Spore

Your Sinclair

Graphics 2/10

Playability 4/10

Value For Money 3/10

Addictiveness 4/10

Overall 3/10

Tony Worrall 3/10

BUDGET BONANZA What we got? Loadsacheapies! And we got Tony Worrall to review 'em. Take it away, Wozza! SPORE Bulldog £1.99 Reviewer: Tony Worrall Bulldog scored something of a minor hit with this game on the Commie 64. It was fast, noisy and mildly addictive. I didn't really go a bundle on it then, nor do I now. Although this conversion is almost perfect, the blandness of the screens and the bizarre nature of the game itself make it very much an acquired taste. Not my cup of coffee at all. The choc-a-bloc screen contains hundreds of spore creatures that attack your character, sapping energy by the barrel full. Most of the spores are contained within a maze like network of moveable walls. Trouble is the object of your desires also resides within those walls. Wearing your strategy hat, you must figure out the safest way to travel the maze without mega amounts of energy loss. Ho hum! The graphics hardly impress, but things do chug along at a fairly rapid pace so you may not have time to take much notice. Apart from that - forget it. For zappers and maze freaks only.

Sinclair User

Overall 2/10

Tony Dillon 2/10

Label: Mastertronic Author: In-house Price: £2.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon The good old days are a glorious and wonderful thing (at the time they were, of course, a terrible time). Think back a couple of years ago or more (the Spectrum is six years old this year, by the way), and think of the software of the time, games like Knight Lore and Jet Set Willy for example. Well, Spore is one of those games which, if it had been around then, would have been instantly forgettable. How many games have been collect-the-thingies-whilst-avoiding-the-nasty-thingies? Yes, too many to count, and Spore adds to that list. Simply move your small crappy character that looks like a spider doing aerobics and shoot all the small blocks. Boring, especially when you consider that there is no scrolling, terrible animation and the worst level of playability I have ever come across.

Crash

Presentation 55%

Graphics 46%

Playability 75%

Addictive Qualities 78%

Overall 67%

Bym Welthy

Mark Caswell

Mike Dunn

Producer: Bulldog Retail Price: £1.99 Author: M Webb Deadly spores, so virulent that even TCP can't destroy them, have overrun a laboratory. One hope remains: the strong pesticide held in barrels throughout the building. And the task in Spore is to collect all the barrels on each level. But the spores are continually released from generator blocks, and you must always be ready to destroy them with your blaster - before they infect you. Rejuvenating flasks and protective pills also help in the fight against sporedom. Flashing yellow barriers can imprison you or block routes to the vital pesticide - and though you can destroy them by blasting appropriate mirrors and squares that, too, could release more torrents of spores. COMMENTS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair (none work, though!) Graphics: small but well-defined characters Sound: like dried peas in a tin Options: definable keys (which, like the joysticks, don't function); maze-construction set