Rescue

Personal Computer News

PC MICROPEDIA VOL 13 PART 3 SOFTWARE Christmas Software Buyers Guide SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE SOFTWARE SELECTION Whether you've just bought a personal computer, had one for some time or are expecting one on Christmas Day, one thing you'll be looking for is some good software to ease the digestion of the Christmas fare or to stave off boredom during the re-runs of old films on the TV. In this Micropaedia we'll give details of how to select the best value programs for your money, as well as a list of the best games we've reviewed in our pages this year. The first thing to do is look carefully at your needs. Software can be divided roughly into a number of areas such as: applications, utilities educational and games. This list is not comprehensive and there are bound to be some overlaps. Applications: This covers word processing, database, accounting programs and so on. These are designed to take the slog out of paper work, it you're looking to make typing easier then you must bear in mind that there's no point buying a word processor unless you have a printer. You should also ask: - Does the program give an adequate screen size, ie between 40 and 80 characters? - Does it respond quickly when a word runs off the end of a line? How easy is it to use and is the documentation clear? - Will it verity your text once you've saved it onto cassette? - Can you print more than one copy of the text easily? Databases: If you've reached the stage where you've got so many cassettes or records that you can't keep track of them, then you might consider looking at some database packages. If all you need is a simple card index, then you might be better off buying just that. Databases on micros can be misapplied quite easily. The problem with a card index is that you can retrieve the information in one of two ways: by picking a card from its main heading or by searching the entire set from start to finish. A card box is good for people's names and addresses etc, but no good if, for example, you wish to find out which of these people live in a given town. The main advantage of a computer database is that you can select cards ('records') on a number of criteria. For example. If you run a club you could pick out all the members who are late with subscriptions and who live in a certain town. The main limitation of computer databases is that you can't usually keep more than 300 cards at a time. If you have a cassette-based program you will have to SAVE and VERIFY the database every time you alter it - this can be a real pain. The questions to ask here are, will it really save you time and effort? What is the maximum number of records you can keep on it at any one time? How many separate pieces of information can each 'card' hold? (eg product description, code value, number in stock, reorder limit.) How many characters (letters) are you limited to for each record? Accounts: It's at this time of year that you are most likely to be feeling the pinch, financially. Investment in a home accounting or bookkeeping package may help with the management of money matters. In this area you will also find programs that help you calculate heat losses which may help you save money by proper insulation. As with the database programs, the most important question relates to your needs - will the program really save you time and effort? Would it be easier, quicker and cheaper to use a calculator, pen and paper? Utilities: These are programs for the more serious hobbyists, who enjoy developing their own programs and finding out more about their machines. Perhaps the first thing you should consider in this area is another language. Basic is a good language for learning about programming but it shouldn't be the only string to your bow. Forth is now available on most micros which allows you to write arcade games which run very fast indeed. Pascal is becoming increasingly popular on a variety of micros and most versions will give you a good grounding in this structured language. Rarer but just as interesting are, Logo, Lisp and Prolog. If you want your programs to go faster but don't want to learn another language you should shop around for a compiler. This is a program that will convert your Basic into machine code. This has the advantage of speeding up the program and making sure other people can't steal those routines that took you hours to code up. Certainly one thing most programmers will find of enormous use is a 'toolbox' of some kind. There are as yet only a few of these about due to their immense value more are being launched every week. Toolkits generally include REM strippers - to take out all the REM lines needed during program development. This can make for great memory savings if space is tight. If you're lucky a toolkit may also have a packing routine which takes out all unnecessary spaces and in some cases joins lines up to save space. An 'unpacker' should also be provided. If you're interested in working at the heart of the computer, you'll be looking to machine code. In that case you'll need an assembler at least. This saves you the slog of having to convert op-codes to hex, or calculate branches and offsets. A disassembler does the opposite - takes the hex codes from memory and shows you the op-codes. You'll need both of these for getting right down to it and so it is probably worth considering a full monitor system. A good monitor should combine an assembler and disassembler and provide a machine code toolkit with such facilities as, block moves of memory, trace functions, break point settings and so on. The more functions the monitor has the more useful it will be... and the more expensive. Education: In the last few months most of the major educational publishers have launched educational programs. These include, Heinemann, Griffin and George, Macmillan Longman and so on. There is also a lot of software being produced by smaller companies like Chalksoft and Widgit Software. The standard of software in this field is probably more variable than in other areas, some is dreadful, some excellent. Five-Ways is a software company that has produced programs for both Heinemann and Macmillan. Its programs have set the standard by which others should be judged, so try to see them. They are available on Spectrum, BBC and RML380 from retailers, who should be prepared to demonstrate any programs in stock. Games: There used to be a clear division between adventure and arcade-type games. This has been blurred over the last few months by programs which use ideas and techniques from the two types. Arcade-type games can be subdivided into those that mimic the 'real-thing', games like Invaders/Galaxians, Phoenix, Pac-Man, Defender/Scramble, Kong, Asteroids, Berserk and so on. The main differences between these games ties in how you move relative to the background. There has been a move of late toward 3D games. These seek to produce the illusion of three dimensions on the screen, so that things don't just move left-right and up-down, but can appear to move into the distance as well. Some of these have tried to use the brain's capacity for giving this impression from the different information obtained from the two eyes. They do this by using two coloured pictures of the same image on the screen and you have to wear coloured glasses to get the effect. These are worth looking at, but they don't always work well on all TVs. Other games use perspective transformations to get a similar effect. These seem to be pointing the way to a new and exciting direction in games. Of particular note here are Lunar Crabs and Ant Attack. The main point about arcade-type games is the use of sound and colour graphics on the machine. Don't be misled by the packaging. Sometimes the cassette cover gives the impression that the game uses stupendous graphics, but you'll find that this may be an artist's impression of the title and bear no relation at all to the pictures on the screen. To avoid this, look in the magazines to find reviews accompanied by a 'screen-shot' - a photograph of the game being played. Sometimes you'll find one of these on the inside cover of the cassette. Adventure games are often 'text-only'. This means that there are no pictures at all. In these you have to type in instructions such as 'go west', 'get rifle', 'open door' and so on. The idea is that you have to complete a quest which might involve finding some secret treasure or simply finding your way out of a labyrinth of rooms and corridors without being killed by some unsavoury thug. Often you need to have picked up items before you can proceed very far - for example, you may not be able to read a crucial message (or even be told it's there) before picking up and/or using a torch. The best of the strictly text-only adventures should have a very large vocabulary. The program should recognise ten verbs as a rock-bottom minimum and at least twice as many objects. There should also be many locations to move to and from. The best way to find out about these is, again, to read through reviews of the programs or to look at the cover or instruction manual. The problem with this is that some suppliers deliberately include very little detail about the words you can use, or the objects. One of the main points about an adventure game is that you are supposed to work out all this information for yourself. There have been a number of games released recently which might be termed 'extended adventure' games. In these you get a picture on the screen of the room you're in and possibly some extra information at the foot or to one side of the screen. Of particular note here are games like Valhalla. In this, you play the role of a wanderer in the Norse Gods' kingdom. The screen is split into two sections - the top shows your location, yourself and who/whatever might be present. The characters move around rather like those in a cartoon. The lower screen is used for entering commands and getting information about who's who or what's what. The point is that the characters have lives of their own and will move around without your doing anything at all! Also in this vein are the Oracle's Cave and the Hobbit. There are more and more games breaking into this new territory every week. One to watch out for will be Alice in Wonderland from Audiogenic for the Commodore 64. Adventure games require more wit than dexterity and it's easy to get addicted to the better ones, rather like getting completely taken up with a film or book. Try to see them in action before buying and bear in mind that the first few times you play them are likely to provide as much frustration as excitement while you're getting familiar with the basic framework. The better games allow you to do more than just enter two words in the usual verb-object pair. Some will even allow you to enter such complex phrases as telling one of the characters to do something for you! General rules: Avoid buying programs on the strength of advertising or covers. Some suppliers can generally be relied on to produce high-quality games, but everyone makes the occasional mistake! Check the top-ten charts in different magazines and look through back issues of magazines for reviews. Ask to see games before you buy, but make sure you know what sort of game you're after, or you'll waste a lot of your own time and that of shop assistants. TRIED AND TESTED FOR THE SPECTRUM NAME: Psst TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Ultimate FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 16/48K NAME: Jumping Jack TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Imagine FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 16/48K NAME: Cookie TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Ultimate FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 16/48K NAME: Magic Mountain TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £4.95 PUBLISHER: Phipps FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K NAME: Zzoom TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Imagine FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K NAME: Splat TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Incentive FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K NAME: Football Pools TYPE: Utility PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Hartland FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K NAME: Pimania TYPE: Advent PRICE: £10 PUBLISHER: Automata FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K NAME: Horace Goes Skiing TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Psion FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 16K NAME: Mad Martha TYPE: Arcade PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Mikrogen FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K NAME: Jetpac PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Ultimate Play The Game, [redacted] SYSTEM: 16K FORMAT: Cassette OUTLETS: WH Smith, John Menzies, Sinclair Dealers, mail order. This is a classic game that tops Space Invaders and Pacman and offers lots of fun. You're the chief test pilot tor Acme interstellar Transport and your job is to go to various planets to assemble rockets. Bits of elements, jewels and gold fall from the sky which you snatch, but the aliens get a bit peeved because you've grabbed their worldly goods without so much as paying the V in VAT. And there's only one way to settle the matter - shoot them with your Quad Photon Laser Phasers. Before you can make a quick getaway, you have to fuel a rocket with six fuel pods which drop from the skies. Each planet has its own share of nasties that try and get you. The first planet has fire-ball type creatures, the second furry creatures, the third vicious bouncing spheres and the fourth some strange looking little insects. With its good graphics and interesting content you'll have plenty to do to fill those free hours. NAME: Valhalla PRICE: £14.95 PUBLISHER: Legend SYSTEM: 48K FORMAT: Cassette OUTLETS: Some retail, mail order from Legend, [redacted] Valhalla is half epic, half cartoon strip and its Norse setting is ideal for those with the fjords in their bloodstream. With 200 crowns and your brains you have to wend your way through Asgard, Midgard and Hell to pick up a key, a ring, a shield, a sword, an axe and a helmet. First of all you need to get yourself well equipped. Armour is a must. So are the bare essentials like food and drink. And as you progress through the adventure the condition of your soul is rated. The graphics are good and varied, and the responses can be slow, but this is because the machine is processing the moves for a number of characters not just you, and the screen features a superb cartoon effect. The program also allows you to stack instructions. For example, you can type in get food, eat food, go north in quick succession then see your character do all these. I won't tell you how to solve the quest. What I will tell you is that Valhalla is well worth the rather substantial cost. NAME: Manic Miner PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Bug-Byte, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette OUTLETS: High street shops For superb graphics and sound, humour and overall addiction there's little can beat Manic Miner for the 48K Spectrum. It scored top marks in Gameplay (Issue 23) and subsequently soared to become a bestseller. Using keyboard or joystick, you manoeuvre Miner Willy through caverns in a long-forgotten mine-shaft near Surbiton in Surrey, collecting keys to unlock a great fortune on resurfacing. Press ENTER and you're in Central Cavern beginning the great trek upward. The game needs a lot of thought, practice and timing. Robots, ducks and dozens of other creatures. Including humming penguins patrol the caves, platforms crumble and conveyor belts whisk Willy off in quite the wrong direction if he's not quick. NAME: Rescue PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Computer Rentals, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette SYSTEM: 48K OUTLETS: Smiths, Menzies, Boots, Mail order An adventure that has all the ingredients - graphics, variety, plenty of surprises, good plot and ease of play to make it a winner. You have to rescue a princess who is in a castle, and you have four levels of skill from which to choose. You decide how to rescue the princess, you decide what tactics to employ, you decide what objects to use and how to use them. The game is played on a 'board' made up of concentric circles, linked together like a spider's web - and a fresh board is created every time you play. While you play you can keep tabs on the position of your enemies. The two guards keep on the move at the same time as you, and if they catch up with you, you're well and truly dead. NAME: Fantastic Voyage TYPE: Shootout PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Foilkade, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette OUTLETS: Mail order MACHINE: ZX81 If you fancy a trip through the veins of a human body, battling against white blood cells - try Fantastic Voyage. You are injected into a right arm and must make your way to the brain by navigating through the body's bloodstream. Your aim is to destroy a bloodclot. On this interesting theme, forget all the medical jargon about veins and arteries you go straight into the scan mode to give a front and side view of the body. You identify your position by a tiny dot which represents a submarine - a strange object to be floating around in a body. Also displayed is your energy level, direction and size, which gets larger the longer you stay in the body. The movement of the submarine is well done, as you see the artery walls moving past you. But destroying white blood cells is none too easy. They jitter about the screen at a rapid rate and you have to use laser power sparingly. This is a very good game with clever programming. There's a good deal to do and you won't get bored. NAME: Adventure 200 TYPE: Adventure PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Foilkade, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette OUTLETS: Mail order MACHINE: ZX81 The ingredients are here for a really gripping adventure. Disguised as a peasant you venture into the evil land of Grunlock to recover your King's stolen treasure. And you'd better not come back empty handed or the King will have you killed. Starting west of the palace you give simple commands for directions you want to move. After every move, the ZX81 displays where you are, what's happened, and the obvious paths you can take. During your journey you are offered several things, such as a lamp and a fish. And what you pick up affects your progress. A very interesting adventure.

ZX Computing

Documentation 3/5

Addictive Quality 3/5

Use of Graphics 3/5

Programming Achievement 3/5

Value 3/5

James Walsh

PRICE: £5.95 MEMORY REQUIRED: 48K Rescue by D. Barker is another adventure type game. It is a little different, in that a limited amount of graphics are used. The object is to get from the inner ring to the outer ring and then to the castle where you make a daring rescue and then escape back to base. Graphics are used when you look at a map of where you are. Also if you find the radio then you are able to find out where the enemy are. However, if you arrive at a place occupied by the enemy and you do not have a gun or a uniform, then you are automatically dead, which seems a shame really. The game is real-time, hence the enemy will move even if you don't. The instructions are pretty long so they have to be put on a separate program. This is rather annoying because there is no instruction form or leaflet, so if you forget something then there is no easy way of looking it up whilst playing the game. Quite a good game, if you like that sort of thing. By the way, the packaging is nice.

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 5/5

Playability 5/5

Use Of Machine 5/5

Value For Money 5/5

David Janda

NAME: Rescue SYSTEM: 48K Spectrum PRICE: £5.95 PUBLISHER: Computer Rentals, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Basic OUTLETS: Mail Order, Smiths, Menzies, Boots PRINCESS IN WAITING At last, at last, here's one game that's got all the qualities you'd hope for in a good adventure. Graphics, variety, plenty of surprises, a good plot, easy to play - yes folks, Rescue has the lot! You are an agent of some kind, who has to try to rescue a princess held captive in a castle, and bring her back to your base - alive. You'll need a 48K Spectrum to get you through in one piece... OBJECTIVE Yes, the princess is there in the castle, just waiting to be rescued. But before you can rescue her, you have to break into the castle - and before you can do that, you have to find it. And before you can find it, you have to collect various objects to help you - a torch, a gun, a rope, a uniform, that sort of thing - and of course, you have to find them, by hunting in couple of dozen different places where they could be concealed. Oh, and all this must be done while at the same time avoiding prowling enemy guards and notching up the points you'll need to survive the castle ... FIRST IMPRESSIONS At first glance at the cassette, you'd suppose that this is a remarkably simple adventure game. No instructions at all, apart from how to load it. Then you realise that what it's telling you is that the instructions are there on the tape - and so massive are they that loading them takes almost as long as loading the game itself. You can choose to read them or go straight on to load the game - but if you vote to read them, you'd better have a pencil and paper at hand, because they go on for over 20 screenfuls. And there's no provision to print them out with the ZX printer, so you'll just have to get scribbling. I wished heartily that Computer Rentals had produced a separate sheet of printed instructions. Four levels of play are offered, from 1, that's easy, to 4 - otherwise known as impossible. I consider myself to be a reasonably smart bloke, so I chose level 1. A good luck message was printed, and the game was underway. IN PLAY The game is played on a 'board' made up of concentric circles, linked together like a spider's web - and a fresh board is created every time you play. You start by hunting for a map and radio in the innermost ring, and only then can you move out to search for other objects in the next three rings. From the outermost ring, you get to cross various obstacles, such as a river, to look for the castle on the other side - but only if you have the right object, for example, a boat, with you to help you cross. I moved around the middle ring, nine-men's-morris style, since you can only move to an adjacent location or an adjacent one on the ring or rings next to yours. I looked in the house, but all I got was a few points for visiting it, and 'Sorry, there appears to be nothing here'. Undeterred, I tried the garage where I found the map, and picked it up. Now the Spectrum displayed a map showing the layout of the rings, and my position, and after finding the radio. I was also shown the exact positions of the enemy patrols. These two guards keep on the move at the same time as you, and if they catch tip with you, you are well and truly dead. And they play pretty intelligently, lurking near locations where you might want to go when you have collected a particular object, and doing a neat pincers movement to try to cut you off. They certainly kept me on my toes. You are shown a status panel after every action you make, showing you your location, score, objects you have acquired. Patrol locations, and the options open to you - MOVE, PICK, LOOK and so forth. I finally crossed the river with the boat I'd found, and managed to find the castle. Armed with my chosen entry object, a key, I broke in and started the hunt for the princess. But there are a large number of rooms to be searched, on several floors, and each may hold dangers as well as princesses, and you have only a limited supply of energy. If it runs out - back to the drawing board. Well, I got wiped out in no uncertain terms, by a large and deadly cobra, so I can't tell you what would have been involved in getting my princess back to home base. Probably I should have saved the game, but although you can in fact do so, this option is not mentioned in the instructions. You cannot re-run the game at a later date with the same difficulty level, hoping it will be the same - because it certainly will not. It is different every time it is played. At a guess. I'd say you would need about three hours at level 1 to complete the game successfully - I say 'guess' because I haven't managed to do it! VERDICT This is the best adventure game I have ever played. It is excellent, for a number of very good reasons. Many adventure games give you a severely limited range of ways to achieve things - to pass a dragon, say, you either kill it or cast a spell. But Rescue has a different philosophy. You decide how to rescue the princess, you decide what tactics to employ, you decide what objects to use and how to use them. I give my blessing...