien bullets - useful, huh?) and action (pick up or use what you're carrying). Trickiest bits are when you must use two different actions - say jump and shoot - to kill a monster, and have to switch between the two before it kills you. Once this is mastered, you're 'laughing'.

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Ace Rating 530/1000

Melbourne House, £9.99cs, £14.99dk ST version reviewed Issue 9 - ACE rating 570 Obliterator was not one of the world's greatest arcade adventures when it first appeared on 16-bit machines, and to give Melbourne House credit, they have managed to convert it wonderfully to the Spectrum. Unfortunately it's still not a wonderful game and frustrates more than it entertains.

Sinclair User

Graphics 83%

Sound 70%

Playability 70%

Lastability 82%

Overall 79%

Tony Dillon 79%

Label: Melbourne House Author: Icon Design Price: £8.95 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon Remember Barbarian - No, not the hack and slash two player beat-'em up from Palace, the arcade adventure from Psygnosis, released by Melbourne House not so long ago. Obliterator is the official follow up and magically (opo-ee oo) transports you from the barbarian caverns of the predecessor to a huge alien space craft. You are now the last of the Obliterators, and the destruction of the ship and the safety of mankind lies in your hands. Your general and basic aim is to destroy the ship and escape with your life. Well, it'd be a bit pointless escaping without it wouldn't it? To do that, you first have to find and remove four separate components. One to disable the plasma drive, one to disable the shields, one to disable the main weapons system and one to shut down the computers. The final piece you have to find is the shuttle activation datapack so that you can get the shuttle out of there. Of course, you have to find the shuttle. In keeping with the original, Obliterator carries basically the same control method as Barbarian, left and right on the joystick make the character run in that particularly direction if he can. Up and down, however, causes a highlight to travel across a bar of icons at the bottom of the screen. Fire activates the currently selected icon. Pressing space puts you through to a sub menu which handles the basic manipulation of weapons (which one is currently activated) as well as giving you your score and energy level. The icons, from left to right are; Walk left. I wonder what this one does. Move up. Lets your character move up in a lift if you are standing inside one. Move down. See move up. Walk right. Makes your character breakdance. (Really? - GT) Stop all movement. Makes your character transform into a green Volvo estate and then propose to the first alien he meets and promise undying love and (DILLON. THIS IS GETTING STUPID. STOP IT AT ONCE - AS) Move through door. Makes you character move through door if he's standing outside one. jump. Makes him jump. Fire. Makes him shoot currently activated weapon. Roll. Makes turn do a forward roll if he's moving at the time you activate the icon. The final icon lets you pick up anything collectable. A generous assortment of nasties line the glinting steel corridors of the ship. These range from harmless little drills that race along the floor and have to be jumped over, to large froglike things in battle armour that hover and fire at you. Roof mounted cannons line some of the ceilings and, boy, are they nasty. Fighting back is fun. The angle you fire your gun back at is determined by the length of time you hold down the fire button, ranging from parallel to the ground through to the perpendicular. The more powerful the weapon you carry, the less shots it takes to blow away the nasties, which you need to take care of because the shots are very limited. Graphics are pretty fab. Colour has been used really well. No, that's not colour clash, that's the green glow given off by your laser generated forcefield. Oh all right. It is colour clash. All the sprites are really nicely detailed and animated. In fact, the animation is better than the original Amiga version. That's one in the eye for 16 bit. The sound is all right, but nothing really special. Just spot effects really. The 128K spot effects are nicer than the 48K spot effects, however. I like Obliterator more than I liked Barbarian. Another first rate 16 to 8-bit conversion by Ver House, and I look forward to seeing many more.

Crash

Presentation 74%

Graphics 78%

Sound 80%

Playability 68%

Addictive Qualities 65%

Overall 70%

Mark Caswell 80%

Phil King 60%

Obliterating without a blitter Producer: Melbourne House Glossy Packaging Costs: £9.99 cass Author: Paul Murray The Federation Star Fleet has been reduced to debris and once again the Earth lies at the mercy of an enormously powerful alien spaceship. 'But why?' you may well wonder, what have we done that makes everyone hate us. Well, I'll tell you, it's because we're stupid. Just look at this game. Originally a mediocre, rather sluggish 16-bit arcade adventure, remarkable only for its graphics, now it's been convened to the Spectrum to become even more mediocre. The hero who can save Earth (but really shouldn't), is Drak. He's the last of some superwarriors called Obliterators. You take control after he's been beamed aboard the alien ship with only a pistol to defend himself. There are five tasks to complete: disable four key parts of the ship, then nick something to activate the escape shuttle before the ship explodes. Drak can be moved left and right in the conventional manner or, by moving the highlighted cursor along icons at the foot of the screen, do more complex things like jumping, rolling over, etc. Pressing SPACE shows weapons collected, components half-inched, shield level and score. Needless to say the spaceship is packed with aliens and automated defence systems. Success depends on selecting the right combination of icons so you might, for example, run, jump, roll over and shoot. On the 16-bit machines the slowness of things allowed you to admire the graphics, here they only serve to irritate. The graphics aren't bad, but neither are they good enough to make up for frustrating gameplay. The icon control system, for example, allows a wide-range of moves but in tight situations is too awkward. This doesn't spoil play altogether, but if you have little patience, I'd advise you to give Obliterator a miss. PHIL 60% THE ESSENTIALS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: Drak's many movements are well animated Sound: atmospheric 128K ingame tune

Drak in a quick draw contest with alien fiend.