The Gauntlet

ZX Computing

Nick Pearce

THE ZX81 SOFT SELECTION Nick Pearce, our ZX81 expert, pass Judgement on the latest batch of releases. GAUNTLET Personal Software Services Gauntlet is an arcade type game. Back to normal ZX81 graphics, but it is quite a good simulation. The first thing to do after loading is to select from the one or two player options available. In the two player mode, the opponents play alternately and separate scores are held. The object is to complete successive bombing runs over enemy territory. The terrain is mountainous, and the ground bristles with enemy guns and rockets; and of course, you are constantly shot at as you fly overhead. You have bombs and missiles to defend yourself. You have to destroy fuel dumps occasionally to maintain enough fuel to continue your mission. Six phases complete the game. The scenario is the same each time the game is played, so as you become more experienced and develop tactics to cope with each phase a long game with a high score is possible. The action is reasonably good, you can move diagonally as well as forwards, backwards and up and down. The company claim that the speed of Gauntlet has been carefully selected to match the arcade game it simulates. I thought it perhaps a little slow but it is possible to speed it up using certain POKE commands. Gauntlet is a good game, and a reasonable buy. Gauntlet costs £4.95p. Personal Software Services is at [redacted].

ZX Computing

Jason Hardcastle

READERS REVIEWS More of your thoughts about the software you buy. This feature provides you space to air your views on any software, be it for the ZX80, ZX81 or Spectrum. If you've had a good or bad experience with any of the commercial software packages available for your micro, why not write in and tell us? Your reviews should contain your critical thoughts about the software and the relevant details concerning the availability of the package, its price, etc. You should aim to produce something like 250 to 500 words per package, depending, of course, on how enthusiastic you are about the software. Any reviews published in this section of the magazine will be rewarded with the price of the tape you review. So, if you buy a cassette and send in a review which gets published, you'll get your software for free! THE GAUNTLET Colourmagic Computing Jason Hardcastle This game is a version of the arcade game 'Scramble' and is priced at (what I thought was quite a lot of money) £5.50. The tape loaded easily and you are presented with a score table and a demonstration game so that you can get some idea of the action before you begin. If key '1' or '2' are pressed you get a one- or two-player option respectively. In the game, which is somewhat similar to the arcade game except for the final stage, you get to fly your ship through various caverns watching out as you go for the enemy missiles and flying 'nasties'. If you hit the fuel dumps, the ship is re-fuelled. The graphics are good all round and the keyboard layout is well laid out. Not much luck is involved in this game! My only complaint is that the bomb and firing keys are not auto-repeat - but this could be sour grapes because I get shot so often! The game is hard to master and I have still yet to destroy one of the large fuel dumps in the last stage. The instructions supplied with the game are helpful and easy to follow, and the game itself is incredibly user-friendly. As for the price of the game, I think it is worth every penny, and if you're as hooked on 'Scramble-type' games as I am and have a 16K ZX81 (and don't mind waiting six minutes for it to load) I would suggest you waste no time in buying it.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Getting Started 9/10

Value 8/10

Playability 9/10

Eugene Lacey

Take up the Gauntlet and tackle a thrilling subterranean Scramble challenge for the ZX81. The object of the game is to fight your way through fortified caves with bombs and a laser gun. You start with three craft and get one more every 6,000 points. These are controlled by: 'Q' key for up and back; 'W' for up and forward; 'A' down and back; 'S' down and forward. 'B' and 'M' give you control over your guns and bombs, and the game is quite easy to get to grips with. You are actively encouraged to make a copy of the game but that hardly proved necessary as the game loaded every time and the instructions are also very clear. The first part of the game leaves you in the open, than you enter the caverns and take on some aliens. In stage three you encounter the meteors and level four has only a narrow channel to fly down. That was as far as I get (8,300 points if you want to try and beat it), in all there are six phases to the game which requires a 16K Rampack and costs £3.95 from Colourmatic.

GAMES GLOSSARY If you can tell a Pacman from a Defender and a Galaxian from a Space Invader you probably know your way around computer games. But if some of the game terms we have used in this supplement, or in the issue itself, are new to you, then this page should supply the answers. In it we take some of the best known types of computer game and describe how they are played and what features these games normally incorporate. So, if we claim that Penetrator is a "Scramble-type game" and that leaves you just as much in the dark about what to expect, then below there is a full description of Scramble to put you in the picture. ASTEROIDS The Asteroids came into the arcades courtesy of Atari. It features a small dart-shaped craft controlled by the player which can rotate left or right and thrust or fire in the direction it is facing. There is one further control, the panic button (hyperspace) which lets you travel to another part of the screen chosen by the computer. The enemy is mainly made up of large asteroids which sweep across the screen in large deadly groups of rock. When blown up these break into smaller fragments worth extra points. There is extra danger supplied by two UFOs. The first larger creature you'll meet fairly early on. It tends to spray shots in all directions and often crashes into an asteroid. The smaller variety is far more deadly in its own shooting and also more difficult to hit. Each cleared screen means you start again with extra asteroids. DEFENDER You can't expect to keep a finger on every control button in Defender or you'd end up in knots. The action, which takes place above an alien landscape, involves some seven control buttons and takes patience to gain proper mastery of your lone craft. That patience can be rewarded though, as Defender is challenging from the word "Go". The Defender craft can go: up, down, thrust forward, reverse direction, fire, smart bomb and hyperspace. Ten humanoids wander on the landscape and these may fall prey to raiding alien creatures known as Landers. Landers pick up the humanoids and take them to the top of the screen. If they succeed in getting there the Landers turn into fearsome mutants hellbent on your destruction. In all there are six alien opponents. On top of Landers and Mutants, these are: Pods are quite harmless but contain the small and persistent Swarmers; Bombers seed space with white bombs and Baiters only appear if you take too long clearing a screen of the rest of the aliens. If all 10 humanoids are captured, the planet explodes and all remaining alien life attacks your craft at once. Defender games usually feature a small radar screen which shows what is going on at all parts of the planet surface. FROGGER Frogger has spawned a whole host of computer games with a similar theme. This game features a frog hero who must jump across a road and make his way across a river torrent to five frog-holes in the bank. The busy road usually features live streams of traffic travelling in both directions at varying speeds, between which the player must hop his frog without wrapping it around any fenders. Once across the road, the river can be crossed by leaping onto floating logs and onto the back of swimming turtles, until our frog can enter a vacant spot in the far bank. Turtles have a habit of diving though so don't let a frog dally too long on one. Being carried off the edge of the screen (by log or turtle) also results in a note in the funeral column of Amphibians' Weekly. When all five frog-holes have been filled, the game becomes more difficult with extra traffic being added to the road, snakes traversing the bank between road and river and alligators appearing instead of logs in the river. A timer running down on each frog also adds to the difficulties. The arcade original also featured a small lady frog who could be "picked up" on the logs and offered a lift home for a bonus. Other bonuses can be scored by entering a frog-hole in which a tasty fly meal has come to rest. DONKEY KONG Donkey Kong is the strange name for a climbing and jumping game which features a starlet-grabbing monster gorilla. Often referred to as Crazy Kong or Crazy Climber in the computer circles, it has only just found its way onto the home screen. The game features a gorilla holding a girl captive at the top of the screen and an intrepid hero (Mario the carpenter), who starts at the bottom of the screen. Between the two is a connecting network of platforms and ladders up which Mario must run to achieve his rescue. Kong hurls barrels down the screen and Mario makes use of his "jump" button to leap over them. He can also grab a hammer and smash the barrels as they approach him. Once at the top of the screen a new complex is built with Mario, again starting from the bottom with a view to rescue. This time the screen features a series of conveyor belts and deadly fires which travel around on the ladders and belts. GALAXIANS The Galaxians were the sons of Space Invaders. Instead of proceeding down the screen at a leisurely pace, they wavered at the top of the screen before swooping down in batches of two or three (or more often on a solo mission) firing bombs. The player has the usual left, right and fire controls on his laser base and must take care not to get trapped in a corner. He scores double points for a galaxian hit in mid-swoop and there are bonus points for taking out the red fleet commanders, who usually descend flanked by their generals, dispersing bombs at such a rate that the first instinct is to flee for cover. That is the essence of Galaxians but with each destroyed platoon, new waves appear at screen top and their attacks become more frequent, more accurate and, all too often, more deadly! PACMAN The ghostly world of Pacman is made up of a dot-filled maze, a hungry dot-eater and four pursuing spectres. Pacman variations can be found under a whole range of titles from Vic-men to Gobbleman, Snapper to Super Glooper and many others. Most dot-eating games are related to it. The main character is the dot-eater, which travels around the maze, eating every dot he touches. His objective is to clear the screen of dots. He is hampered in this by the four chasing ghosts whose touch is lethal. The Pacman's main defence against the ghosts, who usually number four, are energiser dots. These pulse in the four corners of the maze and, upon being eaten, reverse the roles for a short while. This means that Pacman can turn the tables on the ghosts and eat them for bonus points. He is allowed only a few seconds of dominance before the usual hunter and hunted rules come back into operation. It is also usual for fruits to appear on the screen occasionally and these too can be consumed by Pacman for bonus points. When Pacman has cleared the screen, it refills with dots and the game restarts except that this time the ghosts are a little livelier and a new fruit, worth extra points, appears at this level. SCRAMBLE Scramble should have a big one-way sign on its cabinet. The screen rolls from right to left, taking the player's craft along it into ever-increasing danger. Scramble variations often contain the word "Mission" or "Attack" but there are some weird and wonderful titles about. The player controls a craft heading right across the screen over hilly terrain His craft can never turn around and opt out of its mission but he does have some control over his destiny. His controls are up and down, fast and slow and he can both bomb and fire at his enemies. The Scrambler is not usually equipped with enough fuel to complete his task, but it is normal to obtain more fuel by bombing fuel tanks on the ground and so (mysteriously) replenish his own stocks. The enemies come in all shapes and sizes. Most common are missiles which fire up from the ground as your craft passes overhead and alien invader creatures which frequently inhabit caves and fly at the player's craft. The original Scramble game sent the player through a series of different terrains with new challenges in each section. And most computer Scrambles attempt to duplicate this with a number of different stages. Scramble requires a cool head which can find the right control in a crisis, but it makes an ideal computer game as success naturally leads to new and more difficult stages. INVADERS Space Invaders started the whole computer game craze back in 1977 and most gamers know the format backwards. Still, just a brief resume... The invaders come in waves above the ground and move in rows across the screen one step at a time, firing missiles earthwards. When one row of the aliens reach an edge of the screen, the whole platoon jump down a line and return back the way they came. When they achieve their slow progression to the bottom of the screen, the game ends. The player controls a laser base which moves left to right and fires directly up from its position. His aim is to blow up the entire fleet before it reaches the bottom of the screen. Flying saucers move across the top of the screen in both directions and can be hit for a mystery bonus score. In the arcade original, top saucer scores of 300 were achieved by firing 22 shots before shooting at the first saucer, then firing 14 shots in between each subsequent saucer. Some computer versions have copied this technique.

ONE WAY TRAVEL Scramble was one of the hit games of the post Space Invaders boom and still hangs on stubbornly to its prime positions in arcades, pubs and motorway services. Its addictiveness is due to the challenge it sets you to get further. It's not how much you score that concerns the Scramble fan so much as how far he can get. Can you get beyond the yellow zig-zaggers, or the red fireballs? Or have you got into the maze yet, and if so how far have you got into it? Ultimately, have you shot the robot? This is the supreme test for Scramble aces who have successfully piloted their craft through the preliminary levels. Any computerised version of this popular arcade game should recreate this graded level of difficulty. This can be achieved by varying the speed of the attacking aliens or the difficulty of the scrolling terrain to be flown over. There must also be some final adversary like the robot in the arcade version. It is crucial to be able to move backwards and forwards as well as up and down. Scramble can only really be enjoyed with a joystick. A good version will enable you to bomb and shoot at the same time. Eugene Lacey