Butch - Hard Guy

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 7/10

Sound 6/10

Value 5/10

Playability 6/10

Paul Boughton

MACHINES: Spectrum SUPPLIER: Advance Software PRICE: £7.95 Hi, I'm Butch. Butch Hard Guy. Rough, tough and ready to duff anybody up. My motto? "Who Cares Who Wins." Obviously Butch Hard Guy is intended to be a fun take off of Rambo and the many other macho tough guys. The humour, however stops at the cassette cover and blurb. What we have is a rather straightforward platform and ladders game. The evil Dr Tie Fu (Is that a joke? Typhoo?) is holding captive soldiers. These are scattered around the 20 screens held in cages. And an army of near indestructible droids patrol Dr Fu's South Pacific island. Butch only has his hands, feet and your wits to help him triumph. the droids proved instant death for me. But, apparently, if you punch them in the middle they sit down and switch off for a second. To destroy them Butch has to punch them in the face and then get as far away from them as possible because the explode. To free the prisoners, Butch has to punch and kick furiously at the bars of their cages. Once free they race off towards a rescue helicopter. If they encounter a droid they end up back in their cage. Butch Hard Guy is fun but really not different enough to set the world on fire. It would have been better as a budget game. You do, however, get a free Butch Hard Guy badge with the game. Wow!

ZX ComputingZX Computing Globert

Overall Good

Advance Software £7.95 It's wild: It's wacky! It's, no it isn't, yes it is... It's a platform game. Butch Hard Guy is, believe it or not, a spoof of the recent spate of Rambo, Commando, Cobra types of game - in other words it's just another combat game with a few funny names thrown in. Spoofs are meant to be funny, but in this case the hilarity begins and ends with the names of Butch himself and his opponent, the evil Dr. Tie Fu (that'll have 'em rolling in the aisles). Once you've recovered from the rib-splitting uproariousness of all that you've got nothing left to do but play the game. Butch is an old war veteran whose task is to rescue a number of other vets who have been captured by Tie Fu and locked up in his castle in the south Pacific. The cages that they've been locked in are situated on platforms on each of the games 20 screens, and, as Butch, you have to leap from platform to platform, kicking the cage doors open and enabling the prisoners to escape to Butch's helicopter (see, I told you it was a platform game). Once all the prisoners have escaped from a screen you can then start on the next one, but there is of course a slight snag. Each screen is patrolled by Dr. Fu's robot guards, which are coated in a poison which kills on contact. Not only can these robots kill Butch, they can also recapture the prisoners which means that he'll have to go back and rescue them again unless he's very fast. You can defend yourself from the robots by either punching them, which just makes them sit still for a second or two, or kicking them, which can blow them up (but you'll have to get out of the way or be caught in the blast). The movement of the robots isn't predictable, and I found that you could attempt to hit one of them and still end up dying, which made the game a little irritating at times. The twenty screens are arranged in a fixed order and you'd have to be amazingly quick-fingered to get to the end (and the game wont accept Sinclair Interfaces, so if you've got one, or a +2 then you'll have to use the keyboard), but the game wasn't so addictive that I particularly wanted to.

Your Sinclair

Graphics 7/10

Playability 7/10

Value For Money 5/10

Addictiveness 7/10

Overall 7/10

Rachael Smith 7/10

Advance £7.95 Reviewer: Rachael Smith I did try to warn the Ed that if she gave this to me, I wouldn't be answerable for my puns. But she just shot me a withering look and told me I'd got a dirty mind. So here goes... If there's one thing I like more than Butch Hard Guy it's a... (Don't even start! Ed). There's been a lot of wall to wall muscle in games recently - Rambo, Cobra... and that's just between their ears! Still, I don't like a man with many muscles. Yes, when they made Stallone. they threw away the mould.Unluckily it bounced, got bent around a bit, and out of it sprung Butch, the sort of bodybuilder who fights the flab with a machete. His mission: to rescue trapped POWs. However, when your opponents the dastardly Dr Tie Fu, life's a bed of roses - full of pr.. thorns. (Was that another one? Ed). These take the form of deadly but dumb robots, who're coated with poison, apart from one crucial area, their... (Watchit!! Ed) midriffs. If Butch can punch them in the paunch, then deliver a balletic kick to the head, they'll wander off in a daze before blowing up. But FU, (it's on the inlay. Honest!) has some other wily oriental tricks up his kimono, as you'll find during the twenty screens or so that make up Butch. (And wouldn't we all like to make Butch? Rats! Now you've got me doing it. Ed). That is, if you stick with it, because when it comes to fighting with the big boys, I've a funny idea they're all kicking sand in Butchy's face. This is another platforms and massacres game, but lacking the Green Beret graphics or the Cobra complexities. There's not even any scrolling, as you tackle one static screen after another. That said, it can be mildly addictive, especially when you kick open a cage, only to have the prisoner bump into a robot on his way to the exit and get slammed back in the slammer. But in the end, I have to conclude that Hard Guy's really just... (No, no. no! Even if it is a recognised medical complaint! Ed).

Sinclair User

Overall 4/5

Jim Douglas 4/5

Label: Advance Author: Future Concepts Price: £7.95 Joystick: various Memory: 48K/128K Reviewer: Jim Douglas Butch Hard Guy, we are told, is one tough cookie. He's a Vietnam Vet with a bad haircut. His trousers are torn and he's got a grazed knee. Butch is obviously terribly hard. Advance, in all the excitement of constructing a parody of similar games seems to have become a little confused as to exactly who you are. During the blurb on the back of the box. It appears that you are some form of recruit and have to prove yourself to Butch. On the inside however, you are Butch. Anyway, whoever you are, your mission is to rescue your fellow war vets from the altogether unsavoury Dr Tie Fu. (Oh dear.) The World, we are informed, has been taken over by Dr Fu who has built loads of robots and prison camps. The camps are filled up with people in little cages and the robots guard them. Most of the action takes place in the South Pacific (cue useless music) where Fu's castle is situated. The robots are coated in a very, very dangerous poison that will cause you to drop dead immediately on touching them. As with all androids constructed by insane villains, they can be destroyed by a well aimed kick etc, etc (though if kicking doesn't constitute touching, I don't know what does). The prisoners can be seen in tiny cages looking suitably depressed. In order to free them, you must run to the cage and kick/punch it open. The prisoner will then run for all he's worth to the wrong side of the screen, bounce off the right hand side to a waiting helicopter. What we have here then is a cross between your standard platforms and levels game and a rather inadequate combat program. Despite this, it's actually all rather enjoyable. There are twenty screens, each increasing in danger as you near Fu's castle. Being obviously far too tough to require anything as girly as a gun. Butch hares around the screen (with quite surprising agility for someone so ludicrously muscular) somersaulting and diving like there's no tomorrow and hitting anything in sight. Robots generally appear from the top of the screen and work their way down. As their movements are fairly predictable, it's possible to find yourself a temporarily safe location and wait for them to run toward you. A well-timed kick will send them pootling off in the other direction. Now you have to get out of the way before their innards collapse and the casing explodes. This, as you can imagine, is none-too safe although it can be used to your advantage by ensuring another robot is right behind the injured one. With any luck it will be destroyed in the explosion. The sound is appropriately dreadful and there is an air of quirkyness about the whole thing. It's a nice piece of programming, though, and offers enough longevity (it's pretty tough in some places) to prevent it being an over-expensive joke.

Crash

Presentation 69%

Graphics 63%

Playability 74%

Addictiveness 74%

Value For Money 59%

Overall 65%

Ben Stone

Mike Dunn

Paul Sumner

Producer: Advance Retail Price: £7.95 Author: Future Concepts Platform games have been around ever since Manic Miner stormed the software charts four years ago. Since then however, they've had a patchy time of it. But Cobra showed that a good platform game can still chart, and Advance have leapt in with this similar (though more light-hearted) offering. Butch Hard Guy is just unbelievably butch, so macho that in comparison John Rambo and Zombie-Squad Cobra look like Dempsey and Makepeace. His mission? Rescue a few forgotten army war veterans who are held captive by the notorious villain Dr Tie Fu (no tea jokes, please). Butch doesn't need namby-pamby toys like machine guns, grenades and rocket-launchers; and why should he, armed as he is with lethal fists and feet? Somewhere on the 20 screens of platforms, are located the POW cages. It's up to Butch and his deadly arsenal of moves, to find them, shatter their bars with a swift kick, and then make for his helicopter with the War Vets in tow. But there's a small problem - of course. Dr Tie Fu has a platoon of combat droids out protecting his interests. These can be stunned with a punch, or killed with a carefully timed kick, which results in their recoiling backwards and exploding. The flying shrapnel, however, is dangerous, and so is a robot's touch - it loses the Hard Guy one of his five lives. Apart from running left or right, Butch can kick, punch and perform high or low somersaults. High somersaults are used to move up the screen, low ones are useful for leaping from ledge to ledge. Missing a ledge is bad news though, as a fall of more than the height of a somersault means the loss of another life. Rescued POWs who get hit by a combat droid while making for the exit, go back behind bars... forcing Butch to free them all over again. Points are scored for escaped prisoners, completed levels and killing droids. There are no extra lives to be won, so make every one count. COMMENTS Control keys: definable, left, right, up, punch Joystick: Kempston, Cursor Use of colour: poor Graphics: small and badly detailed Sound: nice drum solo which puts the rest to shame Skill levels: one Screens: 20

Level Three, and Butch still has three captives to rescue.

The last vet makes his way to freedom.