Tranz Am

Crash

Producer: Ultimate, 16K £5.50 It's post-holocaust America and the country's a barren desert with a few cities here and there where you can get fuel. Otherwise a clutch of Mad Maxalikes in deadly Black Turbos are out to kill you while you hunt the wastes looking for eight gold cups. The playing screen is only a 600th of the available area. Instruments on the left show; time taken, miles travelled, a map of the States showing cities and your location, local radar showing cups (if any) and enemies, speedo, fuel gauge, engine temperature and lives left, 8-directional movement, excellent graphics, highly playable. Joystick: Kempston. Highly recommended. Also available in ROM cartridge form for £14.95.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Crash

Producer: Ultimate, 16K £5.50 It's post-holocaust America and the country's a barren desert with a few cities here and there where you can get fuel. Otherwise a clutch of Mad Maxalikes in deadly Black Turbos are out to kill you while you hunt the wastes looking for eight gold cups. The playing screen is only a 600th of the available area. Instruments on the left show; time taken, miles travelled, a map of the States showing cities and your location, local radar showing cups (if any) and enemies, speedo, fuel gauge, engine temperature and lives left, 8-directional movement, excellent graphics, highly playable. Joystick: Kempston. Highly recommended. Also available in ROM cartridge form for £14.95.

Crash

Producer: Ultimate, 16K £5.50 It's post-holocaust America and the country's a barren desert with a few cities here and there where you can get fuel. Otherwise a clutch of Mad Maxalikes in deadly Black Turbos are out to kill you while you hunt the wastes looking for eight gold cups. The playing screen is only a 600th of the available area. Instruments on the left show; time taken, miles travelled, a map of the States showing cities and your location, local radar showing cups (if any) and enemies, speedo, fuel gauge, engine temperature and lives left, 8-directional movement, excellent graphics, highly playable. Joystick: Kempston. Highly recommended. Also available in ROM cartridge form for £14.95.

ZX Computing

Documentation 4/5

Addictive Quality 3.5/5

Graphics 3.5/5

Programming Achievement 3.5/5

Lasting Appeal 3.5/5

Value 3.5/5

James Walsh

MEMORY REQUIRED: 16K Transam is one of the latest offerings from Ultimate - originators of Pet-Pac and Pssst. Transam follows the tradition of quality graphics and simple but relatively original aims. The scenario: 'It is the year 3472 and all that remains on Earth are remnants of a once great continent, a barren land... your aim, in the Super Brown Red Racer, equipped with advance technology, is to regain the eight trophies from the Deadly Black Turbos. The scenario is corny, but what to the game itself? You have four car controls, either available from the keyboard or via a joystick. They are: anticlockwise rotate, clockwise rotate, brake and accelerator. There is also Pause, temporarily to halt the game. The actual aim of the game, in plain English this time, is to travel over America searching for the eight 'Great Cups of Ultimate'. Along the way it will be necessary to keep filled up with petrol', I do not worry, there are petrol pumps in this desolate place of sand, rocks and boulders! Various objects will appear in your patch and, of course, the 'Deadly Black Turbos' will attempt to make you crash. The display is 2D with your car starting in the centre of the screen rotating, and with the barren land, etc, moving past. On the left-hand side of the screen is a 'Real Time Clock', ie one that can tell the real time, continuously; a milometer; a complete map of the U.S.A., showing the positions of fuel pumps, cities, etc; and you, the Red Racer, as a flashing character. Moving down to the second half of this display is a speedometer, fuel guage and temperature gauge. There is also a short range radar, showing the positions of cups and the Black Turbos. Finally, the number of cups found and the number of lives left. The graphics are smooth, fast and of a high quality just like the other Ultimate games. This, in some respects, is one of my main qualms about Transam - it is very 'Ultimate' in that no new boundaries have been crossed or new ideas used. The game is very professionally written with only one minor 'bug' - the fact that when you reach the boundaries of the U.S your car is simply flipped round, without notice, which can cause problems if a Black Turbo is in close pursuit. Overall, Transam is fun, though less original than Ultimate's previous two. The presentation is excellent, addictive, and well recommended.

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Getting Started 8/10

Graphics 7/10

Value 8/10

Playability 8/10

ROAD RACER IN SEARCH OF GOLD CUPS The year is 3472 and the once-great Earth has been destroyed. All that exists is a barren land of sand, rocks and boulders. Life nowadays is ruled by cars. Gold is replaced by petrol and your sole aim in life is the possession of the eight Golden Cups of Ultimate. A more imaginative scene-setter to a road race game is hard to find. And the program's not bad either. Tranz Am gets away from the standard screen layout of the car at the bottom of the screen and the road scrolling towards you. The car stays in the middle, and the whole screen scrolls in any direction. To control the vehicle you use two keys to rotate yourself just like good old Asteroids. The screen acts as a window on the whole land, which is about seven times the size of the displayed area in each direction. The area you are searching is therefore about 50 times the screen size. The idea is to tour the land seeking and collecting the eight trophies which are positioned randomly for each game. There are also enemy cars which roam the area and must be avoided. You have three lives. The screen which displays the road is square, which leaves a column of spare TV space on the left. This is your indicator panel and shows the time, score, miles travelled, speed and a reduced view of the whole land on a radar. Control is quite easy and uses only four keys. Two to rotate and two more as accelerator and brake. The game is also compatible with Kempston joysticks. You can pause the game if you wish. Although the speed indicator is labelled from 0 to 400 mph, the car does not go too fast even in full speed. There are no gear controls. Tranz Am is by Ultimate and runs on any Spectrum. It is available from W H Smith and costs £5.50.

Your Computer

Peter Connor

NO OTHER MICRO HAS THE SOFTWARE BACK-UP OF SINCLAIR'S SPECTRUM. PETE CONNORS PLOUGHS HIS WAY THROUGH SOME OF IT FROM GRAPPLING WITH EVIL MAZIACS TO HELPING CHARLIE THE CHEF. Every software house, from the giants to the leprechauns, seems to have programmers chained to terminals, frantically churning out products for the massive Spectrum market. For Spectrum owners the pot of gold under the rainbow is the now huge variety of software available: their only problem is distinguishing the genuine article from the fake. One game you certainly will not need to bite into is Zzoom from Imagine. This is the Real McCoy, a quality arcade-style game of skill and destruction in the comfort of your own armchair. The game starts with the Dambusters theme tune, enough on its own to make you start twirling imaginary handlebar moustaches and warn Ginger about the bandits at 4 o'clock. You find yourself in command of an aeroplane whose gunsights appear on the screen; also displayed are a dibar to show your relation to the ground and a long-range scanner. Before you have time to think, hostile aircraft are approaching from the east; they speed in and suddenly, unexpectedly, wheel 90° towards you, presenting the slightest of targets for your cannon. Those earthbound refuges you are trying to protect do not have much of a chance. Poor blighters, I wish I could have done more to help. After the waves of planes, the landscape changes. Now its the desert, complete with palm trees. Over the horizon come battalions of tanks. More skill is now required, as you have to dive low enough to shoot your earthbound adversaries without crashing to your doom. After the desert - the sea, with enemy destroyers trying to blast the refugees' lifeboats. The standard of graphic display and excitement combine to make Zzoom a most exciting game, one that has deservedly become a micro-classic. DK'tronics, though, has produced a game which could rival Zzoom's popularity. Maziacs may seem, initially, to be just another maze-game. In fact, it has subtle qualities which make it one of the best available in this genre. The scenario is familiar: you must get through the maze, collect the treasure and get out. You can ask the way from prisoners, and pick up swords to combat the maziacs. What lifts Maniacs above the common land is its graphic sophistication. The monsters are the most grotesque I have ever seen on a micro; nightmarish squatting creatures, all legs and jaws who enjoy nothing more than gobbling you up. The prisoners are sad creatures, writhing in their shackles inside blue circles. One feels great pity for them but, sadly, one can do nothing to help. And you, the brave treasure-hunter, are a perky little fellow with a jaunty rhythmic step. You are never downhearted and your jubilation when you have destroyed a marine is quite heart-warming. These qualities give Maniacs that something extra, and make it a very compulsive game. Best of the other offerings from DK is Hard Cheese, in which you have to eat your way round the board, creating your own maze, in order to get at the cheese in the middle. Naturally, you are pursued by monsters. Naturally you can shoot these monsters, but this is not so easy as they move very quickly and you must replenish your energy. Again the graphics are of a high standard, and Hard Cheese is almost, but not quite, as compulsive as Maziacs. In comparison, DK's Road Toad and Jawz are rather dull. The first needs no introduction and is as expected; though the graphics are, perhaps, a little clearer than usual, and the tankers are truly fearsome. Jawz is a disappointment; here you are underwater, firing at Sharks and Jellyfish. It is quite tricky to hit them as you have two cannons converging from either side of your control. Otherwise the game is low on interest. Ultimate Play the Game has a reputation for quality software, and it does not besmirch it with Cookie and Tranzam. Cookie has one of the wackiest situations for a long time; Charlie Chef's ingredients have escaped from the pantry-yard and he must recapture them by dazing them with flour bombs and knocking them into his mixing bowl. As well as the runaways Crafty Cheese and Colonel Custard there are nasties such as Wally Washer and Terry Tack. Crazy, but true. The graphics are very good and Charlie is a sympathetic little figure in his white chef's hat. It is very difficult to avoid the nasties; if they get you, you end up in a dustbin. Cookie is a witty and enjoyable game, but one which you might do well to use a joystick for. Tranzam is set in the year 3474; it is your Red Racer versus the Deadly Black Turbos in the search for the Eight Great Cups of Ultimate. The screen displays a barren landscape where the only land-marks are cacti and petrol stations. You guide your car around looking for the cups, while trying to avoid your enemies and the obstacles. This is a tricky business if you are doing 400 mph and steering on the keyboard; again, a joystick would be useful. Tranzam is an exciting game which gives a taste of the Mad Max experience. GAME OR BLURB? And so to Quicksilva. Do people buy their programs for the game or the blurb? Aquaplane's scenario begins "The contrasting blues of sea and sky provide a perfect backdrop as I relax with a Pernod and lemonade..." and goes on in the same vein for two sides of packaging. Indeed, Aquaplane's sea and sky are very blue, suggestive of hot Mediterranean summers. And, the game is very good. There you are, out for a bit of water-skiing, when the speedboat goes bananas. You are being pulled away to almost certain death. Rocks, driftwood, tacking yachts, cruisers piloted by drunken play-boys, snapping sharks; get through all those and you have mastered the game. Aquaplane is made more intriguing because, as the boat accelerates, you are pulled to one side or another, thus increasing the risk of meeting a sticky end on a piece of driftwood. The graphics, too, are very colourful and realistic. Aquaplane is a highly entertaining game - almost as good as the blurb. On the subject of watery graves, Bug-Byte has Aquarius "an underwater espionage game". As commander of a frogman team you must destroy the bombs planted by an enemy nation. Problems you will encounter are sharks and electrifying jellyfish. Your oxygen will run out and must be replenished by collecting fresh tanks from the sea-floor. While the undersea world is fairly convincing and the sound effects are genuinely squelchy, Aquarius is not a very exciting game, lacking the speed and variety top-class programmes. ENCOUNTER WITH THE DARK ONE In Styx, also from Bug-Byte, you are supposed to be battling your way across the mythological river to Hades "towards an encounter with the Dark One himself". In fact, it is a rather boring maze game, where the "deadly spiders" look like bits of dried grass and the Piranhas - did you know there were Piranhas in the Styx? - are most unconvincing. If they have micros in Hades as well they may well be playing Pool, another Bug-Byte game. The graphics are much better than Styx; a bright green for the baize and red for the bolls. Curiously, the object balls are all the same colour. Control is straightforward, using the cursor keys. But perhaps these denizens of Hades might prefer CDS Micro Systems' Pool. I know I do, if only because the object balls are divided into blue and red. Otherwise, it is much the same as Bug-Byte's version, easy to control and pleasant to look at. Both programs are for one or two players. Purer pleasures of the mind are entered for by Artic's Chess Tutor. The novelty of this program is that it not only plays chess - at three levels - but takes the beginner through three different opening variations; King's Indian, Ruy Lopez and Sicilian Dragon. There is also a section which demonstrates the moves of each piece. This is indeed very useful and would be suitable for the absolute beginner. Unfortunately the board is none too clear, as the white pieces do not show up well on the light squares. As a game chess is not in much danger of being overtaken by any of three new programs consisting of logical board games: Hanoi King from Contrast Software, Lojix from Virgin and 3-D Strategy from Quicksilva. In the first of them you have three pillars on which are a series of rings. You have to transfer them to the third so that they are in the same order, moving only one ring at a time ind without placing a larger on top of a smaller ring. It sounds easy, and with only three or four rings, it is. More than that and it can become fiendishly difficult. Lojix is a game in which you have to fit 18 irregularly shaped pieces onto a board. A sort if fiendish jigsaw puzzle, it is difficult and interesting. Virgin is offering a cash prize for the first correct solution. 3-D Strategy is billed as "a multi-dimensional mind game". It is 3-D noughts and crosses on a 4 by 4 by 4 cube. After 3-D chess Mr Spock might not have much trouble with his, but ordinary earthlings will find it very hard to beat. Despite being essentially simple ideas, all three of these games are well produced and will provide hours of entertainment for the puzzle happy. Perhaps the most interesting new program for the Spectrum is The Forest, from Phipps Associates. This is a complex simulation of orienteering, the sport in which you have to follow a course over difficult terrain using only map and compass. The program comes with a beautifully printed orienteering map ind a long, but clear, explanatory booklet. The screen displays various topographical features and, using the map, you have to negotiate the course. Thus, The Forest is not merely a game, but an help introduce people to map-making and the relation between maps and the physical features they represent. As the program notes say, this program will be of particular interest to students and teachers of geography as well as armchair orienteerers. Plunder is a strategy game from Cases Computer Simulations. Set in 1587, the year before the Spanish Armada set sail, the game gives you the opportunity to be an English privateer whose task is to prevent gold from the New World getting back to Spain. You must also be more successful than your deadly rival Sir Francis Drake. There is more to this than mere yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum; you must weigh up the chances of success in taking on merchant, troop and warships. Too much damage or too many lost crew and the game is up; it's Davy Jones' locker for you. Camelot, an adventure-game from the same company, is not quite so good. As Arthur Pendragon you have been banished from Camelot by the Black Knight. Understandably you want to get back; who knows what Lancelot and Guinevere are up to round the Round Table? You have some warriors and money to help you find the necessary seven items. There are graphic displays of landscapes and obstacles, unfortunately rather crude. The "evil magician" looks rather like a conjurer at a children's party. Those Spectrum owners keen to develop the machine's graphics potential should look at Melbourne House's 48K Melbourne Draw. This program will take you on a tour of the Spectrum's graphics, allowing you to choose colours, draw, and store graphic displays. Once you have drawn your picture, you might want to make it say something, in which case you are referred to Abbex's Supertalk which, with no extra hardware, will enable your Spectrum to speak. The demo facility lets you hear Supertalk's Dalek-style voice exercising its small vocabulary. To enter your own vocabulary you record the words on tape and then feed them in, afterwards adjusting them to make sentences. First "Jolson Sings!" now "Spectrum Talks". Program: Aquarius Company: Bug-Byte Memory: 16/48K Price: £5.95 Program: Styx Company: Bug-Byte Memory: 16/48K Price: £5.95 Program: Pool Company: Bug-Byte Memory: 16/48K Price: £5.95 Program: Pool Company: CDS Microsystems Memory: 16/48K Price: £5.95 Program: Jawz Company: DK'Tronics Memory: 16/48K Price: £4.95 Program: Hard Cheese Company: DK'Tronics Memory: 16/48K Price: £4.95 Program: Road Toad Company: DK'Tronics Memory: 16/48K Price: £4.95 Program: Maziacs Company: DK'Tronics Memory: 48K Price: £4.95 Program: 3-D Strategy Company: Quicksilva Memory: 16/48K Price: £6.95 Program: Aquaplane Company: Quicksilva Memory: 16/48K Price: £6.95 Program: The Forest Company: Phipps Associates Memory: 48K Price: £9.95 Program: Lojix Company: Virgin Games Memory: 48K Price: £7.95 Program: Plunder Company: Cases Computer Simulations Memory: 48K Price: £6.00 Program: Camelot Company: Cases Computer Simulations Memory: 48K Price: £5.00 Program: Hanoi King Company: Contrast Software Memory: 16/48K Price: £4.95 Program: Melbourne Draw Company: Melbourne House Memory: 48K Price: £8.95 Program: Supertalk Company: Abbex Memory: 48K Price: £5.95 Program: Chess Tutor Company: Artic Computing Ltd Memory: 16/48K Price: £6.95 Program: Zzoom Company: Imagine Software Memory: 48K Price: £5.50 Program: Tranzam Company: Ultimate Play the Game Memory: 16/48K Price: £5.50 Program: Cookie Company: Ultimate Play the Game Memory: 16/48K Price: £5.50

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 4/5

Playability 4/5

Use Of Machine 5/5

Overall Value 4/5

John Lettice 4/5

NAME: Transam SYSTEM: 16K and 48K Spectrum PRICE: £5.50 PUBLISHER: Ultimate Play the Game FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Machine code OUTLETS: Most retail, mail order. MILES OF TRIALS Far into the future, nuclear war has devastated the world. The cities are silent, shattered, and you are all that's left of civilisation. Well, all apart from the sinister black racers, the gas stations, and your own souped-up racing car with its fuel gauge, engine temperature gauge, speedometer and radar and map reading equipment. Ho hum, back to nature... OBJECTIVES The game has a main screen, which shows your car and the local sights - the odd tree, cactus or rock, helpfully captioned Denver. San Diego etc. You can steer in any direction you like across this screen, which scrolls through a much larger map - represented on the left of the screen - showing you as a little flashing light moving across the USA. Gas stations, which you should visit frequently in order to keep the tiger in your tank, also appear. Your quest is to find the eight cups of Ultimate - just what you need to rebuild civilisation - while avoiding the black racers. These home in on your engine-noise and crash into you. IN PLAY Besides the aforementioned screens, you also have a local radar screen on which to keep an eye. This shows you if there are any hostiles or golden cups in the area. The black racers seem to be faster than you are, and while you break if you hit an object - tree, rock, cactus - they bounce. You can lose them for brief periods by swerving, or by steering in among clumps of trees, but they soon pick up your trail again. It's theoretically possible to keep an eye on all three screens at once. If you have three eyes, but us mere mortals are reduced to driving by the seat of our pants, dodging trees and black racers. The borders are a further hazard. When you get near Canada, Mexico or the sea, you seem to bounce off, so tourism is clearly out. I did try to see the Everglades, but the rubber band seems to be fixed right at the North of Florida. VERDICT Transam is an original idea, and makes a challenging game. It's difficult to get far into it without a joystick, although there is provision made for one, and even then you've got to be fairly nippy. Getting fuel or picking up one of the cups is difficult, as prudence dictates that you should pick them up without stopping. There's also plenty of scope for developing little manoeuvring wrinkles for your continued survival. It certainly isn't a game you'll tire of quickly.