Strontium Dog: The Killing

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 1/5 MISS

Roger Willis 2/5 MISS

Ross Holman 1/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY From their bench on high, our regular panel of jurors - Ross Holman, Dave Nicholls and Roger Willis - pass judgement on the latest games software! You're probably getting used to our joystick jockeys by now but, for the record, there's gamester supremo Ross Holman; the hairiest of hackers, Dave Nicholls; and the fastest reviewer on two wheels, Roger Willis. 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. STRONTIUM DOG - THE KILLING Quicksilva £6.95 Roger: Johnny Alpha is a 'Search And Destroy' agent (a mutant bounty hunter of the future) who first appeared in yer actual 2000AD comic and he may well have been the star of many ripping yarns in those smudged and inky pages. His dubut, however, as Sinclair superheroette is somewhat more than underwhelming. It's desperate! It's a dog's life!! You can poodle the Strontium woofer through a generally doggy selection of extraterrestial kennels, seeking 'vicious murderers' who need to be put permanently too sleep, along with the 'Evil Dictators' who apparently control this contest of yapping yawns. Watch out for the 'Steel Kriegs' too! Owing to a blatant programming oversight, Strontium Dog fails to cross his back legs in frustration and agony at the complete absence of life-relieving lamposts unfolds screen by screen. Maybe they were just hard to find in two dimensions?

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 8/10

Sound 5/10

Value 7/10

Playability 7/10

MACHINE: Spectrum/keyboard or joystick SUPPLIER: Quicksilva PRICE: £6.95 Johnny Alpha, 21st century bounty hunter and star of 2000AD, THE science fiction comic, steps out again in Quicksilva's second game based on this comic cult hero. And I'm glad to report that this Strontium Dog game is far better than Ouicksilva's first stab at a Johnny Alpha game. That was The Death Gauntlet for the Commodore 64, which left a lot to be desired. Strontium Dog, The Killing, is a different can of worms. You control Johnny in a deadly mission on a strange planet where the Dictators stage a strange contest. They invite all the most deadly killers from all over the galaxy to compete in an evil olympics - the winner is the person who comes out alive! Now Johnny Alpha reckons that a trip to this planet at the time of the games is a good way to wipe out all the top criminals and earn himself a great bounty-cheque into the bargain. This is where you come in. The "games" take place in a maze-like complex of rooms and corridors. Johnny has to explore the many levels of the complex, discover the alien killers and destroy them. Sounds simple, but when you come to play the game, things get more difficult - as usual! The alien criminals are crafty and wait to ambush an unsuspecting Strontium Dog in the various chambers of the games complex. The game is a biggie - and its a good idea to have some paper and a pen to log your movements through the complex otherwise it's easy to get lost. You also have to work out different strategies to wipe out the various nasty alien criminals you come across. The graphics are good - but the sound leaves a bit to be desired. Even on the Spectrum. The Johnny Alpha character is well drawn and animated. You can actually recognise him as the 2000AD character! He is armed with three electro-flares and his trusty laser gun and gets five lives to complete his quest. The screen shows you a display of Johnny and the room he is currently in, plus read outs of lives left, and the number of alien killers still around in the complex. The Killing falls into the currently trendy arcade adventure style of game. I found it entertaining to play and kept coming back to explore more rooms. Two annoying things about the game. One is the fact that you keep having to come back to the intro screen before restarting a new game, once all your lives are lost. Although this is nicely drawn and quite entertaining, it becomes a bit irritating after the twentieth viewing. But if you get really good at the game, you're not going to see it much anyway are you? Second, the instructions could give you a bit more information. I know it's nice to have a bit of mystery about a game - but personally I would have liked a bit more documentation. Maybe if you are a 2000AD reader, you could - as Quicksilva suggests - dig out some back numbers and read again a Strontium Dog story called The Killing. I liked The Killing and will be going back for more as soon as I've found those old copies!

Crash

Use of Computer 52%

Graphics 64%

Playability 52%

Getting Started 53%

Addictive Qualities 30%

Overall 42%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Quicksilva Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £6.95 Language: Machine code Author: Paul Hargreaves of Channel 8 To readers of the comic 2000AD Strontium Dog will be no stranger. Interestingly enough, the even more famous hero (?) Judge Dredd will soon be turned into a computer hero as well as Games Workshop are even now working on the project. Back to the story: Johnny Alpha is a Search and Destroy agent, a bounty hunter of the future, he is also a mutant or Strontium Dog. He has arrived at a contest where the galaxy's most vicious murderers are in a fight to the death. Johnny must destroy them all to rid the galaxy of both killers and the dictators who preside over the contest. The game begins with a screen where Johnny Alpha is brought before the dictators as in a Roman amphitheatre and one of them declares, 'Let the killing begin!' as he happily plunges a dagger into some hapless victim's chest. In the way of modern computer games advertising other games, however, there is a slogan etched into the dais which says, 'Borzak woz ere' - one of Channel 8's games. The Killing is played in a vast complex of rooms, or sectors. Some of these are merely tunnels to other sectors, but the real action begins in those rooms that consist of a central passage with what resemble rabbit hutches on either side. These are the cages in which the vicious murderers live. They emerge from either the top or bottom of their cages, into the open and fire energy bolts which rebound in the centre passage. Strontium Dog must fire at them when they appear and try to kill them, while dodging the energy bolts which travel in a diamond shape, narrowing their field before expiring. Occasionally in the transverse passages a murderer will be lurking, armed to the teeth. At the top left is a status panel with the score in bounty points, the number of the sector you are in, and lives left. On the right is an alien scan which shows living aliens (starts at 93) and deaths scored. Because of the size of the complex, a map would come in handy in order to ascertain that you have got all the vicious murderers. COMMENTS Control keys: 9 or Q/8 or A up/down, 6 or O/7 or P left/right, zero or M to fire and X Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair 2 Keyboard play: sensible keys but not terribly responsive and firing is not possible while moving Use of colour: good Graphics: large characters, a bit jerky and not much animation Sound: fair Skill levels: 1 Lives: 5 Screens: lots

A typical screen from STRONTIUM DOG, with the hero in the centre and a caged baddie on the left firing bolts of energy.

Dead in a corridor with a triumphant murderer under the arches.

Let the Killing Begin - the start screen which offended a number of reviewers.

Your Computer

Overall 2/5

48K Spectrum Quicksilva Arcade Adventure £6.95 Do not be fooled by Quicksilva's packaging and the fatuous blurb - although eminently playable this game is scarcely original. You will need to make a map and solve a few problems but otherwise it is simply a matter of travelling from room to room and blasting away.

Sinclair Programs

Rating 60%

June Mortimer 60%

PRICE: £6.95 GAME TYPE: Maze Let the killing begin. There you are, condemned to death, doomed to kill or be killed, with only a comic strip in 2000AD which you may or may not have read, and a cassette insert, to help you. Strontium Dog, The Killing, from Quicksilva is based on the story in 2000AD. In practice, this means you must travel through a maze, avoiding the parts of the maze which flash, and killing all the aliens you meet, before you can finally escape. The maze is relatively simple. Draw a grid, number the first row 1 to 16, and the second row 17 to 32. Continue until you reach at least box 256. You are now ready to start mapping . Killing the aliens is far more difficult. On the first three levels, at least, they appear in two basic types of room. One, where they run down the sides and shoot you, and a second where they appear in doorways at the top of the room and shoot at you. Shooting them appears to be largely a matter of chance. Moving from one section to another is done by way of the Medis. These are ambushed, and require you to stand in exactly the right place, throw a flare bomb and start firing. If you are in the right place you will get through, if not, you are doomed. Moving to the fourth level means passing the hanged man. The technique for shooting him is even more difficult to grasp, and failure means returning to the beginning again. So, what are you left with? A simple to map, if intricate, maze; and a series of aliens which can only be killed by a combination of luck and skill. Not everybody's idea of fun. Produced for the 48K Spectrum by Quicksilva, [redacted].