Mercs

Your Sinclair

Life Expectancy 63%

Instant Appeal 84%

Graphics 68%

Addictiveness 78%

Overall 75%

James Leach 75%

US Gold £10.99 cass Reviewer: James Leach Have you ever wondered what it would be like if life was lived as a computer game? If you could have three lives (with an extra one at the end of each level)? if you could go around blowing things up without feeling guilty or worried, and you never felt pain? And what if you could stick in another 20p every time you made a mistake and got wiped out? I'd be pretty good, wouldn't it? (Not really. Readers voice) And talking of blowing things up (albeit on a dodgy old colour TV screen) that's exactly what we've got here. MERCS is very Op Wolf-ish in terms of plot, but designed in a sort of 'looking down everything from above and behind' 3D thingie. You're the head of some crack-force team in Africa, bashing it out with a load of thoroughly unpleasant cannibals who (more through luck than judgement probably) have kidnapped the President of the USA. It's hardly worth rescuing him, I reckon, but your little bloke is determined to wade through all sorts of swamps, forests and jungles to get to him. There must be a lot of money in it for him, I s'pose thence the 'mercs' of the title - it stands for, er, 'mercenary', fact fans). SHOOT-BANG-FIRE Your bloke starts off with a single-shot rifle and a bazooka which he rushes up-screen with, destroying everything in sight. This includes a lot of jungle foliage and countless baddies. They charge at you with their rather pitiful weapns and you simply swing your rifle around (it's an 8-directional jobbie) and waste them. If they manage to get you, it doesn't really hurt. All that happens is you lose a bit energy (shown on a bar to the right). A bit pathetic, I'd say. Dotted around are other weapons, such as 3-way firing guns and, er, faster 3-way firing guns (oh, and a very handy flame-thrower). All this extra firepower is seriously useful because close friends of the annoying guys (who you've been slaughtering) are still milling around, determined to diminish your chances of survival. There are 8 levels, ranging from landing on the beach and running up and down on a ship to wiping out an entire HQ and spraying graffiti over the government buildings. But all the levels are a bit short so you tend to zip through them rather than get really involved. Each has an end-of-level machine like a tank, helicopter or armoured boat to destroy. You'll need to don your extra-nippy shoes for these because they move around a bit, spraying you with all sorts of unpleasant gunfire. So it's probably a good idea to make a grab for the bazooka and blast the tank/plane/hovercraft thingie to kingdom come (along with any bad buys still hanging about). Three cheers and a might hurrah! SLOW COACH Actually, sometimes you won't have the foggiest idea which way to go. Your rock-hard Merc stays pretty much in the centre of the screen, and each level covers a large area, so it's quite possible to dash through a stinky swamp, blow up a couple of lean-to sheds and waste 200 enemy soldiers before finding out you've set off in completely the wrong direction. Drat and double drat! (That's what I tend to say, anyway.) MERCS doesn't have the most incredible graphics you'll ever see, but it's strength is said (by US Gold, naturellement) to lie in the gameplay. Hmm. I'm not sure. It's good fun, certainly (and even better with 2 players). Oh sure, it's fast, and it's also action-packed, so no quibbles there. But I reckon it's pretty easy and it's not often I find arcade games particularly easy. Basically I'm just concerned about how long it'll take you to complete it. Caring, aren't I?

Eat bazooka, Mr Helicopter! (Exploding things always makes me happy.)

Here we're in the second level (or it might be the third - I can't remember!), fighting off a rather persistent tank. Shoo!

We're on a train now, and we have to destroy, er, everything that we trundle past really.

WHAT ARE MERCENARIES ALL ABOUT THEN? To answer this burning question we've called on our old YS pal and Spec-chum, Arnie Schwarzenegger. Here he comes now... Vot? Vill your YS compooda magazine go avay und schtop bozzering me?! Oh. You vant my eggspertize und know-how? Ja, ein Merzenery ist ein perzon who getz paid lods of money fur fighting uzzer people's wars. Zum of mein best freunds are you know, like zis. Zey are all much harder zen me, mit gross big guns, und I am razzer frightened of zem. Zo, kiddievinkies, stay avay from Merzenaries. It'z var too uh, dangerous for you to get miggsed up in. (Was dat alright?)

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)C+VG Hit

Graphics 81%

Sounds 74%

Playability 87%

Lastability 85%

Overall 87%

Richard Leadbetter

Robert Swan

US Gold Spectrum £10.99, Amiga £24.99 The unthinkable has happened - the President of the United Stales has been kidnapped! The fiendish guerillas have taken him to the the African country of Zutula and due to the delicacy of the situation (and the bad US relations with Zutula), no military action can be taken against the terrorist organisation. However, the Secretary of State has called in the MERCS - a two-man mercenary outfit with years of combat and espionage experience. Their task is to travel into the heart of the terrorists island hideout and rescue the President, whilst wiping out as much of the organisations military muscle as possible! This involves one or two players battling Commando-style through eight levels of action, blasting ground soldiers, gun emplacements, tanks and aircraft as they go, whilst collecting more powerful weapons, power-ups, missiles (which cause widespread devastation, but are limited in number) and food. At the end of each level lies a large enemy attack vehicle, which will try to halt the mission in its tracks. When destroyed, the two mercenaries continue on their mission if they fail, the President is doomed.

Flame-throwers and missiles make this baby deadly!

Our MERC hero torches all who cross his path!

AMIGA SCORES Graphics: 90% Sounds: 86% Playability: 89% Lastability: 92% Overall: 90%

BAD GUY BALLYHOO At the end of each level, a massive assault craft appears, and does its utmost to put you into an early grave. These include a massive jet fighter on level one, a flame-spewing tank on level two, and a deadly helicopter gunship armed to the teeth on level three! These are certainly no pushover, and take all the firepower you can muster to annihilate them!

GUNS 'N' STUFF The Mercs can collect various forms of firepower along the way, with which they can inflict more damage upon the enemy. MACHINE GUN: The standard weapon, this can be enhanced up to four shots at the same time. WIDE CANNON: This blasts out a spray of lethal projectiles. FLAME THROWER: Probably the deadliest of the weapons available, this fries everything in its path! MISSILE: Widespread annihilation in a nutshell! Not only that, but food can be collected along the way to top up the Merc's energy bar. This appears in several forms, including chicken legs, a cheeseburger. and even a can of spinach! Watch out for the evil dangers of cigarettes though, as these drain our heroes' energy.

JUNGLE JEEP JAPES On your journey into the terrorist-infested jungle, there's a chance you'll come across some abandoned vehicles_ Our mercenary heroes can commandeer these vehicles and use their destructive firepower against their owners! in two-player mode, one Merc drives while the other controls the guns! Jeeps, tanks and boats are all available for use by our gun-toting chums. Watch out for enemy fire though, because each vehicle can only take a certain number of hits before it explodes!

MERCENARY COIN-OP CAPERS Capcom's MERCS was the first Ikari Warriors-style game ever that enabled three players to play simultaneously. Indeed, Capcom were touting MERCS as the coin-op that would out-sell the massive Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles! Although it didn't do quite that well (Turtles was the biggest-selling dedicated coin-op of 1990), it was very well received and was awarded with the title of Best Combat Game of 1990 by the American computer magazine industry! Here's a few arcade screen shots to show you how US Gold's conversions compare with the coin-op original.

UPDATE MERCS should be blasting onto the ST (£19.99), C64 and Amstrad (£10.99) very soon now. Keep your peepers on the relevant Bytesize sections for an update.

Sinclair User

Graphics 59%

Sound 64%

Playability 64%

Lastability 49%

Overall 59%

Chris Jenkins 59%

Phillip Fisch

Label: US Gold Memory: 48K/128K Price: £11.99 Tape Reviewer: Chris Jenkins Mercs, I thought. Great! At last, a game dedicated to the famous Tour France cyclist, Eddie Mercx. But what a disappointment when I found this was just another all-shooting, all-exploding combat action, rather than an exercise in pedal-pushing. Only joking... OR AM I?! In fact Mercs, (short for Mercenaries, see) is a sort of Commando-derivative in which fearless gun-toting Arnie Shwarzenegger-types (depicted in all their bulgy-muscled glory on the intro screens) do their best to make the world safe for freedom, democracy and the Pepsi-Cola Corp by snuffing thousands of international terrorists. A former US President (no names, but I guess it's either the one who told a lot of lies or the one who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time) has been kidnapped while on a visit to central Africa. Direct military intervention must be avoided, so an elite group of mercenaries headed by yourself has been chosen to rescue the Ex-Prez and wipe out the rebels who aim to take control of the country of Zutula. What this bolls down to is eight levels of multi-directional scrolling, with a host of enemy soldiers falling under your weapons. Each level must be completed within a time limit, and there are arrows along the way to direct you to the end of the level; but since barriers such as trees, rocks and huts bar your way, these must be destroyed with an appropriate amount of pyrotechnics. At the end of each level, there's a special challenge; on the first, a VTOL jet fighter which hovers over a plateau taking potshots at you, on the second a line of tanks moving back and fore between fortifications, and so on. To take some of these out you'll require weapons heavier than the assault rifle with which you start the game; these you con find in supply chests along the way, and the same applies to medical supplies and so on - in fact. In this respect too the whole exercise thing is rather like Commando or Ikari Warriors. Though the graphics aren't terrific, featuring some blocky designs, awkward spite masking and uninspired choice of colours, there's enough action to make Mercs fairly absorbing, and the two-player option is fun. But since I completed the first two levels in around two minutes, you might wonder how long the excitement will last.

Crash

Presentation 84%

Graphics 85%

Sound 70%

Playability 87%

Addictivity 88%

Overall 86%

Mark Caswell 88%

Nick Roberts 84%

US Gold £11.99 As the former President of the United States of America toured central Africa on a quest for world peace, he was taken hostage by a group of revolutionaries. What jolly bad luck! Of course, the US can't just send the troops into rescue him, as it could prompt World War III, so instead they send an elite corps known as the MERCS - professional soldiers trained in anti-terrorist tactics. And you're one of them (gulp). Your objective: to rescue the President and stop the rebels taking over the country of Zutula! It's dead easy to describe MERCS - eight levels of non-stop arcade shoot-'em-up action. That's it! Well, there's a little bit more. Two players can take part simultaneously and each can build up their weaponry from a simple gun to a three-way blaster or flame thrower. You're going to need that weaponry to attack the many, many, many enemies you encounter on your mission and they come in all shapes and sizes. Rebels run around firing in all directions, mega-tanks attempt to run you down and, at the end of each level, there are such things as enemy supply trains, battleships and monster Hercules planes that'll make mincemeat out of you if you're not quick enough on the trigger. You couldn't ask for much more colour in the graphics of MERCS. All the sprites and backgrounds use the block colour method, so some look a bit blocky but it allows loads of colour with very little clash. Landscapes scroll in all eight directions and the terrain you run over changes from time to time. One minute you're sprinting along a concrete path, the next you could be up to your neck in quick sand or gasping for breath in the middle of a river! There's so much to be blasted away it'll keep shoot-'em-up fans happy for hours on end. You don't have to stick to shooting the enemy, either. If you are feeling really naughty you can blow up any houses, trees or bushes you see along the way (and sometimes you have to, to clear a path, y'see). MERCS is a real winner with me. The tune at the beginning may be a little, erm, grating but the rest is excellent. A real cool blaster, and I didn't say it looks like a updated version of Commando once (even if it does). NICK 84%

Player one launches an attack on the mighty MERCS train, blasting the train's gun emplacements in this vertically scrolling bit.

Playing MERCS takes you all over the place. Here we're on board a ship ready to trash the opposition's armoured boat.

You're the blue chap coming up the screen ready to attach the missile-chucking tank (but we'll dispose of the yellow opposition first, shall we?).