Sky Ranger

Sinclair User

Overall 2/5

Clare Edgeley 2/5

Publisher: Microsphere Price: £5.95 Memory: 48K Joystick: Programmable Microsphere's Skyranger is one of those games which looks great until you start to play it. The idea is to fly your copter above the city to rid the skies of hostile Watchers - Drags, Trums, Rics and Dores. 10 points for guessing which micros they are named after. The screen is impressive. As well as the view from your cockpit depicting the city's skyscrapers there is an array of instrument panels including altitude, radar and fuel. When fuel runs out you can land at fuelling stations if you can find them. An indicator on the control panel tells you when one is in close proximity and it is up to you to penetrate the jungle of buildings and find it. The screen is yellow with black wire frame graphics and when night falls those colours are reversed. Occasionally a sea mist creeps in, totally obscuring all graphics. Trums, Rics and the rest of the crew are black blobs and unrecognisable. The radar will flash red when one is within target range. If you crash or touch a building the cockpit window will crack. At the end it looks as though someone has been at the screen with a sledgehammer - which would not be at all surprising if playability is taken into account. The music consists of annoying and inappropriate jingles, totally unsuited to this type of game.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 1/5 MISS

Roger Willis 3/5 MISS

Ross Holman 2/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY From their bench on high, our regular panel of jurors - Ross Holman, Roger Willis and Dave Nicholls - pass judgement on the latest and greatest games software! Here they are again - that motley bunch of joystick jockeys, ready and waiting to sift through the plethora of software to help you make that important decision! WARNING! Just in case you find our scoring system too confusing, here's what it's all about. The score out of five at the end of each person's review is based on their own experience of the game. But that's pretty subjective... so they also use the HIT and MISS system to indicate its potential as a commercial success. SKYRANGER Microsphere £5.95 Ross: The 'Watchers' are computerised law enforcers of the rather over-zealous kind - and they need to be stopped. As a Skyranger, your task is to fly your jetcopter around the city, ambushing the Watchers and blasting them into smithereens with your ultrasonic pulse generator. The screen has a large window at the top left which allows you to peek outside; it's surrounded by various instruments that show speed, height, fuel and the position of your foe. The view seen from the window is one of tall buildings, drawn in 3D-style vector graphics and through which you have to manoeuvre. The 360-degrees radar shows the relative position of the Watchers and allows you to zip through the maze of streets on an intercepting course. If you manage to get in line with one, check your altitude and range, then blast it. Of course, all the time you're moving your fuel is running out. If you manage to destroy enough Watchers, you're given a code that allows entry to the next level. Overall, I have to express disappointment. The program seems technically proficient but it lacks playability and I found myself getting bored with it.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Personal Computer News

Bryan Skinner

PRICE: £4.95 PUBLISHER: Microsphere [redacted] Fancy flying round fairly featureless architecture? Well, until you've mastered that you won't get far in this game. You are the city's sole guardian, seeking out and destroying Watchers. The city presents itself as miles upon miles of wire frame skyscrapers and you're free to fly down low along the avenues, or up high dodging the tower tops. There are plenty of instruments to help you. Altimeter, fuel gauge, speedo, etc are ranged along the bottom of the screen, with the level, your scare and any high-score up the left. The key instrument is the radar, a green circle with a swinging compass above. One gripe is that the dots which show your targets are so small that it's easy to miss them. Once spotted however, it's foot down, climb to the city's upper limits and away in pursuit. The view from the vid-screen is very well done. The buildings zoom past as you seek your victim and it's just too bad if you' cannon into a wall during a tricky manouevre. That's a life lost but, worse still, when you regain control of your craft, you'll find a nasty crack running down your vidscreen. More cracks are added for every life lost, so by the time you've mastered the controls, you can't see where you're going or spot the watchers. As you speed up the beat of your craft's blades gets faster. Once you've got a Watcher in your sights (the target indicator flashes), let loose with the ammo and hope to nail it. They're tricky little devils and you may have to do a quick about face to trail it. There are a number of levels to the game and, needless to say, it gets a lot harder. You can refuel at any of five stations, each of which you can visit once only during each game. Sky Ranger's a pretty good game, but there's really not much to it. Once you've mastered the controls it's just a question of tracking, chasing and blasting. The graphics are good, but not brilliant, and the idea is not particularly original or demanding enough to make you come back to the game. I'm afraid that, good as it is, Sky Ranger just didn't grab me.

Crash

Use of Computer 81%

Graphics 79%

Playability 65%

Getting Started 73%

Addictive Qualities 58%

Value For Money 69%

Overall 71%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Microsphere Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £5.95 Language: Machine code There is a graffiti artist in Microsphere's Skool Daze who writes on the blackboard something to the effect that 'Sky Ranger is great' - a neat piece of pre-publicity for their second release. Sky Ranger is a helicopter. We've remarked before in CRASH how odd it is that software companies tend to have similar ideas at the same time, and there are a few helicopter scenarios around or in the pipeline. Sky Ranger is situated in a large city full of skyscrapers, which allows for plenty of wire frame 3D. The 3D used here, however, is rather more complex than in most previous games of the type, and generally, the graphics are quite different from other Microsphere games. The scenario plays heavily on old computer names, somewhat bastardised over the intervening years. It seems there will be a time when Watchers' will be placed in the skies of the city, servants, Mends in the fight to make the city safe. The people will even give them nicknames, calling them after the primitive 20th century computers that delighted the children so much in the museums. But soon the Rics and the Drags, the Dores and the Trums will have enforced crime so successfully that they will turn to enforcing the lesser offences. Then they will discover the city archives - still packed with ancient and never-repealed laws. The 'Watchers' have been programmed to enforce the law - and the city lives in fear... Your mission is to seek out and destroy the Watchers using your electronic pulse generator. The screen contains a view from the helicopter of the city streets. To the left and below the viewscreen are the instruments. These include the ubiquitous fuel gauge, and the machine uses it quite quickly. There are five fuel dumps in the city which can be visited once each during a game. As the city is near the sea and fogs swirl in rapidly, a ceiling gauge shows the height of the cloud level. There is also an altitude meter and a speedo. Centrally placed is the all important compass and dose range radar on which the Watchers appear. A five letter band indicates your proximity to a fuel dump, with the appropriate letter flashing. Destroying Watchers is done by firing when they are in the centre of the vid screen and the target indicator flashes red. There are various skill levels which are accessed as in Wheelie through codes gained by completing a level. One aspect which makes the game harder is that the viewscreen is vulnerable to contact with buildings or watchers, and easily becomes cracked. These cracks remain with you during a game, making it increasingly harder to see where you are flying. COMMENTS Control keys: user definable, preset are: CAPS to V/B to SPACE left/right, Y to P/H to ENTER up/down, Q to T/A to G faster/slower, 1 to 0 to fire Joystick: almost any via UDK Keyboard play: responsive Use of colour: sensible and avoids attribute problems Graphics: excellent 3D detail, oddly untidy on the instruments Sound: not much, mostly a sound for the helicopter speed Skill levels: progressive with access codes Lives: percentage of damage Screens: 1 Special Features: