Adventure D: Espionage Island

ZX Computing

Nick Pearce

SINCLAIR SOFTWARE FOR YOUR '81 Our intrepid reviewer, Nick Pearce, inspects the new range of software from the Sinclair stable. PLANET OF DEATH, SHIP OF DOOM, AND ADVENTURE ISLANDS - ARTIC COMPUTING LTD Firstly for this month's ZX81 software review, some adventures from Artic. Three of Artic's adventures have been given attractive boxes and more interesting titles (they were known formerly as Adventures A, C and D) for marketing by Sinclair as part of their fast expanding software range. For the benefit of readers new to computer adventures, a brief explanation of this type of role playing game will not go amiss. An adventure is a game in which you explore strange new worlds with your computer in the comfort of your own home. As the introduction to the Artic games puts it, during an adventure 'the computer acts as your puppet and controls your senses'. Plenty of imagination, patience, and some lateral thinking are necessary if you are to succeed. An adventure is a game with an object - to enter a castle, rescue a princess from the clutches of an evil wizard, and escape with her to safety, for example. You move from one location to another and there are objects along the way, some of which should be collected as you will need them later on. Hazards of one sort or another abound, and you will need to overcome them all. Each location is described by the computer, and you instruct it with short phrases such as 'Go East', 'Get knife', 'Use torch', etc. The computer then provides an appropriate response such as a new location description, 'I can't' or quite often 'I don't understand'. It is a good idea to make a map as you proceed to stand any chance at all of retracing your steps to safety. All the Artic adventures are written in machine code and are very fast; response to commands is practically instantaneous. They each have an impressively large vocabulary of over 100 words. The programs are long, and take 5.5 minutes (Adventure A) to 7 minutes (Adventure D) to LOAD. FORBIDDEN PLANET Planet Of Death (Adventure A) has about 20 locations and a similar number of objects. You are stranded on an alien planet, and the object is to escape by finding your space ship which has been captured and disabled. You really are in a strange world of the imagination. There are caves, a prison, a lift (but the buttons are rather high, and where does it go?), guards and green men, and much more besides. There is also a maze, a feature common to many adventures and which, as usual, I found very quickly. Once that happens in an adventure I quit and start again, making sure from then on that I stay well clear of the maze at all times! In Ship of Doom (Adventure C), your ship, whilst on a reconnaissance flight, has been drawn by a Graviton Beam onto an alien cruiser. Your aim is to free your ship by pressing the control button in the main computer room. You commence in your ship, and begin by moving into the airlock of the alien cruiser. This is a long adventure with some 40 locations - a radio room, robot factory, weaponry, cold room, galactic bar, an android conversion room to name a few. There are also about 40 objects including a sonic screwdriver, infra-red spectacles, even a body frozen in ice and a beautiful android girl. I won't go into too much detail over what can be done with her, suffice to say that she is programmed for satisfaction - some parts of this adventure are definitely for adults only. There is the odd spelling slip in my copy of the program, (exits becomes exitw in the log room, for example), but nothing is seriously wrong. In some places the program is surprisingly flexible, it accepts both the instructions 'turn' and 'rotate', for example, although some other commands have to be infuriatingly precise. In all the Artic adventures you can speed up data entry, by typing 'N' for North and 'Y' for yes, for example. All the Artic adventures are extremely absorbing. They can also be very frustrating; it is possible to spend a whole evening stuck in one small area of the game unable to solve a problem that will allow you to move further. However, some time later and after giving up all hope of completing the game, the answer will hit you in a flash of inspiration and you can move on - until you reach another seemingly intractable problem a few locations later. An adventure can take days to complete! Both Adventures C and D are very long and incorporate a cassette routine with which a partly completed game can be SAVEd, and LOADed at a later date - a very necessary feature. I SPY... So absorbing were the previous two adventures that the deadline for this issue dawned before I had managed to complete Artic's final adventure - Espionage Island (D), so I am afraid much of it remains uncharted for the present. On the basis of the part I have so far explored, I am confident that it will prove an excellent game. Perhaps in another edition of this magazine I will be able to give away a few of its secrets. For the present, the plot is as follows. The intrepid adventurer is sent on a reconnaissance mission to observe an enemy island; there is a secret hidden somewhere on this island which must be discovered. Unfortunately, your plane has to be abandoned when one of its engines is hit by enemy fire. The adventure begins in the aeroplane and leads into the heart of the enemy stronghold, from which you must eventually return to safety. This is a very difficult game, only to be attempted by the experienced adventurer. Even getting out of the aeroplane and safely onto the island is a problem - or at least I found it so - and I haven't yet managed to get much further forward. All the Artic adventures seem to be from the same original master program, but I don't think that once you've mastered one, the others will be a doddle. Each is original in content, and challenging. Planet of Death is the shortest, with the fewest locations and objects but will nevertheless provide many hours of enjoyment. The quality of software for the ZX81 is constantly improving, and at the same time prices are, if anything, falling. Some readers might feel these Artic cassettes are still a little expensive; however, there can be little doubt that they are very good adventures indeed. Artic Adventures A, C and D cost £5, £7 and £8 respectively, and are available from Artic Computing Ltd, [redacted], or through Sinclair Research Ltd (see below).

A sample screen dump from Espionage Island.

A sample screen dump from Planet of Death.

Sinclair User

John Gilbert

SINCLAIR ACTS TO IMPROVE THE STANDARD OF ITS NAMED SOFTWARE John Gilbert looks at the latest group of cassettes issued by Sinclair and finds that it is now setting the standards. A new batch of Sinclair Research software for the ZX-81 and Spectrum shows a marked improvement in the quality of programs and a continuation of fine artwork on the cassette inserts. The reason is that the company is selling programs from other independent companies, such as Melbourne House and Artic, instead of continuing to rely on Psion, Mikro-Gen and ICL. The Hobbit which takes first place in the new releases for quality and value for money. This adventure game, which the makers claim uses artificial intelligence, is discussed in Mind Games on page 93. VU-3D, for the 48K Spectrum, is another good offering from Psion. It allows the user to create a three-dimensional representation of an object on the television screen. The object can then be rotated and viewed from any angle. The objects can be displayed as wirework figures or can be shaded. They can also be magnified and reduced. It is possible to store the figure on tape in a data file and re-load it to view again. The program costs £9.95 but even though it has some good features it still seems over-priced. Games feature strongly in the new tapes. Sinclair is selling the Artic range of adventures, A, C and D. Adventure A works on the 16K or 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81 and is called Planet of Death. You are stranded on a planet and must return to your spaceship. There is no guide to the keywords but with a little thought you can discover the help command. At times the suggestions can be very unhelpful and it is a good idea to construct a map, as some of the help suggestions may make you retrace your footsteps. The next adventure so far released is C, called Ship of Doom. It can be run on the 48K Spectrum and 16K ZX-81. Your ship is captured by aliens who are searching for humanoids to replace their brains with microchips. The object of the game is to escape from the alien craft by breaking the gravitational field. To do so you must find the control room of the alien ship. The help command is a little more useful in this game and it is easier to get further when playing the game. Adventure D, called Espionage island, can be used on the 48K Spectrum or 16K ZX-81. You must escape from an aircraft which is about to crash into the Atlantic. You must the reach the island safely, avoid capture, and try to discover the secret of the island. The game is more difficult than the others and many people have not managed to get out of the aircraft, even though there is a parachute. All the adventures cost £6.95. Leaving adventure games, Reversi, or Othello as it is sometimes called, can be played on the 16K Spectrum or 16K ZX-81. The game has nine levels, from novice to expert, and the computer is difficult to beat. The makers claim that Reversi reflects the strict contemporary morality of Victorian society but we believe that it can traced to Arabic origins. Reversi costs £7.95. An interesting addition to the range of software is the Artic 1K Chess. It takes some technical wizardry to squeeze this kind of game into the unexpanded ZX-81. The game can be played using one of two opening moves. Because of the lack of memory, castling, pawn promotion and capturing en passant are not allowed. The game loads in approximately 40 seconds and that is ideal for someone who wants a quick game of chess without having to load from a tape which takes several minutes. The computer also makes its moves very fast for the amount of memory available to it. 1K Chess costs £4.95. Super Glooper is an amusing game of Pac-man on the 16K ZX-81. Glooper must paint the maze before the aliens kill him. Unfortunately it is difficult to evade those aliens using the standard ZX-81 keyboard but it is not impossible. Glooper can also pick up one of the shields at the corners of the maze to protect himself and chase the aliens. On the other side of the tape is Frogs, a game of Frogger. You must get the frogs over the river via the moving boats to the jetties on the other bank. If froggie falls into the river, it drowns. You score points for each frog you get across the river and you can have eight frogs to send to their deaths. Super Glooper and Frogs cost £4.95. Another game with a familiar-sounding theme is Through the Wall. It is based on Breakout and is available for the 16K ZX-81. On the other side of the cassette is Scramble, also a familiar theme. Both games on one cassette represent good value at £4.95. A package for the 1K ZX-81, called 1K Games, has also been released. The games include Jackpot, in which you must try to win the 25 pence jackpot from a one-armed bandit; Etch and Sketch, where you can draw pictures on the screen; and Maze Game, where you must find your way out of the conventional maze. The release of this cassette, costing £4.95, is a good idea at a time when so many people are buying ZX-81s. A basic Toolkit is available for the 16K ZX-81. It provides a series of machine code routines to make the job of programming easier. It includes a re-number routine, a search and replace routine, a merge routine to put together two separate Basic programs, and a routine to put a Basic program above RAMTOP and out of the way of the NEW command. The Toolkit costs £5.95. Two database programs are available in the range for the 48K Spectrum. They are called Collector's Pack and Club Record Controller. Collector's Pack can be used to store information about coins, stamps or even records. The Club Record Controller will store information about people such as addresses and telephone numbers. It would be useful to schools or even someone who runs a private club. Both packages are easy to use and cost £9.95. Adventure B, Inca Curse, for the 48K Spectrum is an upgrade of an adventure which Artic wrote for the 16K ZX-81. The adventurer is exploring in the jungle when he finds an Incan Temple. The aim is to go in and drag out all the treasure, or as much a you can carry. It all seems so easy until you enter the game and step into the temple. The authors have managed to cram a good deal into this adventure and the Artic top score of 3,200 points will take some beating. We must admit that it is not one of the adventures in which we have made much progress. Adventure B costs £6.95. The latest release of tapes is certainly better than the previous one. The games, utility, and business areas have been covered well but there is still a lack of good educational software. The only tapes available tend to be multi-choice and question-and-answer sessions. The Psion tapes seem to be the best for quality at the moment and the ones with the most interesting concepts. None of the cassettes reviewed was bad but The Hobbit, Vu-3D, 1K Chess, and Super Glooper seem best.