Powerama

Your Sinclair

Overall 6/10

Nat Pryce 6/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT And down in the basement this month, it's Nat Pryce - himself available at 20% discount on alternate Thursdays. Any offers? POWERAMA Power House £1.99 Reviewer: Nat Pryce A fleet of huge alien spaceships is heading towards earth and only you, a humble scout ship, can stop them in time. Isn't it fortunate how routine patrols are always around when megalomanic aliens go on the rampage? Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how good a pilot you are), you decide to do what any empty headed space hero would do, blow them aliens to smithereens! So you zoom along each alien dreadnought and suddenly... you're in a vertically scrolling monochrome shoot em up! As with all blasters these days, there are some bolt on goodies to stick on your ship and great lumpy mother ships to blow away at the end of each level. The scrolling is smooth and the graphics are neat, if not incredibly imaginative, but unfortunately the game itself is incredibly run-of-the-mill. I'm not saying that it's bad, mind, but just that there are better games, in a similar vein, in this price range.

Sinclair User

Graphics 80%

Sound 70%

Playability 80%

Lastability 92%

Overall 82%

Chris Jenkins 82%

Label: Power House Author: D. Drummack and C. Galley Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins What a spiffy little shoot-'em-up! Not a jot of originality, to be sure, but the software equivalent of a really hot, steamy Big Mac - greasy but satisfying. Powerama (is it meant to be Power-ama or Pow-erama? I dunno) features some neat designs, excellent sprite masking and scrolling, and a good deal of vertically-scrolling havoc. Whilst your spaceship looks a bit like a distorted Smiley Face (I think the features are meant to be portholes and vents) the alien fighters are suitably sinister and threatening, and the features of the enemy battle cruisers over which you fly are nicely designed. All you have to do is blast the surface features in order to deactivate the fleet's solar energy converters and give your fleet a chance to regroup and attack. Rather than sitting watching Neighbours, the aliens churlishly decide to blast you to atoms, so as you proceed upwards you'll have to fight them off. The attack waves are semi-random, so every game is different. Swirling from the top and side of the screen, all the aliens can be destroyed with one blast from your laser, but some move faster and less predictably than others. As you progress you'll see small flashing icons which you must fly over. This gives you extra speed (which you'll definitely need if you want to get through the early stages), extra bullets and bonus lives. At the end of each level there's a mother ship which can probably be destroyed, but as it throws bombs at you at a generous speed, it's better to keep well out of its way. Get yourself killed, and you'll disintegrate convincingly. On the high score table you can choose to start on any of the first four levels. I can't see anyone regretting investing in Powerama; gameplay's fine, the sound's OK and the graphic design is good. I particularly like the way in which the alien ships are always highly visible, despite the fact that your own ship, the aliens and the background are shown in the same colour. That's the sign of meticulous work.

Crash

Presentation 60%

Graphics 55%

Playability 65%

Addictive Qualities 68%

Overall 61%

Kati Hamza 62%

Paul Sumner 60%

Producer: The Power House Retail Price: £1.99 Author: David Crummack and Craig Galley Earth is under attack from a fleet of colossal alien ships and you're the only one that knows about it. Your tiny scout ship is the only thing that stands between earth and its imminent destruction. Enemies fly in over a monochrome, vertically scrolling background of aerially viewed space cruisers, firing bullets. Collision with aliens or their fire results in the immediate loss of one of five lives. Shooting the energy-giving solar panels on the huge cruisers slows down the fleet giving time for Earth's forces to regroup. Equipment can be improved by flying over a series of flashing squares which hold extra speed, lives and ammunition. Each level culminates in a confrontation with an alien mothership. Destroys it or simply avoid its shots to allow passage to the next level. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Graphics: monochromatic. Originally drawn aliens, very smooth animation Sound: limited spot effects

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