Agent Orange

C&VG (Computer & Video Games)

Graphics 4/10

Sound 3/10

Value 3/10

Playability 3/10

Lee Braithwaite

MACHINES: Spectrum 48,128, 128+/Commodore/Amstrad SUPPLIER: A'n'F PRICE: £9.95 VERSION REVIEWED: Spectrum This game has a very unusual plot. You've got to save the entire universe from a gang of evil aliens. Original, eh? These aliens are planting Triffid-type weeds, that destroy your crops on eight planets. To stop this happening, you must fly to the final planet, and collect a cargo of alien weedkiller, codenamed Agent Orange. You start with one mothership, and eight daughter vessels, but if you play well, you can sell any successful crops, and but better ships from your home planet. When you arrive at a planet, you must blast any aliens that are trying to plant more deadly seeds, and so stop the decaying of any valuable crops. When you fly over fertile soil with the fire button depressed, a seed is planted, and if it reaches a ripe stage, it can be picked. I'm sorry to say, but this is almost as bad as Wibstrs, also from A'n'F. The screen is neither flick screen, nor scrolling, it's a sort of mixture of both. the screen stays stationary, but then scrolls to the next area. Very weird, and very infuriating, especially if there's an alien who's ready to shoot you on the next screen. The scrolling, even for the humble Speccy, and the sound is well below average, even on the 128 Spectrum. The graphics are bland, and mainly black and white with only the odd bit of colour, and nearly all the planets look the same. Basically, it's not a brilliant game, in fact A'n'F hasn't produced a really good game since Chuckie Egg.

ZX ComputingZX Computing Globert

Overall Good

A'n'F £8.95 This is the famous "life" program of multiplying cells transplanted and grafted onto an arcade game. The result is a farmers in space foray with liberal doses of sowing, reaping and zapping. The aim of the game is to establish plantations on alien planets, there are eight to conquer and the final planet has vast supplies of weedkiller with which you can rid the galaxy of weeds. Apart from agriculture there's an element of trading - on returning to your home planet you can cash in your crops and buy a bigger ship. The main action however takes place on the uncultivated planets where you pilot your tiny ship out of the mother craft and set about seeding the surface. There are alien fighters to avoid and destroy and indigenous weeds that will choke your harvest, counteract these threats, harvest your crops and fly back to the mothercraft. That's about the extent of the gameplay - there's a little bit of everything but no highly addictive feature. Agent Orange is an interesting attempt to try something a bit different but the idea of combining "life" with arcade action sounds a lot better than if plays in practice.

Sinclair User

Overall 4/5

Jim Douglas 4/5

Label: A'N'F Author: In-house Price: £8.95 Joystick: various Memory: 48K/128K Reviewer: Jim Douglas I'm still not exactly sure what to make of Agent Orange. OK, it's got a completely lousy title, but it's quite original plot-wise, and it plays very well. Well, while I'm making up my mind, see what you think of the 'concept' (man). Three generations after the Battle of Britain, dogfights of a far larger magnitude are raging on planets all across the solar system. Having exhausted much of Earth's crops, and in an ever-progressive system, whole worlds are exploited for their growth/enducing environments. They're turned into huge greenhouses on which crops are planted, grown and harvested. Policing these places is a big headache, as is simply moving the crops in order to sell them. As a result, a new industry was born. The workers have long hours, poor conditions and little incentive other than the money they can make by importing crops from dangerous areas and maybe ridding the galaxy of a few alien parasites. The trouble with these aliens, though, is that they just seem to decide that any planet is their own, and can plant their own crops on land which you have already claimed. Obviously this is not on, and will have to be dealt with. OK. That's the story. You are a Flying Farmer - as they are known - and have the job of planting and harvesting crops, and dealing with the aliens. Once you've decided which options to select (joystick/ redefined keys etc) you enter the game proper. The screen swishes open to reveal the mothership and your tiny hovvery thing on the launch pad. Off you go over miles and miles of monochrome landscape, which apparently is only a few metres wide - you can't go up or down. Now you will have a full tank of seeds that need planting. Trying to plant these on machinery and weedy areas is pretty stupid. Instead, you've got to find some ground that hasn't been attacked or built on. As you fly low over the surface, hold down the Fire button and your pods of seeds will be shot into the ground. Soon they'll start to grow into little cubes of colour. Of course, the aliens are doing exactly the same thing with their crops, and it's up to you to stop it. Alien craft fly around and take pot shots at you now and again. These can, at least on the early levels, be picked off very easily. Once you've killed one, they will explode in a puff of white smoke. Miraculously his cargo of seeds makes it through the explosion and will lie, invitingly, on the ground. All you have to do is fly over the pod and collect it. Alien seeds overrun your own potential growing areas and must be removed by flying at low level and firing continuously. Having dealt with a couple of aliens and blown away most of their crops, some of your seeds (remember we planted some a couple of paragraphs back) should have turned green, signifying their readiness to be harvested. Harvesting is a doddle. Just fly over the crops and watch your cargo gauge begin to fill. Once you've stocked up on crops, it's back to the mothership and off to another planet. Crops can be converted to money in order to buy a more heavily defended ship. This will come in handy in later stages when the baddies develop tougher hulls. And that's just about the measure of it. The graphics are rather nice, it's all rather original, and there's some genuine strategy involved; should you concentrate on harvesting your ripe crops or try to deal with the spreading alien vegetation? Not so much kill, kill, kill as sow, harvest, sell and kill a bit.

Your Sinclair

Graphics 8/10

Playability 6/10

Value For Money 7/10

Addictiveness 7/10

Overall 7/10

Marcus Berkmann 7/10

A'n'F £8.95 Reviewer: Marcus Berkmann Rick Scragworth: Intergalactic Farmer. Doesn't sound too hot, does it? If a title like that leapt out at you from the shelves with hunky illustrations of a Harrison Ford type driving a combine harvester, what would you do? Shell out or run out? With new ideas never thinner on the ground, more and more bizarre variations on old ideas are very much the soup of the day. And the main course, served by A'n'F, is Agent Orange, the world's first pastoral shoot 'em up. Coming soon - Gauntlettuce, the classic vector graphics zaparama Compost, and of course Way Of The Exploding Tractor. Well, maybe not, but you never know! So, wassitallabout? Well in Agent Orange (which is not, incidentally, the name of a CIA-employed citrus fruit), you play an intergalactic farmer, sowing alien seeds on hostile planets and reaping the benefits - if you can stay alive, that is. Each time you return a certain quantity of grain to your home planet, you can trade in your ship for a bigger one, which is just as well, since the aliens on each successive planet get nastier and less easy to dodge. The eighth planet, should you get there, is where you'll find the elusive Agent Orange, which turns out to be a sort of mega-weedkiller. Once you've destroyed the alien ships patrolling each planet, the weeds are in fact your greatest enemy, as they slowly cover the surface and throttle your own plants. The plants' growth follows the same rules of their real counterparts, so you'll have to wait until they're fully matured before you can harvest 'em. Be careful you don't overload your ship, though, 'cos if you do, kerboom! This is an odd sort of game, combining strategy and arcade elements without really getting the best out of either. It's not superfast, but it does sport some excellent Uridium-type graphics to compensate for its lack of speed. Farmers should love it - and you may well like it too.

Read it at Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

Crash

Presentation 72%

Graphics 63%

Playability 59%

Addictiveness 55%

Value For Money 53%

Overall 59%

Ben Stone

Mike Dunn

Paul Sumner

Producer: A'n'F Retail Price: £8.95 Author: Icon Designs The single greatest drawback of space travel is its cost. But the costs are worth it of the profit is reliable, and space farming certainly meets that requirement. You would like to try your hand at the new game of seeding uninhabited planets and harvesting the resulting crops. Trouble is, that an alien species have just had the same idea, and their plants ('weeds' to you) seem to do so much better. The only real ray of hope is Agent Orange - a potent weedkiller that reaches alien weeds the way ordinary domestic killers can't. It's out there in the wide galaxy - somewhere, if only you could find it... Still, before that, there's farming work to be done. You are faced with battling across eight planets full of rival alien planters. Starting from home, a mothership heads for the first world, carrying seed crop and all-purpose crop-planted fighters for daughterships). On arrival in orbit, an information screen shows the number of enemy craft on the planet, and their shield strengths. When the daughtership is launched, the screen displays the immobile mother ship and the virgin soil below. The view is from overhead with a left/right flip scrolling screen - the fighter moves in eight directions. Further read-outs indicate the fighter's shield strength, enemy shield strength, score, money and number of seeds and harvested crops in the fighter's hold. Crops are planted by holding down FIRE and moving the craft over the planet's surface. Once sown, they multiply fruitfully, going through three stages of growth: red, blue and green. When green, they're ready for harvesting, a simple matter of moving the fighter back over them. Leaving the crops unharvested causes them to wither and die. This scene of peaceful cultivation hides a violent fight for the right to plant. Alien fighter/harvesters are there too, and are determined to stake their claim. On the early levels of the game, just one shot disposes of them; but later, with bigger shields, they're far more aggressive. These ships can also plant crops, which you cannot harvest - but you can burn them off. If the joystick is released and the fire button is held down, the ship starts to fire rapid, short range shots, clearing alien weed to give your crops more room to breed. Strategy plays a part. The fighter's hold carries only 600 harvested units, and when it's full, the fighter returns to the Mothership. Fighter shields are replenished at this stage. The Mothership can only carry 2000 units, so after three harvesting trips, the Mothership must return home to cash in the crops. But it can only leave the planet if all alien ships have been destroyed. Back home you can trade ships. The current stock of ships and seeds is cashed in, and the sum added to money received for crops farmed. More expensive models with better shielding can be purchased with the profits. Meanwhile, back at the space ranch, more aliens have taken up residence. You can return and start over, or try for another planet - who knows, you might discover that elusive Agent Orange. COMMENTS Control keys: definable, left, right, up, down, fire Joystick: Kempston, Cursor, Interface 2 Use of colour: Graphics: detailed bas-relief, but jerky Sound: title tune, average spot FX Skill levels: one Screens: eight scrolling landscapes

Between planting jobs, your fighter passes an abandoned processing plant.

Threatened by the approaching enemy, your craft emerges from the mothership.