Traz

Your Sinclair

Overall 3/10

Marcus Berkmann 3/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT Yes it's Marcus Berkmann again, rootling around in the lucky dip for all the latest cheapoid games. And what did he pull out? A bunch of bargains no less! TRAZ Gamebusters £2.99 Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann Ah, so this is what happened to it. Every so often a game is announced amid much excitement, palaver and huge advertising budgets, and then it never shows. Why? What happens? The usual scenario is that the company announces the game before it has seen the finished product, and when it does get an eyeful, the game's so dreadful that everyone tries, usually without success, to forget all about it. Traz is an Arkanoid clone, originally by Cascade, and was converted from the excellent and highly successful Commodore game of the same name. On the Spec, though, it doesn't take a genius to see that it doesn't cut it. So instead of an enormous star-studded (J. Minson) launch, out it has dribbled six months later as a cheapie. It's much the worst game of its kind that I've seen, so let's say no more and let it expire with dignity.

Crash

Graphics 77%

Playability 80%

Addictive Qualities 80%

Overall 81%

Mark Caswell 84%

Phil King 78%

Producer: Gamebusters Bat 'n' Ball: £2.99 cass Author: Imagitec For the uninitiated, TRAZ, stands for TRansformable Arcade Zone. Why 'Transformable', you ask - well, because this is one game which you can alter to your heart's content, due a great construction kit. The basic game is Breakout - it's all about knocking out coloured blocks by deflecting a tiny ball with one or more bats. Some of these blocks release question marks which have an unpredictable effect on the bat, speeding it up or even making it go round in circles. Some types of block are indestructible though, while others are transparent and after the path of the ball as it travels through them. Monster generators create nasties which hover around the screen deflecting any balls which hit them. If all the balls are lost through traps at the bottom of the screen, so is one of your three lives. Complete a screen and one or more exits appear. Only when all the screens have been visited is the game over. In addition, a two-player mode allows a daring duo to play simultaneously, taking control of one bat in turn, or two or more bats at the same time, switching bats every so often to mutual confusion. All the block types and traps can be moved around via the designer to create new screens. Also, any number of vertical and/or horizontal bets may be placed onscreen along with the starting position of the ball. Up to 64 different screens can be created and saved to tape. Screens are linked by definable exits, and once you've created a whole set you can play the game proper. Or if that sounds too exhausting use the predefined set of screens. Although there are undoubtedly better Breakout variants around, the way TRAZ allows you to design your own screens makes it much more fun. In fact, just as much amusement can be had fiddling with the editor as in actually playing the resulting game. But for the budget price, it represents a great deal. PHIL 78% THE ESSENTIALS Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair Sound: nothing more than the odd beep Options: one or two players. Design your own screens

Designer Breakout with TRAZ.

Sinclair User

Graphics 73%

Sound 54%

Playability 61%

Lastability 75%

Overall 68%

Tony Dillon 68%

Label: Gamebusters Author: In-house Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Tony Dillon Oh dear, here we go again with yet another Breakout variant. Well, not exactly. This one's a little different. It has all the usual features of the Breakout games. The bat, the ball and the wall of bricks. Let the ball get behind the bricks and you lose a life. All pretty basic stuff, so what's new? For a start, there's normally more than one bat on screen. That's been done before, you say. The bats can be on different walls and even floating in mid air. Seen it before, you say. You can have simultaneous two player action. Yawn. But have you seen all of those features on one common game? All this and a screen editor. Wow! The aim behind TRAZ is to destroy all the blocks on a screen and then escape through one of the exits into an adjacent screen. To destroy the bricks, you have to bounce a ball off your bat into them, or use one of the pods that fly around, giving you special powers when caught. The 64 screens are arranged in a maze of eight by eight screens. You have to try to find your way out, whcih isn't very easy, when you consider you have to clear the screens before you can even try. It's the large amount of things going on at once on a screen that makes TRAZ a lot harder than most other Breakout clones., For example, having four bats under your control at once, one on each wall, as well as having lots of roaming monsters and funny little tiles that change the ball's path make some screens almost completely unplayable. The graphics on the whole are great, even better than the megafab Arkanoid 2 and Batty screens. The backgrounds are shaded and colourful, but there's none of the old problem of not being able to make out the ball. The bricks are colourful and shaded, and of course, clash free. The screens are well laid out and most are amazingly taxing. Designs like the original Ace 2 advertisement and a flag appear in places and due to most of the screens irregular shapes, there's not much chance of getting a lucky ball trapped in the back, bouncing around, knocking out huge amounts of bricks and knocking up some mental scores. The screen designer is easy to use. Simply a matter of choosing a type of tile and laying down as many as possible. All your designs can be saved out and loaded back into be continued later. The only thing I didn't like about the designer was the way you have to design all 64 screens and the map, as opposed to just one screen. TRAZ isn't anything new to the world of Spectrum games. That said, it is a little bit different, and worth a look if you're a fan of the genre or are just after a bit of a challenge.

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

Spectrum, £9.95cs Amstrad, £9.95cs, £14.95dk C64/128, £9.95cs, £14.95dk IBM PC, £19.95dk Cooperation is a must if you hope to complete any of this Breakout clone's 64 screens. In two-player mode you'll get nowhere last if you try to compete with a friend because the action is fast and furious and a lost life affects the both of you. Cooperation is necessary simply because of the way the game is structured. When you're in two-player mode you and your friend can find yourselves each with two bats to control - this is not normally too much of a problem, except when you consider that control of the bats switches randomly between the players. Wacky fun that's best enjoyed by two.

Traz - C64. Random bat switching will test your reactions to the full.