Tuneles Marcianos

Big K

Graphics 2/3

Playability 3/3

Addictiveness 2/3

Overall 2/3

Steve Keaton 2/3

MAKER: Ventamatic FORMAT: cassette PRICE: £5.95 A curioss dose of Spanish arcadia that's on the whole slightly more rewarding than a week's vacation in Majorca. Although clearly a distant cousin of Jetpac, Tuneles maintains it's credibility by framing the action in a format not entirely dissimilar to Fantasy's Ziggy hit, The Pyramid. Screens of uglies alternate with a display of inter-locking cells which reveal your current game position. The ultimate aim of the game is to travel to the final cell located in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Exactly what this display represents though is unclear, as the instrucciones are in an unrepentant Spanish tongue (luckily the gameplay is easy enough to suss out). Initially I thought it might depict a massive starship but that seems a little too obvious. More likely it's a network of ghastly coastal resorts with the final room no doubt containing a much needed medi-kit and a return ticket home! Lending support to this theory are the denizens of the cells who are both fiendish and Spanish in appearance. There's a swarm of bearded waiters, plates of paella, fly sprays and hungry crabs (which I'm told are rife in Benidorm). The assault is unrelenting. Thankfully there's a full range of familiar joystick options to help get you home.

Personal Computer Games

Graphics 6/10

Sound 5/10

Originality 4/10

Lasting Interest 5/10

Overall 4/10

Bob Wade

Peter Walker

Robert Patrick

Steve Spittle 4/10

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K CONTROL: Keys, Kemp FROM: Unique, £5.99 Vertigo is a strange cross between Berzerk and Jet-Pac. It has you travelling through a maze with a large number of interconnecting rooms: these rooms contain aliens who attempt to bounce into you. Your objective is to collect seven keys which have been placed throughout the maze. After you have killed all the aliens in a particular room you are shown a map of the maze. This has your position, and that of the keys marked on it. Some extra lives are also available in a number of the rooms; these are also marked on the map. Once you have collected all of the keys, they must be taken to the trunk in the top left-hand corner of the maze, and you can then exit. Your man is equipped with a jet-pac and a laser gun, he is also incredibly large, (approximately one third of the height of a room). Although he is very well drawn and moves smoothly, controlling him is very difficult and the aliens have a nasty habit of bumping into various parts of his anatomy, as his size makes it almost impossible to dodge them. For some reason the aliens are not as well drawn or animated as the impressive-looking rocket-man. Vertigo appears to have a fairly limited variety of aliens; as even the small amount of rooms I visited contained aliens identical to those in other rooms. Unfortunately, the program can also be 'broken-out of' accidentally when you are viewing the instructions or entering your name in the score table; this should not be possible! This, combined with the obvious derivative elements, has given Vertigo a tacky feel. Overall, due to control problems and poor presentation. I must give what may have been a reasonable game a definite thumbs down.

Crash

Use of Computer 73%

Graphics 71%

Playability 69%

Getting Started 77%

Addictive Qualities 62%

Value For Money 65%

Overall 69%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Unique Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £5.99 Author: Jose Manuel Gutierrez This new game from Unique is from a Spanish software house called Ventamatic, whose games Unique are marketing in Britain. Vertigo is a large maze complex shoot em up in the manner of Doomsday Castle, Pyramid etc. There is a visual resemblance to Jetpac and Jetman in as much as 'you' are a space suited character with a jetpack on your back, equipped with a laser in hand and ready to deal death to the numerous Martians. The object of the game is to get through the labyrinth of Martian Tunnels by locating the seven keys which open the treasure chest at the end. Each tunnel, or room, is guarded by Martians that fly about trying to kill you off (by contact as usual). To get out of each section of the tunnels you must destroy all the guards first. Doing this opens up the doors, either horizontally or vertically. The room may have some standing platforms and one or more trenches in the floor. These are often useful to duck into when threatened by a low flying alien. Having finished a screen, it clears and returns alienless and with all doors open for you to move into the next. Before this, the map appears which shows the location of all the rooms. There are 256 of them. There are also several different types of alien with varied characteristics, and your man is one of the largest graphics of its type in any shoot em up game. COMMENTS Control keys: alternate keys bottom row left /right, 2nd row thrust, 3rd row to fire Joystick: Kempston, AGF, Protek Keyboard play: very responsive, at times over-responsive Use of colour: good Graphics: smooth, fast and detailed Sound: good tunes, not continuous sound but well used Skill levels: 1 Lives: 3 Screens: plenty of precedents, but generally well implemented Originality: well worth considering, generally above average