Energy 30,000

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 3/10

Memory: 48K Price: £5.95 Joystick: Kempston Energy 30,000 by Elm Computers for the 48K Spectrum transports you to the year 30000, where uranium stocks are diminishing and you have to collect pink tar - yes, pink - to fuel the reactors. To help you in the task you have a bulldozer with which to push it. Various nasties try to prevent you doing so and usually succeed. Part of the program was compiled with the Wye Valley Compiler and it shows. All the graphics are simple UDGs and move in low resolution. It is difficult to tell which parts were not compiled. If the game is interesting in the first place a compiler is acceptable but in this case it makes a mediocre game into a fast mediocre game.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Crash

Use of Computer 68%

Graphics 60%

Playability 80%

Getting Started 63%

Addictive Qualities 95%

Value For Money 70%

Overall 73%

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Producer: ELM Computers Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £4.90 Language: Machine code Author: Paul Braithwaite The cassette inlay explains that it is the year 30,000 (that's a long, long way off) and you have been recruited by Dr. Minestorm who has discovered that Pink Tar left over in the old mines of the 20th Century can be used as an alternative fuel to Uranium, which is running out. Your task is to mine the Pink Tar by using a bulldozer (bang up to date in the year 30,000). This is done by driving the bulldozer down onto the tar and moving quickly with it to the fuel store. Ten chunks will fill the quota for that mine, and work then moves onto another. The mine is infested with creepy crawlies (show us a mine that isn't these days), and if the bulldozer runs into one - it's kapoom. The screen is divided horizontally by four mine shafts (floors really) with a vertical shaft down the centre. There is also a bottom floor. The rock floors actually resemble Pirelli tyre marks, and are made up of numerous little black rocks, with the occasional pink one. Your bulldozer can crawl left or right, descending or returning by the shaft. The screen is wrap around. COMMENTS Control keys: Z/X left/right, I/J up/down, well laid out Joystick: Kempston Keyboard Play: highly responsive Colour: average Graphics: fairly small, simple and perfectly adequate Sound: good Skill levels: gets impossible after being hard Lives: 3

One of the blurs is your bulldozer in fast, addictive Energy 30,000.