Zombie Zombie

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 2.5/5 HIT

Roger Willis 3/5 HIT

Ross Holman 1/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY All the latest software from around the houses! Passing judgement this month are Dave Nicholls, Ross Holman and Roger Willis. Our regular crew of software screw balls are in fine form this month. Draining the dregs of Christmas spirit are Dave Nicholls, the hairy hacker; JSW champion Ross Holman; and our own two-wheeled terror, Roger Willis. 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. ZOMBIE ZOMBIE Quicksilva £6.95 Dave: Oh no! Antescher has been invaded by zombies - nasty green ones that turn red with rage and attack whenever you get too close. To help you rid the city of this influx of Duran Duran fans, you're equipped with a helicopter which you can use to fly around in safety. But you have to leave it when you're destroying the zombies - a feat accomplished by running into them from behind! Once hit they turn all slavelike and can be led up onto any convenient wall where they will happily jump to their death to the tune of Ten Green Bottles. If you're not too confident of controlling the zombies this way, you can always fire your 'puffer' at them whichMl make them run away to a safe distance. Any architects out there will also be glad to hear that your helicopter is capable of carrying a large number of bricks around, so the city can be re-defined to suit yourself; you can also have some fun with your own brand of 'Soft Solid graffiti'! Basically this is Ant Attack all over again and as such it will appeal to Ant Attackers everywhere - but if you found Ant Attacks tedious experience then don't bother with Zombie Zombie. For those of you who've seen neither Zombie Zombie is probably the best of the two.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Your Computer

Overall 3/5

Spectrum 48K Quicksilva Novelty £6.95 A new game from the author of Ant Attack, which uses the same superb 3D effects. Once again you find yourself roaming around a ruined city, now fighting off zombies rather than ants. This time you can also fly over the city in a helicopter, pick up and transport bricks.

Personal Computer Games

Graphics 8/10

Sound 8/10

Originality 4/10

Lasting Interest 7/10

Overall 7/10

Bob Wade 7/10

Peter Connor

Peter Walker

Robert Patrick

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K CONTROL: Curs, Kemp, Sinc FROM: Quicksilva, £6.95 The follow up to Ant Attack using Quicksilva's 'softsolid' graphics technique has arrived and it's endearingly titled Zombie-Zombie. You are in an ancient city and the only things you have for company are the walls, a helicopter and zombies! Actually they are rather blobby green, red or pink things and you have to kill them. The only way to zap-a-zombie is to get it to walk off a wall that is three blocks high. To this end you have been provided with a helicopter in which you can move bits of the walls about and construct your own private zombie plank-walk. First, however, you have to get a mindless monster in tow. Usually they appear green but if you get too close they turn a nasty red and start to eat you. The only way to avoid this is to choose your victim, charge up directly behind it and pounce. It will become a bright shade of pink and start to follow you around. If you put a wall between you and it, it will be able to escape - so you have to carefully lead it to your staircase up to a wall. Then you lead it up the stairs and along to a large drop at the end. with every step scoring a point. Jumping off the end should make the beast follow, plunging to its death. However any twists and turns in the wall may allow it to escape as you leap into mid-air. If the wall is too high you will die as well and its very easy to twitch your joystick and jump accidentally. As in Ant Attack you can view the landscape from four perspectives and the screen scrolls smoothly around. You can keep red zombies away from you by blowing at them but, be warned, they attack very fast. The cassette inlay gives you very few hints but you could have fun with this one.

Big K

Graphics 3/3

Playability 1/3

Addictiveness 2/3

Overall 2/3

Fin Fahey 2/3

MAKER: Quicksilva FORMAT: cassette PRICE: £6.95 After fiddling around with this for about half and hour, I'm left with lingering feelings of bewilderment. Zombie Zombie is definitely for those who relish enigmas. The sleeve offers little help, simply one of Quicksilva's crazed blurbs, which I must admit I always enjoy reading. The game itself looks great on first impression, but you have to pick up tips on playing from the demonstration mode. This much I do know... You are in a ruined city with a little red helicopter at your disposal. The ruins are beautifully realised, in what Quicksilva term Softsolid graphics. You can climb into the chopper and fly around, in which case the ruins can be re-arranged by picking up or dropping individual blocks. In the helicopter you are safe, but if you choose to go foot-slogging, along come the zombies. Nasty little green figures, these do something of an unspeakable nature to you if they get close, but you can temporarily blow them away. But here's the puzzle. What really is the object of the game? In the demonstration it seems as though you have to construct ramps up which to lure the zombies so that they can fall to a precipitous death. But to me this seems rather a clumsy tactic in what is otherwise a very elegant game. I suppose I'll have to accept it, though. The game failed to hook me as I just couldn't believe in it.

Sinclair Programs

Rating 70%

June Mortimer 70%

PRICE: £6.95 GAME TYPE: Arcade Somewhere in this deserted city where no people can be found and the walls provide hiding places but no homes, somewhere in this city lurk the zombies. Hideously deformed, green creatures, they wander the grey streets mindlessly, striking dread into the hearts of hapless strangers. When the zombies change from green to red, then is the time to flee. Their minds reanimated for a short time, their killer instinct leads them towards the nearest living creature. In Zombie Zombie, the nearest creature is bound to be you. Flying high above the city in your helicopter, you detect the zombies below. Safety can only be gained by their destruction, and you plan to lead them to their deaths luring them to the dizzy heights of the city, and then trusting their mindless forms will leap to oblivion on the hard ground below. First though, you must leave the safety of your helicopter, and walk the streets of terror below. In any of those streets may lurk a zombie and your only weapons are your skill and your helicopter. Use the helicopter to shape the city to your plans, to lift the giant building blocks and send them crashing down in new forms to create an entirely new city. Then leave your refuge and try to destroy the undead. Zombie Zombie is the follow up to Ant Attack, featuring the same high-quality three-dimensional graphics, and choice of viewing angles. It closely resembles its predecessor in looks and feel, although the change of plot, and the addition of the rebuilding facility add to its excitement. Zombie Zombie is produced for the 48K Spectrum by Quicksilva, [redacted].

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 7/10

Chris Bourne 7/10

CITY OF THE UNDEAD Memory: 48K Price: £6.95 Joystick: Kempston, Sinclair, Cursor Moving in the same direction as the film industry, Quicksilva has made the horror quantum leap from giant ants to zombies. Following the trail blazed by 3D Ant Attack, the company has now released Zombie Zombie, using the same softsolid technique which popularised the former. Softsolid is a means by which a true 3D perspective is built up using 'solid' cubes to form structures, behind which you or the monsters lurk. The landscape is a ruined city, many times larger than the screen, which may be viewed from any of four directions, thus enabling you to sec behind the walls. You have a small helicopter, casting the now fashionable shadow when aloft, which can pick up and redistribute the bricks of the city. That enables you to cut off or channel the zombies to a suitable killing ground. Destroying zombies is much more difficult than killing ants. The only apparent way of doing it is to lure a zombie up a set of steps and over a precipice. You are capable of surviving the drop, but the zombie goes splat and leaves a small red puddle. The game is less playable than 3D Ant Attack, despite the welcome provision of joystick options. Whereas the ants used to swarm in large numbers around you if you stood still, the zombies are difficult to find. That, coupled with the enormous difficulty in destroying them, makes it more fun to potter around designing buildings with the helicopter rather than get on with the game.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Crash

Use of Computer 78%

Graphics 84%

Playability 82%

Getting Started 78%

Addictive Qualities 80%

Value For Money 79%

Overall 80%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Spaceman/Quicksilva Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £6.95 Language: Machine code Author: Angela & Sandy White Yes folks, it's the long-awaited follow-up to Sandy White's extraordinary 3D Ant Attack. The style is instantly recognisable, the pre-defined isometric perspective city maze and fast scrolling, the boy or girl hero leaping and walking around, but colour has been added and a few more gizmos to make a different game altogether. Our hero has now been provided with a little red helicopter to fly about in and the city has become infested with death-dealing zombies. The helicopter allows another new element to creep in - architecture. For once inside it, the hero can drop blocks to build or re-design the city. He can also remove existing blocks by the same means. This becomes important because in Zombie Zombie the heroine can jump from the tallest blocks but only jump up single steps, and the Zombies can only be killed off by luring them into following you up onto the walls, and when you jump down from a high one, the zombie follows, splatting redly on the ground? You are also provided with one other means of defence - you can blow a puff of air at the zombies which will blow them away for a moment. Below the playing area rows of yellow dots (106 in all) represent the carrying capacity of the helicopter in blocks. Every time a block is dropped a dot disappears. Once out of the machine and on foot, the dots represent breaths left, so after a long stint of building it pays to stock up on breaths before disembarking. To pick up blocks the helicopter must be sitting on a wall and the fire key is tapped. To drop one, it must be hovering in the air, which is also done with the fire key, but if the fire key is rapid tapped, it will result in blocks failing down into position. Getting out of the helicopter is done by landing and using a direction key. Locating the 3D position of the helicopter is easy with its shadow being seen on the ground. As in Ant Attack there is the facility of four camera angle views which are achieved by standing still and using the fire key, the views then rotate in turn automatically. COMMENTS Control keys: Cursor keys and either zero or bottom row to fire Joystick: Sinclair, Kempston, Protek, AGF Keyboard play: very responsive and much simpler than in Ant Attack, though it might have been nicer to have an alternative to the cursors Use of colour: quite nicely used, but not the ideal game because of attribute problems Sound: 2 channel sound is provided if you have the right hardware, good helicopter noise, otherwise not much during game Skill levels: 1 Lives: 3 Screens: large scrolling area, smaller than Ant Attack however Special features: boy or girl option

The little red whirlybird with an enormous capacity for bricks makes a novel appearance in ZOMBIE ZOMBIE.

Personal Computer News

Overall 9/10

Bob Chappell 9/10

PRICE: £6.95 PUBLISHER: Quicksilva [redacted] Quicksilva's Ant Attack by Sandy White was a smash hit. This follow-up, Zombie Zombie, looks set to do even better. At first glance, I thought I might have loaded up an old copy of Ant Attack by mistake. Did my rheumy old eyes deceive me or wasn't that the blue-walled city of Antescher? Didn't the tiny hero and heroine look strangely familiar? But wait - what was that red object sitting on a raised block in the City centre? If that was an ant then my name is David Bellamy. No, it was obviously a helicopter. And those marching green bipeds - what were theiTwBy the teeth of Michael Jackson, they were (dramatic chord)... zombies! True to Quicksilva tradition, the cassette inlay is silent on the objectives and several features of the game but it seems you must seek out and destroy all the zombies in the city. Although the game has a marked similarity to the ant adventure, there are several innovative features. Fora start, you can zoom around this new city in a chopper as well as scampering around it on foot. To fly, you simply move the hero (or heroine - it's a cast of one and you choose the sex) into the copter, press the fire button and off whirrs whirlybird. And unlike its predecessor, this game offers the option of total joystick control. To move the hero push the joystick in any of the four main directions and he'll run that way. Should he meet a step or wall, he'll either jump onto it automatically or, if it's too high, continue futilely leaping at it until you take pity and send him off on another course. A stab on the fire button and you immediately set one of four differently-angled views of the scene. Stay on foot for long and you'll confront some green zombies who don't seem to worry about you too much. But, should one of them turn red, you're in trouble. It will make a sudden rush and attempt to grab you in a deadly embrace. Give it a quick puff of purple talcum powder (joystick and fire button together) and it'll retreat - but not far. Purple zombies also join in the chase. The walking dead have an aversion to leaping from heights - they have an unfortunate tendency to turn into tomato sauce on landing. When in the chopper, the four views are not available as the fire button is used for keeping it aloft while the joystick controls direction. Beware of flying smack into a wall - your hero will survive the impact but the chopper won't, he helicopter has one further function - and this feature really distinguishes Zombie Zombie from other games I've seen. Using the chopper, you can build a new city. Each quick press of the fire button while in the chopper picks up or releases a block. You can pile up to four blocks on top of each other. Takes a little practice, but once you're in the swing, you'll be building structures that would have had Le Courbusier laughing his socks off. What's more, it appears you can save them to tape for future reloading. How you do this is anyone's guess, since the between-game menu offers only a load option while the instructions say nowt.