Pulse Warrior

Your Sinclair

Overall 5/10

Ben Stone 5/10

Mike Dunn 5/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT Ben 'n' Skippy take a seat in the stalls to play their way through this month's cut-price offerings! With a bit of help from the usherette of course! PULSE WARRIOR Mastertronic £1.99 Reviewer: Ben Stone, Mike Dunn Graphics wise this game is pretty good but on the playability stakes it's a dog! it took us ages to work out exactly what we had to do - the instructions are a little unclear to say the least. But we did finally manage to discover that the idea was to pick up pulses of energy in order to destroy all aliens in the space station. Control is a bit haphazard and it's a real pain to re-define the keys after each game. As far as strategic shoot 'em ups go this is certainly not one of Mastertronic's best - you'd be better off buying Thrust!

Crash

Graphics 54%

Playability 44%

Addictive Qualities 38%

Overall 46%

Mark Caswell 40%

Phil King 52%

Producer: Mastertronic Out of Pocket: £1.99 cass Author: John Cain from a design by Silhouette Software No, this game hasn't anything to do with peas and lentils: it's all about energy pulses. A hostile alien race from Cirrus Major has decided to attack the Earth (crikey, why do all aliens hate our little old planet so much?). Their first targets are the Earth's massive orbiting solar power stations which are completely defenceless. Naturally this is where you come in, with a hastily-made spaceship that lacks nothing except a weapon. So the only way to eliminate the invading aliens is to exploit the energy pulses generated by the power stations themselves. By using your ship to deflect the pulses into lenses, the pulses can be magnified so that they can destroy the aliens. This task must be achieved in each of the station's 36 sectors, which are all divided into three zones. Each zone has its own colour and, more importantly, time limit for completion. The idea of bouncing pulses (shown as little lines) around the colourful screens is original, but doesn't quite come off. Severe frustration is caused when, after building up a large pulse, it's too easily lost through one of the exits. What action there is moves at a snail's pace and completely lacks any strategic element to get you thinking. Still, at least there's been attempt at originality and the graphics aren't that bad. If you can take the laborious pace it might be worth investigating at the budget price. PHIL 52% THE ESSENTIALS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Sound: Atmospheric 128k tune which a strange tendency to change into a monotone Options: definable keys

The first hippy lentil game?

Sinclair User

Graphics 67%

Sound 79%

Playability 71%

Lastability 57%

Overall 60%

Tony Dillon 60%

Label: Mastertronic Author: Simon Price Price: £2.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon In the near future, Man has used up all the earth's resources in creating lots of spy satellites and Star Wars weapons and lots of other things to protect himself from himself. So, in the tradition of putting things in the sky, the various nations have come up with a space energy platform, designed to catch any space energy that might just be floating about and send it down to earth. Due to various technical complexities, the platform is almost completely defenceless, so your job is to fly around its general vicinity, guarding it. From what? From the alien invaders haven't mentioned before. Aliens have decided to take over the Earth (don't they always) and the easy way to get at the people of Earth is to cut off their power. Simple, innit? The platform is made up of a grid of screens. Each screen is viewed as a small section of spaceship, with lots of galleys and walkways, and it looks quite a lot like Intensity. On each screen, you'll find 4 basic items. (For details, see box). The idea is to reflect the rays of light into a lens. When you bounce one in, it stays there. When you bounce another one in, it goes straight through, but comes out with the first ray attached to it. It's like this that you construct a ray large enough to knockout the alien control panel. The graphics are quite nice, though not half as detailed as they could have been. Everything moves about at quite a speed, and there's no slowing down when you've got 6 or 7 rays of energy bouncing around. Backgrounds are nothing exciting, but there is a very nice scrolling landscape behind them. There are some OK 48K sound effects, but the 128K sounds are really superb. Add to that a continuous tune playing throughout and you've got a quite decent amount of sound. It all plays very nicely, if a little easily. In fact, I found very little to challenge my gameplaying skills, and I'm not exactly red hot. (Ain't that the truth? - TH). A very nice bounce-the-lines game, and a real bargain at the price.

DIFFERENT SCREEN ITEMS 1. Light Rays These bounce around being harmless until you build them into bigger, more powerful lasers. 2. Emitters Emit the light rays (well they would, wouldn't they) and when you trap a ray or let one go off screen, these spew forth another. 3. Lens It's this you use to catch and increase the rays of light. 4. Alien Control Panel Once you think you've got the laser long enough, bounce it into this to destroy it and complete the screen. 5. Aliens These wander about aimlessly moving in a set path, and they'll kill you should you accidentally knock into them. Harmless otherwise. 6. Your ship A nimble thing, you bounce lasers off its sides and, as it's round, you can only hope that you'll get them to go into the correct direction.