Super Arcadia

Sinclair User

Overall 1/5

John Gilbert 1/5

PUBLISHER: Digital Precision PRICE: £15.95 Joystick Digital Precision has set the games market back three years with a two-package offering, called Super Arcadia. It is notable for its awful graphics, flat music, and the appalling use of English in the instructions. The instructions are held on a Quill file, so you have to access the word processor before you can read them. One consolation is that you can print them out and keep a hard copy. However, it would have been easier to include them in the games or on the packaging. The package provides a two option menu from which you can select the game BMX Burner or Grid Racer. When I first saw BMX Burner I could not believe my eyes, and when I started to play it my suspicions were confirmed. The game is just about playable but would anybody who owned a QL want to? Mr Mercury takes his supercharged - surely not! - BMX bike for a trip around a universe of screens which look as if they have been created for retired Binetone Games Console players. He must move carefully past the luridly coloured obstacles, avoiding moving rockets and picking up stationary bombs which he can drop on the evil guardian of each screen. The idea is to collect a series of objects in the correct order. Once you have found the motley array of keys, learner plates, copyright symbols and little cases - to name but a few - you can move onto the next screen. If, however, you are hit by a missile or guardian you will lose one of your nine fives, it is a blessing in disguise that you are more likely to run out of lives than finish all the screens. I certainly could not handle more than three screens. Grid Racer is a different proposition - not much different, but different enough. It does not involve cars, bikes or even 059. You must use Shankses Donkey to get around a field and defuse a bomb before it explodes. You can only move sideways and cannot recross your path which is marked with a thick black line. Beware of the mines, they will blow up. I'm not sure if they do as I was stopped early on in the game by what looked like pixel sized rocks. You can also shuffle left and right although that didn't get me any nearer the bomb which provides a countdown from 50 to zero. If anybody has managed to defuse the bomb in time I would like to hear from them - if only to send their name to the mental health council. Firebird should buy this package from Digital Precision to provide a QL version or their infamous package of Basic Spectrum games - Don't Buy This.