The Atlas Assignment

Your Spectrum

Ian Simmonds 7/10

Jon Warner 6/10

Simon Cox 8/10

Sticks at the ready, the Chiltern Computer Club buckled down to some concentrated critique as they sifted through the latest bundle of software to give us their unbiased evaluations. Any club wishing to offer their reviewing services should contact Ron Smith, Spectrum Soft, [redacted]. This month, the reviewers in the YS jury hot-seat are all members of Chiltern Computer Club, Eaton Bray, near Dunstable. They are (in alphabetical order) Simon Cox, Ian Simmonds and Jon Warner. To be honest it wasn't an easy job for them, with many of the latest offerings falling short of an acceptable level - in fact, sheer crud in some cases. Read on to find out what (and what not) to buy. The Chiltern Computer Club was formed around two years ago, and usually it manages to attract about 35 members - ages ranging from 13 years to near senility. Membership is currently £4 per year, for which potential members can expect practical help with their computer problems, and guest speakers and lecturers from time to time. Club contacts can be made via Steve Betts, [redacted]. Finally thanks go to Steve for the ultra-fast speed at which he pulled the test together. ATLAS ASSIGNMENT Virgin Games £5.95 Take the part of a James Bond-type spy as you work through this text-only adventure that's interspersed with three arcade games.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Crash

Difficulty 7/10

Vocabulary 5/10

Logic 5/10

Debugging 9/10

Overall Value 6/10

Derek Brewster 6/10

DEREK BREWSTER'S ADVENTURE TRAIL This month Derek Brewster takes a close look at a space adventure and some games for girls among others. But before that, he discusses some points on presentation... PRESENTING THE ADVENTURE The format an adventure uses for display is important since it shows you where you are, what items and monsters you see, and how you might leave a location. It is surprising when well-coded games involving many hours of concerted effort are let down by a cluttered display with all the information jumbled together in a confusing way. An untidy, scrolling list of mixed description and input barely separated from the last location's mess is hardly the manner in which to present a complex adventure. An improved format can make use of different colours for objects you come across, the monsters you meet, and especially when in a rush, the exits. Similarly, capital letters, BRIGHT and FLASH could be used more for emphasis. Temple of Vran has gone some way in tackling these problems with neatly boxed-in location descriptions presented upon a freshly cleared screen and your input bearing a different colour. These are simple changes indeed yet add much to your enjoyment of the game. The more complicated and involved the game the more important the input routine. Snowball has a very poor, sluggish input routine which hinders fast typing and has no audible confirmation of key depressions; this in an otherwise highly sophisticated game. Many adventures only use delete when it would be a simple matter to use the Spectrum input routine that allows full cursor control. A game with a broad and friendly language that goes beyond simple verb/noun couplings needs to make full use of the editing facilities of the Spectrum. It would be a useful feature, particularly with those games requiring long, intricate inputs, to enable the rescue of an incorrect input line so it can be brought back on to the screen and corrected. Fantasia Diamond and The Hobbit don't allow cursor movement through the input characters - only delete is used, in a more straightforward verb/noun adventure this would not be such a drawback but certainly is when dealing with the highly complex sentence analyses featured in these games. Long sentences are often used when communicating with other characters; it would be useful to recall the previous input were it not understood. Valhalla has complex syntax checking which commendably doesn't allow the entry of sentence structures It doesn't understand. Before leading you through the maze of this month's adventures let me just point out the simplest advance in presentation - white, or even better yellow, text on a black background which is much easier on the eyes around midnight! ATLAS ASSIGNMENT Producer: Virgin Games Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £5.95 Author: M.C. Davis A top-class criminal, codenamed Atlas, has stolen the American nuclear defence plans and it's your unenviable task to make sure he doesn't do something silly with them - like blow up the world. The training manual is not as intimidating as it sounds since it involves only a few notes on the inside of the cassette inlay. It is a text adventure featuring three simple arcade games. We are told much of the author whose hobbies include book collecting and serious computing. Load "" Code - curious, most machine-code programs these days use a Basic loader and most of this program is Basic. On loading you are given your Atlas Assignment Briefing and your first location finds you outside the Chief's Office. The text is the inverse of the normal for the Spectrum with white on a dark background which is less tiring on the eyes and BRIGHT is used to emphasize inputs. Moving south, you reach the equipment room and see a labelled bottle and an automatic pistol with only three bullets. The message in the bottle is truth and the pistol comes in handy when engaging the type of hoodlum who likes to remove and check the colour of your liver. The program, which accepts straightforward Verb/Noun entries, accepts both TAKE and the more expedient GET and only requires the first three letters of the noun and four of the verb. At the back door of the M15 building you exchange pleasantries with the man leaning against a lampost and he proves most helpful. He informs you of a certain Ivan Lendelovich, the Russian who is to buy Atlas's merchandise. Moving on via an affluent and careless drunk you meet the belligerent shop-keeper. You draw the gun that has given you such a sense of security and shoot only to meet with the report that you don't hit anything in particular. Apparently, you can only shoot the people you are supposed to shoot. It is at this point that my suspicions were aroused and later confirmed: the game too often returns to the unswerving path of linear development. The only meaningful interaction that which allows you to progress. The result is a loss of realism and the game is reduced to nothing more than a string of puzzles. After much intelligent analysis you reach the first of the three arcade games, which happens to be the lesser of the three. It is a poor version of a bomber game where one bomb demolishes the whole building and the plane travels much too fast. Since the game is very difficult it is annoying to be sent all the way back to the beginning of the adventure on your inevitable failure. The second arcade game has you fired upon by an erratic and hiccupping helicopter - deceptively difficult - and the third, my favourite of the three, is played out on the lawns of Cherriere Lodge where the ferocious Alsatians are coaxed into the ponds in the manner of a strategy rather than an arcade game. Briefly, die-hard adventurers may not welcome these arcade games, more especially the first two. Atlas Assignment is a rather modest text adventure with a conspicuous linear progression and limited vocabulary with the inevitable result - 'You Can't'. However the diminutive wordstock allows a quick response time and the sound is used to good effect.

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 7/10

Memory: 48K Price: £5.95 In an adventure game, death usually results from carelessness, bad planning and timing or merely an excess of the gung-ho mentality. It can then become exasperating when all your careful work is erased at a stroke because an arcade section has been included which requires only manual dexterity as a survival skill. The Atlas Assignment, written by Martyn Davis, author of The Island, is such a program, in the main following a pure text format but studded with a trio of arcade action sequences. There will no doubt be many players who enjoy those facets of the game as much as the puzzle-solving in the rest of it. The full machine code game casts the player as a secret agent in pursuit of Atlas, a formidable spy who has somehow lifted the American nuclear defence plans and intends to sell them. The adventure will take you globe-trotting and, to be fair, the arcade portions are billed as shoot-outs. The remainder of the game follows a classic adventure pattern and a great deal of ingenuity and thought is required even to reach the first sudden death exercise. You will need some understanding of map-work, sociability to obtain information, and plenty of time to figure it out. All the usual adventure facilities and commands are included, though it is not the complex kind of adventure in which speech is possible. Most of the characters are passive and do not interact in Hobbit or Valhalla style. If the test of an adventure is that you have to keep trying, The Atlas Assignment from Virgin Games will suit you.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Personal Computer Games

Complexity 7/10

Atmosphere 7/10

Interest 5/10

Value 6/10

Steve Cooke

ADVENTURES IN COLOUR What price graphics? Don't kid yourself. One way or the another you'll have to pay for them. First, graphics can take up a lot of memory. Fans of text-only games argue that the space is better used for a larger vocabulary or better location descriptions. What's more, they point out, the pictures take a long time to draw and conflict with the image in the players imagination. Do the text-only supporters have a point? Or should they stick to reading books and playing Scrabble? Recent adventures, it seems, have overcome most of their objections. As far as memory is concerned, you might like to know that Bug-Byte's very successful Twin Kingdom Valley has over 175 locations, each with its own picture, but, incredibly, the graphics take up only 8K. 'It's a very crafty coding system,' says Trevor Hall, programmer of TKV, obviously unwilling to give away any secrets. What's more, the graphics draw in under 10 seconds and some even boast the occasional animated sprite. Other software companies, however, seem to be going in quite a different direction. Interceptor Software recently brought out Heroes of Karn for the Commodore 64, a game with only 65 locations that takes up all the available memory, a large part of which is dedicated to graphics. One look at them will tell you why. The detail of the display is fabulous and some of the locations have excellent music as well. The graphics are very slow to draw, but - although the Text-Only Supporters Club will no doubt disagree - I think they're worth waiting for and add substantially to the atmosphere of the game. Heroes of Karn was reviewed in the March issue of PCG, so all I'll say here is that it's a great adventure and well worth adding to your collection. Meanwhile most of the more recent adventures on the market are offering graphics, while some of the older, text-only games are being re-released with graphics added. Into this last category falls Adventure International, distributor of the Scott Adams adventures. These games have been around for quite a while now, but they've come a long way since Scott first hammered them out on his 16K Tandy. Four of the titles, already available in text-only form on the BBC, are about to be released with graphics for the Spectrum and Commodore 64. If you haven't tried the Scott Adams series then they're well worth sampling. Pirate Adventure is one of the simplest, but try Adventureland if you enjoy a challenge. Scott's commitment to graphic adventures is most clearly shown by his latest offerings, based on heroes from the Marvel Comics. The Incredible Hulk has just come out for the Atari, Spectrum, BBC and Commodore 64. Catching a quick glimpse of some pre-release versions a few weeks ago, I can assure you that the graphics are excellently done, and the games have some amusing and original touches. Design was carried out in collaboration with Marvel artists so authenticity is guaranteed. I'll be looking at these games in more detail in the next issue. BBC owners have been known to turn a little green at the sight of graphic adventures. That's because they're usually running on someone else's machine. Sadly the BBC doesn't quite have the space inside for all those pretty pictures, as anyone who's tried playing The Hobbit on the Acorn machine will know to their cost. Good news, then, for BBC owners. Micrograf have just released two games for the Beeb that make unusual use of graphics. Flint's Gold and Vampire Castle are predominantly text-only, but each program has occasional graphic interludes. It's a bit like reading a book with an illustration in each chapter. Because of excellent use of sound effects, varied responses, and a great sense of humour, Micrografs games score very high on atmosphere. As you walk along the sea-front in Flint's Gold you hear the waves breaking on the shore and even the sound of gulls calling out overhead. Vampire Castle brings you face to face with Count Dracula, Igor, and a number of tricky puzzles. Neither of these games is a full-blown graphic adventure by any means, but the occasional 'illustration' and the sound effects add a lot of fun. Beeb owners who insist on graphics at all cost might be tempted by The Stolen Lamp from Lothlorien. The display is colourful and draws very fast, but the game itself is repetitive and lacking in challenge. If you fancy flying round deserts and blowing up pickpockets in a search for Aladdin's Lamp then you might be able to put up with the extremely limited vocabulary and sparse locations. My own inclination would be to avoid it except in cases of dire software starvation. Adventure in a very different style for Beeb owners is offered by Pettigrew's Diary from Shards Software. This is billed as a three-part adventure, and the First 'chapter' certainly isn't short on graphics. Unfortunately it's very short on text, and there are only two locations. Yes, you guessed, it's really an arcade game. The idea behind Pettigrew's Diary is to get through the first part collecting various objects and the password to the next 'chapter'. Unfortunately the action is so agonisingly slow that it was all could do to keep playing. I spent no less than five hours struggling with the game, in which you guide a little man round a burning farmhouse looking for various objects and avoiding the ever-spreading flames. Once you've completed the first chapter you move on to the second, which is a more traditional text-adventure with standard two-word inputs. The third 'chapter' involves you undertaking eight separate challenges in order to solve the secret of Pettigrew's Diary. Whether the later stages of Pettigrew's Diary are worth all the effort at the beginning is a mystery to me since I never got beyond the first stage. For this reason I haven't included a rating of the game, but if any reader wants to write in and give us all the low-down on what happens then please do. If you fancy arcade/adventure combinations and you have a Commodore 64 then you should try Sorcerer's Apprentice from Phoenix Software. Here you must first battle it out against mad mops and brushes in order to discover a password that will enable you to play the adventure that follows. The adventure, however, is text-only. You wander about the Wizard's Castle experimenting with spells and, if you're not careful, find yourself turned into a toad or poisoned by biscuits. Once you get tired of this, Sorcerer's Apprentice doesn't have a lot more to offer. The only really good thing about the game is the error-checking, which is just as well as the vocabulary is very small. Graphics adventures for the Oric are few and far between. To make up for this, some of them seem to make extravagant claims for themselves which they then fail to live up to. Island of Death from Ocean has you wandering round a desert island using single letter commands. Each time you encounter an obstacle the program launches into a graphic interlude that takes the form of a simple arcade-type challenge. The graphics are very basic and none of the challenges really tests the player. Despite some humourous moments this game is definitely not the 'ultimate Arcade/Adventure' it claims to he. Hell's Temple from Kenema is a straightforward 3D maze game with D&D elements. You can listen outside doors, battle with monsters, and collect treasure. Like Island of Death it uses single-letter inputs and claims to be 'one of the most advanced Adventure programs for the Oric 1'. It isn't. Don't be discouraged, Oric owners. As soon as the confusion caused by the Oric/Atmos transition has died down I'll be looking at adventures for your machines in more detail. Finally, a quick look at a couple of -new releases for the Spectrum. Hewson Consultants' Fantasia Diamond is a graphic adventure with many similarities to The Hobbit, though it isn't so complex. The display will be familiar to Hobbit fans, with the picture in the top half of the screen and input/responses in the bottom half. The graphics aren't quite as good as the Melbourne House program and they're rather slow on the draw. The best thing about this game is the other characters in the story, each of whom will help or hinder you in a particular way as you search for the stolen Fantasia Diamond. You can speak to them (using the 'say to' format) and even get them to do things for you, provided they're willing to. The error-checking is good, and the vocabulary comprehensive. You'll have to persevere with some of the puzzles - even when you know the answer the program is very fussy about how you phrase it. Virgin's Atlas Assignment is for the most part text-only, but includes three arcade sequences. If that isn't enough for you (and I warn you that it won't be) then you'll be pleased to know that the adventure itself isn't at all bad. Some of the puzzles are very tricky to solve, and my only objection to the game was that it encouraged a rather homicidal approach to other people. Shoot them on sight, in other words. That said, Atlas Assignment has some novel ideas and looks like being one of Virgin's better games. Game: Hell's Temple Machine: Oric 48K Price: £12.00 Complexity: 3/10 Atmosphere: 3/10 Interest: 2/10 Value: 3/10 Game: Island Of Death Machine: Oric 48K Price: £6.90 Complexity: 2/10 Atmosphere: 4/10 Interest: 1/10 Value: 2/10 Game: Heroes Of Karn Machine: Commodore 64 Price: £7.00 Complexity: 7/10 Atmosphere: 8/10 Interest: 6/10 Value: 7/10 Game: Stolen Lamp Machine: VVC Price: £6.95 Complexity: 4/10 Atmosphere: 4/10 Interest: 3/10 Value: 3/10 Game: Sorcerer's Apprentice Machine: Commodore 64 Price: £9.99 Complexity: 4/10 Atmosphere: 5/10 Interest: 4/10 Value: 4/10 Game: Twin Kingdom Valley Machine: Commodore 64, Electron, BBC Price: £9.50 Complexity: 8/10 Atmosphere: 8/10 Interest: 6/10 Value: 7/10 Game: Flint's Gold Machine: BBC Price: £6.95 Cass, £9.95 Disk Complexity: 6/10 Atmosphere: 8/10 Interest: 4/10 Value: 7/10 Game: Vampire Castle Machine: BBC Price: ££6.95 Cass, £6.95 Disk Complexity: 6/10 Atmosphere: 8/10 Interest: 4/10 Value: 7/10 Game: Atlas Assignment Machine: Spectrum 48K Price: £5.95 Complexity: 7/10 Atmosphere: 7/10 Interest: 5/10 Value: 6/10 Game: Fantasia Diamond Machine: Spectrum 48K Price: £7.95 Complexity: 6/10 Atmosphere: 6/10 Interest: 7/10 Value: 6/10