Tubaruba

Sinclair User

Overall 1/5

John Gilbert 1/5

Label: Firebird Price: £1.99 Joystick: various Memory: 48K/128K Reviewer: John Gilbert I expected Firebird's latest to be a flashy arcade game. After all, Thrust II was pretty fine. Instead, what I got was a lot of weird metaphysical objects bouncing up and down in front of me. The anti-hero of this piece - called Tubaruba incidentally - is an itinerant schoolboy who has smashed a school window, collect £50 to cover the repairs and form the basis for his end of term report. Sounds fabulous doesn't it? But when I started to play the game I was treated to a flickery stick-insect of a schoolboy sprite and a group of performing tomatoes which bounce up and down on the screen so that more by luck than judgement you get to make your first £10. Our schoolboy finds himself in some very psychedelic otherworlds. Was he on drugs? Was there some message in the graphics which I'd missed? The answer to those questions is no. Tubaruba is just another excuse for Firebird to release any old tat on its Silver label. Worse - I found it difficult to get past the first three screens because those alien fruit take up most of the screen. The game's play logic was all to pot, and the player character couldn't seem to move into the main part of the screen without tripping over something!

ZX Computing

BUDGET GAMES ARE ACCOUNTING FOR MORE SALES THAN EVER. ZX LOOKS AT THE LATEST RELEASES. If the computer press is anything to go by, budget software is taking over the world. Nobody is buying full-priced games apparently (unless they're conversions of coin-op titles), and certainly Mastertronic, if they're not taking over the world, are taking over Melbourne House. There are a number of software houses competing for the budget market but for the most part it's a three way fight these days. Mastertronic were the first in the field, closely followed by Firebird's Silver range, and these two have been slogging it out enthusiastically for a while now. Recently though, Code Masters, the label founded by a couple of ex-Mastertronic programmers, has made quite an impact with games such as BMX Simulator and Terra Incognita. This month we've received some new releases from all three of these companies, giving us a good chance to compare a Super Robin Hood variety of products and take a look at the state of the (budget) art. FIREBIRD Personally I've not been as impressed with Firebird's stuff as I have with Mastertronic's or Code Masters', but they have been improving a bit lately. Thrust was perhaps their best release for the Spectrum, and Thrust II, whilst basically the same, added a couple of frills to the addictive formula. Their latest game, Tubaruba, is a fairly run of the mill effort. You have to find your way around a school building and collect £50 to pay for a broken window. You have to contend with the usual assortment of deadly sprites, ladders and so on, and while this is the sort of thing that could have been sold at full price a couple of years ago it's still a bit bland by today's standards.

Crash

Presentation 58%

Graphics 45%

Playability 43%

Addictive Qualities 41%

Value For Money 48%

Overall 42%

Gareth Adams

Paul Sumner

Producer: Firebird Retail Price: £1.99 Author: Tooba Zaidi Naughty Tubaruba's always in trouble at school, but this time it looks really serious. He's broken a window, been caught by the headmaster and faced with expulsion unless he pays a £50 damages bill. However, if the trainee delinquent collects this amount by the end of the term he'll not only achieve good grades, he'll also wind up owning the headmaster's Ferrari. In his financial search, Tuba passes through a series of rooms on different floors collecting money as he goes. He can move left and right, jump up or leap down in the school buildings he hates so much. To make his task that much harder, bomb-dropping angels, egg-laying ducks, deadly ball-spitting heads, octopuses, and musical instruments fly about. Contact with any of these saps energy, which is replaced by collecting the red discs found lying about the school. Should his energy level fall to zero, Tubaruba is permanently wiped off the school register. Overactivity also depletes Tuba's energy, so to rest his legs he drives about in on of the Sinclair C5's which are conveniently distributed around the school. Tubaruba protects himself by firing on his attackers with a concealed gun. Each kill earns a penny, but his piggy bank fills up much faster if he picks up the coins and notes which are also to be found about the premises. Leaping up to and touching windows transports the scheming schoolkid to another part of the building where he can continue his money hunt. COMMENTS Control keys: Q up, A down, O left, P right, Z/M fire Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2 Use of colour: very bright Graphics: primitive and generally small Sound: poor Skill levels: one

It may be an old-fashioned game, but Tubaruba is brightly pretty to look at.